The planet Capralla isn’t particularly interesting, except for its location—and even that only makes it interesting to scientists. Located near the edge of explored space, it’s the perfect planet for long-range, deep-space scanning. The breathable atmosphere and small population add to its value.
Farsight Corporation has had a primary research facility on Capralla for several dozen cycles. The small local population was employed to help build the planetary facility as well as the launch pad that placed several dozen advanced-scanning satellites in orbit. While not technologically advanced themselves, they know about technology, but simply don’t care.
“Welcome to Capralla,” Wil announces, as the Ghost drops out of FTL. He taps a few controls on his station, bringing the FTL engines to standby mode and powering up the sub-light drive. “Zephyr, call down, get us cleared to land. Does this research station have a landing pad or spaceport, or are we landing near the city?”
Bennie looks up from his station. “From what I can tell, there’s a pad just big enough for us at the station.”
Zephyr is speaking to someone at her own station, keeping her voice low so as not to interfere with anyone on the bridge. Old training dies hard, Wil thinks to himself, smiling, just as she looks up. “We’ve got clearance at their pad. They didn’t sound super thrilled to hear it was us coming in.” She looks back to her station. “Receiving a vector, sending to your station.”
“So, about the same as normal then,” Wil says, turning his chair to face Maxim at the tactical station. “Max, don’t be shy with the scanners, I want every nook and cranny of that station and the surrounding area mapped out.”
Maxim nods, and turns to his displays. “Of course.” He scratches at the stubble on his cheeks, Wil notices—he must be growing out a beard.
As the Ghost nears the planet, Bennie lets out a low whistle. “Would you look at those.” He taps a few controls and the main display switches from the view of the approaching planet to a zoomed-in view of one of the Farsight Corporation’s deep-space observation satellites.
Zephyr nods toward the screen. “From what I’ve learned during our trip, they’ve got a small fleet of those things at various orbits, looking all over deep into the black. Some are even FTL-capable.”
Wil switches the display back to the now much closer planet. He taps a control. “Hey, Gabe, everything good down there? Gonna be lighting up the atmo-engines in a few seconds.”
Over the speaker comes Gabe’s voice. “Acknowledged. The atmospheric flight engines are ready, as are the repulsor lifts.”
The repulsor lift generators are immensely up-scaled anti-grav lifters, Wil knows, like those used in grav-sleds. Gabe has explained it to him: ships that can’t generate aerodynamic lift need lift generators to keep them from plummeting to the ground when in atmosphere. The Ghost has a lift generator in each of its wings, at the forward section of the nacelle that house the FTL engines, providing a balancing point which the atmospheric engines can push against.
“Roger that buddy. Hold on everyone, atmosphere in 15 seconds. Shields set for atmospheric entry,” Wil announces, adjusting his position in his seat. The pilot station in front of him shifts appearance for atmospheric flight: pedals lift out of the floor, and a flight yoke disengages from the console and swings into place in front of Wil.
The Ghost begins to vibrate—just a little at first, then slowly building in intensity. The main display begins to brighten as superheated plasma builds up along the deflector shields. The shaking starts to diminish as the shields further adjust to the atmosphere, and soon the ship is flying as smoothly as ever, plunging further and further into the atmosphere.
“Atmo-engines in three, two, one.” Wil touches a control, and there’s a solid boom from the back of the ship as two powerful thrusters engage and begin pushing the ship forward. At the same time the engines erupt into life, the lift-generators begin to thrum, glowing green, providing the not-at-all aerodynamic ship with the lift it needs to keep from falling very fast into the planet below.
Soon, the Ghost is gently lowering itself onto the landing pad outside the Farsight Corp research complex.