Chapter 118 – Crashing, Mark 2

Amelia gritted her teeth, her hands gripping the shuttle’s controls tightly before looking back into the shuttle’s drop bay. The rear hatch was wide open to space.

The darkness of her dead cockpit warred with the lightless void, punctuated by the iridescent debris and slag of the Radiant Descent that was behind them. Sweat beaded on her forehead inside her suit as she mentally ticked down the minutes until re-entry.

It turned out, there was a marine with a flight engineering ribbon.

It turned out, that despite half of them showing up in nothing but their underwear, there were enough skinsuits to keep everyone from having their lungs vacuumed and being turned into corpsicles.

Whatever magical space-bullshit had hit them and the Radiant Descent hadn’t affected their personal neural implants. Otherwise, they’d all have probably died on the spot.

Small mercies.

“How’re we looking back there?” she called over her shoulder, her voice steady despite the tension coursing through her body.

Skinsuit radios were fine. It had taken two seconds to tune them all into the same channel, letting everyone talk despite the lack of atmosphere.

A marine’s gruff voice crackled through her comm. “Almost got it, LT. Just need to bypass the main power coupling.”

Amelia nodded, though she knew they couldn’t see her. They were somewhere on the outer skin, their mag-boots the only thing keeping them from drifting into the void.

“Twenty minutes to re-entry,” she announced, her tone clipped and professional.

The shuttle’s interior was filled with the sounds of labored breathing through oxygen masks and the occasional curse as the marines worked to secure the contents. Themselves.

She could have killed the channel, but the sound of other people being alive was a minor comfort. Regardless of what they were facing, at least she wasn’t alone.

There weren’t enough drop seats for everyone, but with an application of the survival gear stowed away on the bird, the shortfall was quickly shrinking. Now she just needed to avoid calculating their survival odds.

A spark of light out the rear doors caught her eye. “What the—“

[Warning: Unidentified energy signature detected.]

Beams of ethereal light lanced upwards, slicing through the debris field like a hot knife through butter.

“Holy shit,” someone whispered behind her.

“Focus, people!” One of the marines barked. Probably the Sergeant. “We’ve got bigger problems. How’re those thrusters coming?”

As if in answer, the shuttle’s systems flickered to life. Displays blinked on, filling the cockpit with a soft blue glow. Amelia quickly moved to check their systems.

Nominal. Everything reported Nominal. No sign or reason for the power loss. Probably the self checks were offline themselves…

Nothing wrong with the sensors or visual display on her primary screens, though. Which quickly highlighted a pressing need: everything moving forward, and thus into a higher orbit, was being lashed at by the blue alien energy whips.

“We’ve got power!” a marine shouted triumphantly.

A dry smile appeared on Amelia’s lips. Yeah, things were looking a little better. It was all about degrees of how shit-fucked they were. “Good work. Now let’s see if we can—“

The words died in her throat as every display suddenly went dark. The shuttle’s systems fell silent.

“No, no, no,” Amelia muttered, frantically flipping switches and pressing buttons. Nothing responded.

[Alert: Complete systems failure detected. Cause unknown.]

“Fix it again!” she shouted on the comm, her voice tight with tension. They needed to adjust course.

A second later, much faster than the first time, the shuttle’s systems flickered back to life, displays blinking on with a soft blue glow. Then they died again.

Amelia hissed a sound of frustration before the short-range radio crackled.

“We already flipped the breaker, LT,” one of the marines outside reported.

“Again!” she shouted.

The systems came back online. Whatever was wrong, that seemed to fix it. For ten seconds. How many times would that work? Why did it even work? Fuck, did it matter?

“We need a way to do that from inside,” she called out.

A chorus of curses erupted from the engineer, followed by the systems going dark yet again.

Amelia’s stomach churned. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t any physical damage, unlike the destruction the blue beams were wreaking on the debris field—and what they had already done to the Radiant Descent.

There was nothing to do but wait for them to figure it out. At least the visual display was black, so she didn’t have to watch how close they were approaching the ‘killing’ field in front of them.

The clang of metal reverberated through the hull snapping her head to the back as two marines clambered inside. Between them was a torn off chunk of hull with a large physical switch. The cable running to the shuttle’s belly ran right out into vacuum.

