No Easy Way Out (1/9)
Title: No Easy Way Out
Author: Moraya
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Rating: NC17
Genre/Warnings: sci-fi AU
Summary: After crash landing on Malgn’a, a small outpost in the back of the Sjöstedt star system, trade pilot Viggo Mortensen has no other choice but to accept the price of a scavenger called Orlando to lead him out of the forsaken wasteland he finds himself in. But handing over a part of his load is only the beginning of it.
Disclaimer: If you think this is the truth, please hand over some of the drugs you’re taking.
Feedback: is loved very much so!
Beta: liriel1810 *hugs*
Notes: Thanks to jeyhawk for being an immense help with the plot. This is somewhat more sci-fi than what I've written before. Don't let that deter you; ultimately it's still about the characters.
Dedicated to nurseowens. Remember I told you last year that I’ve started three completely different version of my early_theory fic before settling on the third one? This is version #2. Happy birthday, sweetie *hugs*
Part I
‘Good as new,’ Nal had said, and ‘shan’t have any more probs with her.’
Viggo’d kill him if he ever made it back to Dyl Four. Slowly and cruelly. He’d skin him, disembowel him and then hang his entrails from the radar pole for the vultures. Or maybe he’d stick him headfirst into one of the blubbering pools of hot sludge. Nal hated the swamps.
Xeen’e trembled and quivered, her metal parts jittering and clinging. Viggo’s knuckles were white, holding on with almost inhuman force to the steering lever. Floating pieces of space debris jarred Xeen’e’s hull, the screeching contacts resonating through the battered ship.
Taken down by fucking garbage, Viggo thought and cursed colourfully as another chunk jolted Xeen’e. The lights flickered out, then on again, and Viggo kicked hard against the console to stop the irritating howl of the alarm signal. He knew he was in the middle of a debris field, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Not with half of Xeen’e systems failing.
The impact buffer shields refused to go up and the steering worked only with several seconds delay, too much to dodge chunk after chunk of debris. It had been bad enough manoeuvring her down on Dyl Four, and then there hadn’t been any garbage trying to disrupt his course.
Xeen’e tumbled and groaned, and Viggo prayed to any deity that eventually listened in to let him survive this. Not taking his eyes off the space screen - fucking radar screens had given out first - he jabbed the steering lever hard to the right, narrowly avoiding another huge piece of metal coming right at him. His heart was beating up in his throat as the metal scraped against Xeen’e’s side and the pressure made her shift off course yet again.
Time stretched on endlessly, and Viggo was bathed in sweat as abruptly the space ahead was all black with tiny white specks of stars again, the debris field behind his ship. His hands ached as he pried them off the steering lever, pinpricks of pain bursting in the joints. They shook too, violently, and Viggo suspected his legs would be no different if he tried to stand up.
He had been in life threatening situations before, but rarely had he felt this much at the mercy of pure luck. No matter how much experience in piloting anyone had, when a ship’s systems stopped working, there wasn’t anything you could do except hope and pray. And fix them, but Viggo wasn’t a mechatronician and his knowledge of Xeen’e’s inner workings was terribly limited, just enough to repair small every day problems on a ship as old as his. Her system failures proved to be more than he could handle, and apparently more than fucking Nal could handle as well.
Absentmindedly flexing his hands to get the blood flow back in his fingers, Viggo looked around the bridge, taking in the chaos. Parts of the boarding had come loose, leaving unimpeded view of twirling cables and oozing out filling material. If that was how bad the bridge looked, Viggo daren’t think of how other, less stably constructed parts of her looked now.
“Think this’s your last trip, Xeen’e,” he muttered wryly. The ship gurgled as if in response, and Viggo returned his attention back to the screens in front of him.
It took a couple of minutes to get her to display the readings without flickering so much. Viggo couldn’t see any more than wobbling smears, but a well placed hit against the side of the screens finally did the trick. Viggo cursed under his breath at seeing the complete list of damage in faintly green shimmering letters. There were hairbreadth thick fissures on the outer shell on top of the not working buffer shields he already knew about now, though at least the two inner shells appeared to still be intact.
Getting up from the chair he’d been perched on for far too long, muscles protesting vehemently, Viggo went to pick up the thermos bottle that had fallen down at the first jolt. Caffeine was what he needed, then a fucking good idea.
Xeen’e wouldn’t make it through another cosmic debris field, even nebulae could be dangerous now, and entering the atmosphere of a planet might very well be a suicide mission. A space station was the most sensible option, if not the only possible one, but the nearest one would take at least three weeks to reach at current speed and Viggo doubted he could coax Xeen’e to go any faster.
He didn’t have enough provisions for three more weeks. There was food for a week longer, liquid for maybe 14 days if he rationed it very carefully.
Why the fuck had he taken this trip into barely civilized territories again? Oh yeah, because it was better paid and Xeen’e’s repairs had gouged a deep hole into his assets. Nal was as good as dead.
Plonking himself back into the pilot’s seat, Viggo drew the screens towards himself, pulling the navigation panel back up, then brought Xeen’e back on course and checked the maps. The debris field hadn’t thrown him off too much; he could still reach his original destination, Malgn’a, one of the Dhraa moons, in less than two days. If he had to bring Xeen’e down on something with an atmosphere, he could just as well do it on a fucking moon in the boondocks.
