Escape From Space

Gary had bordered the phallic rocket that morning thinking he was going on a leisurely journey through the upper atmosphere, to graze along the fringes of space. To spend his entire retirement in one weekend.

Wrongo.

After the second inflight meal had come, one of the flight attendant's came down the aisle frantically asking if any of the passengers were doctors. None were.

Apparently the first officer had gone down due to stomach complications related to a gluten intolerance. Then the captain went into anaphylactic shock due to a peanut allergy. Nobody else on board the twenty passenger luxury Spaceliner had any flight experience. Gary had flown Cessna 172s on a pipeline patrol route in the middle of the desert for almost fifty years. He was twelve years retired then as the shuttle careened pilotless back through the upper atmosphere.

All Gary had wanted was to see the stars and maybe feel what real zero-g felt like, now he had to save the damn day.

Taking a sip of steaming black coffee, he slammed his thermos back into his seat’s cup holder, unbuckled and pulled himself up into the zero-g induced by the shuttle’s rapid descent. At least he was getting part of what he'd paid for.

“Get the hell out of my way!” He yelled at a crying flight attendant holding desperately to his cart as Gary dragged his way floating from headrest to headrest toward the cockpit. No gravity meant they were going fast. A quick glance out a passenger window at the glowing orange of the fuselage burning up on reentry reaffirmed his fears. Really fast.

“Open the gotdamn door!” He yelled at another flight attendant huddled in the jumpseat by the cockpit. “Somebody’s gotta fly this piece of junk, open it up!”

She nodded and fumbled with the lock without actually unstrapping her harness, barely managing to unlock it, she resumed crying and cradling her head in her hands. Gary pulled his feet forward and barely managed to leverage the door open. Too damn old for this.

The two pilots were slumped in their chairs, the first officer’s chest still rose and fell, the captain’s didn’t. Peanut boy was down for the count. Gary shoved the captain’s corpse out of the left seat, pulling the headset off his cold ears, he slapped it onto his own head. He grabbed the yoke in one hand trying desperately to slow their descent, finding the transponder he squawked 7700 and slammed his thumb on the mic.

“Mayday, mayday, twenty some souls aboard Starliner—” Gary looked around the enormous instrument panel for the tail number, “—979 whiskey, both pilots are incapacitated I've taken control in an attempt to slow our descent.” His voice was calm despite the dire circumstances. He’d had two engine outs and had landed three off strip emergencies safely during his long patrol career, giving in to fear was the first mistake most pilots made in an emergency. Fear causes one to think irrationally, to do things out of order or not at all. Fear is the mind killer. Gary almost laughed, he could land the big haus. Probably.

“Starliner 979 whiskey, loud and clear, do you want vectors to the nearest airport?”

“Affirmative.”

He went full throttle in case they were in a stall, and despite all instinct to do the opposite, pushed down on the yoke. Then after confirming there was no stall to break, Gary slowly pulled back to level the stubby shuttle wings. He yanked the first officer’s checklist from where it was strapped to gluten boy’s right thigh, and flipped to the emergencies page.

This starship wasn’t anything like the 172s he used to fly, the instrument panel alone was about six times as big, with buttons and switches literally surrounding him, a little different than the Garmin G1000 he was used to flying. But in principle not that different, right? He pulled up the Nearest tab on the avionics unit and found the closest airport with a runway long enough to land the Starliner, White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico. He hadn’t been the one to calculate the weight and balance info during preflight, obviously, but he’d seen plenty of Holotube footage of these big things coming in to land, they needed a loooong runway. The dirt strip of Space Harbor was designed for shuttle landings back in the twentieth century. Perfect.

Whichever center frequency the unconscious pilots had been talking to before spoke again over the com and confirmed Gary’s findings, White Sands it was. He’d managed to get the shuttle somewhat under control by then, though according to the altimeter they were still losing altitude at an alarming rate. The little wings of the shuttle designed more for stability than gliding, Gary was confident in his abilities as a pilot, but he was in his seventies now and hadn’t flown anything consistently since retiring. It was coming back though, just like riding a bike. What a load that was.

Breaching twenty thousand feet, Gary entered a series of S-turns in an attempt to slow down the spacecraft. It kind of worked, the flaming glow of reentry burned off so that he could actually see out the cockpit windshield. He flipped the gluten intolerant first officer’s checklist to the emergencies page.

Holy ass that's long. He’d expected it to be longer than the five to ten step emergency checklists he was used to in Cessnas, but this list was almost fifty steps long. Trimming the shuttle, he began monotonously going through each step.

