Title: Rescue Run
Author: Lady Rheena
Genres: Alternate Universe, Action/Adventure, Romance
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If you recognise it from a fandom, I probably don't own it. That includes the world of The Matrix, all its characters and the concepts it entails. The idea of the Fleet and the Planetary Coalition are technically my own, but you'll probably recognise bits and pieces from various sci-fi media.
Chapter notes: This opener may appear to have little to do with The Matrix. Be warned that if leather suits and gun-toting are your thing, this fic is set entirely in the real world of Zion and the machine-ravaged Earth.
Part 1- Impact
Starlight glinted off the tertiary navigation display, then abruptly was blacked out by the shadowy hulk of Terra Luna as the hopper craft Mariposa banked. For Captain Dena Reese, the phenomenon was expected and familiar enough to present no distraction, but what did draw her eye was the blackened excuse for a planet that lay to the starboard side of her ship. A shiver ran involuntarily down her spine at the sight of it, and she experienced a fleeting wish that she'd taken up the Gormenghast's offer of a rookie for company in the spare rear seat. But just as quickly the sensation vanished- a rookie would slow her up, ask too many questions and above all piss her off when the survey cruise ought to be a chance to get a job done and chill out at the same time. Oh, as brilliant a tactician, pilot and officer as she was, if there was one thing she hated it was having to shepherd rookies. Of course, now she'd finally managed to wrangle a permanent starside placement she didn't have to worry about the compulsory part, which was nice. That only left the constant asking, begging and pleading instead…
Noting a red light on the second power intake valve in the main engines, she frowned and brought the display to her main screen. Equipment glitch. Muttering a brief curse against inept deck crews, she shut the problem valve down. It wasn't any great difficulty to manage a ship on three rather than four. Dismissing the engine display, she resumed her survey scan for Terra Luna. The Prospector IV wasn't due for another good six months, and so Fleet was taking every opportunity to eyeball the moon, being finicky about landing co ordinates and the like. Of course the last three Prospector missions had found everything of bugger all on the derelict satellite, but the IV carried state of the art probe and drill equipment, primarily for possible mineral exploitation. Not that much of anything was in short supply in the Coalition these days, but that was partly because the various prospecting sectors kept the search up for new raw materials on every hunk of rock in the solar system- well, every hunk of rock except that one, she thought, eyeing the planet again. But then you'd have to be suicidal to send even a robotic probe down there, not to mention stupid. All Terra had to offer now was blasted ground, blackened sky and one helluva lot of miserable history. No thank you.
The scans finished, she flipped the Mari around to begin the cruise back to Phobos base and the waiting Gormenghast. The mammoth carrier, her home from home, was due to begin a final set of checkups, drills and supply runs in preparation for its colonisation mission at Procyon, some eleven light years away. The biggest problem, of course, was finding colonists whom the Powers that Be considered 'suitable material' to accompany the military personnel, but as a section captain Dena didn't have to worry about that, Maker be praised.
At that moment an alarm went off. Starting in surprise, she quickly brought the display up only to discover that she'd lost another intake valve on the engines. Now her only option was a skid off the Earth's remaining atmosphere and hope of a cruise back to Phobos. Quickly opening a com channel to the base, she fed power through the signal boosters.
'Phobos base, this is the Mariposa. Two intake valves are offline and engine power is at-' a brief check made her wince '-thirty percent of normal. Will attempt a skip off Earth's atmosphere and cruise to base. Require immediate assistance; repeat, require immediate assistance.' Setting the call to a repeat transmission, she began feeding computations into the nav computer. An atmospheric skip was a dangerous manoeuvre at the best of times, but on only thirty percent power it was nigh on bloody suicidal.
'Come on, Dizzi. You've done this before.' Dena became aware that she was sweating and muttered a curse before finalising the navigation settings. Taking a deep breath, she pointed the Mari's nose square at Terra firma and hit the button.
Being such a seasoned pilot, she knew the moment the burn initiated that she'd computed correctly and the manoeuvre would work. Holding the burn for maximum feed, she prepared to fire the secondary thrusters to initiate the skipping action- but just then another alarm went off and this time the reading flashed onto her main screen automatically.
'Shit!'
Before she could do anything about it the third intake valve had shut down, leaving her with all of six percent power normal. The thrusters died and gravity took her before she had time to react, engage the auxiliaries, do anything to slow that inexorable fall downwards. The inky black of space gave way to piercing blue that made her eyes ache, and she caught only a brief glimpse of a layer of solid dark cloud before the Mari was in it. Buffeted by unknown wind currents and loud cackles of electrostatic energy from Maker knew what, Dena battled to level out the flight of the little hopper craft. Finally the cloud layer vanished to reveal a sooty landscape of twisted grey and black- but in the distance, about twenty klicks, three massive pylons glowed with a dull red light. For some reason she couldn't fathom Dena aimed the Mari at them, feeling the temperature in the cabin plummet as the power drain took its toll on the environmental systems. As the tiny ship hurtled crazily towards the pylons she caught sight of moving objects- gargantuan cylinders with a myriad of sinuous, tentacle-like limbs reaching down, plucking…something from the ground below. Some instinct provoked her to wrench the controls sideways, and without warning the Mari plummeted groundwards to skid a good half a kilometre along the jagged terrain before sliding to a slow stop against what looked very much like Dena to the remains of some kind of radio pylon.
That was when she blacked out.