The Telic Campaign - chapter 2

The pilot seat was occupied by a small, stoutly built woman in her late thirties with icy grey eyes that remained transfixed on the controls while I entered the cockpit and even when she sternly addressed me. Like all the flight officers she appeared tiny and fragile, at least compared to the powerarmor wearing folks, but Anna Conelly held the rank of lieutenant. The iron-wings on her shoulder hinted that this wasn't the first time she had survived being shot to scrap metal, partially explaining her unnatural calmness while the first earnest prayers could be heard coming from the crew decks behind.

"Ma'am?"

"Login" she ordered me, briefly nodding towards the port on the unoccupied place of the co-pilot "Conelly, Delta C Romeo 1-1-9-6-2. Come'on, hurry up!"

Jaeger watched me suspiciously from the doorway, but then reverted his attention back to the main monitor, where the football-sized brown splodge of five minutes ago had grown to full sized planet proportions. Without hesitation I pulled the connex cable from my arm and plugged in. A moment later the instruments flickered to life.

"I need all safety protocols disabled in navigation and engineering, gravo, boosters, steering, reactor output, all of 'em..." she commanded hastily, "...yes" the lieutenant added when she noticed me staring at her unbelievingly, "even the protected ones, so don't waste time with the standard emergency override, boy. Don't ask, do it! And better now than tomorrow!"

"We're a helpless, fat cow, with weak boosters and the inertia shifting speed of a brick out here" she continued explaining. I didn't know exactly if she was talking to Jaeger or me or maybe just herself, but I didn't waste any time worrying about it as I began to run codebreakers on the system. "This birdie is similar to a stormboat in design, there's a heatshield under the belly and we've likely ten times more thruster power than those drones. Should be able to get rid of'em in the atmosphere..."

I didn't like the sound of that announcement at all.

Fortunately the masterkey to the internal systems was pretty small and my codebreaker performed with virtuosity, hammering in a few trillion possible combinations every second. But even in the chaos surrounding those few moments, watching the progress bar seemed somewhat hypnotic to me, like watching a molting insect or a dripping water tap. Nevertheless it reached an end, eventually. "Ready!" I yelled proudly "Override complete, transfer all protected controls to pilot..."

"And not a second too soon," Connelly replied in return. "OK, BOYS!" she announced through the intercom, spinning her seat around to flip switches and push buttons in a manner almost faster than I could follow, "REACTOR OUTPUT TO ONE-HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE PERCENT, ENGINE PULSE OVERCLOCK TO ONE-HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN, ANGLE FOR RE-ENTRY: FIVE POINT FIVE. I'M PUSHING THE NOSE DOWN, TRY TO HOLD YOUR MEALS!"

I had only experienced maybe a half dozen emergency drops in my brief career, and never under worse conditions with such continuous heavy fire, let alone a certifiably insane pilot. Swallowing dryly, I firmly grabbed onto the most solid thing in reach and steeled myself for the impending G-forces, all the while praying I would be able to tell my grandchildren about this one. The last thing I saw was Conelly vigorously slamming the mirrored-glass visor of her helmet shut, smacking her lips as she gave me an encouraging thumbs up, probably as a last warning, before pulling at the controls with all her might while simultaneously jerking the rudder a full 180 degrees twisting us upside down.

Well...

The original plan had been to orbit the planet in the Bloodhound to make additional scans of the dropzone and then to enter the atmosphere at a flat angle for a convenient, controlled landing. Instead the heavily damaged ship suddenly rolled over it's longitudinal axis and plunged head-first into Rhea's ionosphere, instantly erupting into a ball of flame like a meteor.

Someone later explained to me that this maneuver was called a 'hunter-dive'. Usually not performed with engine output way beyond maximum, mind you. All I can say is that from one second to the next my world had turned upside down. The ship started rumbling and shaking like mad. The planet's gravitational field kicked me in the guts, and it felt like my stomach left my ass in protest.

