Second bit of chapter 3:
Admiral Aken Bosch looked at the ragged display panels and control levers in front of him. While he had to give the Shivans credit for being efficient and capable, he’d have to definitely minus points for their cleanliness and organization of the entire thing. It would be a monumental task piloting this craft down, especially since it wasn’t exactly meant for planetary travel.
He started in the most logical place: trying to determine whether this thing was capable of basic flight or not. The Azreal class transport was triangular in it’s hull shape, ending in a short narrow neck that led to the cockpit at the very front. The neck itself was significantly thick, as it supported to beams that held all the cargo underneath the main belly. A small skid was located here, to facilitate landings inside of larger vessels. Two long, sharp arms protruded from either side of the craft, ending in points that also served in securing it inside of larger vessels. The Shivans had configured the edges to also hold skids to allow for a landing in the snow-filled canyon that was their target.
Definitely not flyable Bosch thought to himself. But then, even a brick like the Ursa could fly if given powerful enough engines. And engines was what Transports like this were all about.
Probably flying in that case. He thought to himself. He placed a hand onto the rough metallic ‘seat’ that he would be sitting on throughout the journey down. It couldn’t be called a seat, as it was mostly a small sheet of metal placed on top of another slab of metal, with seat belts welded into it to hold him down. Fortunately, one of his crew members had had the foresight to put a small cushion onto the slab itself, allowing some comfort at least.
Bosch sighed. This was going to be tough, very tough indeed.
His thoughts were interrupted as a voice rang out from behind him, towards the entrance of the cockpit. Turning around, Bosch looked on as Gibson walked through the entryway from the rear cargo hold. The cockpit area was not separate as in most Terran craft he had been on. It was triangular in shape, with a wide entryway that led directly into a cargo hold as well as an exit (which had now been converted to an airlock). It also led to the main engines. A clear and unblocked corridor all the way, Bosch wasn’t too surprised, hardly expecting the Shivans to have the need or want for doors or the like. Gibson nodded at Bosch before saluting.
“All ready at the rear sir. Sarno and John are on the way.” He said, glancing back as everyone secured themselves against the wall.
Bosch nodded, replying. “Excellent. Secure yourself as well. I’ll get us started in a few minutes.”
Gibson nodded in acknowledgement, but didn’t turn back immediately. Instead he took a step closer and leaned towards Bosch, the helmet of his environmental suit almost making contact with Bosch’s. Gibson’s concern could be seen clearly over his face when he asked “You sure you can handle this sir? The G-forces that we’ll be experiencing on the way down-”
Bosch cut him off before he could finish. His features turned to that of slight anger and irritation. Although Bosch felt that the concern was genuine, it was getting a little tiring. “Gibson, if you don’t get back into that cargo hold and secure yourself, I’ll make sure to crash this ship on purpose and kill us all. Stop worrying, get to the back, and be more concerned about whether you’ll live through all this.”
Gibson just stared at him blankly for a moment before regaining his sense and nodding. He flashed a smile before saying “Yes sir!” and then moved off towards the back. On the way out, he passed by Sarno and John, both of whom had finally finished suiting up and were ready.
They came to a halt in front of Bosch and saluted. Bosch sighed and saluted back. He was starting to get a little irritated with it, especially since now the NTF was gone, and they were just about the only ones left. Still, he’d settle this issue later. For the moment their were more important things to do.
“Are you ready?” he asked, looking from Sarno to John. In reply, both men only nodded.
“Excellent. Get ready, we’re about to go down.” Bosch turned around and moved towards his seat. Sarno and John didn’t reply, and instead just started to strap themselves to the harness, and then activating the Harness’s magnetic locks, securing themselves to the wall.
Bosch in turn, secured himself to the chair. He pulled the harness over his chest and abdomen, making sure that he was strapped in tight. Once he thought he was ready, Bosch looked up at the control panel, contemplating the daunting task ahead. Moving his hands across the panel, he adjusted a final few displays to show altitude, relative speed and other data he would need. Bosch also set the auto recorder/transmitter array to work, which would transmit all the data to the Shivans. If the wreck turned out to be unusable or they were unable to get it working well enough to get off the ground, the Shivans would try to land another one in, learning from the mistakes that Bosch and his crew made and compensating for it.
Although getting onto the ground was tough, getting off wasn’t a problem as long as they could get off the ground – simply going into subspace would mean that they would instantly in space once again, even though it was quite risky, to say the least.
