Chaos. Sam's screams echoed in her helmet as she tumbled about multiple axis. Sight proved to be only a detriment as her surroundings blurred by her in a nauseating streak. Her vasted mind rapidly determined the necessary corrections to bring her spin under control. Three deft touches of her corona later and her orientation had stabilized so that she felt no motion. Of course, being in space, that didn't mean much. She was in fact sailing through the interior bay of the Angelship towards the far wall.

Priorities. First, find Jess. Her eyes scanned the area and quickly fixated on a human tumbleweed. Good. Friend found. Second priority: stop her friend and herself from hitting into anything. Sam shot towards Jess and managed to get both of them stopped relative to the immense structure around them. Vomit stained the interior of Jess's helmet. Priority three: prevent the aspiration of nasty stuff. Sam used her corona to move the chunks to a corner of the helmet, then rapidly dehydrated it with her teleotic talent.

What next? Getting back to Earth before the Angmari did something to them seemed like a solid idea. Sam sent comforting memes towards Jess as she pushed both of them out of the Angelship's bay. As they came around the row of docked shuttles, she caught sight of the blue marble that was Earth and her heart suddenly swelled. All the times she had piloted back and forth, her attention had been on screens displaying navigation instructions. The shuttles didn't even possess windows. A glance to Jess indicated that the moment of awe was not shared. In fact, the chances of a second up-chuck seemed fairly high.

Sam moved them fully out of the bay, accelarating towards the Earth. "You don't know how long your air supply is going to last, Sam, so get a move on," she shouted inside her helmet.

For long minutes, not much seemed to change. The globe beneath her did not noticeably change in size. Then she turned briefly to look behind and saw the Angelship already small with distance and shrinking rapidly.

Faced forward once more, Sam stared at the Earth as she continued pushing them. After a time, boredom set in. The only sounds were the hiss of her suit and whatever noises she made. She was covered in sweat from the heat of her body combined with the heat of the sunlight. Beside her, Jess looked miserable any time they made eye contact.

"Flying in space is getting old," she said.

Her attention suddenly snapped back into focus. The Earth was larger. By a lot. Something in her brain suddenly recognized the perspective for what it was: she was moving towards this object really, really fast. That object being the Earth, one would not be wrong to say she was falling. "Probably going way too fast, but that's no big deal. I can decelarate us as fast as necessary without worrying about mechanical stress. The kinetic talent has me covered here."

Sam applied her corona to rapidly slow their pace as the black of space at the periphery of their vision retreated so that only planet existed before them. Though she was using her maximum effort to slow them, the Earth continued to rush up at them. Sam's suit began to heat up around her. "And this year's Darwin Award goes to . . . me! So stupid. It probably took an hour for me to get up to speed, of course I'm not going to slow down in time."

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Priorities. First, prevent burning up in the atmosphere. Second, don't smack into the ground. Two goals which might not be entirely compatible given her limited flow of precursor.

Sam diverted some of her animas away from the task of slowing them to divert atmosphere from beneath them to their sides. That would create an area of lower air pressure around them. Hopefully low enough that atmospheric compression and friction wouldn't overheat their bodies. She briefly diverted more precursor to clear some residue.

They continued their fall. Below and to every side, baleful red grew as the leading edge of Sam's corona bore the brunt of their descent. Within their protective shell, they were buffeted by the forces that managed to reach them. Sam found herself hyperventilating in her suit and couldn't tell at first if it was the stress of the situation or the quality of her air supply. She couldn't afford to worry about that on top of everything else.

Though their speed obviously had dropped, they were still moving at a dangerous rate. Sam poured more effort into slowing them for a moment before backing off. Her shield was becoming increasingly important as the air thickened. She had to . . . .

Sam blinked herself back awake. The hyperventilation problem was not stress after all. Oxygen. Need oxygen. Her hands went reflexively to her helmet before stopping. Removing that would be a bad idea. Need oxygen. So . . . make oxygen? Carbon dioxide to oxygen. How would that even work? Sam flooded her mind with nous to preserve her consciousness.

The teleotic talent had to be used intelligently, she knew. You couldn't just wish for something to happen. You had to impose a physical pattern on reality, then the probabilities would shift in its favor. But what pattern could she use here? More oxygen in the air? That might just make the oxygen bubble out of her blood to fill the air. No. Smarter. Carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide. She wanted the oxygen freed from the carbon, so why not force the carbon out?

Sam had no idea what the pattern of carbon felt like, so she began to prod at her blood and the air with the teleotic talent, trying to reverse engineer what she was seeking. Carbon was all through human bodies. Maybe that? No, that was obviously water. How about that? Nope, oxygen. Hmmm . . . . So oxygen bound to that thing floating around the blood would be carbon dioxide. The pattern for that thing . . . two of those things, actually . . . bound to each other.

And . . . black flecks began to precipitate within her helmet. Sam's dimming thoughts began to resume. She turned her attention to Jess and applied the pattern to her friend's air as well.

Then she turned her attention back to their status. Alive but still falling.

Sam noticed the edges of her shield no longer glowed balefully and shifted animas from it back to her efforts to slow them. They parted the clouds to reveal ground beneath them. Sam took a deep breath and coughed on the flakes of elemental carbon. At that moment, they looked to be about as high up as a commercial airline would go. Sam released her shield entirely and poured everything into stopping their fall.

Beside her, Jess jerked awake in sudden panic. "I'm going to owe you a serious apology if this doesn't work," Sam muttered.

As the ground features resolved into focus, their descent ended. Sam ripped off her helmet to take a breath and threw it at the farmland beneath her. Jess did the same. "I almost died and had to smell puke the whole trip! One star rating! Would not uber with Sam again!"

Sam could only laugh.