Jimmy tightened the circle and picked his spot. One of the down landing gear snagged a small hill which caused the ship to lurch to the side. Jimmy overcompensated a little and ended up dragging one of the other landing gear before the others planted firmly, jolting the ship to a stop.

“Sorry,” said Jimmy.

“Don’t worry about it. You’re doing great. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Just get ready to get us out of here as soon as we’re loaded. Drea, follow me.” Ray barked the order as she did some quick estimates in her mind. Around 50 people at approx 150 lbs each would be around 7500lbs, maybe less. Some of them had looked like kids. She had no idea what maximum lift capacity was on one engine or even two for that matter so what difference was it going to make? They were either going to make it or they weren’t at this point.

“Alright, get them packed in wherever possible but try to keep the cockpit clear. The rest will have to hang on in the cargo bay.” Ray ran down the ramp and called to the scrambling people.

“Come on! Come on! Hurry!” They were moving as fast as they could in the blowing sand and rain. She ran back inside and yelled to Dreagar. “Help me get this cargo netting spread out.” At least then they’d have something to hold on to.

The people filed on board and assumed their positions, crawling amongst the ship, trying find a small nook or cranny to squeeze into, somewhere… somewhere safe? Some were used to it, they had been running from one place to another most of their lives. Ray had seen the fear in their eyes before. Ray had known that fear. Of all the fears, fear for your immediate life was the most pure. Once you had known that kind of fear, all the rest paled by comparison.

For some here this was their first time experiencing this kind of fear. A few of the small children were crying, but only the smallest. The others already knew that their best bet for survival was to get into a safe spot and stay alert. A small girl in her mother’s arms was wailing.

“I don’t wanna be here, mommy. I wanna go home.” Her mother was hunkered down with one arm wrapped through the netting and the other around her daughter. The child clung to her stuffed wabbit as if it were her child. Ray saw herself in that little girl, she had been that little girl. Except without the mother.

The weight of the situation hit Ray straight in the chest. She was the captain of this vessel, these people were depending on her for their very lives. She had never had this kind of responsibility on her before, well not exactly. They were her passengers and she was their captain, whether any of them wanted it this way or not. She figured it probably best not to ask if there was an experienced pilot in the group. She was sure an experienced pilot would have already assessed the situation and made himself known.

Ray walked over to the mother and still crying little girl. “Why don’t you two come up into the cabin, I think there’s an open chair in the cockpit.” She escorted them quickly though the small interior spaces of the ship. She passed Dreagar in the small lounge/dining nook/sleeping quarters as he was helping the smallest ones into the bunks. He was showing them how to hold on to each other, how to lock their arms together like a chain. Most already knew it and were hunkering down arm in arm. You learned that one pretty early in space.

Dreagar followed her into the cockpit. At least her and Dreagar had that experience in common. She didn’t know exactly to what degree, they had both been (still were probably in most beings opinions) space trash. But so had been just about everyone on McRackin’s Hole. Except for a few, like McRackin himself and Jimmy’s mom, and Jimmy, and maybe Flynn. Well Flynn was something different all together, she wasn’t sure exactly what.

The cabin was already full, other than the three forward seats, the back two had occupants. One was an elderly but very alert woman who smiled nicely at Ray. Ray had smiled back. The other was a young boy close to Jimmy’s age.

Jimmy turned to her and said, “I couldn’t get him to leave.”

“Alright you, you’re in the sleeping quarters. I think I saw some room in one of the bunks.” The young boy stared at her blankly.

“Here,” Ray said taking off the gunbelt Flynn had given her. “Put this on. I need you to look out for the little ones in there, alright? You keep them safe for me ok.” The little boy lit up like a glowstick and headed aft. She was fairly certain the blaster was empty, well now that she thought about it, it might have one more little weak shot if anything. But probably not, she decided. She directed the mother and little girl into the seat and showed them how to utilize the straps to secure the both of them.

There seemed to be some conflict brewing around the pilots seat. Dreagar was sitting in it and Jimmy was trying to get him to move.

There was no time for this, “What’s going on here?” she barked.

“He jumped in there while I was securing something and now won’t get back out. He doesn’t even know how to lift this ship vertically yet, I obviously should pilot it.”

