It was an odd-looking craft. The front half was very sleek, very aerodynamic, with smooth, swept-back orientation planes. The nosecone was slightly hooked, like the beak of a bird of prey. The back half of the shuttle, on the other hand, was boxy, blocky, with straight edges and right-angled corners; unlike the front half, it didn’t look like it had been designed with the least amount of wind resistance in mind.

Four powerful rocket turbines jutted out from the sides of the re-entry vehicle, situated toward the less aerodynamic rear. They sat in semicircular trusses, angled away from both the top and bottom of the craft. Jets of liquid oxygen streamed from the turbines’ vents, momentarily permitting flashes of flame in space. Grey exhaust plumes streaked behind the shuttle, leaving a trail where it had been.

As co-pilot, Sergeant Cameron’s responsibilities were largely auxiliary. He wasn’t doing any of the flying, but he sat behind and to the left of Corporal Carlisle, the pilot, and monitored everything that was happening. He was an extra pair of eyes and ears for Carlisle, so that the pilot could keep his own on the view-screen.

“Fifteen seconds to the stratosphere,” Cameron reported.

“Got it,” Carlisle said, teasing the sticks apart.

Carlisle’s controls consisted of twin joysticks, one controlling a pair of rocket turbines each, that were rubber-gripped and contoured for his hands. He had digital altimeter and airspeed displays in front of him, but not much else.

“Bring the nose up point-three,” Cameron said.

“Right.” Carlisle was concentrating hard.

In front and to the sides of him, Cameron had the read-out deck. It told him how well the engines were performing, how much fuel they had left, whether the engines were overheating, and prompted him if Carlisle could save several hundred litres of fuel simply by bringing the nose up an almost imperceptible amount.

“Stratosphere in three...two...one.”

When the re-entry vehicle struck the planet’s atmosphere it was going so fast it barely shuddered under the impact. The heat shield began to glow orange.

All four rocket turbines cut out instantaneously. A jet of cooling gas vented from a ring around each of the vents. A second later, the turbines pivoted in their semi-circular trusses until they were pointing the other way, pointing downward, toward the planet, in the direction the re-entry vehicle was heading.

After another second, they roared into life again.

Inside the re-entry vehicle, they felt this happen acutely. The entire cabin began to shake as these opposing forces vied for control of the shuttle. On the one hand, the craft had built up enough forward momentum (now aided and abetted by the planet’s gravity) to hurtle downward. On the other hand, all four of the powerful rocket turbines that had given the ship that forward momentum to begin with, were now working against it, trying to blast the re-entry vehicle back into orbit.

A less sturdy vessel might have been torn apart by this action, but the re-entry vehicle was designed for the purpose, and built for it too.

Sergeant Cameron watched their airspeed. The digital display was changing so rapidly the numbers looked like a blur, but the shuttle was indeed decelerating. By the time they reached the lower stratosphere, they would be going slow enough to glide down to a nice, soft, conventional landing with the manoeuvring thrusters.

“Bring the nose down point-six.”

“I’m on it,” said Carlisle.

Cameron had piloted four re-entries and co-piloted seventeen more. As far as he was concerned, the exciting part was over.

Meanwhile, at the back of the craft, the Doctor and Rose were holding on for dear life. A sudden lurch had almost thrown them into the cabin, where they surely would have been seen, so they had retreated back into the airlock where there was something to hold onto: the consoles. Rose was absolutely petrified.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Tenerife?” the Doctor heard her gabbling at his shoulder. “First time I ever went on a plane. First time I ever left the country, too. And the last. Turbulence all the way! Never again, I said; never again.”

“I don’t think this is turbulence, Rose,” the Doctor said.

The ship lurched again and she yelped. “What would you know? The Tardis doesn’t even fly. Doesn’t like sand? I’ll give it sand when we get back!”

A sharp jolt almost shook her off the console.

“If we get back,” she added.

The re-entry vehicle continued its plummet toward the planet. There was a thick, heavy cloudbank that stretched to the horizon in every direction. An electrical storm was brewing inside. Arcs of white lightning flickered over the billowing grey peaks, like the tongues of monstrous angry snakes coiled within the clouds.

The shuttle plunged right into the heart of the viper pit.

Sergeant Cameron frowned when he saw the new readings.

This storm had been unexpected. Either they didn’t schedule dead-drops during electrical storms, or they changed the landing zone to avoid it. Both in theory and in practice the re-entry vehicle could withstand several direct lightning strikes, even to the engines. However, electrical storms played havoc with the shuttle’s sensors, and just one unreliable reading could have catastrophic consequences.

“I can’t see a thing,” Carlisle said, shaking his head.

The view-screen was completely grey. The cloud was thick, so thick that depth perception was way off. What looked like a kilometre below could have been two, so they had to rely on what the sensors told them, and therein lay the problem.

“Bring manoeuvring thrusters online.”

“Read-outs say it’s too soon,” Cameron replied.

“At least put them on standby.”

Cameron sighed privately and did as he was told. “Manoeuvring thrusters on standby.” Whilst he outranked Corporal Carlisle on the ground, when they were in the air, Carlisle was pilot and Cameron was co-pilot, and that was that.