Hull temperature climbed from far below zero to a full 1300 degrees in the blink of an eye. The primary monitor presented glimpses of the inferno raging around the ship for a couple seconds longer, until the external cameras, unable to remain operational under such conditions, shut down. I knew perfectly well that Conelly's pilot instruments were still functional, but without the reassuring information from the monitor, the unendurable feeling of being entombed in freefall inside a big, metal coffin that was, on top of everything else, brightly aflame became just overwhelming. It's comparable to being so badly piss-drunk, that you can't lie down, can't even close your eyes for a second or risk becoming nauseous from the world spinning out of control.

I endured three minutes that I might easily call the worst of my life, the intercom feeding me a mix of prayers, screams and vomiting sounds all the while. The panic of not being able to see what was happening growing until the monitor suddenly flickered to life again, revealing a dirt colored mountain that I would have described as thouroughly uninteresting, had it not been squarely in front of us and approaching FAST.

We were less than two seconds from ramming a mile-wide crater into the planet when Conelly performed a masterpiece of piloting skill I hope to never witness again. Simultaneously deactivating the main engines, igniting all after steering boosters and even opening the frontal emergency breaking parachutes, she vigorously jerked the bloodhound's nose upwards. Of course at our current speed the chutes ripped loose almost instantly, but the effect was sufficient to change the ship's angle enough for Conelly to halt our fall by firing up the main thrusters again.

Every proximity alarm in the cockpit wailed in desperation as our ass end noisily reduced some unknown mountain peak into some unknown high plateau. While the afterburner continued carving an impressive trench into the landscape, I silently thanked all holy saints I could remember that the biggest part of Rhea's substance was made of soft, crumbly bunter that instantly dissolved to brownish ultra-fine dust if so much as coughed at.

For once I left my harness buckled until we reached our final resting position. After barely ten seconds of eternal sand-filled nothingness whooshing past the portholes, the bloodhound careened into a sand dune at a velocity that put me into a world of hurt once my brain recommenced higher cognitive functions. The insides of the powersuits are cushioned with sophisticated gel-pads that can absorb quite a bit of punishment, slowing armor piercing rounds and even making a fifteen-foot drop feel like a hop. Crash landings are a little off scale it would seem.

With my head spinning and my whole body feeling like one single bruise, I saw that Conelly was motionless, her upper body hanging limply across the controls. The second I had convinced myself she hadn't survived the landing, she jumped up, giving me a mild heart attack in the process, and hit her helmet against the low ceiling. Seeing my reaction she punched me in the shoulder and broke into a joyful laughter that was nothing short of intimidating. Something like winning your third iron-wings badge in a row can do that to you I suppose. Heck, I was so high on stress hormones myself I could have hugged her...

Unfortunately our general rejoicing for continued existence was all too soon harshly interrupted, namely by Jaeger kicking the door open and yelling, "F I R E!"

Still struggling to regain composure, Conelly quickly checked the indicator panels, but all controls had gone black during the crash, leaving our pilot slightly dumbfounded

"Fuck! WHERE?!"

I could already see the heavy, black smoke rising through the floor as the cockpit was the highest point on the ship. Since the intercom was barely audible through all the static, Jaeger impatiently jerked open his helmet and simply shouted his answer.

"Engineering, storage... crewdeck... crap, half the ship is burning!"

There was a moment of hesitation, when we all just stared at each other until Conelly finally responded.

"Can't douse it manually with a hot reactor... CORPORAL, GATHER THE MEN! I'LL FLOOD EVERYTHING WITH COOLANT GAS FROM HERE. HURRY UP, YOU'VE GOT THREE MINUTES TO GET'EM ALL OUTSIDE!"

"ROGER!" Jaeger bellowed in return, and immediately grabbed my arm, shoving me into the aisle. Following right after me he screamed in my ear, "YOU HEARD THE LADY... GO GO GO! ... WHERE'S YOUR GUN, SOLDIER?! 60 SECONDS AND I WANT TO SEE YOUR SORRY ASS OUTSIDE, MURPHY! MOVE IT!..."