His hands and mouth moved on instinct, following procedures he’d trained in so many times that they’d all long since blurred into one long montage.

“Hit the fire extinguishers,” he ordered. “We’re losing altitude. Milla, seal up your helmet.”

Milla did as she was told, first hitting the whole bank of controls that sent the signal to flood affected areas with halon gas extinguishers, then grabbing for her helmet, pulling it on over her head, and linking it to her flight suit. The seal was automatic, a Priminae design, leaving her with an additional level of protection in case the shuttle cockpit was breached.

“What about you?” she asked, her voice now acquiring a mechanical tone from the helmet communications system.

“No time,” he said, eyes dead ahead. “I’ll put it on if we live.”

Steph supposed that he really should have already been wearing it, but honestly, the helmet seemed superfluous. Any sort of damage that might require it would almost certainly end them both before lack of oxygen could.

He opened the comm. “Odysseus Control, Eagle One. I am declaring an emergency. We are going down on the inner moon of the gas giant we were approaching. I say again, I am declaring an emergency. Eagle One out.”

A flip of a switch and confirming squeeze of a firing stud on his control stick sent that recorded message firing out on a rocket set to play on a loop. Steph figured the rocket would have enough power to get into orbit, given the small size of the moon and low gravity, but didn’t have time to be sure.

Ahead of them loomed a massive cone wall, and he was fighting the shuttle to try to maneuver around it.

“Whatever hit us must have fried the control surfaces or somehow shorted out all the relays and redundant systems,” he said. “And I thought this thing was a pig before.”

He was fighting the shuttle every inch of the way and figured that the damage had been done mainly to the control surfaces, because he was getting some response. If the relays were out, they’d have been a flying brick with wings.

“Brace position!” Steph called as he narrowly missed the slope of the volcano, the land falling away again for a moment as the shuttle screamed through the thin atmosphere and dropped through a low valley surrounded by smoke and fumes.

The Eagle hit hard, tailfirst, as Steph just managed to lift the nose a few meters at the last moment. The shuttle slammed into the alien turf with enough force to crack the fuselage in half and then entered a spin. Steph hung on to the controls as long as he could, feathering the CM generators and using the thrusters to keep them nose first while slowing the ship.

Then all went dark as the power gave out.

In the blackness, the CM field failed, and with that everything went to hell.