“Ray, I got this, I do know what I’m doing. I AM the one whose got the most flight time logged and I am the one taking the pilots training.”

That was a laugh, Jimmy and her both had been reading the information and then spoon feeding it to Dreagar. She wasn’t even sure he was going to be able to pass the tests. He did have actual logged flight-time but not on anything this big. She had to decide now.

“Dreagar, out now, captain’s orders.”

“Ray, Listen,” he started to argue but she cut him off.

“No! You listen! Out of that chair, that’s an order! We don’t have time to debate this!” She softened her tone slightly but it was so subtle that nobody noticed. “Jimmy’s already handled her in this weather so far, plus I need you on scope, I don’t think Jimmy can reach it.”

“Alright,” Dreagar chuckled as he moved to the starboard side seat. “Ten-four captain. Get us out of here Jimmy.” Ray ignored that last minor snub to her authority. If they lived she’d beat it out of him later. She knew how to handle stubborn little boys.

“You heard him Jimmy, get us the fark out of here.” Ray ordered as she strapped herself into the comm seat which was behind the pilots seat on the port side.

The ship shuddered and shook as it pulled itself free of the muddy ground. Jimmy had to crank the engine to nearly full throttle with 100% force directed to lift. The ship released with a “Schlump” that was felt more than heard and shot into the air. Jimmy applied some thrust and it started to move forward but then began to drop.

“What’s going on Jimmy?” Ray asked.

“Not sure, with all this wind now it’s hard to get any speed and maintain altitude.”

They were coming back down toward the ground now at a rapidly increasing rate.

“We’re dropping too fast!”

“I know, I know!” Jimmy pegged the throttle and diverted all power to lift. Ray quickly struggled out of her seat to reach her quick-rigged anti-grav controller. She flicked the on switches and bumped all four units up to full power. They bounced off the wet ground and started to rise again. The ship skipped across the muddy surface like a carefully thrown stone. She held on to the seat’s rigging with her other hand and rode out the cushioned impacts with her legs.

Ray struggled out of her seat to reach her quick-rigged controls for the anti-grav units. “Try to level her out, I’m putting all the anti-gravs on full power. If she won’t lift then try to get as much speed as possible and keep it as high as possible off the ground. We’re gonna have to lose some serious weight. Dreagar with me!”

“I’m gonna need him on the scope!” Jimmy yelled. “I can’t see far enough ahead to avoid something if it was in our way.”

“Alright, Dreagar stay on the scope and keep Jimmy from wrecking this thing.”

Ray ran through the ship pointing to the young boy she had sent to the bunks. “You! With me!” When they reached the cargo bay she opened the secondary loading port, It made a whooshing sound and wind whipped though the cabin. Locking it to it’s first position, Ray hit the intercom button.

“Ok we need to cut weight before we can lift, we’re tossing anything that isn’t tied down, any bags that anyone brought, and anything that I tell you to. Got it?! Those who can, help! Now start passing everything back.”

Several of the townspeople began moving around, a few following her as she moved about the ship.

She flung open the storage lockers and started grabbing her tools an armful at a time and handed them off to her nearest helper. After a few seconds a couple of the other townspeople unwravelled themselves and began tossing items or joining into the relay chain. She looked just in time to see the last of her tools, her precious tools… again… go out the portal.

Ray sent a couple of people forward to take anything they could out of the cabin. Out went the dishes, out went the fire extinguishers, out went all the rigging, out went all the spare parts, out went everything she had spent the past few months carefully collecting and salvaging from the various ships on Flynn’s lot. Her spacesuit was in a locked compartment near the airlock, that would be the last thing to go. Where else, what else?

Ray ran back to the cockpit. “Ballast, Jimmy! Can you drop any ballast from here?”

“We’ve already dropped everything we can, flushed the water system and any reserves that could be dumped.” There is a lot of heavy fuel but I don’t know how much we’re going to need to break atmosphere.”

“Yea, don’t drop any of the fuel! How are we doing?”

“Eh not great, we’re moving at a good clip but not gaining much altitude. I think she’s maxed out. How did you rig those anti-gravs? Any way to drop them? I don’t think they’re doing much good anymore.”

“No, they’re bolted and welded.” Ray hadn’t thought about that when she was hooking them up. She usually thought of Anti-gravs as “lift neutral” but they were only effective when near the surface of a massive object such as a planet. Up here they were just adding extra weight and wind resistance. Well ‘hindsight was 20/20/20’ as the Trimurrians liked to say.

