“Yes Sir,” Pilosus complied with the order. “Ship’s command is on your display.”
Forte made the appropriate adjustments and brought up the helm and hanger bay on his handheld display tablet. Looking across the hanger bay through the open rear hatch, he saw most everyone was settled in to their shuttles. Furier had just secured the last load in shuttle 135 and was climbing in to sit next to Captain Stella. Forte peered out the hanger and all the shuttles’ entry hatches were closed. Forte slammed the lever that brought the hatch down on the rear compartment of his shuttle.
Taking a deep breath, he entered the command code to open all the hanger bay doors. What if they did not open? What if there was a power failure right at this moment? It would not be hard to fathom such a failure, seeing that the ship was plummeting to Earth at over 10,000 miles per hour. All twelve hanger bay doors slid open; Earth’s atmosphere crashed into the hanger bay with a deafening roar.
Forte did not want to launch all the jump shuttles at once, for fear that they would slam into one another upon exiting the hanger bay. They were not designed to be ejected while free falling through atmosphere. Forte pressed the button on his display screen that would launch two shuttles that were on opposite sides of the ship. Immediately, his hand-held display monitor flashed an ominous read caution light. He looked around and noticed the shuttle next to his only partially launched and was stuck halfway out. The wind was exerting tremendous pressure on the front portion of the shuttle that was extended beyond the super structure of the Impegi. Immediately, Forte remembered the Chief’s words: ‘I don’t think we can fix them before we arrive at Earth.’
Forte had a sinking feeling in his stomach, there were two more shuttles full of people that were going to fail to launch. Forte looked over at the shuttle next to him, they were freaking out. He saw though one of the portal windows, it was the eager young officer, he was sitting still as a stone with a blank stare on is face. Forte knew this was his fault. In the pandemonium, he had forgotten that three shuttles had malfunctioning tracks. Thirty people would die for his carelessness.
“We have to launch the other ships now! there is nothing we can do; five minutes to impact,” Cordatus urged him.
Forte knew Cordatus was right. What if launching his own shuttle was futile? Maybe the next button he pushed would be killing him and the others in his shuttle. It would be what he deserved, punishment for his sin of neglect. Forte launched two more shuttles from opposite sides of the ship. No red lights. Both successfully launched.
Then two more successfully launched. Six in total, only one got hung up on the tracks. Six more to go, two of which would lead to certain death for its occupants. Forte smashed the button again; this time the red light blazed on his display. The shuttle that failed to launch was not within his field of vision, Forte timidly spared a second glance at the failed shuttle next to him, somber eyes stared out the window, wondering if anyone was going to come and save them. Wind was flashing around the stranded shuttle. It was starting to glow a faint red from the friction and pieces of it were starting to break away. While the super structure of the Impegi was built to withstand extreme heat and conditions, the jump shuttles were not so stoic. Under normal conditions, the jump shuttles would employ their heat shield upon atmosphere reentry, but it could not be activated while stuck on the track. Forte took little solace in the knowledge that it’s occupants would be burned to a cinder long before the Impegi slammed into the Earth’s surface.
Four shuttles remaining to launch. One will end in a fiery death for its unsuspecting passengers. Forte smashed the button again. This time, both shuttles shot out from the Impegi’s superstructure. Two shuttles left, one with occupants that were doomed. Could Forte have condemned himself, and his command officers, to death by choosing this shuttle? He had a fifty-fifty chance. He pushed the button. His shuttle leapt forward and was free of the Impegi. For a moment, he was relieved to feel the freedom of a second of weightlessness, then the substantial guilt sank his heart. The launch of his shuttle meant the deaths of ten crewman. Had he remembered, he could have crammed those thirty crewmembers onto the nine shuttles with proper launch equipment. Better to sit in the pressurized cargo hold than be burned to death as the ship plummeted to Earth.
Yet, Forte could not afford to think about the dead, he still had work to do, and it had to be done fast. Four minutes to impact. Forte had the Impegi’s flight control on his hand-held display. One minute until he had to activate the antigravity field around the Impegi. He glanced up at the stone-faced Pilosus – unsure if Pilosus knew why the three shuttles had failed to launch.
Forte pulled against his harness restraints to get a better look at the Impegi; it was far below them, freefalling towards the rocky surface. Forte’s jump shuttle had engaged its fusion reactor and was approaching Earth in a controlled dissent.
Captain Stella was at the shuttles helm, “Where should I take her down?”
Forte replied, “About a mile from the impact crater; find a place that gives us cover. We don’t know who will be there to greet us.”
“Yes Sir,” Stella muttered, putting on the jump shuttles helmet and focusing on the controls that lit up across the visors screen. The jump shuttle was controlled by a hybrid of handheld steering and neural signals received through the helmet.
Forte’s plan, for better or worse, not that he had time to carefully consider it, was to activate the antigravity field around the ship three minutes from impact. The antigravity field would eliminate the force of gravity on the ship. Forte hoped that by activating the force field, the gravitational pull would be lessened, and the ship’s speed would be reduced.
Forte activated the antigravity force field, and, as expected, the Impegi’s speed stabilized. Still not enough for a survivable crash, but perhaps enough to salvage some of the cargo.
“Commander, two jump shuttles just lost power; they are in freefall,” Stella shouted.
Forte shook his head, “Do we know why, what happened?”
“No radio contact,” answered Stella, “their optical stealth shields are not functioning; humans on the ground can clearly see the shuttles.”
The Impegi had three minutes of reserve power. Forte planned to use two minutes and fifty seconds of that power in the last minutes of the fall to minimize the planet’s gravitational pull. The final ten seconds were to be used to power the plasma shields. Forte could see on his display that the Impegi was essentially in a nose dive toward Earth. Forte rerouted eighty percent of the shield’s power to the bow. It made sense to divert the little remaining power to the section that would receive the brunt of the impact.
Ten seconds from impact. Forte pressed the button on the display to divert all power from antigravity to plasma shield. The Impegi smashed into the cold, hard rock that made up the surface of Far East Russia. The plasma force field, which was designed to withstand impacts of up to 25,000 miles-per-hour, shuddered, as the force field drove deep into the barren surface. The billions of nanobots that were directly behind the shield reacted with the rock as they came into contact, turning unforgiving rock into a sand-like powder, until the nanobots were completely depleted. The superstructure of the ship, which was designed to withstand temperatures of more than 10,000 degrees and impacts of comets and small asteroids, crumbled and broke.