Looking at the console, he sighed. Without a word, he placed a hand on the central control stick, which controlled the Yaw as well as the pitch of the craft. As per norm, the pitch controls were through the foot pedals, while engine control was via a lever to his right. Using the other hand, he manipulated a few of the controls, setting off the subspace engine to the pre-defined co-ordinates. Looking ahead, Bosch watched on as the view changed in front of the transport. The blue-green structure of green disappeared behind a bright, blue-white hole that appeared out of nowhere right in front of the transport.
Pulling up on the throttle lever, Bosch accelerated the transport forwards into subspace at maximum velocity, causing the G forces to push him back into the seat and cause grunts of discomfort from the people behind him. Yet Bosch knew, this was nothing compared to what was going to come.
Subspace greeted them willingly, its border encompassing the entire transport and pulling it in. To some, it was nauseating, but to Bosch, it was a sight beyond words. As the transport pushed through, the light of subspace washed all over him and the cockpit. He could only watch in amazement as the hole he just went through turned into the blue and white tunnel they all knew and were familiar with. His heart started to rush at the sight, reveling in the mystery and wonders of subspace that had amazed him ever since he first saw it over 30 years ago. Despite having been in and out of subspace over a thousand times, each entry was a new experience for him, vibrantly different from the last. This was no exception. Glancing to the screen on his right, Bosch saw that they had 10 seconds before exit.
He glanced back and yelled, alerting the rest of the crew. “Ten seconds to exit! Brace yourselves!”
Bracing himself, Bosch watched as the seconds ticked by on the countdown meter. 5 Seconds...4....3....
At about two seconds to go, the wall of subspace in front of him was pierced by a small hole forming up. Through it, Bosch couldn't see much, but as it began to grew, he could make out more. One second to go. The transport was almost at the hole now and was starting to shudder as the atmosphere near the exit point started to rush into the vacuum of subspace.
From the outside, the only thing people would have been able to see would be a swirling blue and white whirlpool, slowly growing in size and sucking in everything around it. Nothing was spared, birds, debris, the upper atmosphere - it all went in, betraying the force of gravity that had held it towards the ring for so long. Around a second later, the whirlpool stopped growing, seemingly reaching it's maximum size. It spat out a triangular-shaped transport, with spikes on either side before collapsing on itself and closing completely, nearly clipping the transport in the process. If one were to look upwards at this point, they would notice that the closest portion of the ring was actually above them at this point, just as planned....well, almost as planned at least.
Time seemed to slow down for Bosch as the transport exited subspace. The transport smoothly flew past the exit point - albiet a bit slowly due to the air resistance - and barely made it out before the hole closed up behind them. Time still moved slowly for Bosch as he looked up and outwards to the ring. He simply stared in awe and wonder at the scene above him, a spectacular image of green hills and valleys, surronded by small lakes and river streams. The features of the landscape below were tiny, almost as if Bosch could reach out and grab it in the palm of his hand.
Bosch contemplated the scene for a second, was this how the first astronauts felt when they looked down on the Earth for the first time? Or the first airplane pilots for that matter? Even though he had seen this thousands of time before on display screens all over the place, as well as through the windows of many transports, the entire thing was still thrilling, aweing him beyond words.
Then two things hit Bosch, interrupting his thoughts and amazement at the whole scene. The first was the distinct feeling that something was wrong with the entire scene. Trying to think as hard as he could, Bosch finally realized what the problem was. The entire scene was wrong! Although the co-ordinates were correct, by this time he should have been seeing the strange device in the centre of the ring above him, not the ring itself! Either they were at the wrong co-ordinates, or subspace had somehow screwed up leaving them ups-
He never got to finish the thought as the split second passed and time caught up with them.....along with gravity too. Had he eaten in the past few hours, he would have probably thrown up the meal due to the disorientation and G forces they were feeling as the transport fell, top first, towards the ground at break-neck speed. The blood started to rush to his face as Bosch struggled to fight against the massive G forces pinning him to the seat, while at the same time trying to keep himself secure against the force of gravity that was trying to pry him out of it and into the window. They were upside down and crashing fast. From behind him, Bosch could hear loud shouts of surprise and pain as the men struggled to adjust to the G forces as well.
Think Bosch, think damnit! He thought to himself, trying to catch himself and figure out what to do. First things first: he was going to have to fix the orientation of the craft. Preparing himself, he pushed the right pedal, activating the thrusters on the left side of the craft and pushing the entire transport into an agonizingly slow barrel roll. The air resistance was significant and slowing them down throughout the roll. What should have been an affair of only a second or two rolled on to become 10 seconds, but finally Bosch could breathe a little easy when they were right side up.
