The Highlander lurched into RIP space with a violence that Sayeeda had never experienced. The containment protocols for anti matter were not so different but the instaneous jolt of energy was very different from the normal slow continous feed of power. For a moment she felt like the ship itself hand vanished and greasy coils of rip space were wrapping around her body, pulling her apart with the inexorable strength of glaciers. Her mouth opened to yell but as soon as her lips parted the sensation faded. For a few moments all was calm and then the Highlander crashed out of the RIP, its short hop completed.

Alarms screamed as Sayeeda grabbed for the controls. Neil was already pulling at the flight yoke but there was a sickening crash.

"Atmospheric bounce!" he yelled over the grinding of over stressed metal and then the sensation of falling took hold in the pit of her stomach. The PPI confirmed that the Highlander had come out of the RIP far to close to the planet they were aiming for. That was a reasonable outcome given the fact that the most accurate R.I.P data they had was years out of date but it was a damn poor time for a stroke of ill fortune.

The ship plunged uncontrolled into the atmosphere as Sayeeda punched up the damage report.

"We have lost starboard three and port one and two," she said with the calm of a combat vehicle driver for whom life depended on reporting the situation accurately. A dozen other sub systems were in the red but that hardly mattered right now. Aft airlock B wouldn't be much of a concern if they were smashed to flaming debris on planet fall.

"Tell me something I dont fucking know," Neil yelled as he continued to fight with the control yoke. He had obviously noticed the lack of thrusters when he tried to maneuver.

"The Atmosphere reads as breathable," she responded tartly. Neil looked back over his shoulder in puzzlement, sweat beading on his face.

"What?!"

"You didn't fucking know that," she responded her hands still flying over the console.

"Oh very fucking clever," he responded but there was a hint of a grin in his voice as he turned back to his task.

Sayeeda pulled up the limited topographical information the sensors could detect. The planet was lightly wooded with no local technology centers registering. She tapped the map twice highlighting a stretch of coast that read as as tropical estuary and fowarded it to Neil's terminal.

"Are you c... you know what never mind," the pilot said shaking his head. The landmass swelled into focus beneath them as they tore through the clouds, the nose of the vessel red hot from air friction of the barely controlled decent. Sayeeda checked her harness and braced herself as the tropical lowlands raced up at them at a suicidal rate.

"Venting ventral B!" Neil yelled and flipped a series of switches as he hauled up on the controls. Metal shrieked and their was a sound like a vast explosion as the seat punched up into Sayeeda. She had a split second to realize that he had vented the fusion chamber at the last second to give them a last minute burst of thrust. For a moment everything was confused and their was a vast rushing sound like an anvil hitting a swimming pool at terminal velocity. Dark water closed over the view port for a moment and then the ship up thrust like a breaching whale. Water rained down from a column that must have stretched three hundred meters into the air and local wildlife scattered in all directions. The ship bobbed violent for a moment and then began to settle.

"Well," Sayeeda said with careful understatement, "We are down."

[@POOHEAD189]