Amelia sputtered. “You—”

They ignored her and moved to close the rear hatch. Of course, it snagged on the cable. A marine in power armor moved forward, a plasma cutter appearing on his forearm. He made a hole, put the cable through it, and then welded it shut. Then the marines closed the hatch. The entire spectacle only took a minute.

There was now a hole in their belly, and they were about to try re-entry.

What was the temperature rating on the cable?

Rather, how thick was it and would it melt away before they got to the ground or not?

One of the marines flipped the switch. The lights came on. He gave her a thumbs up.

Ahh, well, too many questions. Fuck it, right? “Everyone in?” Amelia asked sharply.

“Affirmative,” came the reply.

Somehow, she kept the irony out of her voice. “Buckle up. This is going to be rougher than usual.”

She flipped the shuttle around with a burst of RCS thrusters, only for the systems to shut down mid-maneuver, sending them into a spin.

“Get that breaker flipped!” Amelia shouted, fighting down a wave of vertigo.

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Power surged back online and the cockpit screens wobbled resentfully from the rapid on-off cycle.

Ignoring the unstable displays, Amelia killed their spin and aligned them retrograde. Power flickered again, but she fired the thrusters as soon as it was back up—for a precious few seconds—before the shuttle went dark once more.

“Damn it!” Amelia cursed, her knuckles white on the controls. She was going to have to time ever move with the rolling outages. Sweat trickled down her neck as she fought to keep the shuttle on course during the brief moments of power.

“Keep it on!” she yelled. It was just words to shove between the terror—she knew they were doing their best.

The shuttle lurched repeatedly, pushing them hard retrograde, sharpening their descent angle. Clawing them away from the deadly blue energy slicing through space above them.

A marine burst into the cockpit, his face pale. He watched as she fired another pulse of the thrusters. “What the hell are you doing?”

Amelia snatched the co-pilot headset and hurled it at him. He fumbled, barely catching it before it smacked his face.

“Getting us down faster,” she snapped, her eyes never leaving the controls.

He sat down and read the navigation chart as soon as the system cycled again. His eyes widened. “We’ll break up at that angle!”

Amelia jabbed a finger at the sensor screen. “See that? Anything going up is getting vaporized.”

The marine opened his mouth to argue, but Amelia cut him off. “Make yourself useful. Make sure the other knuckleheads have the hatch buttoned up. Everyone needs to be strapped in tight. It’s going to get hot.”

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded sharply and disappeared aft.

There was no room for doubt now. It was this or be vaporized by whatever the hell those beams were.

By the time a violet haze began to form on the shuttle’s nose, she had almost managed to relax a bit. The craft shuddered as they plummeted into the thin upper atmosphere at breakneck speed, ventral first.

The marine from earlier returned, a sudden rocking nearly sending him into her seat.

“Strap in,” she ordered. He nodded, securing himself without a word.

The systems blinked out again. She was used to it, now. It came back on as expected and she monitored their trajectory—and the rising skin temperature. The status screen was working well enough to show a single hotspot and integrity warning, right where the marines had torn out the physical system breaker.

That would hold, or it would fail. She had little control over that. There was a special prayer her mother liked to whisper for things like that, but Amelia couldn’t remember it. Serenity, something, something. The screen went black again.

The constant cycle was wearing on her nerves, but she pushed the anxiety aside, right up until the next reboot returned with blank readouts. A blue screen with a security and system instability warning.

“Shit,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

“Expected something like that,” the marine beside her said. “Let me plug in.”

Amelia glanced over, eyebrows raised as he connected a wrist jack. His eyes closed, face tightening in concentration. Seconds later, the shuttle’s systems came back online.

There was no time for questions. Amelia adjusted their pitch, her movements gentle but precise. The systems died again, and the marine winced.

“Uncomfortable,” he muttered.

“Techie?” Amelia asked, curiosity momentarily overriding her focus.

He shook his head. “More technical. Saw what was going on and suspected something like that would happen. Fleet doesn’t like their toys turning on and off that much.”

Amelia nodded. “For good reason. Usually, that’s someone trying to crack the firmware.”