Then the transport's rattling became even worse as it started to reach thicker atmosphere, shaking everyone including himself and creating a massively loud roar all over the transport. Add to that the multitude of the alerts and alarms coming from the panel in front of him and Bosch could barely hear himself think. Looking over the instruments, Bosch became alarmed at the rate of descent. They were going too fast! Within two minutes the transport would crash to the ground, and at this speed survival was not possible at all. Reaching to his right, Bosch pushed the throttle lever, increasing power to the rear engines, as well as those manuevering thrusters on the bottom. He watched as the forward speed started to pick up a bit, and the rate of fall decrease a bit, but it still wasn't enough.
The transport started to rattle further as the atmospheric resistance increased. The timer started to slow down a bit, even backtracking a little. There was little Bosch could do to slow it down at this point. Instead, he looked ahead in an attempt to find the canyon they were going to land in. Looking through the window, Bosch spotted the canyon up ahead, two kilometers out and about 700 meters below them. It wasn’t much, especially considering that the ring wasn’t that large either. They were currently traveling at 20 m/s forwards, and 10 m/s downwards. The thrusters were barely keeping the acceleration of gravity from moving it towards the ring faster.
Bosch switched one of the panels on his left to an external camera underneath the nose. The monitor flickered several times, displaying only static. Bosch cursed and hit the monitor on the side, making it flicker even more but then display an image after a few seconds. The view wasn’t much, as most of the underside was on fire (thank god for the Shivan armor!) and blocking the view, but Bosch was able to make out large forests and trees directly below, as well as a large river that was running in their direction.
Bosch glanced at the other controls. The increase in power to the engines has generally left them for the better, and they now had a controlled rate of descent. But Bosch was going to have to slow down the ship somehow, otherwise they wouldn’t survive the landing. The problem with slowing down the transport was that if he did, the thing would drop like a brick into the ground.
Decisions, decisions Bosch thought to himself.
Then the transport jerked, triggering half a dozen alarms and several shouts from the rear. They must have hit an air pocket! The transport’s controls went haywire as Bosch fought to keep it steady and on-course. However, the fight just became harder with each meter they went down.
Finally, the objective came into proper sight. On the other side of a vast lake stood a massive wall, almost half a kilometer high and posing an impressive sight. The waves lashed up against the cliff faces in a constant stream, eroding away the wall slowly and steadily as it must have been doing for centuries – maybe even millennia.
But it was in between these cliffs that Bosch was most concerned about. About 40 or 50 meters above the waters, the cliff walls parted to give a narrow entrance into a canyon. From the entrance a natural waterfall had been formed, where the water cascaded down into the lake below. This was where Bosch was headed. The entrance was over 50 meters wide, meaning that they shouldn’t have too much problem entering it. Although the immediate vicinity was filled by water, further up the river diverted elsewhere and the rest of the canyon was filled with snow.
Bosch pushed the engines a bit harder, trying to get the maximum amount of speed and reducing the downwards descent. They were over the beginning of the lake now and crashing into it at this speed would be like crashing into cement. The shaking grew even more, and it felt like the transport was trying to rattle Bosch’s to death. He had to be careful to hit the right controls, and not allow the shaking to make him miss it and hit the wrong one.
Over the next few seconds, Bosch lowered the transport enough to meet the height of the canyon entrance. At this time, they were directly over the water. The shockwave of the transport’s movement through the air affected the water below as well, and anyone could see the clear trail as it blazed past.
Then they entered the canyon. The walls stretched up on either side of Bosch’s window, leaving only the view of the ring above him, and the rest of the canyon below him. It was a straight run all the way through except for one turn, but what seemed like several obstacles in the way. From what they could see in the magnification of the area, a small clearing of snow should be available up ahead, towards the end of the canyon. But right now, although the weather was clearly quite frigid below them, there was no snow just yet. It should be after the large turn Bosch was going to have to navigate. Although how he was going to do that while fighting the transports inertia and speed was going to be a tough one.
Well, he had to figure it out soon. Bosch could see the turn coming up ahead. Cursing, he reduced the forward speed a bit, reducing engine power to the rear and putting whatever he could to the starboard and port thrusters. It was less than 400 meters out now, and at their speed, they would hit it within a minute. Bosch first banked the craft to the right a bit, coming up close to the canyon wall – but yet not close enough to risk hitting it. He looked at the corner of the turn, where a large waterfall raged from the top of the canyon wall, splashing down to a small pond below, and then to the river that in turn led to the lake. The waterfall shouldn’t be a problem, as he was going to avoid it altogether, but Bosch kept a vary eye on it anyway.
