Lost in Magadan: Extraterrestrials on Earth

Then two more successfully launched. Six in total, only one got hung up on the tracks. Six more to go, two of which would lead to certain death for its occupants. Forte smashed the button again; this time the red light blazed on his display. The shuttle that failed to launch was not within his field of vision, Forte timidly spared a second glance at the failed shuttle next to him, somber eyes stared out the window, wondering if anyone was going to come and save them. Wind was flashing around the stranded shuttle. It was starting to glow a faint red from the friction and pieces of it were starting to break away. While the super structure of the Impegi was built to withstand extreme heat and conditions, the jump shuttles were not so stoic. Under normal conditions, the jump shuttles would employ their heat shield upon atmosphere reentry, but it could not be activated while stuck on the track. Forte took little solace in the knowledge that it’s occupants would be burned to a cinder long before the Impegi slammed into the Earth’s surface.

Four shuttles remaining to launch. One will end in a fiery death for its unsuspecting passengers. Forte smashed the button again. This time, both shuttles shot out from the Impegi’s superstructure. Two shuttles left, one with occupants that were doomed. Could Forte have condemned himself, and his command officers, to death by choosing this shuttle? He had a fifty-fifty chance. He pushed the button. His shuttle leapt forward and was free of the Impegi. For a moment, he was relieved to feel the freedom of a second of weightlessness, then the substantial guilt sank his heart. The launch of his shuttle meant the deaths of ten crewman. Had he remembered, he could have crammed those thirty crewmembers onto the nine shuttles with proper launch equipment. Better to sit in the pressurized cargo hold than be burned to death as the ship plummeted to Earth.

Yet, Forte could not afford to think about the dead, he still had work to do, and it had to be done fast. Four minutes to impact. Forte had the Impegi’s flight control on his hand-held display. One minute until he had to activate the antigravity field around the Impegi. He glanced up at the stone-faced Pilosus – unsure if Pilosus knew why the three shuttles had failed to launch.

Forte pulled against his harness restraints to get a better look at the Impegi; it was far below them, freefalling towards the rocky surface. Forte’s jump shuttle had engaged its fusion reactor and was approaching Earth in a controlled dissent.

Captain Stella was at the shuttles helm, “Where should I take her down?”

Forte replied, “About a mile from the impact crater; find a place that gives us cover. We don’t know who will be there to greet us.”

“Yes Sir,” Stella muttered, putting on the jump shuttles helmet and focusing on the controls that lit up across the visors screen. The jump shuttle was controlled by a hybrid of handheld steering and neural signals received through the helmet.

Forte’s plan, for better or worse, not that he had time to carefully consider it, was to activate the antigravity field around the ship three minutes from impact. The antigravity field would eliminate the force of gravity on the ship. Forte hoped that by activating the force field, the gravitational pull would be lessened, and the ship’s speed would be reduced.

Forte activated the antigravity force field, and, as expected, the Impegi’s speed stabilized. Still not enough for a survivable crash, but perhaps enough to salvage some of the cargo.

“Commander, two jump shuttles just lost power; they are in freefall,” Stella shouted.

Forte shook his head, “Do we know why, what happened?”

“No radio contact,” answered Stella, “their optical stealth shields are not functioning; humans on the ground can clearly see the shuttles.”

The Impegi had three minutes of reserve power. Forte planned to use two minutes and fifty seconds of that power in the last minutes of the fall to minimize the planet’s gravitational pull. The final ten seconds were to be used to power the plasma shields. Forte could see on his display that the Impegi was essentially in a nose dive toward Earth. Forte rerouted eighty percent of the shield’s power to the bow. It made sense to divert the little remaining power to the section that would receive the brunt of the impact.