Total lunacy.

Someone yelled and it was patched through his suit.

“I’ve got the drone in sight!”

Mac looked up quickly, his eyes sharp as he scanned the maw of the deck.

“There it is!” One of his men pointed.

Mac spotted the drone a second later as it dropped into view, settling in on an approach course that would bring it right down the center of the deck.

The LSO grimaced. Normally, that was the optimal course, but with the steel sheets patching the gash in the center of their deck, it might be a bit rough on the smaller size of the drone and could even damage the systems.

He shrugged that off, as it wasn’t his problem, but made a note to have the deck FOD checked again as soon as he could, just in case something got jolted off the drone in the process.

That was about the time that someone screamed.

The yell was logged into the system, its source noted. Mac’s HUD lit up like a Christmas tree as he spun around.

The man who had yelled was pointing outside and was still yelling.

“Sweet Jesus! Look!”

Mac looked.

The experienced LSO went pale in his vacuum suit as he saw what had scared the crewman. The four alien shuttles, such as they were, were coming in practically right on each other’s tails!

“Wave them off!” Mac yelled, flashing signals with his arms. “Wave them off!”

Men were darting out of the way, gluing themselves to the walls of the flight deck as part of his signal corps held their ground, signaling desperately to the alien crews with lighted batons.

The four ships ignored—or more likely, perhaps, didn’t understand—the signals, and kept on barreling in.

Men dove for cover on both sides, and even Mac kicked off his position and flew for the nearby blast shield. He hooked his hand in the grip and swung down into the bunker, where two men from the crash and salvage crews were tensing to jump into motion if the worst came to happen.

Mac pulled himself out of the way of the figures in the red-accented suits, grabbing a handle so he could look through the clear blast shield.

His eyes widened as the four ships came in like a goddamned freight train, barreling into the deck, well past any sane speed, then came to a smooth stop like they were bolted together.

The four shuttles came to a rest just meters from where he was hunkered down, maintaining precise distance from each other, and for a moment, Mac found himself looking for the braces that must be connecting them.

He didn’t find any and wasted minutes staring until his heart slowed back down to normal. Finally, he climbed out of the blast bunker and walked over to the shuttles, wondering if anyone inside had seen the scramble.

A flash of embarrassment and anger rose up in him, but the experienced LSO forced it down and pulled the two lighted batons from his hand. He flicked them over to the brilliant green setting and waved both of them to the nearest lock.