Free A Titan for Christmas by Aria Kane

 
     
    Chapter 1
     
     
    Jenna took one last look at the monitors. "We're sure everything’s in running order again?"
    "Yes ma'am," Henry said. "You're good to go."
    Henry was the oldest, most experienced mining technician at Huygens Station, where Jenna had been working for 18 months. Despite all of her mentors and trainers and official manuals, she had learned a hundred times more from Henry. He wasn't afraid to tell her to crawl down in a grease-filled trench so he could show her how a certain coupling fit together. To Henry, she was an engineer. Not a female engineer, just an engineer who needed to learn.
    Jenna looked at her watch and sighed, pulling on her long brunette ponytail in frustration.
    "You miss your shuttle?" Henry asked.
    "Yep," Jenna said. "And the one after that and the one after that, which I'm pretty sure is the last passenger shuttle out of here before Christmas."
    Jenna had been scheduled to leave for Christmas vacation over thirty-six hours ago, but a hydraulic line on Drill #3 had busted forty hours ago. All of this advanced technology and the station was crippled by a system that had been perfected hundreds of years ago.
    Out of all the Titan Energy Project engineering shift managers, she had the least seniority and no children back on Earth to worry about disappointing for Christmas, so she had "volunteered" to oversee the reparations. And now it looked like she'd be spending Christmas the way she had spent Thanksgiving, in the dining hall with Henry.
    Her job had made her miss a lot of holidays, but this was different. In all his years as a mining mechanic, her father had never even missed a Christmas. It was the Holiday, as far as her family was concerned.
    "What about the non-passenger shuttles?" Henry asked.
    "What do you mean?"
    "Passengers ain't the only thing that gets shuttled back and forth between the mining colonies and Earth. Sometimes private freight ships will take on passengers in need of a lift – for the right price, of course."
    "Really?"
    Jenna's eyes lit up with hope for the first time in forty hours. Maybe she would be able to make it to her family in time for Christmas after all. Her eyes filled with tears when she pictured her mom, dad, and two sisters sitting at the dinner table decorated with red bows and corny snowflake confetti, her spot empty. Bubba would be laying just close enough to the table so he wouldn't get yelled at, begging for scraps with those ridiculously sad puppy-dog eyes.
    "Maybe," Henry said. "I don't want to get your hopes up too high. Just make sure you're careful about who you jump on board with. Those private pilots don't go through the same background checks our company and government crew do."
    Jenna smiled warmly at Henry and gave him an almost work-appropriate side hug. Though she was technically his boss, she loved him like the grandfathers she never really got to know. In a mining and engineering environment of eighty-three percent men, having Henry to provide guidance without judgment was an often-appreciated blessing.
    Henry waved his hand dismissively at her. So she planted a kiss on his craggy old cheek. He could pretend he didn't like the affection, but she knew better.
    "Well, what are you waiting for, girl? A flight could be leaving for Earth at any minute!"
    She squealed and crossed her fingers as she ran to grab her purse. "Thanks Henry! Hold down the fort for me while I'm gone?"
    "Anytime, JJ. I hope you find a flight."
     
    **
     
    Jenna sped toward the docks in her TEP personal craft. The TEP employees liked to call them Penguins – partly because of their black and white color scheme, but mostly because the short-winged craft wouldn't have been able to fly in the thinner Earth atmosphere either.
    The entire top half of the Penguin consisted of a clear fiberglass bubble, allowing for full visibility all around and above. Jenna leaned back in her chair and gazed up into Titan's dim, fuzzy sky. The craft basically flew itself once