During their narrow escape from the front compartment, the port-side landing gear had collapsed under the weight of the falling ship, making any further takeoffs problematic. The maintenance bots had cleared the intakes, but until they repaired the damaged strut, the engine could still suck in foreign debris, rendering it useless. The irreparable loss of propulsion would mean no one would go home until another crew could bring replacement parts and equipment. But Moss couldn't worry about that possibility now. Something had gone wrong.
After 20 minutes of terrifying radio silence, Moss had moved to the pilot's seat and begun performing a series of hasty pre-flight checks. Most of which failed. The engineering subsystems control console flashed a myriad of red and yellow warning lights. The angry display intended to get the pilot's attention was a good indicator that a takeoff attempt was a bad idea. He ignored them all.
An odd series of worsening energy surges rocketed down the trench and struck the ship. Moss was certain his uncommunicative teammates were in serious trouble. If he had felt those surges this far away. What the hell did they feel on their end? He couldn't guess what happened and didn't want to try. The possibilities were endless, and all of them were dire. Time and time again, he fought down the feeling they were already dead. The energy surge had shoved the ship 10 yards further downrange, knocking him off his feet. Luckily, the carbon fiber cast on his forearm protected his recent break. But it couldn't ease the horrific pain filling his arm.
Moss strapped himself into the pilot's seat. "At least, I get my seat back," he said, starting an emergency engine start-up. The engines spun up, sputtering and stammering. The starboard-side engine ground and chattered loudly. Super-heated air blackened the sand behind the ship as blue jets of fire roared through the exhaust cowling, turning it a brilliant shade of orange.
Moss jerked back on the stick, hoping the engines wouldn't fail the way they had on Lockspur and Dahl. The ship lurched upward, protesting the sudden demand for elevation. More red lights flashed, and several shrill alarms blared as dust devoured the ship. The choking storm sandblasted the intake manifolds for a third time, passing through the spinning inner-workings of the starboard engine. The ship shuddered. Moss' seat tried to eject him through the windscreen. He jerked harder on the stick, trying to gain more altitude before the intake manifolds plugged solid or the spinning airfoils inside the engines became a hail of shrapnel exploding out the rear of the engine. All I need is a little fresh air, he thought.
The ship bucked through the relentless storm of roiling dust. It teetered precariously 20 feet above the ground as if deciding whether it would fail or continue soaring upward. Peering through the windscreen, Moss could no longer see the horizon. It disappeared into the swirling storm outside. The engines stumbled again, vibrating the vessel and tossing its lone occupant mercilessly. More red lights flashed. More alarms screamed. "It's going to stall," he yelled to a cockpit full of empty seats. The tail dropped, pointing the nose skyward. The ship slipped lower into the choking storm. Moss slammed his fist down on the aft docking thrusters. Agony seized his arm. The rockets roared to life as white-hot jets of fire blasted the dust away, and the ship exploded out of the choking sandstorm like a speeding comet.
The ship leveled out, flying straight. Only two red lights remained. The aft landing gear failure lights blinked, but those problems would have to wait. Moss stared at the horizon, mouth agape and wide-eyed. Beads of sweat poured down his forehead. The spire piercing the horizon moments earlier had vanished. In its place was a massive drifting cloud of dust. Moss slammed the stick forward. The nose dropped, the ass end rose high, rocketing the vessel forward on a corona of supersonic fire.
He circled the fallen wreckage, searching the area with the forward array to locate his missing comrades. No human life signs registered outside the ship's thick steel structure. He prayed Dahl and Lockspur weren't under the twisted wreckage. But he knew they were.
Hundreds of dead and dying bio-raptors screamed and stumbled around as the searing UV cooked them alive. There would be no retreat for them. The fallen compartment had sealed itself. But that meant Dahl and Lockspur had no way out either. They were inside with hundreds of raptors, trapped. And they were in the dark.
Moss knew what he had to do. He had to get in there and find them. Save them if possible. Bring their bodies out, if not. Either way, Moss would never leave them behind. Not as long as there was strength in his body. They were not just his brothers in arms; they were his family. The only family he had.
He thumbed the red switch on the Pilot's console, and a heads-up display filled the windscreen. Beneath the nose cone, a 5-foot by 5-foot panel slid down and out of the way. Its whining hydraulics filled the cockpit. "Time to get extreme," he said to himself as a trio of 20mm mini gun barrels slid forward, poking out of the opening. Each had giant bores. Moss thumbed up the safety shroud on the joystick. The barrels spun a half turn, and a green light burst into view on the forward console. The AI primed the mini-guns; they were ready to fire. He needed to get inside, and for that, he needed a hole. A big one. He placed the tip of his finger on the trigger, spotted his target, fixed the HUD's crosshairs on the side of the compartment and hoped no one would be in the near vicinity. Moss depressed the trigger, and the 20mm barrels spun up. A long, growling trail of HE rounds interspersed with tracer rounds tore through the hull. The steel sheeting tore away as if made of tissue paper. The sound in the cockpit was deafening. Several larger creatures saw the gaping hole appear in the compartment and raced towards the darkness. It screamed to its flailing comrades, and a growing onslaught of sizzling raptors followed it towards safety.