“I know where there’s a couple thousand pounds of useless metal.” Jimmy was saying. “That fused stardrive, it’s too bad we hadn’t cut that out yet.”

“Yea no kidding.” Ray thought about it, she had been waiting for zero G and several days time to carefully extract that from the ship’s inner most reinforced structural webbing. Removing it in a turbulent atmosphere was far from ideal, but if she didn’t worry about making it pretty it might be possible. It wouldn’t be easy, but when had that ever stopped her before?

“You know, I bet I can cut that thing out if I open up the inner hull. I can even hack it into pieces that are small enough to be dropped out the portal, except for the core itself, that’ll be a beast but I think we can do it.” They had to do it.

“How long will that take?”

Ray knew that nobody could sling plasma like she could, but still it was going to be tricky. “30 minutes?”

“I might be able to hold this altitude for another 20 or so, you better get moving!”

He was right, she had to go now. “Wait a parsec, I’ll have to cut…” she was running out of the cabin before she had finished. She got to the cargo bay just as the young boy she had given the blaster to and another guy were trying to lift the bulky plasma rig to toss it out the portal.

“Wait! I need that stuff.” That had been close. She opened the side panel of the cutting kit and looked over the gear. Ok good, it was all still here. Dreagar walked up next to her.

“Jimmy has it for now, let me help you.” She pulled out the small hand cutter and the spare power pack and thrust them toward him.

“Here! Get those lockers off the wall and anything else you can. Just don’t cut into the inner hull and be careful! Do not start a fire! We just threw out the extinguishers.”

She pointed at blaster boy. “You! With me again!” She yanked out the access panel at the front of the cargo bay and climbed into the narrow crawlspace between the inner and outer hulls. “Help me move this thing, I’ll pull you push!”

She was at the core in 3 minutes. The trusty Snarpon GX 2000 fired to life with a snap, the tiny air turbine spinning up to fill the compression tank. Ray flipped all the settings to their highest and dialed the aperture to six tinches. It would go as high as 14 but for solid metal she would need all it’s power concentrated. She hoped the turbine could keep up with continual use. Ray keyed the thumb switch and the tiny jet of air focused sharp enough to cut thinner metals by itself shot to life, she felt it push back against her arm as she aimed it at her target. The force of it made the wand resist her guiding hand, just how she liked it. She squeezed the trigger and the thin cyclone of air erupted into a glowing blue-white-hot terror of metal melting mayhem.

She looked at the stardrive. The once intricate device had been fused into one massive glob of metal. What had Flynn been doing to the poor ship when this had happened?

There was no time for a plan, she attacked the thing swinging wildly. She was gonna have to figure this one out on the fly. 3 more minutes and she only had a few small chunks out. The back of her mind wondered what she was doing, there was after all no way she was going to finish in time. She had learned long ago to ignore those negative voices, sitting still never did any good. She dived back in recklessly.

She pushed the dangerous end slowly into the metal all the way to the hilt and then pulled it down. That was far too slow. Two more attempts and 5 more minutes and she had a few chunks out. She released the trigger and turned and lifted her safety shield. She yelled to the boy she had told to wait around the corner.

“Find some gloves and start pulling these chunks out, they’re hot. Get them out the portal! And whatever you do, don’t look at the beam when I’m cutting!”

She dropped the face shield and went back to cutting. She held the wand’s hilt like a grease pen, allowing it to find the smoothest path on it’s own, only providing gentle inputs when necessary. She probably had more time logged on this particular cutter than even Flynn, she knew how to handle it well. Two dozen chunks and 11 minutes more and she was through the first side. She bet herself she could do the other side in half the time.

The core itself came out in four pieces one of which held the entire inner liner. It was without a doubt the heaviest chunk. Dreagar and the two other biggest guys had taken turns yanking it through the crawlspace. It took two of them to heave it out the portal.

“Well that’s out.” Ray said as she patted out the smoldering spots on her gloves. The melting plasma cutter had gone out the portal along with the half melted face mask.

