"Clear the deck down there we're coming in hot!" yelled Captain Raspin into the comm link to the base landing personnel, indicating the loss of control that we had over the ship.
Normally the Class III skimmers were the most dependable of all the ships in the fleet, but recent circumstances had forced us to emergency measures that had left us with de-orbit engines, decent flaps and main engines fully functional, but no braking engines in the craft.
Basically we were an unstoppable missile. With the flaps in full up position we had been able to slow our speed to sub-sound. But we were still coming in too hot for the small air strip that we had been able to commandeer at the last minute.
The Captain looked over to me with just a small bead of sweat forming on his aging forehead. He was definitely handling this better than our engineer who had locked himself in the aft section of the ship one hour earlier and had not been heard from since. As for me I had prepared myself earlier in the flight for the possibility that we were not going to make it. In fact I never would have believed that we would have been able to attempt a landing at all just a few short hours earlier.
"Identify your craft!" the ground station broadcast back to us in the plain band radio frequency that was reserved for emergency landings. It was ancient technology but it had proven itself to he dependable time after time.
"This is Earth Fleet 6785, Class III Skimmer. We have sustained extended damage and we are coming in hot. Repeat clear the decks or we will do some serious redecorating as we land!" The captain looked at me again, as if to seek some sort of conformation what he just said. All I could do was nod my head.
I pulled up the front and side screen views on my station and was looking for our escorts. Our scanners had been knocked out by the earlier combat so I could not detect them on the ships normal systems. But good old visual never failed me in these situations. Strange I could not spot them, it was standard procedure to launch some fighter class escort ships to aid incoming ships in distress. Perhaps they had not received our emergency data packet transfer. I was just about to say something to the captain when the audio came back from the strip.
"What the hell is an Earth fleet, not to mention a skimmer?" Broadcast the ground station. "Ernie, is this some sort of a joke?"
"Who is this?" Demanded the captain. He was clearly not amused by the joker running the communications station on the ground. "This is Captain Ben Raspin of Earth Fleet, code 985434, I repeat we are coming in hot, clear the landing strip."
"Again, I have no listing for any Earth Fleet. But we will assist with your landing as we can. Did your engine stall out? What is the status of your craft?" Asked the ground station radio person. "We don't have radar at this site yet so I have no idea where you are. But just follow the lights in and I will have a truck standing by to assist in any rescue we need to perform."
The captain looked at me with a very confused look on his face. His normal coolness had been placed on hold. "What the hell are they talking about Don?" He asked me.
"I don't know sir, but we have no escorts of any kind and our scanning systems are still down. The ship's remaining systems have identified the landing strip. It appears to be some sort of old style runway. I have nothing in the ships computers as to the location of any of these antique strips that are still operational. As for why they are waiting for the installation of an antique radar system is beyond any guess I have sir. I suspect that we may have stumbled on some sort of museum site, possibly automated."
I reviewed my screens for any hints but we were still outside of visual range. I could tell that it had been a long time since I had been back to Earth, by shock of the overall darkness of the planet. I had remembered a lot more structures being present. But the shock of the situation were most likely throwing my senses off some.
The captain put the front screen on the main screen and instructed the computer to make it's best attempt for landing. It was all or nothing on this landing and it was dark as well. Very dark, I thought as we were coming down.
The captain announced to prepare for emergency landing on the ships intercom system. Wherever our engineer was he at least deserved a warning of impact. If we were lucky we would have a very rough landing followed by a series of prayers to what ever deity the captain prayed to in his times of need. If we were not so lucky then perhaps the survival suits would leave us salvageable. Then there was the third option. I would rather not think about that option, so I leaned back into my chair and prepared for whatever came.
The ship began to shake is the computer attempted to maneuver the ship with its limited remaining control surfaces. The inertial dampeners failing during our final approach. Just how fast was unknown to us inside the ship. My counsel in front of me lit up with a full screen of shipboard alarms. It would have been better to have instructed it to show the remaining shipboard systems that were operational.
We had donned our survival suits as part of the normal operating procedures. Once sealed they would provide medical attention to any survivable wounds that we may sustain during the crash. They were the standard grey issue of the service. These suits were constructed of a one piece design that was self sealing and provide stasis protection until they were unsealed by a chief medical officer. To make room for the hardware the suits had been designed with large rounded head covers. The head piece had two big ovoid one way eye pieces, one over each eye. Looking at the captain in his suit I realized that the suits would look downright comical if not for the urgency of the situation. I had to think about what we would look like to untrained personnel. After all all three of us had been picked because of our dwarfism for this particular ship and mission.
The captain looked over my way and we wished each other good luck. Once the suits activated we would be in a state of suspended animation, inside of a darn near impenetrable suit, until we were released. Normally if the suits survived they would be recovered and we should be unlocked in a matter of hours.
The ships small frame began to shake more violently. I watched as the external sensors indicated external temperatures climbing. Our small ship would be unrecognizable except for the nano-aluminum covering that was a part of the new ships design. It was a special memory metal that was developed lately to assist in the war effort.
The ship retracted all the screens into the bulkheads as we continued to rocket towards our destination. It was strange that the computers had not picked up any of the standard drones on approach. But with our crew surviving a light drive jump so close to a black hole we were just lucky have survived this far. There were so many unknown possibilities in our last minute escape effort that it was hard to tell just what all had happened.
Before my survival suit activated I heard the captain starting to cry, then the silence and blackness that was stasis enveloped me.
***
July 2nd 1945, Rosewell, New Mexico.
"Sir I need to report a crash."
"Where and what plane, private?"
"In the desert outside the base sir. As for what plane, it is not any plane that I have ever seen sir."
"What do you mean, not a plane? What is it then, a weather balloon?"
"Not exactly sir, but that's not bad........"
The End
Just a little short story to liven up your days. Let me know what you think of it.
Roswell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
