The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

another in the neck. Both went down. Dirken and Yiorgos ran in, as well. Dirken shot a crewman and killed him. Yiorgos finished off the two that Andy had wounded.

Other than 'TakTrak, who was strapped into the captain's chair, this left Feleesha, struggling as she was to keep the ship on path. Three different holographic displays revolved around her, all of which were flashing red. She dared to take her one good eye off the navigation panel and flash an angry look toward Dirken, teeth gritted with the effort of leveling out the ship's control.

"Dirken!" 'TakTrak said. "You have to stop this! You will kill us all!"

The Corthian's flechette rifle was strapped to the side of the captain's chair next to him.

Dirken leveled his blaster at Feleesha. "Take us back into orbit! That's not a suggestion!"

"Fuck you!" Feleesha said. "You shoot me and the ship loses control. We'll all die!"

"Friend Dirken. Reconsider!" 'TakTrak's hand edged toward the flechette rifle.

Dirken growled and shot between 'TakTrak's feet, barely missing his splaying avian toes. The Corthian yanked his hand away from the flechette rifle.

"I told you to stop calling me your fucking friend!" He turned again to Feleesha. "Now take us back up!"

Feleesha emitted a groan. "I… can't…."

The Raptores wobbled, alarms blaring. Over-compensated. "Shit!" Feleesha spat. Lurched back.

The ship abruptly did a barrel roll and Dirken tumbled across the bridge.

CHAPTER THIRTY

PLUMMETING TO EARTH

Dirken rolled across the window of the bridge, knocking heads with one of the dead crewmen, before crashing against the base of the communications panel.

Feleesha managed to get the ship out of the roll. When Dirken looked through the bridge window, the re-entry flames had sputtered out and revealed a verdant landscape growing closer, bordered by an azure sea.

Yiorgos managed to strap into the seat for the weapons panel. Andy was crumpled in a heap by the door.

"Retro thrusters!" 'TakTrak yelled.

"Won't be enough!" Feleesha yelled back. "Hold on!" She banged on a console and yanked a thruster handle.

All of a sudden the ship was flung upward and rolled with a G-force that made Dirken see spots and glued him to the floor. He wrapped his arms around a secured seat base to stabilize himself.

Alarms rang louder. The ship seemed to scream as metal ripped and the wind whistled through openings that shouldn't have been there.

Next to the comms panel a damage control readout flashed an angry red across the entire map of the ship. Three of the six cargo cubes had been lost, including the VIP cube. As the G-forces relaxed a little, Dirken wondered if Sugarplum was still in there or her own trajectory to the surface.

Through the bridge window, Dirken now saw only sky and clouds. Feleesha had performed an aerial one-eighty with the stern of the ship now aimed at the ground. They were falling fast.

She slammed again on the nav panel and threw the thruster handle back the other way.

Dirken was thrown again, this time tumbling through the bridge and hitting the back wall, held there next to Andy's splayed and unconscious body.

The ship complained, its engines roaring like an enraged giant, pushing him against the wall.

"Not sure it's enough!" Feleesha yelled. "Ground in twenty seconds!"

"Lower landing gear!" 'TakTrak barked.

"According to your weapons panel," Yiorgos said, "you have external-mounted missiles. I'm firing them without arming or launching."

"Do it!" 'TakTrak said. "A bit of extra thrust to slow us."

Yiorgos fired the missiles and the ship did a little shimmy. The nav panel cried out an urgent audible warning in Corthian, but Dirken didn't need to know what it said to understand that impact was imminent.

"Engage safety cushion!" 'TakTrak barked. Feleesha reached up into the holo display and pressed a red button twice.

Strings of white foam shot out from the walls, filling the room, covering every surface, and immediately expanded a hundred-fold to fill all the empty space in the bridge. In a fraction of a second it thickened and swelled against Dirken's face and body. Pushed him against the wall. Formed a hard gel.

And then they hit.

Metal whined and ripped. Explosive cracks issued through the foam as the ship slammed to Earth. Dirken was buffeted against the wall and launched back and forth. But the safety foam held him in a tight pillow.

Then the movement stopped.

Dirken gasped. His organs felt like they'd been shuffled like so many goron'oc cards. He was suffocating against the foam.

Then the foam dissolved, crumbling apart and collapsing to the floor in drifts of clumps and dust.

Dirken coughed, wiping the foam remnants from his eyes and spitting it out of his mouth. Blinked against the foam dust in the air.

The room still echoed with dire alarms. All of the panels were flashing red. Exposed electrical panels sparked. Hanging fiber optic cables flashed. The ship had come to rest upright, though listing to port. Through the cracked transparent aluminum window of the bridge, Dirken saw the trail of destruction that the Raptores had left in its skidding wake. Broken trees littered the deep trench that marked its landing. They had landed engines-first.

Dirken blinked, realizing the miraculous landing — a testament to Feleesha's piloting skills.

Andy moaned on the floor next to him. Feleesha lay bent over the navigation panel, unmoving. 'TakTrak snorted and twirled, his head lolling, and said to her, "Status?" His translation necklace was damaged, the word coming out digitized and staticky. Across the room, Yiorgos unbuckled himself, brushed off the foam powder, and looked over to Dirken as if he'd just had an average landing. He answered for the pilot. "We're down."

It was an obvious statement and yet Dirken found great comfort in it. An affirmation that they were still alive.

Dirken looked down and found the duffel still clutched in his left hand. But where was his blaster? Lost in all the tumbling. He looked around the cabin, but the room was filled with debris, broken panels, and covered in thick drifts of foam dust. So, too, were the weapons of the other crewmen they'd dispatched, their