Genellan: Planetfall

She verified that the remaining fuel had been dumped. Precious fuel, it was worthless because of the damaged nozzles. Only enough fuel to ignite the hover blaster remained, and she retrimmed for a no-fuel approach. Her scan narrowed. She debated whether to keep the autopilot engaged. The computer could fly the approach better than she could—if it worked. The autopilot had only shown problems on final. No, she could no longer trust the systems; too many things had gone wrong. She swallowed, half to clear the building pressure in her ears and half to push her doubts back into her being, and then she switched off the auto-controls.

Trailing double thunder, the glinting lander descended for the cloud deck. Buccari banked smoothly, airspeed dropping in the turn. She steadied on a truncated base leg and watched the timer count the seconds. Airspeed and altitude bled off rapidly and thefirst tendrils of cloud obscured her forward vision with ghostly wisps of cotton. The lander skimmed deeper into the silky vapors. Her view of the stars flickered and was gone.

Sha

"Five minutes! Turn on flashlights—white beams." he shouted into his helmet radio. The Marines had traded their cloth hats for helmets. "Acknowledge!"

The Marines responded. Everyone was ready, but for what? If Buccari missed the lake to the right, she would kill his people. If she got lucky and landed in the water, then what?

Sha

"Light 'em off!" he commanded over UHF. In the distance a bright red flare erupted into life, followed by another, and yet another, until a necklace of red sparklers pierced the drizzle, illuminating and defining the shoreline. He reached into the raft, took out the powerful search torch, and turned it on, pointing it into the skies.

The lander rolled onto final and dropped sub-sonic, the black fuzziness of clouds still obscuring forward vision. Raindrops vaporized against the viewscreen. Buccari concentrated on the head-up, noting her radar altimeter coming on line. She would be dragging it in; there was no excess airspeed. A good thing—she did not want to force the EPL down on the lake; but did she have enough energy to make it?

She checked distance to the beacon, made an alignment adjustment, pushed her nose down for airspeed, and armed airbrakes and spoilers in the unlikely event she stayed fast. The glide slope indicator moved steadily to center. In quick succession she activated wingtip fences and leading-edge slats, dropped the first increment of flaps, and armed hover blasters. She was ready; only flaps and blasters to go. Rhodes's voice droned steadily as he reported altitude and distance to the beacon for Qui

Ten kilometers to go. On glide slope and on course. Attitude trimmed a bit fast, the nose not quite high enough, but that was the side on which to err—plenty of time to correct. She tapped the rudder and eased stick pressure to port; the lander corrected an incipient drift. Five kilometers; she added flaps; the nose ballooned slightly. Buccari compensated, holding the slope. Three kilometers. Where were the bottom of the clouds? She checked altitude, pushed the nose down, and added the last increment of flaps.

Red flares! She saw flares strung in a ragged line to the right of her nose. Airspeed approached stall. The radar altimeter indicated ten meters. She eased back the nose and held wings level using only rudders. Impact was seconds away! She forced herself to hold attitude—no jerky movements. With startling immediacy the tail of the lander met the water, and simultaneously—more luck than timing—Buccari fired the hover blaster, offsetting the impact and keeping the nose from slapping forward. She yelled for Rhodes to eject.

And found herself screaming hysterically into the wet night, a living projectile being rocketed violently out of the crashing craft below. Before she could comprehend the fact, she was swinging into the water, deadweight at the end of a pendulum, her canopy having opened just enough to retard impact. The reality of freezing water snapped disjointed thoughts into focus. She surfaced clear of the chute and fumbled for the disco

The impenetrable blackness defied consciousness; her helmet shut out all sounds except for the beating of her heart and the explosions of her labored breathing. With difficulty she removed her headgear, letting in the splashing of the lake—and the cold water. She spit out a throatful, and then, as if in a dream, she heard yells carrying across the chop. A bright beam passed over her.

The EPL, a crazed dragon descending from the clouded heavens spouting evil flames, mushed into the lake, throwing before it a tremendous crest of water. A crashing emerald-green wave surrealistically illuminated by blazing hover blaster surged upward. The lander disappeared, but the fiery blasters continued to burn submerged, lighting up the roiled lake around the sinking craft like a huge Chinese lantern. After eternally long seconds, the blasters extinguished, their fuel exhausted.

Buccari had hit the mark, not a hundred meters from where the raft was waiting. As Tatum pulled on the oars, Sha

The first wall of water was powerful and steep, nearly capsizing the raft. Sha

"Nice landing, Lieutenant," Sha

"Kiss my ass," she choked.

"That's…an order I can live with…sir," Sha