Chapter 73: The Last Descent
The alarms were still screaming.
I didn't need them anymore. The ship was alive with warning lights, the steady, grinding sound of metal against metal, the whine of failing systems. But it didn't matter. I had already seen this moment. The chaos, the madness. I had already decided I wasn't going to die here.
Not like this.
My head was a pounding mess from the impact earlier, my body still feeling the crushing weight of the G-forces, but it didn't stop me. It couldn't. Time was running out. The atmosphere of Mars was clawing at the hull, pulling us down at an unforgiving speed, and I had 2 mere minutes before I was going to hit the surface.
The rocket was spinning, too fast. The turbulence had me pinned in my seat, but I didn't need to be strapped down. My instincts were already moving ahead, calculations flitting through my mind like some kind of expert orchestra.
Instincts. Endurance Boost. Precision Engineering. Spacecraft Operations
They came together like strands of string creating an intricate web. A flash of everything I had done. Everything I had known.
I knew I had to stabilize the ship.
Focus.
The left booster was still operational. It had to be. The right one was a lost cause in the middle of this death spiral. But if I could work with the left one, shift the controls, redistribute the power— I had to trust the systems.
My hand shot out. My fingers found the console in a blink, pressing buttons and activating switches that made the ship groan in protest. The rapid spin made it nearly impossible to focus, but I didn't have time to care.