Thread: The Land After Time (Mr. M & Hahvoc Requiem)

Re The Land After Time Dunny Drrurnnniii, in rrariiixx , but Ham knew him well enough to nickname him started wrestling with the sublight navigation as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace. All the fried navicomputer would say is that there was supposed to be a charted world with breathable atmosphere, and that had to be enough. At least the fire was out depressurizing the whole ship outside of the bridge would tend to do that. Not that they had much choice, with the big hole that the control unit had blown in the hull when it left. Ham got on the comm, and pumped up the broadcast to maximum across all bandwidths power consumption was the least of their worries. Mayday, mayday! he said, as calmly as he could into his headset microphone. Ship in trouble, ship in trouble. Catastrophic reactor problem going to have to ditch. Dunny snarled something, his pointy black ears flat back against his skull as he wrestled with half-functional control boards. I'm not seeing technology in orbit , he spat, sounding like the angry Siamese he frequently looked like and nodding to the scanner read-outs. Might be pre-stellar . Great , Ham thought. If anyone can read me, we need a beacon. It was sensible if there was any technology on the planet, they wanted to crash-land somewhere nearby, if only so they could find communications to call for help. We'll come in soft, but we need to know where to aim. He repeated his message as the target planet swelled in the front screen. If anyone heard them, they would be legally bound to give them some kind of sign. It was one of the compacts of civilized space, particularly if there was any technological presence on an otherwise primitive world. He wasn't expecting anything, but then, suddenly, there was a blip. He stopped immediately and shunted all power to detection, and yes, there it was! Dunny squinted at the screen. Low power, he complained. Might be nothing more than a droid. Droid's better than nothing! Ham shouted. They were close to the atmosphere, definitely within the gravity well. All right, I'm ejecting the reactor assembly dive us in on anti-gravs! The whole frame of the ship shuddered as the explosive bolts blew, rocketing the swiftly over-heating power generator away into higher orbit. The reactor was going to explode shortly, and if they got far enough down, they'd have the protection of the planet's ozone layer, so they might escape with little more than a sunburn. But diving into the atmosphere so fast could be tricky too shallow a descent, they wouldn't be low enough fast enough, too steep and they might hit too much friction, and either literally bounce off thanks to atmospheric thermal expansion or heat up faster than the heat shields could handle, particularly on battery power. But Dunny was an expert, and kept the indicators just kissing the redline, all the way in. The anti-gravs were flickering -- the power surges from the reactor's initial malfunctioning had damaged them -- but they worked well enough, keeping the ship balanced over the pull of gravity. The beacon, weak as it was, was something to aim for. There was a flash that was nearly blinding -- the reactor going up. It was far enough out in space, there wasn't a shock-wave to rock them around, but they still felt the heat of it from behind them. Well that's it we're cooked or we're not, Ham muttered. Look at it this way , Dunny shot back, if we die, you'll have the finest company imaginable! Ham snorted. But the ground was getting close, rocky and mountainous, but the beacon was nearby, and Dunny needed to work on the drive units, fighting to force the remnants of the anti-gravs to guide them down. Ham got up, and ran to the back, snagging the emergency survival packs. Two were personalized, one with Hammond in English block letters and another with Drrurnnniii in flowing staccato rrariiixx script, and the other two were standard-issue. He slid his arms through the straps of the packs, two on each arm, as he buckled himself back in. He clipped the belts closed just a second or two before the first impact, so he wasn't actually thrown half-way through the control systems. The ship hit once and plowed a giant furrow into the rocky ground. It eventually hit something that bounced it free, making it sail through the air, skipping it to plow again into the ground, bouncing once more and spinning half-way around until it skidded, throwing up more dirt and rocks and local scrubbery. Hull cracked, superstructure shattered, and components sizzled, fire starting once again. Ham was barely conscious by the time they finally slid to a stop he felt Dunny dragging him out of his chair, and managed to stumble over to the bridge hatch. He came more awake as they had to work together to force it open there was no power left to cycle the door. But the fire and smoke also sharpened his senses, forcing his self-preservation instincts to push past whatever concussion or anything he might have had, and making him try and stumble to the open air, hanging on Dunny as much as Dunny hung on him. They finally pushed out into fresher, alien-smelling air. There was still a chance of explosion, and there was definitely a fire, so they kept going out into unfamiliar foliage and semi-rugged mountains.