Free Her Brother's Keeper - eARC by Mike Kupari Page B

herself, and was mature enough to babysit, but Marcus knew his wife. She was a doting, dedicated mom and wouldn’t settle for being an absentee parent. She wasn’t going to be able to work full time like she had, and they were going to need money to provide for both of their children’s futures now.
    Annie was smart enough to get a scholarship to the university if she’d just apply herself, but she was bored with school and Marcus knew it. She took after him in that regard, and wasn’t as studious and patient as her mother. She didn’t want to go to the university anyway. Ellie didn’t want to hear it, but he knew she wanted to go to the Spaceflight Academy. A few more years of saving and he probably could have sent her, but now?
    Marcus held his family tightly, and resolved to find a way.

Chapter 5
    New Austin
    Lone Star System

    It took the Andromeda two hundred and twenty hours to complete the trajectory from the transit point through which she had entered the system to the orbit of New Austin. The dusty, dry planet was far from the heart of the Concordiat, but was slowly growing into a trading hub and center of frontier commerce. Andromeda ’s sensors were tracking twenty-two other ships in the system. Lone Star had four transit points, and all were relatively close to the star itself. This was a huge benefit, economically speaking, and was one of the factors that enabled the system to get so much traffic. Transit points that were weeks’ or even months’ travel from each other or inhabited planets tended to not get as much traffic, since even the biggest ships could carry only so much reaction mass. In systems with enough traffic to make such things cost-effective, automated space tugs would help haul ships on long, in-system journeys, but New Austin had no such infrastructure in place yet.
    The Andromeda approached New Austin at a comparatively high relative velocity. Tail first, she sailed into a low orbit, descending into the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. Her thermally shielded tail section heated up as she skimmed the atmosphere, bleeding off velocity and using far less propellant to decelerate than she would have otherwise. A single orbital rotation was enough to slow her to descent speed. The trajectory plotted by the flight computer had the ship begin her descent far above Aterrizaje, the colonial capital and home to the planet’s largest spaceport.
    Guided by spaceport traffic control, her systems synced with those on the ground to prevent a collision with other ships, the Andromeda descended through New Austin’s atmosphere. Riding on her engines in a spectacular plume of smoke and fire, she gracefully slowed to almost a hover a few hundred meters over her designated landing pad. Sturdy landing jacks extended from the thick wingroots of her four large airfoils. The heavy ship set down on the landing pad amidst the roar of her engines and the smoke created by her exhaust. The landing gear hydraulics compressed as engine power was cut, and the stout craft curtsied politely as she settled onto terra firma . The ship’s engines were locked out and the landing pad’s service tower automatically aligned itself with the now-open ventral cargo bay. It adjusted itself to the correct height and length as it craned outward, like some kind of massive mechanical snake, and coupled with the cargo bay.
    Inside, the Andromeda ’s crew was quickly but carefully running through their postflight checklists and procedures. Even experienced spacers tended to move awkwardly after a months-long journey, most of which was spent in freefall, but the crew hustled as best they could. The captain had announced that they’d be dirtside for several local weeks, and that this was the last chance they’d get to stretch their legs and have some fun before the long haul to Zanzibar. The sooner the crew finished their assigned tasks, the sooner they could be out blowing their accumulated pay in the bars and brothels