FutureSight - a YEAR 10000 story

07 - Planet Regridden

Seven hours of flying in a small capsule was hell for a man, especially if that man is hungry, tired, and needs to use the bathroom quite badly.

Daren steered his personal space scooter closer to the incoming blot of a planet. It was green, mostly, mottled with blue green here and there. He imagined that was swamp, and he also imagined that if he didn't figure out how to land this thing it would be where he crashlanded.

He juked the controls, trying to figure out which one activated the landing gear. He could steer just fine, so he might be able to avoid landing in the swamps if he could only figure out how to activate landing gear and how to activate belly thrusters.

This thing did have belly thrusters, right?

He scratched his head in the cramped confines and reviewed his choices before him. A panel of knobs, buttons, and levers, and none of which signified that there were any belly thrusters on this thing.

Of course there had to be though; how else would the ship slow down for descent? Just the same, if he couldn't find them, they weren't going to be all that useful.

He veered towards one of the incoming patches of blue green, the whole planet dominating his cockpit now.

He looked up and around in some kind of awe, then back to his fighter. Okay, maybe if he could swivel around backwards he could use the ship's main engine as a thruster. Mostly he just needed something to slow his descent towards the planet. Yes, it looked like he'd have to land backwards.

"This'll be something new," he thought. Daren the Outlaw was a good pilot, but it seemed he was always learning new tricks.

He cut the engines, letting himself free fall towards the planet. While gravity did it's thing, he tried to figure out how he was going to land. There were no outside cameras to give him a view of his descent, and he could only look up, through the cockpit.

Well, he'd just have to play this one by hand and see how it treated him.

When the hull of the craft began to burn bright red, he activated the ship's engines on a low burn. This would slow him down, but not stop his descent.

He neared in on what had to be a swamp, descending into the canopy of trees that had to be thousands of feet tall. He slowed down even further, worried that he might hit a branch or something and cause the ship some damage.

He felt the ship thud and stop falling. Then there was a creaking sound... it was a sound like breaking wood.

"Oh shit," he thought as something broke from under him. The space scooter went falling head over heels, plummeting downwards towards the swamp water. He dared not activate his boosters until he was facing the sky; otherwise he might slam into a tree.

He turned his boosters on and hovered above the ground. He lowered slowly, to the ground, and stopped in the swamp. He switched the engines off, and sighed, relaxing back into his cockpit.

Whew, that was a long and uncomfortable ride. Now, to use the bathroom and call up Koe Kavoly.

He popped open the cockpit and stepped outside onto the hull. The ship's hull had cooled down considerable since it now resided in a marsh. There wasn't anybody around so he was just going to take a leak right here in the swamp.

Daren unzipped his pants and got down to business.

After he was done he thought about Koe. His good friend lived on this planet. He had some serious shit to complain about, what with him being the one who recommended the Sel Sarrak job. He had to be sure Koe wasn't in on it, even though he was already sure he was innocent.