Seventy Hours on Raener-12 : Part 1

Stars fused into clouds; The Mastery was careening toward Raener-12.

Spawned from starlit blackness, the behemoth lusted for ground. It fell fast and hot and she was screaming. The manmade meteor tumbled through the upper atmosphere of the planet, a flaming cocoon half-a-kilometer long destined for impact. At the speed of sound the juggernaut sliced through fog and cold air, piloted without eyes. In seconds it would all end.

In seconds...

Pressure compounded along every deck as heat pulsed in storage bays. Inside a cramped holding cell the woman writhed and clutched. She had no control--no time or space or will to save herself. Her head was drumming and she felt nauseous. Her lips let loose a barrage of pleas to God above.

As the ship danced in the air--her body violently meeting the ceiling, the floor, walls--the future strained her mind. A future she was powerless to alter.
Sickening thoughts flooded as flashes of pain shot from her limbs, charged down her back. The malaise mounted along her body, but felt distant and strangely unattached. Though white and furious the pain was irrelevant; it had lost its place in her fear-encompassed state. The woman discarded her terror and felt guilt and shame, like a gaping open wound. She knew then that there was no hope left. She knew the plan would unfold. Swiftly death would take her and she accepted the call.

Nothing would remain.

A siren impinged her ears. It was the ship's security system, wailing, warning the crew of an imminent crash. What crew? the woman thought absently.

The room tumbled again, shaky and wild, and leveled out as the ship continued its descent. What few possessions she had rushed by her head and rattled her cell in frenzy. For the last fleeting seconds of The Mastery's free-fall, the woman was pinned painfully to her ceiling. Outside the oval eye of her window the world showered upward as the ship spiraled for a lost port. Staring down at the broken remnants of her dresser and overturned cot, she released a quivered breath.

"Lord have mercy..." she whispered.

Then it came.

Metal and glass met the white billows below. The ship sank into the planet's iced surface with disquieting ease. Fireballs trailing chunks of debris instantly extinguished into curt wisps of smoke. Powder charged upward from the blast, and a brief, towering ivory fountain groped for the sky.

Blackness.

Silence.

A crater cradled the remains of The Mastery, and a heavy snow cascaded from the twinkling night above, kissing the whitewashed ground.