Lithobraking
21 Oct 2020Lakshmi Bai
"Pad 4 Sierra cleared for emergency landing. Fire and medical standing by!" These were the last words on the comm before a great rending, grinding noise shook the striken spaceframe of the "Catfisher" to pieces as it pulled out of its terminal dive towards the outskirts of Soper Hub, the brutalist, towering architecture of the spaceport in stark contrast to the red, barren surface all around.
Inertial dampeners whined and thrusters roared as Commander Lakshmi shunted all available power to the ship's drives at the finale of a ballistic entry trajectory that began when a drug-crazed smugger rammed her head-on in a final act of defiance in this lifetime, apparently unaware hers was a mission of mercy and the sixteen tons of food and medical cargo could very well save a doomed colony.
No other Commander for the past week, or months, according to the Galaxy trade map had ever visited this backwater colony that plainly was on the verge of civil war and starvation, if not for the few brave privateers who still took to the stars on personal vessels to send out messages of distress and hopefully, bring back salvation.
And now, the one and only ambassador from the prestigious Pilots' Federation was reduced to trying to fly what seemed like half a ship down to the surface. The Adder-class light exploration transport's aerodynamic shape would have given the pilot a fairly easy time with atmospheric entry, but the atmosphere of this forlorn rock was all but burned away eons ago by close proximity to its red dwarf sun. Only the foolhardy, or desperate would risk settling on its barren surface, and countless thousands now huddled in the overcrowded vaults and maintenance tunnels beneath the planet's only spaceport - Soper Hub, renown for its questionable entertainment, smugglers, anarchists, liberated slaves and whatnot from the dredges of galactic society.
But they were people. Human beings. And human beings believe in second chances. Lakshmi kept that thought in her mind, as she fired the last of the emergency thruster reserves to send the crippled vessel on one last ballistic hop towards the nearest available landing pad.
The main engines had given out a while ago and there wouldn't be any way to stop the ship besides lithobraking, but this was what a Commander had sworn to do, right? To put the mission above the self and be the ambassador of Mankind. One whose ship would blaze a trail like a sword of the stars, or in Lakshmi's case, a fiery meteor that brought the first, and hopefully not last, taste of salvation for the colonists below.
She tightened the restraints and looked down towards the unyielding slab of ferroconcrete that would be her final resting place. And waited in silence...