As the transport slowed down, it also started to loose it’s battle against gravity, descending slowly towards the ground. But Bosch was ready for this and braced himself. As the transport approached the turn, Bosch looked around the corner of the left side, and once he had a clear view of something other than the wall, he hit the controls for the thrusters.
Immediately, the transport reacted, firing all starboard thrusters and shutting off the port engines altogether. This caused the transport to go into a gut-churning spin to the left, even though it was still moving towards the far wall. Once everything was aligned, Bosch transferred all power back to the main engines, pushing the craft forwards and trying to reduce the slide altogether. It worked….almost.
Although the transport managed to clear the canyon wall for the most part, but the right arm scraped by the wall for a second. Although it didn’t cause much damage to show up on Bosch’s control panel, anyone on the outside would have clearly been able to see the skid on the right arm was no longer there.
Bosch saw the field up ahead. It was crystal clear, just before a lake of ice and a small hill, near the end of the canyon. He thought he could make out something at the end of the canyon, but couldn’t be sure as everything was covered in fog after the field.
Bosch steered the transport down a bit, as an ice bridge arced over the small hill. It would be a tight fit, but they had little choice. Going above the bridge would make it an even harder landing as they would not be able to slow down as much.
The transport shuddered and rocked as it sped through the small gap, barely missing the stalactites hanging down from the bridge. The heat from the engines melted the stalactites as they moved through, causing quite a number to collapse onto the hill. This caused a small avalanche on the hill, forcing the snow down onto the ice lake which the transport was barely 50 meters above.
The landing area was almost upon them. Bosch had already reduced their altitude significantly, and was on approach. Engine power was reduced to almost zero, their rate of descent was reasonable and the speed wasn’t too high either. Just 30 seconds to touchdown now, and things were looking good. The area ahead was clear, only a white field of snow with a bunch of trees towards the end. Nothing Bosch did now could change the outcome, so he switched off the engines, putting them to idle, hung on and prayed for the best.
The transport made it’s approach to the field much like a fighter did to a runway. Although somewhat fast, the lack of any engine power pushing it meant that it was gliding through on sheer inertia alone. Air resistance and turbulence would steal this inertia and slow it down just enough to make it a soft landing.
The Shivan transport continued its glide down to the ground. It was at 20 meters now, slowly dropping to 15, then 10. The descent rate then was the slowest, with the transport going down a meter each second.
Upon looking at it on the ground, the red and black transport stood out like a sore thumb, it’s glowing red hull casting an unnatural illumination a large portion of the snow, which was covered in shadow from the canyon walls.
At zero seconds, the transport should have touched the ground rear skids first, with the nose following down. It would have been an extremely bumpy ride after that as the transport rode in the snow till it came to a complete stop, the forward thrusters providing the brakes in this case.
But that was the ideal plan. As reality went, the transport touched down normally, with both arms touching the snow as planned. But only the left arm actually stayed on top of the snow. The right arm, lacking a skid, sank into the snow like a hot knife through butter. This caused the transport to lean heavily to the right as it sped through the snow. As the arm sunk deeper, it hit a rock underneath the snow, stopping it dead in its tracks. Unfortunately, inertia demanded that the main body of the transport should go ahead, with or without inertia. The result was the arm breaking off almost totally from the body, leaving behind a stump and only air to hold up the transport.
Gravity took over, causing the transport to fall onto it’s right side. As it was still moving through the snow, the rear end went up as the nose plowed into the ground, going end-over-end one, then twice. It was thrown into a third roll as the right engine, having taken slight damage from the scrape earlier, exploded outwards and pushing the transports forwards. It came to a stop at the end of the third roll, just nearby the trees that were supposed to be the end of the target.
The right engine was on fire, but this was fading as the bitter cold of the environment extinguished it. The rest of the transport was buried in the snow, leaving little exposed to the air outside. The red luminescence of the hull was still there, but it slowly started to fade out till, finally, it was snuffed out completely. The only thing that suggested a transport had come here was the portion of the hull sticking out along with the right engine, and the immense trail it had left coming there. But even this wasn’t permanent, as the trail was blown over by the strong wind, removing all traces of existence and deafening everything with it’s loud howl as it traveled through the canyon.
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