Saving Grace

  SAVING GRACE

  Copyright ©2014 by Merry Farmer

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Kalen O’Donnell

  ASIN: B00LSPP5CE

  ISBN: 9781310248191

  Paperback:

  ISBN-13: 978-1500390006

  ISBN-10: 1500390003

  Saving Grace

  By Merry Farmer

  For all of my co-workers at Coventry over the years.

  Some of you may find yourself in these pages.

  Okay, most of you will find yourself in these pages.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – The Crash

  Chapter Two – The River

  Chapter Three – The Gift

  Chapter Four – The Treasure

  Chapter Five – The War

  Chapter Six – The Leader

  Chapter Seven – Aggression

  Chapter Eight – The Mission

  Chapter Nine – The Mistake

  Chapter Ten – The Other Side of the River

  Chapter Eleven – The Wildcard

  Chapter Twelve – The Explosion

  Fallen From Grace Preview

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  Chapter One – The Crash

  “Impact with the moon’s inner atmosphere in five… four… three… two….”

  Before Grace could take a deep breath, the emergency ship groaned, a shiver that turned into a violent jolt. The impact shook ES5 like a cosmic child angry with its toys.

  “What’s going on?” Beth yelped across the cramped cabin, pale with terror.

  “It’s all right,” Grace assured her, even as her own heart sped to double-time. She checked on her fellow team members, tense in the seats that lined the walls of the ship they’d been stuck in for months. “It’s just the atmosphere surrounding Chronis’s moon. We won’t—”

  She was cut off by a boom that rocked the helpless vessel. The straps crisscrossing her torso dug in to the point of bruising. Screams echoed off the metal walls.

  “Are you okay?” Danny shouted beside her.

  “Yeah, it took me by surprise is all.” She put on a brave face, fear lurking under the surface. The increasing roar of their descent caused her to wince.

  “If deciding to land on this moon gets us all killed, I’m going to wring Sean’s neck,” Danny shouted.

  That wry burst of humor twisted Grace’s stomach with panic. Danny only joked when he was desperate.

  The screech of the hull rose to an unbearable volume. Sirens blared to life, adding to the clamor at a higher and higher pitch. Grace’s ears burned. The pressure threatened to squash her head from the inside. It was madness to try to land, but it was that or die drifting in space. Die in space or die on solid ground. It wasn’t much of a choice.

  Muffled shouts to her left pulled Grace’s attention to the flapping cockpit door. Through it she could see Sean and Dave and a few of their team members straining over the controls, shouting directions. The wide front viewport—hot white glare growing around the edges—showed a swirl of blue and green and brown racing toward them.

  A moment of awe eclipsed her fear. Green and brown. After more than a year of nothing but black and silver, space and metal, cold and darkness. Life sped toward her. Life that was about to destroy her.

  Before the thought could coalesce into fear, the ship’s engines groaned into action. The accompanying jerk took her breath away. She gripped her seat with white knuckles and prayed as if she could hold the vessel together by her will alone. Will and prayers were the only thing that had held ES5 together for the past six months. The blasted thing had started malfunctioning within two weeks of fleeing the colony transport ship, Argo. It hadn’t been designed to land and she wouldn’t have risked it if they had had any kind of a choice.

  To her right, Danny shouted. She couldn’t hear him at all now over the engine and rush of atmosphere. She fought against the pressure of their speed to turn her head toward him. His wide blue eyes burned with fear and determination behind his glasses. He shouted again—whether words of comfort or of warning she couldn’t tell—and lifted his hand to plant it protectively over hers. Grace managed a smile, even as black sparks formed at the corners of her vision.

  She stared once more toward the cockpit door and the tiny glimpse of promise or annihilation in front of them. The green and brown and blue were no longer spinning, but now the impossible rattling returned as the ship’s braking mechanism kicked in. The glare of entering an alien atmosphere stung her eyes. She looked away. This was it. The end of her life or the beginning.

  “Hold on,” she shouted, hardly able to hear her own voice. She worked against the force pinning her to make eye contact with as many of her people as she could. It was her job as emergency management coordinator, her responsibility as a person, to keep them safe. Most tried their best to return her nod through the fear and the turbulence that replaced the pressure of speed. “Hold on.”

  Her eyes snapped to Danny, to his hand holding hers. “Hold on, Danny.”

  “I am holding on.” His reply was muffled over the din. He tightened his hand around hers. “I’ve always held on.”

  For half a second she felt comfort.

  It vanished as the ship knocked sideways. Screams cut through the chaos. Grace’s heart dropped to her stomach. She squeezed Danny’s hand hard as they smashed against the side of their seats. The rip of cargo breaking out of its mesh restraints at the back of the cabin doubled the noise.

  The view through the flapping cockpit door showed trees and hills and distant mountains, distinct against the coral-tinted sky. Sean and Dave evened their descent, but they couldn’t control it. Grace saw the ridge of a hill moments before they skimmed it.