Ray ran back to the cockpit noticing her butchered ship on the way though. She also noticed that her passengers seemed to be going to pieces. They were hanging on frantically and even some of the adults were weeping. Many had their heads buried in their arms but occasionally she would meet their eyes. Calm eyes, alert eyes. For the rest this was probably their first time.

“Jimmy, Status?”

“Ah, better for now, I think.” Came the reply. “Something really weird is going on, come see.” Jimmy pointed out the cockpit. Weird was the word of the day today.

“What is it now?” Ray said as she looked out the windscreen. She didn’t believe her eyes. A wall of rock appeared to be moving overhead, or rather they were passing underneath it.

“We’re gaining altitude, but it’s slow, I’m trying to avoid these flying mountains or whatever they are. I had been trying to fly around them because I was afraid of falling rocks but this one was too big and so far I haven’t seen a single thing fall. It’s almost like they have their own gravity or something, my instruments are all over the place.”

Ray watched mesmerized as the massive rockmass went by overhead.

“Ok and here’s the bad part again, you may want to buckle up.” Jimmy said as they plunged out of the shadow of the thing and back into the raging storm.

In all her frantic action and focus she had not paid much attention to the raging storm outside. Sure the ship had been bouncing around but she hadn’t felt anything too worrying. She guessed she was just more used to unstable gravity from all her early childhood, or no gravity at all. There was lightning going off all around them, but not like the massive individual flashes that would very rarely touch down on the small moon. This was like a lighter but constantly arcing kind of electricity. It was going off all the time, providing dim backlighting to the large bulbous shapes moving about around them.

Ray picked up the comm and flipped it to the onboard only setting.

“Hey everyone, this is your captain Raybeam, uh Capt Starchild, or just Ray, or whatever.” She sputtered. “I want to thank everyone for helping out so well. We seem to be through the worst of it.”

“Uh Ray.” Jimmy said

“It is still gonna be a bit bumpy, so if you could please look around you and see if anyone needs any help. Try to lock down any loose children or items that might be in the cabin.”

“Ray?” Jimmy asked.

“Now when we start to make orbit we’re gonna loose gravity, be sure to hang on to something. We’re gonna get through this as long as we all look out for each other, ok?”

“Ray!”

Ray cut out the comm and turned to Jimmy in a huff. “What?!”

“Look!” he yelled, pointing out the viewscreen.

Ray looked to see a massive wall of clouds that covered the entire sky heading straight toward them. If they were already in a storm then the mother off all storms was about to gobble them up.

“Jimmy, turn the ship around. Turn the ship around!”

“Yea, I think you’re right.” Jimmy said a little too calmly as he began to wrench on the control yoke.

Ray braced herself against the sudden motion of the ship and hit the comm button.

“Folks, scratch that last, it’s gonna get bumpy! Hold on tight!”

The ship came around as the edge of the storm engulfed them. The ship tipped noseward sharply and Ray found herself flung against the cockpit’s bubble. She had one arm on the wall grips which kept her upright. She wondered why she hadn’t been strapped in and was vaguely aware of the sound of screaming. She looked up into Jimmy’s face as he tried uselessly to pull at the yoke, he just didn’t have the strength. It was Jimmy who was screaming.

Behind Jimmy she saw the faces of the mother and daughter clinging to their straps, sheer terror on their faces. The ship rolled over and the sky turned to a spinning blur outside.

Ray used the momentum of the spin to fling her body toward the pilots station. She hit it hard, her body instinctively rolling off to one side. She grappled for the yoke, her hands landing on Jimmy’s.

The ship began to auto stabilize as it was designed to in such a situation. The nose tipped downward again as the body spiraled around it. The yoke was jammed hard from one side to the other threatening to loose her grip. She bore down hard and flipped her body around looking for a place to plant her feet. They hit the side of the cabin and she hopped her way level beside the pilot’s seat.

Jimmy was still screaming in her ear. “Jimmy, snap out of it!” she yelled as she found her footing and pulled the yoke toward center.

“Jimmy! You’re going to have to help me!” The ship began to slow it’s spiral and she felt the pull of his arms in line with hers despite the fact that the screaming did not abate. Just then a large form moved up next to them and another pair of hands were on the already crowded yoke. She felt the strength and crushing pressure as he wrenched the control to center and steadied it there. It was Dreagar.

