The Search begins

His craft was of the ANDROMEDA design, not all that fast but a capable and reliable ship, built as an Interstellar transporter with a passenger... more

by Blair Stuart

Title

The Search begins

Artist

Blair Stuart

Medium

Mixed Media

Description

His craft was of the ANDROMEDA design, not all that fast but a capable and reliable ship, built as an Interstellar transporter with a passenger capacity of 200 this one had been stripped of all the luxury passenger comforts and was down to the very basic seating which had been also reduced to accomodate only 150 passengers.

As far as Xavier was concerned Command was well and truly overly optimistic if they thought for one minute that all in the group he was supposed to rescue had survived. No, he grimly thought, given his previous encounters with the creatures roaming this planet, he doubted if any would be filling those empty seats.

Still his orders were straight forward enough and quite concise. he was to locate and rescue the survivors. Easier said than done, he thought. All he had to go on was a set of coordinates generated by a Distress Beacon and the approximate numbers of the group, one hundred and fifty men, women and children.
When he asked as to how and why they were on this godforsaken planet, he was told it was on a need to know basis..... and he did not need to know. The only additional information he needed to be aware of was that the men were armed and were of a warrior class.

As he started his final descent to commence his first run along the cliff top Xavier once again ran his eyes over the guages, estimating that he had a maximum of three hours available to him in which to conduct the search, after which time the weak sunlight would start to fade making it unsafe to continue and impossible to land even if he wanted to.

The plan, for want of a better word, for the search being to cruise just off the cliff face, at just above stallimg speed in the hope that the survivors would, somehow, be able to attract his attention.



He calculated that he would be able to do three passes and should there be any survivors, still have enough fuel to land, takeoff and return safely to his base.

If, however, after those three passes there was no sight of the survivors then his next plan was to hightail it out of there. Though he was sorely tempted to just turn his craft around without conducting any search, convinced as he was that the mission was going to end in failure.

The only thing preventing him from doing so, was the nagging thought in the back of his mind, that maybe, just maybe there might be some survivors...

© 2011 Stuart Media Services All Rights Reserved

Uploaded

June 8th, 2012