Mission: Astro

by Robert Emerald Fountain

The Crash-Landing

The journey from Merlin 5 to Earth took 3 years. However, as the crew woke up from the signal, the ship got shaken violently by something outside. This startled everyone to the point that they jumped out of their sleep pods. They found total CHAOS when they rushed to the bridge. Alarms were squealing, lights were flashing, and the position showed the orbit to be decaying. Flurry quickly scanned for what could have caused this, and she spotted part of a solar flare. They had been shorted out by an energy wave.

“All hands, we must do everything in our power to keep our ship in orbit.”, she said.

The crew worked for three hours to get the circuits up and running again, but they did not have enough time to get their thrusters working in order to avoid a crash.

“We need to get out of here before we slam to the ground.”, said Yona.

After the crew rushed to the escape pod launch bay, Flurry tried to get the escape pods powered up, but they were shorted out from the solar flare as well and taking too long to reboot.

“BRACE FOR IMPACT!”, yelled Flurry.

As the ship entered the atmosphere, she started to spin, causing the crew members to stumble and trip as they ran back towards the bridge to get seated and fasten their seatbelts. Gallus ended up tripping over Smolder’s tail and slamming face-first into a wall-mounted touchscreen panel which had started to spark, resulting in him getting painful burns around his eyes. Flurry Heart lost her footing and fell sideways into a roll which caused her to smash into a wall and break both of her wings. Yona and Silverstream both fell forward and slammed face-first into another wall and ended up with bleeding noses. Smolder slipped through a doorway into the archive area and fell in a way that caused her to dislocate her left wing. Sandbar and Ocellus both went into a tumble and hit their heads hard enough on the wall that they ended up with bad concussions.

All seven of the crew members passed out after they had injured themselves, but Flurry woke up and struggled her way to the bridge just enough to see where the ship was going. They were headed for water, which meant the landing would not be extremely hard. However, she still hit her head again and passed out as the ship splashed into the ocean. Right before splashdown, she activated an emergency beacon in hopes that the planet’s inhabitants would come to rescue them. Little did she know that the inhabitants had already seen their ship coming down from the sky.

The impact in the water was so hard that the ship’s main electrical system was knocked out. The backup lights kicked in after a few minutes because they had been delayed by the short out from the solar flare.

**

Thirty miles away, there was a base camp where some of the inhabitants would meet up in order to plan missions to keep the world safe. The inhabitants were a cross between humans and either squids or octopi, known as Inklings and Octarians. A small group of these inhabitants were known as the Squidbeak Splatoon, and they worked secretly from the base camp. The group’s Captain was about to turn in for the night when she saw what looked like a shooting star, and she looked closer through binoculars, only to find that she was seeing the Alicorn. Realizing this was a starship that was in trouble, she radioed the group’s members.

“Attention all Agents. This is the Captain. I have seen what looks like a crashing starship. We must rescue the crew ASAP.”, she said.

“This is Callie. Michael and I are on our way.”, replied one of the members.

“Ten-Four, Captain. This is Agent 3. Agents 4 and 8 are with me and we’re on our way as well.”, replied the next member.

“Captain, this is Andrew. Marie can’t help with the mission, but I can.” said another member.

“Oh yes, that’s right. How long do you two have at this point?”, asked the Captain.

“Any day now.”, said Andrew.

At that point, the members made their way to the base camp in order to plan out the rescue mission.