Gary unconsciously reached for his thermos about halfway through the checklist and realized he’d left it in the cup holder of his seat. Damn. He always flew with coffee, the day just couldn’t get any worse.

Glancing at the altimeter, the shuttle was descending through ten thousand feet. Center control informed him White Sands Space Harbor's landing elevation sat just under four thousand feet, he only had a few minutes left until he would save the day or they would die in a fiery wreck. Great.

Clicking over to the shuttle’s intercom, he spoke to the terrified plebeians in the back. “Attention passengers and crew of Starliner 979 whiskey, this is your impromptu captain speaking, we will be landing shortly and it’s gonna be a bumpy one so please fasten your seatbelt and hold onto your assess.” Not much of a pre-landing spiel, but he’d never actually had to give one to any number of passengers before. Good enough.

Finishing the emergency landing checklist, Gary flipped to the standard landing procedure and began working his way through it. Needing to do everything he could to continue slowing the shuttle down, he once again entered a series of S-turns and engaged the flaps, slats and spoilers. Hoping he wasn’t overstressing any of which with their current high speed, he didn’t have time to check their limits.

The altimeter read just over eight thousand feet. A couple minutes left. Without the cockpit’s windshield the mountains of New Mexico surrounding the desert lakebed looked incredible, he wished he had more time to appreciate their beauty as he focused back on his instruments.

“Starliner 979 whiskey,” The center controller spoke through his headset, “emergency services have been notified and should be arriving shortly after landing.”

“Save em, I’m gonna grease her in.” Gary chuckled at his own complete lack of professionalism. When one spent as many years flying the same airspace as he had, you got to know your local controllers real well, and a certain level of casualness entered communications. He knew they wouldn’t actually call off emergency services regardless of what he said.

Gary had lived a good life, if he went down in fire and flames he’d call it a valiant effort. But he knew he couldn’t let the shuttle crash, the faces of the puckered rich pricks that filled the back of the starliner flashed through his mind, somebody had to save those fools. Somebody has to be the hero. Man, he could really go for a cup of coffee.

Seven thousand feet.

Gary excited the S-turns and leveled the stubby shuttle wings as best he could. Their speed had slowed drastically, though they were still going to land about four times faster than the Cessnas he’d always flown. Continuing through the landing checklist he extended the landing gear, a grinding groan came from beneath him as the massive wheels unrolled from their home within the belly of the beast.

Six thousand feet.

They were still going too fast, gliding in at almost four hundred knots, he needed to cut their speed in half before they landed. He wondered if he could slip this big thing in as he scanned the final steps of the landing checklist. He decided slipping probably wouldn’t be a good idea given he wasn’t familiar with the shuttle’s limitations.

Five thousand feet.

Only a thousand feet left, the “landing strip” loomed before him, a great desert lakebed all of white and tan sand. He hadn’t done an off-field landing in—damn, twenty years? And now he had to do it in a space shuttle, if his feet weren’t busy controlling the rudder pedals he would have kicked the slumped captain’s form for making him do so. A peanut allergy? Really?

Four thousand five hundred feet.

Gary began slowly lifting the nose of the shuttle, pulling back on the yoke oh so gently. The last thing they needed was to stall now, far too low to recover and far too high to drop it in. If he stalled the shuttle now they’d plummet to the ground and crumple on impact. Happy thoughts.

“Starliner 979 whiskey, winds are 270, you are cleared for land runway 23.”

“Thanks.” Numbnuts.

Four thousand one hundred feet.

It was now or never. Oddly enough Gary wasn’t nervous, he wasn’t afraid, frankly he was a little giddy. He’d hadn't really flown anything but single engines his entire aviation career, baring the ten or so hours he'd gotten in a twin engine Piper Seneca some forty years before, and now he was sitting at the controls of a space shuttle, and about to land the big bastard at that. It was honestly a dream come true, but the real dream come true would have simply been the commercial space flight he’d paid an astronomical rate for in the first place. He sighed and flicked on the landing lights.

The shuttle’s rear wheels slammed onto the dirt, bounced once, twice, all the while Gary held back on the yoke as hard as his old arms could, keeping the nose up for as long as possible through the bubbling ground effect. Then after the third bounce, the rears finally settled, he continued holding off the nose, and as his arms trembled almost to the point of giving out he slowly released back pressure and let the nose wheel come down to the dirt.

He gently applied brakes and after what seemed like the longest landing roll ever, the shuttle came to a stop.

He’d landed the shuttle. He’d saved the damn day. Ignoring the cheers and applause of the flight attendants and other passengers, he exited the cockpit and walked down the aisle to where his thermos waited still half full of lukewarm coffee. Delicious.