Suddenly, the shuttle lurched especially violently.

“Did we hit something?” Carlisle asked.

Cameron checked his read-outs. “What the hell?”

Several of the digital displays were blank; others were blinking.

“Starboard control sluggish!” Carlisle reported.

Cameron tapped the read-outs. As he’d feared, the sensors relaying data on the engines were failing. Fortunately, the perigee read-out was fine.

“We’re going into a spin!” he told Carlisle. “I think we’ve lost the lower turbine; I’m taking the lower port turbine off-line to compensate. You ready?”

“Do it!” Carlisle shouted through his headset.

Cameron thumbed the button and the shaking inside the cabin became more pronounced. The force maintaining the reverse drag had been halved.

The soldiers in their flight-seats were now being tossed about too much to keep up their hearty singing. Their helmeted heads banged against the backs of their seats. Many of them grabbed their harnesses for further support. All around them, equipment rattled in the rigging attached to the inner hull.

“How we doing?” Carlisle demanded.

“We better clear this cloud-cover soon,” Cameron returned. “I don’t need no read-out to tell me those turbines will burn-out doing double-time.”

“Give me the manoeuvring thrusters.”

Cameron grimaced. “If we use ‘em and lose ‘em, we’ll have a hard landing.”

Suddenly, the re-entry vehicle broke through the clouds.

“We’re not going to have any landing at this rate!” Carlisle cried. “We’re coming in too fast! Give me the thrusters now!”

Cameron saw the ground looming up on the view-screen and knew he had no choice, even if Carlisle hadn’t ordered him. He slammed the button.

“Manoeuvring thrusters on-line.”

All along the bottom of the re-entry vehicle, eight pivoting square engines ignited simultaneously. They all pointed in the same direction; it was the same direction as the four turbines, two of which were now dormant. Black smoke poured from the lower starboard turbine, but the shuttle was still dropping so fast that the smoke was whipped away by the wind as soon as it was vented.

Less than four kilometres below, a distance decreasing by the second, the grey surface of Erebus awaited the shuttle’s arrival.

“Launch the distress beacon,” Carlisle’s voice crackled through Sergeant Cameron’s headphones. Though the pilot was only a few feet away from him, the noise in the cabin was now so loud they couldn’t hear each other otherwise.

“I’m going to level off; we’ll overshoot the LZ.”

Cameron kicked the back of the pilot’s chair. “You level off at this speed and you will total the manoeuvring thrusters!”

“And if I don’t...”

If he didn’t, Cameron thought, and the remaining two turbines didn’t slow them down in time, then they wouldn’t have another chance to level off. It’d be pretty pointless trying to affect a gradual descent curve when there was a planet in the way; the truth was, one way or another, they were going to crash.

“Beacon launched,” he reported.

A small round portal slid open on top of the craft. In a shower of sparks a cylindrical rocket shot out of the re-entry vehicle like a firework. It would career upwards until it ran out of fuel, then the spherical distress beacon inside would float to earth with a foil parachute. By then, the shuttle would already have crashed.

No sooner had the beacon rocket shot past the upper starboard turbine than that engine began to gush thick black smoke too.

Cameron guessed what had happened from the perigee read-out. “We’re going into another spin! We’ve lost the upper starboard engine too!”

“Cut all turbines!” Carlisle hollered back.

Cameron hesitated, but knew he had no choice. There was nothing left to slow them down now; their best hope was that the manoeuvring thrusters would hold out long enough for Carlisle to level the shuttle off. If he could bring them down at less than a five-degree angle, the re-entry vehicle could survive the impact.

Cameron checked the read-out.

They were currently at thirty degrees.

In the airlock, the Doctor and Rose were sitting down. It had become too rough to stand, so now they were sitting between the consoles, backs against the front of one, feet braced against the other, clawing the deck for extra support.

Suddenly, though, the ship seemed to settle.

It was still turbulent, still rocking one way or another, but now it was more like a speeding train, less like a crashing one. Rose had noticed too.

“Well, that’s better,” she said.

The Doctor frowned. “I’m not so sure.” He opened his clawed fingers and spread his palm out on the deck. “Oh, no; that’s not good.”

“What is it, Doctor?”

He turned his face toward hers. They were so close he had to squint his eyes to look into hers. “They’ve turned the engines off.”

She clambered to her feet.

The Doctor joined her. They stood in the airlock and gaped at the surface of the planet on the view-screen, now so close they could see details.

A klaxon blared in the cabin.

“Brace...brace...brace...” came an anxious voice over the tannoy, and all the soldiers in their seats tucked their heads down, fingers locked behind their necks.

“Get down!” the Doctor cried.

Then he threw Rose back to the deck and dropped on top of her.

A few seconds later, everything went dark.

NOTES:
This chapter is clearly indebted to the dropship sequence in "Aliens". The co-pilot, Sergeant Cameron, who will go on to be a major character, is named after the director of "Aliens", James Cameron, but more because James Cameron also directed "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgement Day", which also featured robots out to kill humans. I already envisage the captain of the marine platoon being named Hamilton, after Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor in those movies.