  The impact sent loose cargo smashing across the cabin like dice in a cup. Several seats down, Peter ripped out of his seat’s restraints and bounced off the ceiling.

  Grace pushed against her own restraints, her instinct to help overpowering her alarm. Danny’s hand tightened around hers. She could only watch in horror as Peter smashed into walls and cargo, limp and battered. He banged against the seats to Grace’s right and was caught and held by three fellow travelers.

  Grace swallowed the edge of fear that made her heart pound and turned to check on the cockpit. Through the front screen she could see a deep green valley with trees and fields speeding toward them as they sank lower.

  “It’s almost over,” she yelled, unable to hear herself. Her eyes flickered across to Carrie. She raised her voice, “It’s almost over.” She and Carrie would laugh about this later. If they survived. She swallowed a fresh wave of panic.

  Carrie nodded as if she could hear. Grace looked to the cockpit viewport one more time then twisted away as they rammed into the trees.

  The moan of speed was replaced by sick rumbling as impact after impact shook the ship so hard she was sure it would come apart. Lights flickered and vents hissed as ES5’s systems failed. The straps digging into her arms and chest were the only thing keeping her from Peter’s fate. The screaming in the cabin grew. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the warmth of Danny’s hand st
ill clamped over hers.

  With a final booming lurch, the ship ground to a stop and flipped up at an angle. Grace smashed into the side of her seat as it bucked against the bolts holding it down. Metal groaned and snapped and some of the crates and boxes that made up the cargo hurled to the front of the cabin. They crashed against the wall, mashing the cockpit door shut with a boom like thunder. The emergency sirens gave one final shriek and died as the lights in the cabin dimmed.

  Then the ship was silent.

  Grace panted, ears ringing, body aching. Her fear coalesced into shaking. It was over.

  She lay still, disoriented with the new angle of the ship. Her head lolled to the side before she summoned enough strength to lift her neck.

  The world returned to focus with a ringing buzz.

  Weeping, more creaking, the crackling snaps of electrical wires, they were all hollow through the buzz.

  She inched open her eyes. The cabin sloped down toward the cockpit. Several crates were piled against the wall, some smashed open to spill their contents. One was wedged against her foot. She had to stare at it for a moment before the pain registered. Pain was something real, something she could focus on. She chose pain instead of fear.

  With shaking hands, she reached to unclasp the buckle of the restraints that had saved her life. Danny’s hand tightened over hers.

  “Are you all right?”

  Dazed, she twisted in her chair to face him. His voice seemed miles away. In the dim light of the cabin she could make out a cut down the side of his face and blood trickling from his nose, but he’d managed to keep his glasses on straight.

  “I’m…I’m fine.” She took a breath, pushing herself to action through her shock. “How about you?”

  She laid a hand on his warm, sweaty jaw and turned his face to see his wound better.

  “I’m all right.” He squeezed her other hand, then let go to unclasp his restraints. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  “So is yours.” She nodded.

  As blood and feeling returned to her limbs and mind, she took several calming breaths. This was what she was trained for. This was her job. She could handle this.

  The groans, crying, coughing, and retching of her people came clearer as the ringing in her ears subsided. She brushed a thick strand of loose red hair out of her face with the back of her hand, wiped her bleeding nose, and kicked the crate away from her foot.

  “Come on.”

  Her head pounded as she struggled to her feet. It took a moment to regain her equilibrium, especially with the floor slanted under her and the hint of true gravity holding her down. The muted light of emergency power was cut with flashes of alarm red, showing her the damage. Voices and banging could be heard on the other side of the blocked cockpit door.

  Carrie lurched free of her restraints and sat hunched on the slanted floor, rubbing her ears. Grace pushed her way across scattered debris to her friend.

  “Are you all right?” She reached Carrie in half a dozen faltering steps, foot aching, and caught herself on the arms of Carrie’s chair. Her knees threatened to give out, but they were the least of her worries. The air inside the ship was heating, which meant life support systems were on the fritz at best.

  “What?” Carrie shouted at her, cringing and shaking her head. “My ears….”

  Grace nodded and straightened, offering her hands to pull Carrie to a standing position. “The ship’s systems are malfunctioning. I don’t trust this thing to last long. ES5 wasn’t designed for six months in space and a crash landing. We have to get out of here.”

  She twisted toward the door. The banging from the cockpit startled her.

  “Help! The door’s stuck.” Sean’s deep voice was muffled and tinny through the wall.

  “Hold on. There’s stuff blocking it,” Carrie responded before Grace could get a word out.

  Carrie wove unsteadily down the sloped floor to push crates out of the way. A few of the others recovered and stumbled across the cabin to help her. They formed a team to clear debris from the cockpit door.

  Danny shifted his way around the team at the door to help Peter, who lay limp across the seats, two others crouched over him. Peter was still and silent, his limbs bent at wrong angles. Dread swirled in Grace’s gut. She took a step toward him. If he was dead…. She paused and took a breath of the stuffy cabin air. One disaster at a time.