“I got this guys, move over!” He yelled confidently. Thank the verse for white knights. Ray helped Jimmy out of the harness and pulled him aside, allowing Dreagar to slide in.

Dreagar looked over all the instruments quickly then reached up and pushed the throttle back up to full. Evidently Jimmy had pulled it back to almost nothing, perhaps inadvertently in his panic. The ship picked up speed and smoothed out slightly. If the constantly buffeted jarring death rattle she now felt in every bone of her body could be considered anything close to smooth.

The acceleration pushed Ray and Jimmy toward the back of the cabin. She left him there and started working her way back.

The ship came out into the dramatically clearer stormy sky. Dreagar made a few minor adjustments on a few controls and the ship again began to slowly tip up.

“We just came out of the edge of that, whatever that was… storm wave?”

Ray went back to the scope and adjusted it for rear view as she instructed to computer to analyze the situation. The results displayed in a graph on the panel.

“Looks like we’re pulling away from the edge of the storm and climbing pretty well. Can probably get a little steeper rate there Drea. Adjust your heading 20 degrees to port, we need to stay ahead of that thing.” Ray commanded as she flung herself to the other side of the cabin and keyed the intercomm.

“Alright everyone, that was close but I think we should be out of the worst of it.” Ray said with false confidence as the ship began to level out then suddenly dropped a little. She heard excited gasps from the back of the ship as Dreagar quickly regained control and the ship started to climb again.

“Airpocket I think.” Said Dreagar. The ship leveled again but Dreagar was ready this time and the whoop-de-doo wasn’t as exaggerated this time.

Ray caught her breath and pressed the intercomm again. “You know what, just hold tight until further notice. We’re almost out of it.” If they thought she was a total newbie at this captaining thing, well they were right.

“Or, maybe…” Dreagar started as he wrestled with the control yoke. He adjusted a few more controls, and scanned his instruments. “Uh guys, controls are getting very loose when I push for altitude.

“What does that mean?”

“We’re not going to make it.”

“What, why?”

“We’re loosing power somehow, we just sort of hit this barrier and fall back planetside.”

Jimmy came up beside them. “I think it’s that questionable fuel you had brewed. It works fine in atmosphere but up where it’s so thin, it’s just not burning right, I don’t think it has enough encapsulated oxygen.” He had to be right, it wasn’t the proper fuel at all, she didn’t know if it had any encapsulated oxygen. This was all her fault.

Now wait a minute, it was not! She had never intended to take this ship into orbit on the fuel that was currently in it, that was just to run it in atmosphere. And she certainly would never have taken a shipload of people on the maiden trip to orbit. Sometimes you just couldn’t predict the randomness of the ‘verse. Ray had learned that lesson over and over again.

“All I know is that each time I try to gain altitude I loose power and we fall back.”

“Yea, look at the efficiency readout, it’s dropping as we ‘top out’,” said Jimmy pointing. They watched it drop to around 60% until the ship began to loose altitude then it would increase allowing them to speed up.

“You know with both engines I think I could push through it..” Said Dreagar.

“Do we have anything else we can throw out?” Jimmy inquired.

Ray could guess what they were all thinking with all those people on board, but if they weren’t going to mention it, then neither was she. In her opinion ‘that’ wasn’t even an option.

“We’ve already cleared out everyone’s shoes and belts and anything else remotely heavy.” Said Dreagar who had evidently been supervising the ship stripping. After that was clothes, after that… No! No people! Either they all lived or none of them did, they were in this ride together.

If Ray knew one thing in life it was that sometimes you couldn’t control your circumstances. But sometimes, if you could just find a way to ‘maintain’ long enough, then other options would present themselves. Even if they threw everyones clothes out it still wouldn’t be close to the kind of weight drop they needed. She ran through the ships contents in her mind. Wait, she did know where one good chunk of dead weight was.

“Dreagar, drop altitude enough to maintain maximum engine efficiency. Then give Jimmy the helm and come find me in the hold.” She turned to Jimmy and put a hand on one of his shoulders. “I need you to stay ahead of that storm, and try to hold her steady, I might have to open the main cargo door.”

“Ray, what are you thinking?”

“We do have one more thing we can toss. Flynn’s cargo.” Ray said as she started to head aft. She could hear Jimmy making some sort of argument but just turned her head and yelled. “Those are orders, Dreagar now!”