Planetshine's Space Odyssey Book 2

We were landing in a grassy area that didn't have too many trees or sudden height gains, the perfect place even though it isn't a runway, but it was the best we could find. The place wasn't great or anything like that, but it was good enough for a landing, even if it would be a crash landing as we could escape with relative ease.

The Diver slowly but eventually completed one orbit around the place, and then Lyra started to do the deorbit burn. Lyra was a great spaceplane pilot, really, she is. I crawled into the little Scouter for some testing and whatnot in somewhere that wasn't Equestria. The thing somehow worked, even after 2 trillion years of being stuck to the Diver by magnets.

I let the Scouter go, and it slowly drifted away from the mothership, but it would definitely still go into the atmosphere. The Diver was the first one to enter the atmosphere, but mine entered a bit later. Thank goodness for cameras mounted on my ship so I could see what was outside, or I would basically hate myself for choosing this little ingenious craft.

The Diver had pretty good thermal performance, and so it was able to just glide down the atmosphere with no problem, but mine was a little different. It had great maneuverability, but it had average thermal performance. Since the maneuverability was great, I used it to my advantage, spinning it around at about 60rpm, dissipating the heat evenly around my craft.

I pitched the nose down 90 degrees, going into a vertical dive, while Lyra did a different approach, gliding along the upper atmosphere. The vertical dive was ok, that was all I could say, falling down at a very fast speed. When I was near the ground, I pitched up extremely fast, also having to endure a harsh 30g spike, feeling like it was crushing me. I then got into a landing approach, minimising my vertical speed and deploying the landing gear. After touchdown, I deployed the drogue chute and kept my craft as low to the ground as possible by setting a deploy limit for the landing gear to avoid spinning out.

The Scouter officially landed on Pandora, but the Diver didn't. I put on my helmet, first needing to do an atmospheric scan, but that could wait. I looked up, and the Diver was heading my way, then later pitching up. It didn't have great gliding abilities, but it could be considered ok as it could glide with no problems with relative ease. It had a vertical speed of about 20m/s, or at least that's what it looked like.

The Diver then deployed its parachutes before touchdown, but its vertical speed was too high, and two of its back landing gear got overstressed, the other two were fine. Since two of the 4 back landing gear was broken, the other two landing gear got overstressed, never overestimate landing gear, just don't.

One of the two landing gear then got overstressed and snapped, making the back topple down, falling on its wing. The wing collided into the ground, basically snapping it off the craft. I watched in despair, crying. I didn't know if the others were fine. If they weren't, then I would have nopony to be with, and I'll be lonely.

Every explosion made me sadder and sadder, crippling my emotions. When all the explosions were done, and the ground considered safe for me, I flew over as fast as I could. I opened up the emergency exit hatch from the outside and went in. What I saw really cheered me up, Derpy was all fine. I asked her worriedly, 'Where are the others, are they fine?'

'I don't know,' she replied.

I dashed over to the other parts of the cabins, also going into the cockpit, not seeing anyone there. I then cried, tears flowing down my cheeks, depressed that the others could have died. I then flew out the emergency exit, looking out. What I saw was absolutely shocking, the others were there, outside, heading towards my craft. I couldn't believe it, they were alive, but there were only Starry, Flamerider and Lyra.

I dashed over to them, all of them in spacesuits and wearing helmets, as no one knows what Pandora was like. The landscape looked like Equestria's, only with big trees. I stopped right in front of them, immediately hugging and crying. 'I can't believe you're alive,' I sobbed.

They cheered me up, but they also had some bad news. 'Some of the other ponies are dead, they got squashed or something, we have no idea,' Lyra sadly told me, also hugging me.

'No.'

A shrivel went down my spine, my heart stopped, tears started to pour down my cheeks. I couldn't describe how it felt, I then started crying, and wearing a helmet, had a bit of a problem with the tears. I then asked them, 'How did you guys survive?'

'We were at the front of the spaceplane, the others were at the back end of it. Anyways, the plane spun out and then it kept stalling, that was how it crashed,' Starry replied.

I listened and took in what she said, but now it was something else, to find the others. We all looked everywhere, but we could not find anything, even after excavating the whole plane. The interior of the plane was all intact, but the back was all crushed, some of the engines on top of it.

We all sat there, looking at the debris, they were dead, there was no sign of them anywhere. They were our friends, more importantly, my friends. I lost them due to the crash, sadness just went through my body, my heart stopping again. We sat there for a long time, remembering the past and everything about it. The light was fading away, and night was bound to fall, so we had to find shelter.

Finding shelter wasn't hard for us at all, there was one already, the debris of the SSTO, and also the Galaxy Scouter. Everypony worked together to get the Galaxy Scouter to the Diver's debris, taking a while, then putting it inside it for keeping it safe just in case, also pretty good for an extra shelter. The Diver's front cabins were all intact, plus the cargo bay and the cockpit all were. We would claim that as our home for now, and we would settle in it for the time being.

The front cabins weren't very comfortable compared to the back ones, and the cockpit wasn't very good either. The cargo bay was a good place to create a living room and the Scouter could be an emergency shelter. I knew how to engineer a spacecraft, also modifying it, so I could make something out of the Scouter, which on second thought would be a pretty suitable exploration craft.