Disclaimer: Disney owns the Power Rangers now. I'm not trying to make any money, just playing around.
Future Red
Chapter 3: The Landing
Dramlin and Tyler sprinted onto the bridge amidst the wailing of the alert sirens. Dramlin literally vaulted into one of the open stations, one of the weapons pods.
"We've got three squadrons of Troobian void-fighters closing fast," Jack explained from the command seat. "Tyler, take the other weapon pod!"
"What?!" Tyler exclaimed. "I don't know how to fight a starship!"
"It's just like a video game kid," Dramlin yelled.
Tyler jumped into the other weapon station and grabbed the controls. Immediately he was surrounded by a holographic tactical display. It was actually straightforward; he had control over the starboard forward cannons and the computer was already set to auto track and fire on any fighters that came within a certain range. The void-fighters were coming in fast from directly ahead.
Haylun was calling out ranges from the main sensor console. Falon announced shield and other status reports from the ship operations readouts board. Alanya was at the helm, "Evasive, Commander?"
"Let's see what they do," Jack replied to the question.
Tyler was about to ask why all the fighter icons on his display turned red when Dramlin yelled out, "Hostiles arming weapons!"
"Well, that answers that," Jack muttered. "Helm, take evasive."
Alanya forced the ship into a tight, diving roll as the fighters opened fire. The ship shuddered slightly as the shields took glancing blows. Tyler and Dramlin began returning fire. Dramlin had been right; it wasn't all that much different from a video game. However, as Tyler started making a few hits, something dawned on him. He found the button that fed the ship's life form scans into his display, and breathed a sigh of relief when the fighters didn't show any.
The ship rocked hard. "Shields down to forty percent!" Falon yelled out.
"We have two more squadrons approaching from 118.47!" Haylun added to the bad news.
Jack studied the tactical display, and the commanded, "Alanya, dive through the hole!" pointing to a void in the fighters just big enough for the ship.
Alanya looked back at Jack as if he was nuts, then noticed his hand hovering over a switch that had been added to the arm of his command chair. She smiled grimly and sent the ship diving through the Troobian line.
In the midst of the ships, Jack hit the switch and the special hull plating that had served as the cruiser's disguise blasted free, leaving an expanding cloud of debris in the cruiser's wake. Nearly a dozen fighters almost immediately vanished from the tactical displays as the debris slammed into the unshielded ships.
The cruiser, which now resembled the Delta Megaship in outline, shot forward, free of the additional mass of the disguise, leaving the fighters behind. They came in fast, just under light speed, on course for the target planet. However, as they passed the planet's lone moon, a Troobian battle cruiser reared up from its hiding place behind the rim of the moon and opened fire. The ship shook hard and a completely new set of alarms rang through the ship.
"Primary and secondary reactor coolant systems are gone!" Falon yelled out. "The reactor is going critical!"
"Prepare to separate the command pod!" Jack commanded.
Alanya yelled back, "We're in the gravity well! If we separate, we'll hit the atmosphere too hard, we'll burn up!"
"Putting your piloting skills to the test versus blowing up?! I'll take the former over the latter! Separate!" Jack responded.
"Aye, separating!" Alanya announced. She hit a series of controls and the ship shuddered again as the bulkhead between the bridge and the rest of the ship sealed and the command pod, roughly the size of a large shuttle, leapt forward, away from the detonating ship. "Brace yourselves!" Alanya yelled, "This is going to be rough!"
Rough was an understatement. The ship exploded and the shockwave literally slammed the pod into the planet's atmosphere. Warning sirens screamed, the pod's structure groaned, and every warning display that wasn't flashing in bright red before now joined the ones that already were. Alanya was sweating as she struggled to keep control of their flight as the others held on for dear life.
"I can't slow us down!" Alanya yelled over the sirens. "We're going to hit, hard!"
Jack looked at Tyler, "Now might be a good time for that gift from Grandmother!" Tyler nodded as Jack turned to the others and said, "Dramlin, Falon, Haylun, grab the emergency kits!" While the three other Red Rangers reached under their stations and pulled out the emergency kits, Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a small crystalline object. Carved into its face were a small display area and a single, raised button.
Tyler pressed the button once and the crystal started to glow slightly. Tyler looked up at the view screen and saw the ground coming up to meet them way too fast. He looked down again and saw that the display area on the crystal now showed six red lights, meaning it had located everybody. Tyler looked up at the screen, saw the ground again, and hit the button one more time. The bridge cabin was filled with flashes of red light an instant before the pod slammed into the ground.
