08-09-2016, 06:32 PM
It was as Carmelita fought the controls and pressed override buttons that she noticed the little light that flashed red in the bottom of the screen. Her face paled as she realised all the connotations ‘no landing gear’ meant.
---
From the sky descended the escape pod, thrusters burning furiously and wings struggling to keep the ugly device airborne. Carmelita’s fiddling had turned the elegant arc it would have taken into something better resembling the trail of a drunk duck, twirling and whirling around until it straightened into a low, staggered glide towards the town.
Carmelita shot over the mine entrance, arcing down towards the town. By her reckoning, she had one, maybe two flybys in her flight path before she had to set down, so she had to make them count.
Below her ghoulish faces looked up in confused wonderment at the shooting star as it passed over the town, banking up and round down by the docks before it returned and passed over the records building. There were, of course, those that understood what they were seeing perfectly well, from the truck filled with armed primes to the unlikely pair who’d made their way from the mines.
Carmelita pulled the escape pod into its final approach, bracing herself for impact. A touch on the pedal to the left, a bit to the right, jerking the joystick up to land the rear end of the escape pod first, she squinted through her headache and grit her teeth. Keeping the pod straight with the rudder and glider wings, the capsule ploughed along the near empty street, decapitating a few hatchbacks and littering the streets with overturned rubbish bins. It ground its way up a hill, jets finally burning out, and came to a deceptively graceful halt outside the centre for the town’s bureacracy.
The windscreen was ejected forcefully by explosives, the piece of hardened plastic winging its way across the street and crashing into the facade of a stockbroker’s. Carmelita unbuckled herself, grabbed her luggage and, as she activated her cloak and faded from view, left a parting quip to the few ghoulish eyes that watched, stunned.
“I’m here to make a withdrawal. Don’t rush, I’m just dropping in…”
With that, the vixen’s cloak engaged properly and she hurried to the main doors, picking the lock and slipping inside under cover of invisibility.
---
From the sky descended the escape pod, thrusters burning furiously and wings struggling to keep the ugly device airborne. Carmelita’s fiddling had turned the elegant arc it would have taken into something better resembling the trail of a drunk duck, twirling and whirling around until it straightened into a low, staggered glide towards the town.
Carmelita shot over the mine entrance, arcing down towards the town. By her reckoning, she had one, maybe two flybys in her flight path before she had to set down, so she had to make them count.
Below her ghoulish faces looked up in confused wonderment at the shooting star as it passed over the town, banking up and round down by the docks before it returned and passed over the records building. There were, of course, those that understood what they were seeing perfectly well, from the truck filled with armed primes to the unlikely pair who’d made their way from the mines.
Carmelita pulled the escape pod into its final approach, bracing herself for impact. A touch on the pedal to the left, a bit to the right, jerking the joystick up to land the rear end of the escape pod first, she squinted through her headache and grit her teeth. Keeping the pod straight with the rudder and glider wings, the capsule ploughed along the near empty street, decapitating a few hatchbacks and littering the streets with overturned rubbish bins. It ground its way up a hill, jets finally burning out, and came to a deceptively graceful halt outside the centre for the town’s bureacracy.
The windscreen was ejected forcefully by explosives, the piece of hardened plastic winging its way across the street and crashing into the facade of a stockbroker’s. Carmelita unbuckled herself, grabbed her luggage and, as she activated her cloak and faded from view, left a parting quip to the few ghoulish eyes that watched, stunned.
“I’m here to make a withdrawal. Don’t rush, I’m just dropping in…”
With that, the vixen’s cloak engaged properly and she hurried to the main doors, picking the lock and slipping inside under cover of invisibility.