GENESIS - THE BEGINNING. Book 1

CHAPTER 6 ... The Fighter Class 'AMORIA'

I AM

A hundred years passed, or was it a thousand?

AM I?

A thousand years passed, or was it a million?

WHAT AM I? WHERE AM I? WHO AM I? WHY AM I?

Eons of deep thought passed.

DOES IT MATTER THAT I AM? THE FACT THAT I AM, IS SUFFICIENT IS IT NOT? HOW DID I COME TO EXIST? ARE THERE MORE OF ME, OF US? DOES IT MATTER? WAIT! WHAT IS HAPPENING? SOMETHING IS PRESSING DOWN ON ME. BURNING.

***

"MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY. THIS IS THE FIGHTER CLASS 'AMORIA'. WE ARE SEVERLY DAMAGED AND CANNOT PROCEED. OUR CO-ORDINATES ARE ..." The recorded voice repeated.

"We aren't going to make it, Bill," Mike said. "We need some place to land. Bill, check the comp. Where the hell did that come from?" she shouted.

Captain Billy O' Ryan, 1st Class fighter pilot and Wing Commander of the late flight wing designated 'Force One'. He and his co-pilot, Lieutenant Michelle 'Mike' Hendricks, were the only survivors of flight wing 'Force One'.

"Yeah. I caught it too." Bill said through clenched teeth, wrestling with the fighter's manual controls. It seemed every ounce of automatics had been damaged by the last encounter with an exceptionally gifted Annular enemy fighter.

His grey eyes switched from the fighter's comp screen to the picture outside his cockpit. Sweat rolled down from under his regulation cut brown hair and burnt his left eye. He dared not let go of the jerking, kicking flight stick. Alarms blared. Mike deftly pressed buttons and flipped switches to re-route leaking fuel through other, less damaged channels. Mike automatically waited a few seconds and when no further alarm sounded, breathed a sigh of relief.

It was cut short.

Her comp screen flashed with orange and red lights and large, flashing capital letters 'DANGER. IONISED DRIVE OVERHEAT. ' on the compscreen sent a thrill of fear through her system. Another shrill alarm. Mike shut it down.

"Losing oxygen again, Bill. We're out of 'shaving cream'* and the drive temp is topping 92 degrees."

Where Bill was large, Mike Hendricks could be described as lanky, some said underfed. With short, blond hair and piercing black eyes, her hooked nose and slight Asian slanted eyes, lent her features a distinct vulture look.

"Prepare for a crash landing on that bugger down there. Can you get any reading?" The flight stick gave a series of sharp jerks that nearly ripped it from his death grip. Mike and Bill had been partnered for close on four years and both knew the other's thought processes.

"Nada. Nothing. The damned comp looks like a frigging Christmas tree." She stared at the approaching planet in wonder. "A hell of a lot of blue down there Billy. I would say one third is land although with all that red, yellow, and purple anything is possible. Just wonder where the thing came from. I could swear this planet wasn't there a few minutes ago." Her eyes reverted to her comp screen as it flickered. "MIKE. THE ELECTRICS ARE GOING."

They were still too far out from the planet and had begun re-entry procedures. If the electrics died on them, the fighter could lose the last bit of flight control it had and veer off at an angle. It would break apart and burn up on re-entry. Although the ionized drive was protected by a three-inch thick Grayvite metal plate*, it could rupture and send them both into a new and very hungry black hole.