[b]The area around and above the NASA-New Horizons Corporation land[/b]
Many people, whether civilian, military, or outlaw, all turned their heads to the sky when an unusual rumble sounded from the clear, cloudless sky in Texas. The rumble was only felt, at first, deep inside, where people got the nagging idea that maybe something was happening, that something was coming. For up to an hour, the rumble grew. It grew and grew until one could feel it everywhere, and then they could hear it, a low, carrying thundering noise that traveled for miles, coming down from above, striking the ground and then rolling across it like an invisible cloud.

Hundreds of miles above, a Ceres Independence shuttle, marked so by the logo of a series of circles, the solar system and its orbits, with a rocket flying across it, descended back into the atmosphere. No one had really heard it for quite some time; the upgrades on the shuttle since it had last come down had been of the latest design, the opportunity only arising because of its lack of use. Now, the shuttle was nearly the size of the biggest bomber, and had only a wingspan of half as much. Four engines were attached: one at the base of each wing, forward and rear. Each was capable of independent movement: the ship could hover in mid-air with every engine facing a different direction downward. 

But now, it had a new re-entry and landing equipment. Instead of flying through the atmosphere, using the blunt nose to take most of the atmospheric damage, the ship had been upgraded to allow it to fly belly-first through the upper atmosphere. It allowed for more stability and control, and slowed it down more, while allowing it to scan more of what is below it to give a better reading of any possible dangers. The US was a very different place than what it used to be. These precautions were necessary. 

The ship fell through the atmosphere, breaking into Mach 3 several times as it reached patches of thinner air, until it finally fell through the 'Fire Zone,' as marked by casual Ceres Independence members, and the ship turned to a nose-dive, to regain control of its flight. It took over a mile for the ship to turn its nose from its 25-degree-upwards position to a 70-degree-downwards position. After a moment, the wings caught the wind, and the thrusters engaged, each powered by a very advanced, very powerful mini fusion reactor. The shuttle had come in easily over 300 miles from its destination, but it wasn't a problem. In a flash, the ship regained its bearings and the pilot steered the massive, atmospheric craft towards its destination, and rumbled its way across the landscape. Neither the pilot or the co-pilot could look out the window to either side; they would be so mesmerized by the land passing by so quickly that they would never be able to tear their eyes away.

As it finally made the final approach, Flaps opened up, blocking the air flow around the ship, slowing it down as it created drag. The ship began losing speed dramatically, and in 20 miles, it had began reaching the point of dropping out of the sky. Not to worry; the co-pilot took manual control of the engines, and maneuvered them to make up for the loss of wing-power. Soon, the ship was only a mile away from the New Horizons Groundside Communications and Control Center, and the massive shuttle landed in the parking lot with recently-added landing gears, attached to extend some distance out the bottom/sides of the thrusters. Soon, tractor-sized tires made of a rubber-plastic-titanium-wire weave/material touched down, several of them smashing rusting and unused cars as if they were soda cans.

The gridded black underside was shiny from the light, even where the sun did not directly strike it. From the back, just like any cargo plane, a section lifted, split into two, and moved to the left and right. As they slid out to either side, the cargo ramp itself unlocked, disengaged, and gently lowered itself to the ground. With a resounding thud, the ship was now ready to take on cargo or passengers.

From inside the building, people watched. As the ship had landed, all of them flooded out into the parking lot, relieved that they could finally return to their own. The two hundred people left climbed aboard at the direction of a squad of heavily armed Space Marines, who were wearing sealed reactive armor, which generated a light, regenerative energy screen around them. Each screen was capable of stopping a high-powered round to the point where, when it struck the armor, it would only dent or scratch it. However, it could only do that once a minute or so, and the shield could only take a dozen or so times before it shorted out, and needed repair. Each soldier was armed with what could be called a personal railgun: they were recoilless, high-powered rifles that fired 3 slugs out of 3 barrels in about a second, once every second. Each slug was very dense, and anyone on the receiving end of the bullet would not be living very long. Then again, all the soldiers were somewhat untrained in actual combat, and were sluggish and slow in the higher Earth gravity. Even with artificial gravity on New Point and on Ceres, it only came up to about .7 Earth Gravity. Each of the soldiers were bigger, having grown up in the lower gravity, and so they were giants compared to regular people. The Earth-born people getting onto the shuttle were 6 inches shorter or less, even with the tallest person at over 6'.

In an hour, the shuttle lifted off again. From below its stubby, thick wings came out 4 hardpoints, each armed with a Shrike-class missile. Short-range, powerful missiles, each one came with some power. As the ship lifted off, the pilot carried on with his orders. Moments after confirming everyone was on board and they were a safe distance, two of the missiles on one wing dropped. For a moment, it seemed as if they would just fall and hit the ground, but then the thrusters fired. Two streaks of white appeared, and moments later, the first missile impacted. As the fireball consumed the front of the building, the targeting system in the second missile calculated a new path and followed through, diving into the building with unnerving precision. Moments later, a fireball deeper inside the building added to the one already expanding. The roof seemed to rise up, belch, and then crack and splinter, unable to contain the fireball broiling beneath it. As the building collapsed and the fireballs began dissipating, the shuttle's co-pilot switched control over to the pilot.

Moments afterwards, the pilot pushed forward on both of his joysticks, and then the thrusters rose to face backwards. The ship accelerated rapidly, tilting upwards. As the acceleration began to die off, and the shuttle began to struggle to maintain speed at such a steep incline, the sublight engine engaged. In moments, the ship seemed to flash for a second, and the next, a rolling[i][b] BOOM[/b][/i] could be heard as the shuttle accelerated to a fraction of sublight, and accelerated straight up through the cloud. Only the pilots could feel the affects: an alternate type of artificial gravity had removed all gravity within the bay, allowing everyone inside to be saved of the force that would originally knock them unconscious. Only the pilots could withstand that force, which was why they were shuttle pilots in the first place.