01 - LOST

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is ISS Arietis! We suffered an explosion on the

Engineering Room and we're had casualties already! Remaining crew on board are
trying to fix the breach before we hit plasma. Ship not equipped for atmo-flight
and no Thermis installed! We need a brunpath! Sending data."

`"ISS Arietis, this is Melbourne Tower. Your flightpath is getting too near the
minimum altitude for your class. Please ascend ASAP. Over."`

"Captain... I think our Comms are damaged! They can't seem to hear us." - said the
Communications Officer in the bridge.

"Try changing the frequency! Try anything! Morse if you can! We need to alert them 
*'Dammit... Okay, think! There is a way out of this bullshit situation... Think!'*
- was what Captain Michael Reese thought before consulting furiously the holomap of
the simulated descent of his ship... And it was bad. With the angle and speed the
were falling into the planet they would burn to slag at the best or detonate like a
antimatter warhead after hitting the ground at worst... And their current
trajectory also was made a third option! The one of being shot down by the EDF for
the threat of nosediving a freighter with collision path with Melbourne, the most
populated city in the world...

*'...There is one way... I have to do this perfectly...'* - the plan was forming in
his head... - *'If I angle the ship a little more up like this... Use the Retros
together with the ICS Boosters here... And here... And then activate them... Yeah.
YEAH! This will work! This HAVE to work!'*

"Everyone, please hold on your seats... This one will be rough…" - he looked as
noticed the ship' status, most of it orange and telling a number of medium and
minor damages - "Everything ready on engineering?" - he asked over the internal
communication of the ship.

"Yes *Bossman!* Yes... Breach sealed..." - came the distorted voice from the
InterCom. - "The seal will take the blunt but it won't last long..."

He could hear the grief clearly in the voice of Ariel  his Chief Engineer... He
knew what that meant about the rest of the engineering crew...

"Alright! Now get the hell out of there and find a seat! We're doing an 180."

"Understood, *Bossman...* Oh God... On my way." - she ended the call still sounding
shellshock -

"Kirby! How much until Plasma Blackout?" - he asked but on his left the young
Navigational Officer keep silent.

"…"

"KIRBY!"

"S-sorry captain! 60 seconds until Plasma Blackout!" - he hurriedly answer in a

scare, but his fear wasn't coming from the shouting call his captain did. No. The
color drained from his face had another reason… - "Sir… With the current
trajectory… We will hit… Sydney…"

Truth be told, when hearing about what they were about to do, the color drained
from captain's face too. His option to eject the reactor in case of overload was
completely null now, because doing so would mean dropping basically an huge anti-
matter bomb over one of the most populated cities on Earth… So his options now were
either dive like an missile on a very populated area and pray to not explode like a
nuke or drop the reactor and landing with minimal casualties on the city as his
ship crushed some buildings but the reactor still falling on a nearby region and
still exploding, killing God knows how many more. It was either land perfectly or
doom and damnation for all. No pressure at all.

"Can we try changing course? Maybe the middle of the Pacific?" - he asked to his
Quartemaster. Vain hope for he probably knew the answer based on how fast the ship
was accelerating, but hope nonetheless.

"…Calculating here… We could try to use the RMCEs to changing it a little. But then
we won't have enough fuel on them to help us decelerate." - came the response from
the athletic woman's grave voice. No fear, no despair, no exaltation, just
genetically-tailored calmness coming from her mouth.

"Do or die then… Alright."

"Plasma Blackout in 10, 9, 8, 7-"

"Time to see if *Mermaid's* seal endure enough!"

"-2, 1, now!"

The bridge started to shake as the entire hull of the *Argent Stellara* made
contact with the upper atmosphere and started to burn involved in superheated
plasma.

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