[Story]Shadowrunning, Part 2

[Dartz]

Right, Hubris. As long as it fits her personality, and isn't a grasping of the idiot ball. Meanwhile, Nova gets hit.

The final missile’s proximity detonator triggered.

A cloud of high speed shrapnel burst out, scything through the starboard engine pod and heatshield. Metal shards slashed through current carrying coils, instantly melting as Megaamps began to arc through them. Blue electric fire burned at temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, melting the coils before blowing the conductive metal apart and contorting it through magnetic tangles.

In the engine room, Andy had just enough time to feel the impact before the circuit breakers snapped open with a bang, opening the circuit and blowing out the arc in the breaker with a blast of nitrogen gas.

It was all over inside a quarter of a second, before the force of the blast had even begun to throw the Nova into a spin. White hot gas spewed out of the smashed engine.

On the bridge, Hotaru was near thrown from her seat by the force of the impact, saved only by a too slack harness which crunched at her shoulder. She cried out in pain as alarms started to ring out across the bridge, panels switching to a dangerous read.

“The starboard nacelle has sustained a direct impact. We are venting drive plasma,” Desmond announced.

His steady voice was lost amongst the din of alarms and warnings.

“Shut down port! Shut down port!” Mari was yelling.

Carrie had leant right over, hauling all the control yoke, jamming the rudder pedals in as far as they could possibly go. With the starboard engine giving little or no thrust, and the port still running effectively at full throttle, the Nova wanted nothing more than to snap around in a wild spin.

“Got it, got it,” she grunted back through gritted teeth. “I can hold it,”

She reached over and pulled the engine throttle right back to the neutral position. The Nova snapped over, being pushed now by her own maneuvering thrusters.

“Hold it!” Mari barked.

“Don’t fight me. Don’t fight me,” Carrie snapped back at her.

“Starboard thrust, null it, null it out,”

Maneuvering jets machinegunned, shaking the ship’s frame. She bucked and rolled and creaked and groaned, threatening to just burst apart. Desmond was calling out something about attitude control and gimbal lock. Instruments on the pilots panels pegged themselves in the danger zones.

Miranda was trying to focus on the information coming through her earpiece, voices calling out damage and injury reports.

“I’ve got injuries all over the ship!”

The ship lurched once more as a damaged fuel tank burst open, spewing fuel gas like an extra thruster. Hotaru was thrown over, her skull making contact with a handrail. There was a red flash and she was gone, knocked clean unconscious by the cracking blow to her temple. That was all she knew of what happened to her.

Carrie hung on to the yoke. “We’re starting to roll. We’re rolling over right,”

Mari hung on to her panel. “Pitch and Roll! We’re pitching up. ’ll kill pitch. Kill the roll.”

The pair fought with the controls, thrusters firing. In the bay, Cortana’s straps snapped and lashed, denting the hull. The Stargazer slid forward, crashing into the shuttlebay doors before sliding back against the internal bulkhead, smashing equipment lockers and permanently severing her own connections to the Nova’s systems. Luka in the computer room hit the server racks, before being pelted with a shower of datapads and paper manuals.

The ship kicked back, welds popping under the damaged wing, panels blowing off the heatshield exposing the wing structure underneath. Debris, superheated engine parts and gas-ice spewed out behind the spacecraft.

Linda was thrown first against the ceiling, then down on top of the batteries’ cover, then back up again. There was a crunch of shattering bone and a scream of agony.

Carrie struggled with the yoke, “I’ve got her. I’ve got her.”

Focus on the HUD. Focus on the gyros. Focus on the instruments and not on what her inner ear was telling her. She could feel herself being flung around like loose change in a washing machine. Tumbling, spiral, bouncing. The stars out the windows were a whirl of light.

Mari was yelling “Fire you pigs,”

A thruster cluster had malfunctioned.

After a full minute of fighting, the ship came back under control, returning to steady flight. After the wildness of the last sixty seconds, it seemed positively strange to be moving steadily forward. Alarms were still sounding off; they began to die away slowly as they pushed buttons to finally acknowledge them.

“Main Bus B undervolt. Main Bus A undervolt. Starboard Three breaker trip. Starboard Two breaker trip,” Carrie read out. “Port hot shutdown. Thruster pack two fuel warning. Starboard fuel low pressure...” she paused. “Might be easier to get a list of things that are still working,”

Mari turned back, “Hotaru, anything still come....” The rest of that sentence just died in her throat when she saw Hotaru slumped in her harness, blood matting the hair on the right side of her head. “Miranda, get the medkit! Fuck!”

She brushed the sweat off her face using the cuff of her uniform, before fumbling with the catch on her belt. “And tell me where the hell we’ve ended up out here. I don’t want to survive the missile hit before flying up shit creek without a thruster.”

“I still have a fix on Nehallenia, the sun and our marker stars.” Desmond announced. “We’re passed the asteroid,”

Miranda fumbled with her belt straps, stumbling over the deckplates. The medkit was mounted beside an overhead porthole, strapped to the roof. It was enough for basic injuries. Right. Airway, breathing, circulation.... Hotaru seemed to be sitting up right. Airway clear. Breathing very shallow. Pulse was there, but barely.

“Dear sweet Serenity,” she breathed.

Her pupils were fully dilated. Nothing happened when she shone a light in them. Clear fluid trickled out of her ear, mingling with the blood. Thick, red blood pulsing out of the side of her head. Blood was smeared on the handrail where her skull had cracked against it.

“it’s a head injury,” she called back. “Bad one. Oh holy.... oh... It’s ….. “ Her tongue just tied itself into knots. It was obviously lethal, it was obviously going to be lethal very soon. Her skull had buckled in.

“Wave injector.” Mari ordered. “Now! Before she’s too far gone!”

----

Just think, if the Nova'd been more solidly put together it might've blown apart with the stress rather than just buckling and shifting and warping.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?