Well, the Sergeant was back to consciousness if not to action...     Chapter 23.      "Whoa!" Tavana lunged out reflexively, catching Maddox as he was almost dragged headlong into the water. The carbonan fishing pole was bent in a sharp curve, vibrating furiously even while Tavana managed to get the smaller Bird brother back on his feet. "Got something, Tav, we got something!" "Vraiment, that we do! Can you hold it?" Maddox' face was set in lines of determination. "If… you can… keep me from falling on my [ Continue reading... ]

Sorry about the delay; medical emergencies in the household distracted me yesterday.   Chapter 20.      "You have to eat something, Tav." Tavana jumped slightly at the unexpected voice. He was sitting on the steps of the lander's ladder, looking up at a comet whose slowly-fading tail covered thirty degrees of the now-dark sky. "Not hungry." "Bullcrap," Xander said, and held out a plate. He was about to refuse again when his nose caught the scent. "A Buckley? Merde, Xander, we were supposed to be saving those for special [ Continue reading... ]

Work's never done on a frontier world... -----   Chapter 17. Tavana sagged back into the shelter's narrow bed and let out an explosive sigh. He hurt in places he didn't remember he had. The temporary shelter was made of the lightest, strongest materials available. But it was also designed to house up to ten people, which meant that even with the lightest, strongest materials it was very heavy, very bulky, and unfortunately required some manual work to unpack and set up. The automated anchors had failed; they were meant for [ Continue reading... ]

They had just landed.... but were they safe yet?   -----   Chapter 14.      Tavana let out a whoop and for a few moments everyone was cheering except for the Sergeant, who was just grinning from ear to ear and leaning back in his seat with obvious relief. Finally the noise died down and the Sergeant stood up. "Whoo. Feels real funny standing now, but also seems my medical nanos didn't let me get too weak. Still, everybody be a little careful moving around 'til you get used to walking again." He looked around the [ Continue reading... ]

  They had one more roll of the dice to throw...   ------   Chapter 12      Tavana gazed at the brilliant disc of the star – filtered, of course – that was the center of their hopes. "Program concluded, Sergeant. We made it; I think we must be, um, what, something like a hundred eighty million kilometers from the star right now. What now?" "Now we have to look for a planet we can land on," Campbell said easily. Tavana knew he was putting up a front, mostly for Maddox and Francisco. There was no guarantee of a [ Continue reading... ]

Well, they'd retrieved Lieutenant Haley...     -----     Chapter 9.   "Do you think we have enough, sir?" Sergeant Campbell didn't answer at once; Tavana could see he was still carefully transferring the contents of injector after injector into a treatment pack. Finally he looked up and Tavana was startled to see the lines on the Sergeant's face; they seemed far more pronounced now than they'd been when they were first marooned. "I wish to God I knew, son. To be dead honest with you… if it were just me [ Continue reading... ]