The Crash
Miranda Atmo - 17:45 h
Red lights blared.
Air flashed through the holes in the ship.
The seatbelt was tight enough to choke back the vomit.
Gravity whirled around me as Usir was toyed with mercilessly by it.
"-HIT! LOST ALLFUCTIONOFTHELEFTTIRBINES-!" Pilot Deng's voice was no longer silly.
In an instant, my body experienced a lift the smallest amount from my seat, before I was throttled right back down by the belt, my head hitting the wall behind painfully.
The Usir underwent wrenching lunges forward, as a stone would across the water. Each bout of air it hit wrong was another lurch to a random side, thrashing my body rigorously.
As the adrenaline slowed time for my processing mind, I realized only one ridiculous thing; Brera won the bet, Miranda was in rebellion.
They shot at us.
Ó, wǒ de shàngdì, we were going to crash.
Minutes after the Usir hit atmo, the rebels blasted clumsily away at the ship.
It was the fifth beam that pulverized the entire left side of the ship. Debris flew and tore gaping holes through the top left-side hull, creating vacuums that rushed the ship's air to meet Miranda's.
Behind the clamoring whips of hair, striking my face, I could see something large and metallic splitting through Mauk's chest.
Ellis had blood splattered sporadically dripping off the side closest to Mauk. The terrified man kept his wide eyes on the bloody protrusion and screamed words of horror, only to have them sucked quickly out the hull holes.
"STABLIZE!"some man screamed.
Usir was jostled again, plowing my body forward into the tight belt. Then up, then to the side-and then I couldn't keep track anymore.
My brain slamming all around my skull, my bones thrashing against the muscles attached.
Suddenly, the ship jerked and looped and we were upright again, somewhat steady. The metal rattled thunderously over the rushing wind.
After a few moments passed, the captain, who strapped to the chair directly behind the Pilot's, decided to trust the steadiness. He unfastened his belt, throwing it over his head, and ran through the turbulence. Crashing into Mauk's dead body, he unfastened it, flung it to the floor and sat there himself.
I focused on the Captain's voice fight over the enormous suction, "ALL SECURE! INITIATE FLIP!"
Before I could even think to ask what it was - it initiated, and I was promptly flipped over, my hair hanging from my head, my body's weight crushing my shoulders against the belts around them, my stomach in my mouth.
The wind immediately was silenced. All I could hear now was the spitting, moaning, and heavy breathing of Brera, Shull, Gao and myself.
We had been literally flipped into the shuttle behind us, the lab shuttle.
Something was wrong. We weren't supposed to be hanging upside-down from the side wall.
"It's jammed!" Gao's voice huffed.
The sound of impatient pressing was heard, then incessant cursing in Chinese.
"Tā mā de tā mā de zhè yīqiè! Gǒu shǐ yīkuài, get off of me!" her voice growled in frustration at her belt.
Around us, the shuttle continued to shudder and groan.
"GAO!" A panicked and suddenly a loud interruption through the speakers of the small shuttle screen cortex by the pilot's seat.
Brera's throat made an uneasy whimper, and I could see blood dripping to the floor from somewhere…
"DETACH YOUR SHUTTLE!"
"DENG, IT IS JAMMED, READ ME, JAMMED. Báichī bùyào liǎn!" Gao's belt un-clicked, a pop sounded and she cried out.
"Are you-?" I managed to finally heave out words, turning my intensely pressured head to the woman.
Her body was outside of its constraints, but still dangled a foot from the ground by her arm, which was surely the cause of the sound. My eyes felt as if they might pop out. Gao managed to side her arm out and fall to the floor, her knees partially giving out, she fell instead, on her bottom.
"GAO, DETACH YOUR SHUTTLE!" Heaving and whimpering, she rose to standing, favoring her left arm.
Ignoring me, she rushed over to the bubble shaped cockpit, sliding through the narrow circle and into the pilot's seat.
"What about us?!" Shull's voice rang in panic.
Gao sat, ignoring him too, and snapped into action.
The spherical doors closed perfectly behind her, though we could faintly hear her yelling.
"DENG, GAO HERE, READ ME?"
The whirling wind ran through the speakers again, "YES!" "DETACH IN THREE, TWO, ONE!"
There was a loud clamor, and an overwhelming hiss, and suddenly the shuttle had independence, but the atmosphere outside was far from unshaken. Turbulence rocked us still.
"HANG ON!" Her voice cracked over the speakers in the shuttle room we hung from.
The room spun, I closed my eyes, feeling the pressure of my bodyweight leveling back to the proper place.
I took a breath and heaved for normalcy, my feet touched the floor again- or the ceiling?
It was then I realized that they were designed the same, especially for the flip technology.
The lab equipment was safe, sealed away and upside-down facing the wall opposite to us.
"Get us out of here!" Brera's voice rasped and whined painfully.
I craned my neck over the belt to try to see if she was okay, if she was the one bleeding.
Gao's spherical cockpit flipped itself, to returning to the same level as the rest of the shuttle.
"I can't. We detached too late, we're coming in way too fast. Everyone just hang on!"
Beepers were going off, swirling around my ears in chaos. Lights began to flash, yellow this time.
"Qǐng bùyào ràng wǒmen sǐ." I shouted surprising myself, tears falling quickly as the tremors of the shuttle grew ever more violent.
I heard Gao scream, and pull up viciously on the automatic steer.
I felt it hit Miranda-
the skipping jerks -
the sudden slam-
the screeching-
the shrieks of voice-
the crash surrounded the outside shuttle walls, collapsing down on us.
Something hot was dripping down my eyelid, my brain distorted.
And instantaneously, silence and stillness was all there was.
