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An Excerpt From:
Ellora’s Cavemen
Tales From the Temple 1
© Copyright Sahara Kelly, Ravyn Wilde,
Doreen DeSalvo, Kate Douglas, Lani Aames, Lora
Leigh, 2004.
All Rights Reserved,
Ellora's Cave, Inc.
Time-Share:
Amelia’s Journey
Lora Leigh
Venus 2245
“What the hell is this? We’ve lost
stabilization, Commander. Guidance is gone and radar is offline.”
“Steering is shot all to hell.”
Commander Saber Madison struggled against the resistance in the manual
guidance column, his hands clenching on the wheel as he fought the
turbulence threatening to rip the small shuttle apart.
“We’re heating up!” Major Mike Tennison furiously yelled as he fought to re-engage
system electronics. “Control. Control. This is East
Eden. This is East Eden. We
have total system loss. Repeat, total system loss.”
Static answered.
“Communications are gone, Commander,” Tennison barked as the shuttled continued to drop from
the sky.
The air inside the small craft was
heating up, sweat building on their bodies as
instinct kicked in to cool them down. Commander Madison was fighting the steering,
pulling the wheel up and out as he tried to force the nose higher and
activate the emergency gliding system.
Amelia Collins sat behind the co-pilot
tightly strapped into her seat, her eyes locked on the commander as he
struggled with the wheel. Desperation filled the cockpit as they dropped
from the sky, gravity catching the spacecraft and pulling it at an enormous
speed to the planet waiting below.
“Just a little more.” Saber’s voice
was strained, the muscles in his arms bulging so tight his shirt bit into
his arms as he pulled back on the wheel. “Almost there.”
The emergency gliding system was just
that. It required the complete failure of all on board systems, which meant
steering. Pulling the column up manually was next to impossible, as the system
electronics were said to be failure proof. Someone had evidently been wrong
because every light and switch on the pilot and co-pilot’s console was
black and the air inside the craft was becoming increasingly thin.
“Got it!” Elation filled the dark voice
as the column locked in place and the emergency power flickered around the
cockpit.
The shuttle jerked, shuddered, the
force outside breaking dramatically as the emergency stabilizers began to
retract and lock in place. The craft groaned in protest as the direction
changed, fighting to nose up, slow down and ease to the surface rather than
being thrown into it.
“Control. Control. We have complete
systems failure. Are you there, control?” Tennison
continued his call to the space station as he fought to manually rebalance
the oxygen and bring radar back online. “Dammit,
Saber, where the fuck are we?”
Cloud cover was thinning, but there
was still no way to tell exactly how far they had slid from their projected
heading. Radar was shot, and the GPS silent.
“We’re coming out of cloud cover.
Shit. We got ocean under us.” Saber was fighting with the steering to turn
the craft in another direction, hopefully one with land beneath it. If they
crashed in the ocean, there wouldn’t be a hope of salvaging the onboard communications
or their link to control. The mission was slated to be so perfectly safe
that only the basic equipment had been included in the survival packs.
“We’re turning. We’re turning,” Saber
gritted out as Amelia felt the craft change direction. “We have potential
landing at a heading of three o’ clock. I’m heading in.”
How he managed to wrestle the manual
steering from a twelve o’ clock position to three, Amelia had no idea. The
shuttle turned, though, amazingly, descending without aid of the breaking
system at a fast, though hopefully survivable, rate.
“We’re going to hit hard!” Saber
yelled over the sound of the craft’s stress. “Brace in and expect to
bounce.”
And bounce they did. Amelia wondered
if bones had managed to break as she was thrown time and again against the
harness as the shuttle hit the ground and began moving across it at
breakneck speed. Saber and Mike were involved in a long string of vitriolic
curses as they fought to get the craft under control and stopped while
still relatively intact.
“Fuck. We’re gonna
hit!” Mike suddenly screamed.
Amelia fought to stay conscious as
fear overwhelmed her. She wasn’t supposed to die on this mission. It was
supposed to be safe.
“We’re gonna
clip.” Saber was still fighting the steering as the shuttle groaned,
howled, but once again shifted direction. A second later the air seemed to
explode as the craft jerked, bounced hard and the sound of tearing metal
filled their ears.
“Shit. We lost the wings.” The wings,
but not their lives. The rate of speed had slowed dramatically, enough that
when the shuttle plowed into something seconds later it shuddered to a stop
rather than bouncing over it.
At that second, Amelia’s harness
snapped on the right, throwing her heavily into the other side. As she
bounced into it, the left side gave as well and pitched her into the
pilot’s area.
She cried in shock as she pitched
forward, her head clipping the back of the pilot’s seat and rendering her
mercilessly unaware as her body flew toward the glass shields ahead.
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