I'm not sure when the next instalment of my main story will be, so I threw this together to give you something to read
Enjoy.
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Thinking back, he couldn’t quite figure out how he’d got into the situation in the first place. As the ship pitched downward towards the yawning mass of the planet below, Deckan heaved back on the manual rudder. Ion reaction control thrusters ignited on the underside of the massive vessel, trying through brute force to bring the ship into a workable orbit.
“Engineering! Please tell me you have that fuel leak squared away.”
“One mizura, Deckan. Captain! Engines are running awful hot.”
“Noted. Ops, keep those shields up! I do not want to brush hulls with the atmosphere here.”
“I’ll have to reroute some power from somewhere...”
“Do it, just make sure it’s nothing critical.”
“Aye, sir.”
A few pirates had tried to separate crew from vessel from cargo, which was fair enough. The massive bulk freighter wasn’t flying with an escort this time, and the system was fairly dubious, as far as security went. Some minor damage had been sustained when they overloaded an isolated section of shielding, over one of the smaller cargo bays. They’d had to seal the section, but no one was killed.
Then the other ships arrived. Cleared the pirates away no problem, but then decided to take down the transport. The first salvo had ruined half the main engines, and completely crippled the auxiliaries. Then the weapons went, and so did the other ships. Just flew away and disappeared, apparently thinking the transport was now worthless.
“Tyrell! The fuel leak! Is! It! Fixed! Yet!”
“God damn it, Deckan...”
“Helm!” called the captain. “Calm down! We’re relying on you to get us out of this!”
Deckan turned to face his station again, muttering, “But hey, no pressure.”
“Captain!” he called. “Permission to assume temporary command.”
The captain narrowed his eyes. “Granted. Very temporarily.”
“Ops, ramp the aft ventral shields to maximum. Engineering, pump as much coolant through the pipes at the rear of the ship as you can. Comms, advise all personnel to evacuate non-essential areas.”
Tapping furiously away at his console, Deckan increased the angle of the exhaust nozzles in the main engine array, until they were pointing upward by nearly thirty degrees. Three actuator servos jammed in the process, but he had enough functional engines to do what he wanted to do. He ordered a full burn, pushing the aft end of the ship downward, trying both to get a better thrust angle and generate some small amount of lift. The ship’s inclination now being four degrees to the horizon, he straightened the nozzles and ordered a redline thrust, wrestling with the rudder to keep the ship straight and nose up.
The hull glowed a dull cherry red at the foredecks, gradually warming to a pleasant orange before becoming a sickly yellow at the rear. “Deckan! You better know what you’re doing... reading hull breaches in all lower sections!”
He didn’t answer, he was concentrating too hard on not getting everyone killed.
The massive transport sluggishly began to respond... first stopping its perilous descent and then finally starting to rise.
“Deckan...” Tyrell said. “You’re ruining my engines. Twenty percent thrust capability remaining!”
“That’ll be enough.”
With a final flourish, Deckan levelled the wounded transport and locked her into orbit. He turned to face the captain. “You may reassume com-“
An explosion ripped the engineering spaces at the back of the ship apart. The main fuel tanks ignited, and secondary explosions bloomed on the hull. A rush of superheated gas flooded a cargo hold full of Hornet warheads, detonating them.
The ship yawed, pitched and span lazily, then started to fall back towards the planet, half of it missing and the rest aflame.
“Tyrell!” screamed Deckan. “I told you to fix that bloody fuel leak!”
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