Flight of the Sabine
Posted on Mon Sep 1st, 2025 @ 4:12pm by Commander Kevin Lance
Edited on on Tue Sep 2nd, 2025 @ 2:54am
1,470 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Hide and seek
Location: Planet Surface
Timeline: Current
on:
{Shuttle Sabine, Outside of Roanoke}
Kevin moved methodically down the checklist, his voice steady despite the hiss of wind battering the hull. “Structural integrity field—green. Thruster control—responsive. Shield emitters—online, baseline output at one hundred percent. Power flow—stable.” He tapped his PADD against the console once, a reflex to match the rhythm of the readouts. Everything read clean, as if the Sabine had never faltered.
He exhaled, toggling the last switch. “Preflight checks complete. Time to see what she can do.”
The shuttle rose smoothly on a column of thrust, snow whipping in spirals around the viewport. For the first time in hours, Kevin allowed himself a sliver of optimism. The Sabine responded crisply, consoles steady, engines humming with familiar confidence. He brought her up into the low cloud layer, angling away from the rocky shelf where he had set her down, running a series of gentle banking turns and climbs.
No flicker in the lights. No brownout warnings. The logs streamed steadily, a picture of textbook performance.
“Not bad,” Kevin murmured. “Let’s see if you’re ready for the real thing.”
He turned the shuttle toward the base. Through the storm’s shifting white, the faint outline of the landing facility emerged, its beacon lights stabbing through the snow like distant stars. Kevin eased the shuttle into descent vector, hands steady on the controls.
That was when the storm turned.
The winds thickened into violent crosscurrents, hammering at the shuttle’s hull. Snow lashed so hard across the viewport it blurred the landing lights into ghostly smears. Kevin’s jaw tightened, but his hands stayed calm on the yoke. He adjusted trim, bleeding off speed, eyes flicking to the shield indicators—
—just in time to see the first spike.
Output surged by thirty percent. Then fifty. Warnings cascaded across his console. The engines’ hum deepened, straining as power bled into the shields.
Kevin gritted his teeth. “Not again.”
He tried to compensate, throttling auxiliary feeds into propulsion, but the drain intensified. The shields were overreacting to the atmospheric turbulence, soaking up more and more power in a futile attempt to counter every ice particle and micro-currents that buffeted the hull.
“Computer, disable automated power distribution!” he commanded.
“That procedure is not recommended,” the computer advised, “Confirm order.”
“Disable APD, confirmed!” Kevin countered
The ship’s console chirped in response as the computer relinquished its task to efficiently manage the flow of the shuttle’s power. No longer countered in real time by the shields, the storm’s random blasts of snow and air currents had a much more noticeable effect on the shuttle’s flight. Kevin held the joystick controller tighter as he fought the craft’s inclination to surrender to the forces of nature.
Power output from the engines dropped back to 100% and the shield indicators dropped back toward the default levels he had set during his pre-flight checks. The throttle and joystick were more responsive and Kevin turned the shuttle on a final approach of the base’s shuttle pad.
The wind’s force grew in intensity as the shuttle pushed forward. As first, all was normal as the craft made slow progress but as the landing light became visible there was a noticeable fluctuation in the thrust. Kevin’s eyes darted to across the console. The power to the shields was increasing but the automated power distribution console remained dark. Something was pulling power from the engines to the shields but he was baffled as to what it could be.
“Computer, lower shields,” Kevin ordered.
“That procedure is not recommended,” the computer answered calmly, “Confirm order.”
“Confirmed!” Kevin shot back.
The vibrations within the shuttle multiplied as the storm’s force was no longer deflected. A sudden gust forced the craft off the line of approach to the station’s pad, forcing Kevin to wave off and circle back around. He really wanted to land the Sabine at the station to reduce the complications of an emergency egress by the away team, should that be necessary, but doing so risked damaging the shuttle to the point of inoperability. And he still had no explanation for the power loss.
He made up his mind as the shuttle circled around to reacquire the line of approach. One more attempt, then he would give up and land a safely out of the storm. He pulled the chair’s safety restraints over his shoulders and snapped them securely into place. They automatically clinched up to remove any slack and retrain his body into the chair. Again, the winds increased as he approached the station, as if the structure were the source of the storm rather than just its focus.
Even with the shields disabled, the console showed that energy was still being drawn from the engines. Kevin shook his head. It made no sense. It was like the shield generators were leaking power at a prestigious rate but they had checked out as functioning as designed. Unless something was drawing the power through the generators.
Power fluctuation to the gravitic emitters and maneuvering thrusters continue to increase in frequency and duration, and it looked like Kevin was going to lose complete control before reaching the pad. He needed to wave off and abandon his course. Unless…
Kevin pulled the shuttle into a steep climb. For a moment, the storm’s winds release the craft as if it were surprised at the sudden maneuver. Kevin watch the altimeter and the velocity indicators trying to remember the exact ratio that represented the sweet spot. He had only tried this in simulation and the results were frequently disastrous.
The storm began pressing against the shuttle’s belly assisting the climb. When Kevin judged that the conditions were right, he order, “Computer shutdown engines,”
“That procedure is not recommended,” the computer answered calmly, “Confirm order.”
“Just do it!” Kevin shouted.
The thrum of the engines faded away as the power died. The console flickered for a moment before the emergency power storage kicked in. The batteries would power the controls and the maneuvering planes for fifteen minute, longer than he would need them, but the rest of the shuttle’s systems including inertial dampers went dark.
Without power to the gravitic emitters, the shuttle assume the aerodynamic properties of a rock. The angle of the climb and the momentum just prior to complete loss of power allowed the shuttle to continue in a slow arc to apogee while Kevin fought to point the nose of the shuttle downward.
The safety restraints held him in his chair as he felt nearly weightless, his own momentum continuing upward as the shuttle succumbed to gravity. He continued to force the nose of the craft downward, assisted by the atmosphere flowing over the control planes that he still could manipulate. The shuttle picked up speed and it fell back towards the station and Kevin squinted to find the landing lights directing him to his target.
When he finally found them, he judged that he was going to be well over his landing point and pushed the joystick forward to steepen his dive. It wasn’t ideal. He was going to have much more velocity and less room to flair but he was committed now. He watch the altimeter and the velocity indicators as they moved in opposition, the number to the ground shrinking as his speed increased.
When the altimeter reach double digits, Kevin pulled back on the joystick and commanded, “Emergency restart engines!” The shuttle’s nose rose slightly as the engines roared back to life. With power restored, the maneuvering thrusters blasted out waves of energy to arrest the shuttle’s fall while the gravitic emitters desperately fought to neutralize the attraction between the shuttle and the planet.
Kevin’s body was forcibly pressed into his chair as he watched as the numbers in the altimeter continued to drop. Slowly at first, then noticeably, the numbers began to stop like slamming on the brakes of a land vehicle. The finally settled at eight meters when the power fluctuations began to manifest again but it was too late. Kevin was close enough to the shuttle pad and safety that even a catastrophic power lose was unlikely to severely damage the shuttle.
He quickly maneuver the shuttle sideways and back to land properly on the pad then began shutting down the emitters and thrusters. A wave of relief washed over him as the storm raged impotently outside.
“Was that as good for you as it was for me?” Kevin asked aloud.
“Query not understood,” the computer complied dispassionately, “Please restate.”
“Nevermind,” Kevin smiled as the stations recover systems began to pull the shuttle into the safety of the vehicle bay, “I was a joke.”
:off
Commander Kevin Lance
Executive Officer
USS Chuck Norris
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