Moss saw the approaching horde and laid down a rending volley of suppressive fire that reduced the beasts to a liquid slurry before they reached the safety of darkness. A shower of hot brass rained from the sky, tinkling off the rocks far below as exploding rounds tore through soft flesh and thick steel alike. When Moss let off the trigger, the weapon spun to a stop in its cradle, smoke wafting up to the windscreen. The writhing beasts lying outside the gaping hull no longer cared about the UV. Those who hadn't seen the sudden exodus lay screaming beneath the fury of twin suns.
Moss hoped Dahl and Lockspur had heard the unmistakable barrage and known what it was. The rumbling burp of angry mini-guns is pretty distinct, he thought. "They must have heard it," he assured himself. He continued repeating that in his head until it became a mantra. It was his way of willing them back to life; back into this world of daylight. Moss thought, Just hold on. I'm coming.
He set the ship down 10 yards in front of the gaping hole in the hull. The engines slowed to a stop. To his amazement, he had not destroyed the engines. He unbuckled his harness and then raced out of the cockpit, heading straight towards the weapons storage room. When he entered the armory, he spun around, trying to decide what he wanted to take with him. He turned to the long black storage locker stuffed into the far corner. Inside, waited a special project he had cobbled together over the last year. He hoisted the locker onto a nearby workbench.
"Guess now is as good a time as any to try this," he said, opening the lid and pulling out the locker's contents. He held an untested prototype set of shock armor. The armor was substantially lighter and incorporated several significant upgrades regular heavy armor didn't have. The armor afforded less protection than typical, but it could still withstand far more punishment than lightweight armor. He had equipped it with upgraded night vision optics, a state-of-the-art radar canceling stealth system and other features he reasoned would come in handy. Once he was in the dark, Moss would need every edge he could use against creatures evolved to live and see in darkness. But he didn't delude himself. Once inside, he would be in their world, on their turf, and they would have the advantage of millions of years of evolution. Protected or not, he was meat for the beasts if they caught him off guard.
Moss donned the suit, stuffing every available pocket with as many spare clips, grenades and items he could carry. He wished there were more pockets, but overloading himself would limit mobility and increase noise. The last thing Moss wanted to do was go staggering through the ship, sounding like a clattering dinner bell.
He grabbed a close-quarters rifle, its typical 24" barrel cut down to 12" and its buttstock removed for ease of movement. It looked like a large pistol with a giant clip. He didn't worry about accuracy. He needed stopping power and a disorienting muzzle blast that could back up a close-range target. Anything coming out of the darkness would be too close already; so the luxury of time was not on his side. As a backup, he strapped a sawed-off Remington Model 870 with a pistol grip to his right thigh, stuffed a couple of 5-round boxes of buckshot in an empty cargo pocket. Before he headed out, he took 2 extra sidearms and a set of multi-purpose sunglasses. He thought about taking a flamethrower, but after careful consideration, he decided against it. He was already very close to being overloaded.
Before opening the emergency hatch, Moss checked his weapons and donned his helmet. The suit had an impact-resistant face shield made of the same material the sunglasses used. It would serve him well, both inside and outside the derelict craft. He opened the hatch expecting an attack, but nothing came at him. The twin suns had done their job. Dead bio-raptors' carcasses littered the area around the ship. He was glad his helmet filtered the incoming air as he squished his way through an ankle-deep sea of slippery entrails and fried raptors. Some of them whimpered as he passed by. It was almost sad.
Moss was only a few yards away from the gaping hole in the hull when he saw a giant shadow move across the opening. He pulled up, preparing to fire, and forced himself not to depress the trigger. "Don't!" he shouted to himself. "If they survived, they're more than likely injured and disoriented." He couldn't run through the compartment spraying anything that moved. He could kill one or both of them by accident. That was going to make their extraction far more dangerous. Now, the creatures had the advantage of attacking on sight, and he had to know what he was shooting at before he pulled the trigger.
"Shit." He muttered to himself. There are huge bio-raptors in the depths of the wreckage; raptors he couldn't take down in a close combat encounter. Hell, there were creatures in there he couldn't take down with every round he had. And he bore no illusions that any of them would run up and play fetch the grenade.
Moss needed stealth. He would have to search and evade while moving through a minefield of loose debris. Sound was not his friend. And firing a weapon would not only alert the beasts to his presence, it would cost him precious time in potentially unwinnable firefights. If he had the slightest chance of rescuing his teammates, Moss needed to get to them soon. But compared to enemies who thrived on the art of war in darkness, he relied on untested optics and a theoretical stealth system. But with a little forethought and a whole boatload of cunning, he could navigate the wreckage unseen.
He looked at the ship. Moss could get in and fly away. No one would suspect he had abandoned his team. He stepped through the breach in the hull. He would never leave them there. "No one left behind," he said. "Not on my missions." Then, stepping deeper into the unknown, the darkness surrounded him and he thought, Maybe I should have brought the flamethrower.