"Unauthorized intrusion detected! Shutting down all external communications."
"Freddie, what's going on?" Carly screamed.
"Yo, Fredbag! Can you hear us?" Sam added.
Carly tried a different tactic, "Quinn? Mr. Blanton? Anyone?"
Sam was starting to realize what was going on. "DAN, can they hear us?" she asked the computer.
"No Miss Pucket, they cannot," the computer answered. "Security protocols have severed all communication with the ground."
"Bring it back!" Sam demanded.
"I cannot comply until the source of the intrusion has been detected and neutralized."
"Sam, what are we going to do?" Carly asked her girlfriend.
"Freddie left the command to kill that virus on the screen. I think we should do it," Sam answered.
"Didn't you hear Quinn, though? That'll shut off our life support!" Carly countered. "We could try their other idea and reboot, but then it might not come up." She paused for a few minutes, thinking silently, then she suddenly threw her helmet across the room, screaming, "Dammit, Sam, we're going to die up here and there's nothing we can do about it!" She started sobbing loudly.
"Cupcake," Sam said, taking off her helmet. She reached out to try to hold her girlfriend, but the brunette floated away from her and turned around. Sam spoke in a louder, more commanding voice, "Carly, listen." The younger girl turned to face her. "You know what my life's been like. If I can get through having Pam as a mom, I'm not about to let some malfunctioning toaster kill me." She floated toward Carly. "It's all because of you, you know that right?"
"Hunh?" Carly asked.
"I got through everything because you were there with me," Sam explained. "I knew I had a safe place to come to. I was always safe with you." Tears misted Sam's eyes, and she continued, "And that was when we were just friends. Now…"
"Sam…" Carly whispered.
"We're going to get through this because we're together. We're on our own, but we're not helpless. We'll think this through."
"You're right!" Carly said, surprising herself with her confidence. "We've gotten through all kinds of stuff together." Her thoughts drifted back to the last time they almost died together, on a window washer platform fourteen stories above the ground.
The blonde seemed to read her thoughts, "We've survived worse, Cupcake."
The two lovers simply held each other tightly for what seemed like an eternity, but was really only a few minutes. Finally, Sam's bright blue eyes met Carly's chocolate brown ones and the blonde spoke up, "I don't know about you Carls, but I'd rather die trying something than wait around up here for the air to run out."
Carly laughed - a hollow, ironic sound, "Agreed. What should we do, kill the program or try to reboot?"
"I say we kill the program," Sam answered. "Maybe we can breathe slowly and make the air last."
Carly shrugged, "I don't have a better idea, so let's do it." She floated over toward the terminal.
Sam floated faster, blocking her way. "No deal, Cupcake! I don't know what's going to happen when we press that button. You go strap yourself in. Mama's got this."
"Sam…" Carly tried to argue.
"No Carly. I need you to be safe. Go!"
The brunette knew it was futile to resist. When Mama made up her mind, her mind was made up. She brought the blonde in for a tender kiss. "For luck," she explained.
Sam watched Carly float through the door to the common area as she put on her helmet and locked it. She waited a few more minutes for her girlfriend to buckle up and connect her air hose. She stared at the command on the screen for a minute, studying each pixel of each letter like it was the last thing she was ever going to see. Then, with a deep breath, she pressed the Enter key.
The result was a rather anticlimactic line of text on the screen: Process Terminated.
Before Sam even had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, however, an alarm started to sound. Next she heard DAN's voice over the speakers in her helmet, "Critical system failure. Emergency egress protocol enabled. Beginning deorbital roll."
Sam wasn't sure what any of that meant, but considering their present situation, "deorbital" sounded promising. Judging by the fact that the Earth was disappearing off the bottom of the window, she had clearly started something happening, and the safest place for her to be right now was strapped in next to her Cupcake. She pushed herself off the desk toward the door.
What Sam didn't realize is that the room was rotating around her. The door opened on her approach, but her aim was off and her shoulder hit the doorway. Not hard, but enough to bounce her backwards a bit. On the second try she got through the door. By now, the Earth was completely gone from view.
When she got into the common area, she could see Carly strapped into the seat, which now appeared to be hanging from the ceiling above her. She aimed toward the empty seat next to Carly as she heard DAN's voice again, "Emergency braking thrusters engaging."
Rocket motors at the front of the ship lit up, and the ship decelerated rapidly to begin reentry. Unfortunately, since Sam was not anchored to any stationary objects on the ship in any way, her orbital velocity no longer matched that of the spacecraft. She was effectively thrown backwards into the front wall of the common room with great force, and she hit the metal hard.
Pain shot through Sam's body and she was pretty sure she had broken a rib. She knew she had to get strapped in, though, and she aimed again for the seat next to Carly. Still strapped in, her partner caught her and helped guide her into the seat. As Sam struggled to buckle her seatbelt, Carly connected Sam's air hose. Now settled into the seat, Carly took Sam's hand. "Are you okay?" the brunette asked.
"Hurts to breathe," her partner grumbled. Carly could hear her wheezing.
They heard the voice of the computer, "Beginning deceleration maneuvers."
"What's happening?" Carly screamed, befuddled by all of the activity.
At the radar station in ground control, technician Kara Thrace had been watching her console for days. She was startled to see some of the numbers changing. So startled, in fact, that it took a moment for the ramifications to sink in. She yelled out, "The ship's slowing down! I think it's breaking orbit."
Spencer and Richard Blanton were instantly at her station. "Look, it's losing speed and altitude. Now it's beginning S-turns."
Quinn was elated to hear that. It meant the ship wasn't simply tumbling out of orbit. The computer had control. Then she realized something important, "It's in the wrong place," she said.
"What do you mean?" Freddie asked.
"Considering where the ship started decelerating, it's not going to make Spokane. Not even close," the young girl replied.
"The Egress Protocol!" Pavel shouted from the front of the room.
"The Egress Protocol," Quinn repeated, slapping herself in the forehead.
"What's the Egret proto-thing?" Spencer asked.
"Egress Protocol," Quinn corrected. "When a major system such as life support fails, DAN reverts back to primary programming. He'll bring the ship down to the closest runway that's long enough for the ship to land on."
"Any idea where it's going?" Blanton asked.
"As long as it's doing S-turns, there's no way to tell," Kara chimed in from her console. "When it gets back on a straight course, we can plot its point of touchdown."
Sam Puckett knew she was hurt badly. The ship was going through a wild series of turns that threw them around in their seats. Sam's chest was on fire and every time the ship changed direction, she'd experience tunnel vision. Only, now she wasn't coming all the way out of the tunnel, and it was getting narrower each time. She didn't want Carly to know how bad she was hurt, but she wasn't sure how much longer she could stay awake.
Carly could see Sam's head lolling from side to side every time they turned, and she knew her girlfriend was in trouble. "Stay with me, Sam," she begged.
"Don't think I can, Cupcake," Sam moaned weakly. As they came around again, the tunnel closed in completely and Sam's body went limp.
"Sam!" Carly screamed.