Jim Rudnick

Crash Landing Jim Rudnick

"As the first wisps of atmosphere touched the badly damaged explorer ship, the craft was on it's own AI-the pilot and nine of the ten occupants were already dead. The only alive human lay in the robo-doc tank in the rear of the ship where he'd been for almost a full week. He had been injured during an asteroid incursion and had been placed in the robo-doc then. Now he lay half awake, half in a stupor, not knowing that the rest of the Drake's crew were probably dead. Boathi sphere ships had come upon the Drake twenty light years out-wards, and had so severely damaged the ship, that even as the pilot lay dying and he kicked it into AI and called on full FTL, their fate looked sealed... Inside the robo-doc tank, the surviving human lay in the liquid bath surrounding him, and he was still in that stupor of drugged medical aid. While he couldn't read it, on the interior visor, lay the dashboard with information for the patient-and it appeared he had still another two and a half days in here. Alone... Defenseless and in a sealed tank, as the AI would try to keep the robo-doc up and running to enable his recovery...at least that was it's next task..."