Chapter
Too many systems in Black’s shuttle were failing. The computer screamed his falling altitude until he couldn't take its whining voice any longer and smashed the interface to bits with his fist. Fates be damned he was going to crash on the little blue planet.
If he drowned before finding the spectral soldiers that had been plaguing the galaxy on this water-logged planet, he was going to beat back any Fate who even tried to take him to the afterlife with a stick.
He jabbed at the short-range communicator attached to his arm.
“Listen up, team. I’m going to attempt an emergency landing in the forested area ahead. Continue to Magic, New Mexico. Make contact with Frost. Finding the spectrals is still the key mission. I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”
He got two yes, sirs from his brothers, a got it from Fed, and a grumble from Titian. That Fates-forsaken fox. “Titian, you copy?”
“Nope.”
He didn’t have time for Titian’s bullshit. “Good. My long range comms is out. Contact Passion and let her know I’m going down.
“Aw, fuck me.”
The ship bucked and took a steep dive. Black punched at the keyboard of the flight control panel praying for a response, but what he got was the ship jerking him around, literally. A new warning siren blared, indicating the tailspin, but Black didn't have the time to care. He was too busy trying not to die.
Fucking hell. Join the Star Rangers Elite Corps they said, it'll be epic they said.
He didn't need epic, he needed a damned lead on the spectrals and a way to defeat them. If one more family had to come to the Star Rangers pleading for his help… No, he wouldn't think of those who grieved their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers now. If he survived this day he’d vow to rescue as many as he could and avenge those he couldn't.
First, he had to survive, the bear inside of him taunted.
“Impact in fifteen seconds.”
Black slammed his fist all the way through the console and could die happy knowing this particular computer voice would never again tell anyone else about their own impending doom.
Earth’s enormous white clouds engulfed the ship bouncing and bumping him until his teeth rattled. It was only a few seconds until he broke through the cloud cover and saw the land below growing in the forward screen.
The miles of green trees and snow tipped mountains were so like his native PLANET. If the Fates ordained that he had to die anywhere but home, this would be where his soul would most be at rest.
Not that he was giving up. No way. Never. If he could just level the ship out to an angle that wasn't quite so steep he might be able to skim across the land and stop upright and alive. That is if no large structures or natural formations blocked his path. Like the side of that mountain.
Shit.
“Impact in ten—”
“Shut up you bag of dung.” Hadn’t he already killed the bitch? How was it that the computer voice had redundant systems but the flight control didn’t?
Black flipped the switch for his last-ditch effort, the manual steering column. He hadn’t used one since he’d learned to fly as a cub and even then, he hadn’t been good at it. But crashing a training shuttle ten feet above the ground and smashing a forty-ton piece of metal built for interspace travel were two different things. He unlocked the column from its position under the console and clicked it into place.
“Seven—”
He cursed the computer one last time and pulled up on the manual steering column with all his might. Years of battle and many more working the land he loved had given him more strength than most soldiers, man, bear, or anything else. He called upon the Fates to imbue him with more.
“Six—”
The ship continued in its downward spiral. His muscles strained and he heard metal grinding against metal. A small explosion shook the back of the ship and he lost a chunk of one wing.
“Come on, baby. Come on.” Maybe if he sweet talked her instead of cursing her she’d do his bidding.
“Five seconds to impact.”
Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. “I’m giving you all I’ve got, baby. Gimme just a little back.”
“Four—”
She leveled out by the tiniest degree. Black’s muscles tremored and shook under the absolute exertion. “That’s a good girl.”
“Three—”
The ship skimmed the tops of a clump of dark evergreen trees, then dipped into them. The sound of breaking branches and the trunks clanging on the sides of the ship were louder than open laser fire in battle.
“Two—”
The last thought that flashed though his mind before impact wasn't that of his friends, family, or his life playing before his eyes. It was the fact that the medallion hanging over his heart glowed with the light of a whole damn galaxy worth of stars.
“One.
Fuck the Fates. His life was his own, and this was not how it would end.
Impact, impact, iiiimmmpaaaaccct.”