Death of a Shire Part 2

**Sucide_Jockey** Sat Sep 17, 2011 1:35 pm

“Bridge this is Second Assistant Engineer Powell, the Chief is dead and the First Assistant was sucked out with the reactor. Uhh we lost number 2 engine and reactor, Number one’s reactor spiked but it’s under control, the shield generators are recharging but will take longer with the missing reactor. You still have guns, and the Structural Integrity field is holding.”

“Get on those Shield Generators we need them up now. Flight come to course 090.045 increase speed to maximum.” hollered out McGee, as he grabbed a fire extinguisher and set to put out the fire that the exploding panel caused. “Aye Sir,” Called out Luisa Mendez as she pulled the body of the flight control officer out of his seat and settled into the seat. She then started to hit several key strokes and after a very colorful stream of her native Corsairian she said, “Captain, helm is responding but is very sluggish.” The unmistakable sound of Neutron Blaster bolts sounded as the Kusari fighters raked the starboard hull plates. Though the hull damage was considerable nothing critical was hit.

Mendez kept the ship heading towards Leeds as she got closer she started angling away some as to keep the atmosphere as close as possible to the starboard side thereby keeping the kusari’s from attacking that side. And it worked, what it also did was prevent the enemy fighters from attacking too long on the port side as they themselves had to pull out of an attack or be burned up in the atmosphere.
“YEAHHHHH got another one, look at the bastard burn.” Adams yelled, as his guns found their mark and killed one of the Torpedo Fighters and that torpedo fighter was now caught in the Leeds atmosphere. From the flight control station Mendez called out 4 more contacts closing reading BAF IFF signatures. Do not shoot them Adams.” Adams looked up briefly and said “Roger.” Then he set about tracking his guns onto the second torpedo fighter.

With the fire put on McGee returned to the Flight Control Station. “Mr. Mendez I need you at Operations, Reroute all available power to the guns, shield gener…” the Computer cut him off “Shield Reactivated”.. McGee continued,” Generators, and structural integrity field need to remain up as long as possible.” He then settled into the Flight Control Station as Adams gave another update, “Captain, BAF is holding off the attacking Kusari’s and Musket 4 is hailing us.”
“Put him on then” the video screen switched to show a cockpit shot of the ship being piloted by the Android Data. “Royal 55 this is Musket 4 please respond.” McGee responded. “We are here Data. Thanks for the timely arrival.” Data mealy nodded his and asked “what is your status?” McGee called to his Ops officer “OPS give the report.”

Mendez brought up the damage report on her screen and read it off “ Number 2 Engine has been destroyed, Reactor 2 was ejected, Hull damage along the port side, Major hull damage on the Starboard side, Hull Spaces on decks 3, 4, and 5 sections 10 through 14 have been decompressed, Secondary power relay to the bridge blew, Containers number 1,3,4,6,and9 have been compromised,” She let out another long and colorful Corsairian sentence “We lost the Coffee Pot.” An Alarm on her panel sounded but she was cut off by the intercom system.

The panicked voice of the Assistant Engineer was calling “Bridge this is engineering, Number one reactor has gone critical, uhh uhh I don’t know what happened. Its running at 120% power right now, if I cannot correct it I will have to ejec..” A loud bang cut him off followed by a loud hissing like air escaping a balloon “COOLANT LEAK. Bridge we have a coolant leak. Computer evacuate engineering and prepare to elect the reactor. Bridge I have to eject the reactor or she will blow.” Assistant Engineer Powell was then heard shouting at people to evacuate the engine room. On his way out Powell gave the commands to eject the reactor core. The reactor core cleared the hull of the ship and got about 15 meters distance before it blew up.
That was it; the Jockey could not take anymore. The shock-wave from the reactor sent the mighty ship into an orbital decay trajectory and without the main engines they could not recover. With systems on battery power their options were limited. Either way they were in for one hell of a ride.

Mendez reacted first. “Pon-Pon, Pon-Pon, Pon-Pon. This is Bretonia Armed forces Royal 55, we have sustained heavy battle damage and have lost both engines, and we are in an orbital decay and will make atmospheric entrance in 90 seconds.” She then repeated the broadcast. She spoke up over the blaring alarms. “Shutting down everything and rerouting all power to the Maneuvering Thrusters, with luck we can use those and make this less of a plummet and more of a controlled crash.”
At flight control McGee hit the master intercom, “All Personnel to the Center Spine of the ship and brace for impact.” He then set to level off the decent as best as possible. He yelled back to OPS. “Call the numbers, speed and altitude.”

Mendez called back “Speed 30,000 Kph; Altitude120 km; Hull Temp 500 C and rising.” McGee fired the emergency Breaking thrusters, these small jets were designed to be fired in the ship was on final approach and for some reason was either too fast or was about to miss the mooring stand. At the same time he activated the Bow lift thrusters to put the Jockey into a 40Degree attack. This had two effects first it slowed the jockey second it raised the outside hull temp. “Speed 25,000 kph, altitude; 100km; hull temp 1,500C.” The ship was fighting McGee all the way down Finally they were making headway and slowing the decent of the ship, their approach fortunately took them away from the more populated centers and more toward what was left of the lesser populated agricultural districts.

After what seemed to be forever Mendez called out “Impact in 5 seconds…4…3…2…” she hit the intercom “ALL HANDS BRACE FOR IMPACT.”
The bottom of the big shire hit first and would have been a perfect touch down, if the Shire was designed to enter the atmosphere and this were a spaceport, But neither one was. So after the bottom dragged for about 10 meters the bow flopped down fast and hard and dug into the earth. A 25 km swath of earth was dug up as the Suicide Jockey came to a halt some 5 meters before it would have taken out a pub. On the bridge Adams held on for dear life and sustained some burns when the Tactical Station shorted out in a shower of sparks, Mendez was thrown off her feet and smacked her head off the back of the empty command chair and went unconscious. McGee was catapulted over the Flight control and into the View Screen it too exploded into a shower of sparks. Then everything went black.

When McGee came too he was in a hospital bed both arms were covered in bandages. He was vaguely aware of the news broadcast citing the Kusari menace had shot down the [Convoy] transport and the herculean effort the crew made to keep the transport out of the cities rather than abandon ship. Blah blah blah blah. Something more about deaths being minimal of the crew of 40, 28 of his crew were dead, and 1500 killed on the ground. McGee knew this was only the beginning, next would come the questions, but for now he was feeling the Meds working and he opted to let the haziness of his brain take hold and go to sleep, the questions could wait.