Unexpected Encounter 18
25 Apr 2016Rebecca Hail
"Bulkhead thirty three isn't really closing.", Ria said through the com of her PSA and she knew that Rebecca would know make that annoyed face she always made when something went not like she wanted it."Tch, I guess it's time to switch my engineer. First the racks, now malfunctioning bulkheads. That guy is going to refund me when I'm back.", she muttered, then she asked Ria, "Can you close the bulkhead manually? The pressure release valve should be next to the control panel."
Ria turned to her right and immediately saw the valve. With both hands on the grip of the valve she pulled it out and tried to turn it. Unsurprisingly the valve was hard to move since the whole pressure of the bulkhead hydraulic lasted on it. With significant force and a metal bar from the ships workshop as improvised lever she finally managed to turn it.
The heavy bulkhead slammed into it's frame with an enourmous force and a loud bang echoed through the ship. Ria screamed, jumped of the floor and lost the control for a few seconds in zero gravity. While she tried to get her feet back on the floor and drifted through the hallway she heard Rebecca giggling through the coms.
"You could have at least told me what happens when I turn that thing.", she said slightly annoyed and a bit embarrassed as she had her feet back on the ground.
"That wouldn't be half as funny, don't you agree?", Rebecca was still giggling.
"And now?"
"Come back to the bridge and make sure that the bulkheads are closed behind you."
Both were busy with securing every single thing they could find over the last hours for the coming reentry. The hardest part of all this was finding the cat and putting her in the transport capsule. Both women were pretty scratched after that almost half an hour lasting operation. Now the basked and the cat in it were fixed into a special made holder in Rebeccas cabin.
Ria entered the brigde right as the ships voice said, "Reaching approach path in hundredfifty seconds."
Rebecca turned around on her seat and threw a full head remlock mask towards her.
"Make sure your hair is all tucked into it. Or you'll look like a plucked bird when that thing goes off.", she said, then she tucked her own blonde long hair into the mask.
Ria put her mask on, then she tucked her head into it while she floated to the left pilot seat. Her palms were sweaty and she had a concerned look in her face. She sat herself into it and put the security belts on right as the ship announced, "Reaching approach path in ninety seconds."
"Nervous?", Rebecca asked without looking over to her.
"A bit. Why have we waited so long with the preparations for the landing?" Of course they landed on planets before. But only on airless world. Until now Rebecca had never deemed it necessary to actually visit the surface of one of the many earthlike worlds they found.
"Because the nights are pretty long on this planet and I would prefer to pull this off during the day. Earthlike worlds and Waterworlds can be pretty dangerous. And the worst critters usually come out during the night.", Rebecca answered in a calm tone. The truth was a bit different, since the thermal recordings the DBE made during his fly bys showed a whole lot of activity around the wreck. Suddenly Rebecca was pretty happy that she fitted three turreted class two multicannons into the medium hardpoints and the large hardpoint underneath the ship. Now the ship was slowly drifting through the orbit of the blue planet while she waited for the signal to push the throttle forward. The planet beneath her ship was pretty similiar to earth regarding atmosphere, size and gravity. It was slightly further from the sun and a bit colder because of that.
A red message and a blue crosshair showed up on her screen. "Please align with the reentry course."
She corrected the direction of the ship slightly towards the planet until the message disappeared.
"Thirty seconds." Rebecca layed one hand onto the throttle and her other was already on the joystick. A blonde strand of hair slipped out of her remlock and fell over her face.
"F*ck." she uttered but she hadn't the time to fix it.
"Ten seconds."
The green rectangle marking the window for the reentry enlarged fast. Rebecca looked on her right hand menu and checked her systems a last time.
"Five seconds."
A small bit of the sun appeared over the curve of the planet and glistening light fell for a moment into the cockpit. Then the glass shields darkened a bit and blocked the glistening light.
"Two seconds."
The green rectangle was now way larger than the ship and came with an incredible speed towards the ship.
"One seconds."
The ship flew through the green rectangle and a course began appearing leading in a soft curve towards the planet.
"Engage thrusters."
Rebecca pressed the throttle forward.
"Thrusters at seventyfive percent. Ria, speed and height."
Ria looked onto the screen in front of her.
"Speed: Mach 8.1. Height: 150 kilometres and decreasing."
"Copy. Correcting angle and decreasing speed.", Rebecca corrected the course again and focused on countering the still gentle shocks of the atmosphere.
The nose part of the shield began glowing and suddenly several alarms went off. Ria looked confused around her panel until she saw what was wrong.
"Heatlevel: 90% and rising.", she shouted to Rebecca.
"Fire heatsinks seven and eight at the same time. NOW." Rebecca yelled back.
Ria switched to the systems menu and selected heatsinks seven and eight for her firegroup, then she tried to fire them. Nothing happened. She looked around her stats and she saw that the shield generator began draining the systems energy, so she quickly assigned two more pips to SYS.
Rebecca immediately noticed her tinkering with the power distributor as the thrusters lost a third of their power. The following jerks were far vigorous than the ones before and she had difficulties with keeping the conda on the assigned path.
Ria fired her heatsinks, then she quickly assigned the full power back to the engines.
"Never do that again, without telling me, goddammit! Speed and height.", Rebecca shouted over to her. The roaring of the reentry got stronger and stronger as they reached the lower layers of the planets atmosphere and the whole anaconda was engulfed in yellow orange flames.
"Speed: Mach 5.6. Height: 60 kilometres."
"Still too fast. I try to decelerate."
The ship got more and more uneasy and the jerks and flames around the ship intensified as they descended even more towards the planets surface. After another five minutes and a massive deceleration the flames around the ship got less intenes and the Dark Runner approached a huge cloudfront reaching tens of kilomtres into the atmosphere.
"Uhm, do you think it's a good idea to fly through that thing?", Ria barely managed it to scream over the roaring of the reentry.
"We're way to fast to decelerate before we hit that storm. This is going to be unfunny. How far is it away?"
"Around 100 kms. But it's stretching farther than the radar shows. We're definitely going to fly through it if we keep our actual course."
"So we have around a minute ... It's too late to change the course. Is the crashsite in the storm?"
"I don't know. The storm is interfering with the sensors."
The gigantic black cloud front got bigger and both could see lightnings flashing through cloud. Strong winds began to jog the Anaconda around and Rebecca compensated the hefty jolts with the lateral thrusters to stabilise the flight path at least a bit.
"Forty five seconds until entrance. This is going to be ugly."