  Grace hiked up her skirt, climbing the incline of the floor toward the ship’s exit door. The acrid smell of wires burning heightened her sense of alarm.

  “What d’ya think?” Stacey asked as she approached. Stacey’s overloud voice hinted that her ears were ringing too, even if she stood with her hands on her hips and head cocked as though she was repairing drones instead of assessing danger.

  “ES5’s instruments say…said that the atmosphere on this moon is comparable to that on Earth.” Grace pretended ease and command, though her heart pounded.

  “ES5 is a piece of shit,” Stacey spat.

  Grace gave her a wary look of agreement. “We trusted it enough to land. Apparently the ship following us did too.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.” Stacey shifted her weight. “I wonder if their ride down was as fun as ours.”

  Grace managed a faint grin, but that was it. People were recovering and inching closer to her. Decisions needed to be made.

  “We can’t stay in here if the power dies and the life support stops functioning. If the moon can’t support us, I’d rather know now.”

  Stacey shifted her weight. “You want to ask Sean first?”

  Grace clenched her jaw. “No, I do not want to ask Sean first.”

  “Good.” Stacey grinned. “Neither do I. You’re the emergency management leader.”

  “And this is an emergency.” The half joke energized Grace. She’d spent too long drifting. Now it was time for action. “Open the door and we’ll find out if the ship’s computer was right or if this little moon isn’t so habitable after all.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Stacey was as eager as she was.

  ES5’s door wasn’t designed to be open until the instruments said it had landed. With all but emergency power out, it had no idea whether they were in space or on Earth or Terra or in the middle of a sun. It took five men to force the latches open and to turn the wheel that loosened the door enough for it to slide. The door groaned in protest at its first taste of true gravity before clunking heavily down the hull, breaking part of its casing as it smashed the end of its track.

  Sunlight flooded into the ship. Grace blinked and raised a hand to shield her eyes. She and the others shied back, holding their breath as one last moment of doubt gripped them. In an instant, all doubt vanished. The light brought with it the rich scent of earth and vegetation, damp and vivid. Grace breathed in, testing the air’s viability.

  It was clean. A wave of elation pulsed through her with the fresh, natural oxygen. She closed her eyes and let her shoulders drop as she filled her lungs.

  How long had it been? How long since she’d breathed real air, since she’d felt dirt beneath her feet? Since Nature had taken precedence over Man? How long since she had felt life around her?

  She opened her eyes and pushed her way to the doorway as those who had opened it climbed out.

  In the course of its crash, the front half of ES5 had been wedged into dark dirt, tipping the body of the ship up at an angle. The bottom corner of the doorway was several inches below ground level. Grace stepped cautiously out of the metal hull, still steaming from its dive and run through the ground in lieu of brakes, and into a forest.

  Trees swayed in a mild breeze around her, spreading in a thick canopy of green. Above their rustling tops she could see a hint of blue sky tinted with soft orange. Greens and browns spread around her in all directions, shades she had forgotten existed. She wandered forward, feet remembering what rocks and twigs felt like, body remembering what true gravity felt like. The scent of the forest was rich and authentic, earthy below and tangy with something clos
e to pine above. She could hear birds chattering in every cadence, insects humming in the undergrowth, noisy and true. Honest nature.

  She stumbled several yards forward, across tufts of grass and moss, and sank to all fours. Her fingers splayed through the cool, damp grass. For a moment she breathed, letting her fear dissolve. This was what she had dreamed of from the moment she entered the Project. She plucked a handful of grass and brought it to her nose with both hands. Her throat squeezed in joy and she closed her eyes. She was alive. She had a future. They all did.

  “Hey Grace, you all right?” Stacey called after her.

  Grace let the torn grass go and stood to face her. “Never better.”

  Confidence filled her. It didn’t matter where they were now, her purpose was clear. She was alive. She had a future to build.

  Her gaze shifted past Stacey to the wreck of ES5 behind her. From the outside it seemed like a metal-plated cottage that had landed on a witch, impossibly small for the number of people who had been cramped in it for six months. Its tapered nose was buried deep, the churned earth pouring over the front, like a child’s toy in a sandbox.

  Her elation shifted to decision.

  “We need to get people out of there and into the open, away from the ship, until we can determine if it’s stable,” she spoke to whoever would listen to her.

  Several people were already fanning out in the forest. They nodded at her command, ready to look to her for something to do, and ducked into the hull as more of them began to emerge.

  Grace glanced around, assessing their surroundings. Surviving was only the beginning. They would need water, something to use as shelter besides the wreck. They would need food, protection from the elements. The clock was ticking, but she had no idea how fast it ran.

  She strode the length of ES5, searching. A long trough of destruction cut through the trees stretching behind the ship. She raised a hand to her eyes and studied it. Far in the distance, something glimmered at a break in the trees, possibly water. On the other side of the wreck, a hill sloped steeply up to a crest. A few large clusters of rocks and trees were scattered across the hillside.