“Think this was some kind of hack?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Only if hacks include guillotine positronic beams from God.”

“Don’t know what we’re dealing with,” he replied. “Maybe that’s exactly what it was.”

Amelia let out a tight breath. “Lieutenant Amelia Parker. You can call me Pinpoint.” She offered her hand.

He grinned, shaking it firmly. “Corporal David Kowalski. Callsign Rabbit.”

“Rabbit, huh?” Amelia raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t ask,” he replied.

The shuttle jerked a bit more than was comfortable, snapping Amelia’s attention back to the plot. They were digging into the atmosphere fast, and one ill-timed blackout could—would—tear them apart.

She needed perfect timing now.

Something shot past them at high speed, then exploded. A volatiles tank?

“What the fuck?” she muttered, her fingers tightening on the controls.

The debris shower from the Radiant Descent was absolutely massive. Some parts had shot backward as much as forward—which meant that despite their burn, they were still at risk of being hit by something.

Peachy.

No time left. Amelia acted on instinct, flicking the nose up another degree to steepen their angle of attack, and fired the thrusters hard. The shuttle groaned in protest as it fought to transform their plummeting descent into forward momentum.

Flames licked all around them. They were definitely still there when the cockpit screens went dead. She could feel the heat through her boots. Bad sign. Not unexpected—they had holes in their heat shield, even if that was partially self-inflicted.

But they had to have power and systems, or they were dead anyway and—Amelia blinked. The cockpit monitors remained on. Telemetry ticked down, the system status warning screeched painfully.

But…

No flicker.

Her eyes darted to the velocity marker, watching it crawl upwards with agonizing slowness. They plunged deeper; the air growing thicker by the second. They got more lift along with more violent shudders strong enough to threaten to tear the dropship apart. Only her harness kept her from being thrown from her seat.

In the dropbay, the sound of loose objects slamming against bulkheads filled the air, punctuated by the grunts and curses of marines who weren’t strapped in as good as they thought. Each impact sent a jolt through her gut, but she pushed it away.

She pulled the craft’s nose up steeper, her entire focus on keeping them alive long enough to hit dirt.

“Rabbit,” she muttered. “Status on the systems?”

Corporal Kowalski’s voice came back strained. “Holding steady, but I don’t know for how long. Whatever was messing with us seems to have backed off.”

Amelia nodded, not taking her eyes off the instruments. “Let’s hope it stays that way. We’re not out of this yet.”

But they were almost there. The plunge and red haze abated, replaced by a more controlled glide slope. She leveled them out. Still moving at breakneck speed, but no longer on the verge of disintegration.

She glanced at the external monitors, wincing at the sight of their charred, burnt mess of a shuttle. Thre was a molten glowing hole where the breaker had been ‘removed’ inside. Actually, the entire cable was gone and slagged.

Drop shuttles were built tough, but this pushed well beyond their design limits. She was surprised there wasn’t a hole right through them.

A horizontal bolt of lightning arced through the clouds, barely missing them. Amelia’s heart leapt into her throat as she pushed the nose down, shedding altitude fast.

“Comms are fried or something,” Kowalski reported, his voice tight.

Amelia’s eyes flicked to the readouts. Nothing but static and garbled noise across every frequency. “Jammers?” she muttered, recalling the brief mission details. There was supposed to be a conflict going on, but this... this felt like they’d dropped right into the thick of it.

They punched through the cloud layer, revealing a vast expanse of tanned desert. Amelia activated the assisted informational view, watching as a dozen red rectangles flashed across the screen before turning light green.

“That’s a lot of activity,” Kowalski observed.

“UFE friendly signatures,” Amelia grunted, her eyes scanning for a suitable landing zone. “There. Heavier concentration. Looks like a settlement or something.”

“You sure about this?” Kowalski asked, doubt creeping into his voice.

Amelia’s gaze darted to the shuttle’s status indicator. Every part was highlighted orange, red, or worse—black. Several pieces had either broken off or melted entirely. “Don’t think we’ve got much choice,” she replied grimly.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself for what came next. “Listen up!” she shouted to the marines in the back. “Brace for a rough landing! This isn’t going to be pretty!”

No one looked surprised. When was it ever?