"I'm coming in hot!" Althea's radio cut off abruptly. "Althea! Respond. Please." Tremyr tried to raise her jumpship on the metaspace transponder. He could see the sensor trace for the little pod on the main display. "You're coming in too fast. Slow down or give us a damn good reason not to keep the bay doors shut." Althea's transmission cut in and out. Tremyr could make no sense of her message. Something was definitely wrong. "Okay. Are you in trouble? Do you need help?" He hoped the trace of concern in his voice wasn't any more intelligable than her transmission was. She'd never let it go. Her ship's telemetry showed no indication of difficulty, no out-of-control spin, no pursuit, just the speed. When he'd given her grief for being late for the briefing he was pretty sure she understood he was kidding. Right? He looked at the landing bay doors, still closed after the last lander left. His heart jumped to his throat upon seeing the hover-platform directly in Althea's incoming flight path. If he didn't move the platform immediately she'd be hard pressed to avoid a collision. An explosion in the landing bay would make for weeks of paperwork and toolbox meetings. Why didn't they just let him hire that assistant he'd been begging for. Then any other bork-ups like this'd be the new guy's crap to look after! He clambered onto the platform and fired up the low velocity Randall Impellors. Once he had enough juice to move the platform he began cycling the airlock for the starboard landing bay. He edged the platform forward into an open berth just as the force shields went up. A minimal amount of atmosphere vented to space before the shields completed their circuit. Just beyond the bay doors, he could now make out a growing bright spark light against the blackness of space. If it wasn't Althea's ship then things just got worse. = = = = = = = = Another scene in my Amazon CE space opera. I'll be doing these from time to time, chucking in bits and pieces of whatever cool concept I remember or come across. Don't know how much of a narrative there'll be as my prose skills are very rusty. Anyhooo... so many bits and pieces. The character is Ateba. The set is cobbled together from various parts of Stonemason's Modular SciFi Kit and consoles, some stuff from sci-fi containers and boxes, a hoverplatform which got squished out looking for a good shot, and so many other things as filler. Not really happy with the lighting and the M4 characters just don't look right to me, though this one is as good as any I've seen. He has good expressiveness in him. Thanks again for visiting and any comments you might leave!