Taylor's Journey through Space

Prologue

"What the hell is this? We've lost stabilization, Commander. Guidance is gone and radar is offline. Steering is shot all to hell." Commander Ivan Perry 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 Jackson 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," Jackson 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 Perry was fighting the steering, pulling the wheel up and out as he tried to force the nose higher and activate the emergency gliding system.

Taylor Walker 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" Ivan'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?" Jackson continued his call to the space station as he fought to manually rebalance the oxygen and bring radar back online.

"Damnit Ivan. Where the hell 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." Ivan 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 on board communications or their connection 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," Ivan gritted out as Taylor 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, Taylor 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!" Ivan yelled over the sound of the craft's stress. "Brace in and expect to bounce." And bounce they did. Taylor 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.

Ivan 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 going to hit!" Mike suddenly screamed. Taylor 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 going to clip." Ivan 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 are gone, but not their lives. The rate of speed had slowed dramatically enough that when the shuttle ploughed into something seconds later it shuddered to a stop rather than bouncing over it.

At that second, Taylor'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.

He caught her. Ivan had only a second's warning that Taylor was being tossed headlong into the forward section of the cockpit. Only a breath of time reach to out, break her flight and jerk her into his arms. The force of speed nearly ripped his arms out of their sockets as he braced his body and pulled her sideways, sprawling her across his lap rather than head first into the shield before them.

The shuttle was still rocking, shuddering. Steam erupted from the panels beneath his feet and sparks flew from the control console around them before they fizzled to dust at his feet. His heart was racing, sweat pouring down his body as he trembled from the exertion it had taken to maintain control of the small craft. Beside him, Mike was slumped in his seat, breathing harshly, as well muttering every curse the other man must have learned during his years in the Air Force. And that was quite a vocabulary.

Across his lap, the little botanist he had been forced to accept on the mission was unconscious, her hair having been torn from the neat braided knot she kept it in and flowing around her body. The first thing he thought of was sex. Damn. They had nearly hurled to their deaths and now that they were safely on land, his cock was engorging, his entire body so hyper that for one tense minute he thought of nothing but stripping her uniform from her body and stuffing her pussy full of the cock surging beneath his own clothes.

Adrenaline was a bitch. And the woman in his arms was a weakness. He had known it the minute she had been assigned to the crew. "Is she alive?" Mike was breathless, gasping, his short brown hair dripping with moisture as he leaned back in his seat and looked over at them.

Evidently, Ivan thought, he wasn't the only one with sex on his mind. Mike's pants were straining at the seams as well. "Damn. I'm glad she's unconscious," he sighed as he hastily checked the wound at her temple, her vitals and pupils. "Possible concussion, but hell, she's alive."

Her ass was right over his cock, a soft, tempting pad of flesh. He shook his head, cursing, not for the first time, his more than heated attraction to the little botanist. Now wasn't the time for it. They were in a hell of a situation and sex should be last on his list of priorities. "Let's get out of here. See how bad it is." He released the catch on his harness, wrapped his arms around Taylor's small body and rose to his feet. "Let's pray we can at least keep warm."