The Empty and the Unknown

4 - Rough Landing

I awoke to a deafening blaring sound, disoriented and nauseous from the time spent in the cryopod. I attempted to sit up but the hatch remained closed. I brought my knees to my chest and slammed my feet against the glass, making a sliver-sized crack. I tried it a couple more times and it finally gave way, shattering into minute fragments. I scrambled out of the chamber, being cautious of the jagged glass that still clung to the sides.

A flashing red alarm on the ceiling still screamed loudly while the ship rocked around hazardously, as though it had hit incredibly turbulent winds. I was the first and only one to wake up, so before I tried to diagnose the problem, I tried the latches on each of the pods. All of them were locked tight. The electronic screens that were meant to monitor and control the pods had malfunctioned, leaving the cryopods closed.

Hurriedly searching around the room for anything of use, I spotted an "In Case of Emergency." fire ax. I smashed the glass that encased it, grabbed it, and ran to Titus' pod. I used the sharp end of the ax to pry it open, struggling against the lock. Finally, I leveraged it just enough and it popped open. Titus awoke suddenly, sitting up in his cryopod, seemingly unaffected by the nausea that had hit me when I awoke.

"What's happening?" He asked.

"I don't know yet," I answered simply, pushing the ax into his arms and helping him out of his pod, "But I need you to get Aurora and Gage awake while I go check on the ship's status."

"Got it." He replied. He got to work on the cryopods, wedging the ax between the halves.

I rushed through the main chamber and into the cabin and immediately recognized the problem. The ship was plummeting directly onto a planet, and it was only a matter of time before we crashed.

Luckily, the artificial gravity kept us on the floor of the ship, and I went over to Titus's seat to check the holoscreen. It displayed a timer that read, "3 minutes until impact." It also showed a schematic of the ship, the left wing flashing red. I looked out the viewport, and sure enough, the wing was completely engulfed in flames. My best guess was that at some point or another during the journey, the ship must have crashed into some sort of debris. I raced to the cryo-lab to see that Titus had already gotten everyone else out.

"The ship is going to crash in about three minutes. Half the thrusters are completely out of commission, so I'm going to need your help." I said urgently, addressing all of them. Gage and Aurora both seemed to be out of it from the cryopreservation, but once they processed it their eyes lit up.

"What do we need to do?" Gage asked.

"Gage, Titus, I need you both to go down to the engine room and see if you can restart the light drive. Half of the ionic thrusters are blown, so that may be the only thing able to save us from crashing." They quickly acknowledged me and ran out of the room, where the main chamber door descended to the lower level.

"Aurora, I need you to come with me to the cabin and see if you can figure out what caused the shutdown. We need to know if this was a computational failure so we can signal the other ships."

"I'm on it." She nodded fervently and led the way to the cabin.

I followed her, then sat in my seat. The holoscreen still displayed the schematics and the timer, which seemed to count down at an all-too-rapid pace. With only two minutes until impact, I closed out of the diagram and brought up the Falcon's controls. The left thrusters were offline, as well as the connection to the light drive. Unfortunately, I couldn't do much with just one side of the thrusters, so I lifted the ship's elevators up, trying to slow our descent and gain some lift. They weren't enough to help much, slowing our rapid fall only a minuscule amount.

"I found the problem," Aurora yelled to me over the sound of the alarms, "The ship ran completely off course during the journey! We plowed through an asteroid belt and must have run into a few too many. We were tossed in the direction of this planet, which pulled us in!"

"What is the best course of action?" I responded though I assumed I already knew the answer.

"We buckle up and wait for impact." She said grimly.

The timer had now reached thirty seconds. I hastily got out of my seat and ran down to the engine room, where the two boys were still inspecting the engine. When they heard me thundering down the platform, Gage turned to explain what they had found. "So, it seems that due to the-"

"There's no time, you both need to get in the cabin and buckle up!" My urgent words startled them, but they urgently followed behind me. I sat in my seat, manually pulling my seatbelt over me and crossing my hands over my chest. Gage and Titus were soon to do the same and Aurora was already in position. I screwed my eyes shut and braced for impact as the ground moved closer and closer towards us. I counted the seconds before complete and utter blackness.