***
By the time Viggo reached Malgn’a, he just wanted to get over with it. He hadn’t slept in what felt like forever, because his mind didn’t shut up for long enough to do more than dozing for a few minutes a time, and Xeen’e’s usual whirring that he had long ago stopped registering as more than a background noise now grated on his nerves.
Dhraa was a huge red-orange planet on the left of the space screen, towering over the lighter and much smaller Malgn’a, and Viggo made sure to strap himself carefully into the safety harness, then switched the radio transmitter on. White noise filled the bridge with crackling, and Viggo fiddled with the settings, trying to find a stable connection.
The static died away at last, and Viggo typed the request to open communication and send it down to Malgn’a, putting the transmission on half-minute repeats. He reduced Xeen’e’s velocity and set her on a slow circular orbit a bit out of the moon’s atmosphere while waiting for someone to answer him. Malgn’a was far too sparsely colonized to just go down on chance; he needed some coordinates.
Minutes tickled by without any response from the shining moon below him, half hidden beneath reddish clouds. Viggo cursed, checking data and maps, just to be sure that he was actually above Malgn’a. The computer persisted in its claim.
Fuck it to all hells and back. He’d half circled the moon now and still no one appeared to pick up his signal. There couldn’t be that little habitation on it; according to the data he’d been given when he took the cargo trip there were several settlements on the moon, spread out all over its surface. It was highly unlikely that no one had received his signals.
Which could only mean one thing: Xeen’e’s communication had died as well.
“If that’s how you want it, old girl,” Viggo said through gritted teeth, reaching for the steering levers, “We’ll just go down like this. Have us a nice little crash.”
Xeen’e whirred agreement, and Viggo decelerated her further, getting down to 27.000mph, and left the circular orbit. He wouldn’t have more than one try. It was either going down, preferably in one piece, or being thrown back out into space.
The readings flashed over the screen, showing speed, direction, and atmosphere data, and Malgn’a slowly grew on the space screen. Tilting Xeen’e, Viggo brought her into angle of attack, ready for re-entry, and sent a last deep prayer to the gods.
Xeen’e started quivering slightly, and Viggo tilted the levers carefully, gradually bringing her nose down bit by bit. Malgn’a’s atmosphere was a light green shimmer hugging the moon, losing its intensity the more Viggo brought the ship down. The tremors running through Xeen’e changed as she rushed into thicker layers of the atmosphere, until every single piece of metal and wiring seemed to convulse under the high pressures of entry.
Viggo’s eyes flew back and forth between the space screen and the hectically flickering displays. The temperature readings from the outer shell were climbing rapidly, and the air around Xeen’e must be already burning, her speed breaking and vaporizing the atoms. The outer shell was still holding, the fissures not opening further, but they had just begun entry and the hardest parts were still ahead.
One, two, three, four seconds passed, and Viggo’s hands started cramping as he clutched firmly onto the shaking levers, not daring to lose control of navigation for even a split second.
Everything was vibrating, and the displays rattled down lines and lines of data almost too quick to be read. Viggo strained the fingers of his right hand to reach the input screen attached to the lever he was clutching, correcting the degree of entry minimally. Xeen’e ached, screaming as she shuddered, her engines powered up to the max as she strained to comply despite the compression of atmosphere and speed working against her.
Viggo let out a breath of relief as the data readings showed the corrected angle, then was jolted in his seat as Xeen’e shot further down towards Malgn’a. The temperature readings were still climbing, higher and higher.
Too high.
Shit.
Wasn’t there anything working as it should anymore? Frantically, Viggo pulled up the heat shield readings on the main display. Down to 82.8% and falling. Any lower than 75% and the hull would start to melt away under the insane heat.
Anxiously keeping his eyes on the data, Viggo clutched the levers as Xeen’e started to groan lowly. The vibrating turned into a turbulent shuddering that forced him to clench his teeth together to stop them from rattling violently.
He counted the seconds, making it to eight until the turmoil waned and the inhuman sounds Xeen’e was making stopped. Everything fell silent, though the displays still flickered with data.
Forcing his fingers to uncurl, Viggo turned to check the readings. Entry angle still okay, the outer shell was down to 78.3%, but they’d passed peak temperature now. He might just make it yet, even though impact was going to be bumpy, with no working shields to absorb the shocks.
Malgn’a’s surface was visible now on the space screen, and Viggo thought the huge orb looked little like an inhabitable body. He barely had any time to look closely at the moon before Xeen’e plunged into the next atmospheric layer.
Grasping onto the levers again, Viggo activated the propulsion quickly and pulled up navigation control. They’d be going down one way or the other now; he was just praying for it being mostly in one piece.
Xeen’e hummed and whirred around him as she plunged towards the moon, ever gaining speed, even though her engine worked to accommodate for the atmospheric drag. Viggo’s fingers started to ache, so tightly was he gripping onto the levers, waiting for the first gravity wave to pummel Xeen’e about. The surge, when it came, propelled him against the safety harness, driving the air out of his lungs, and only years of habit enabled Viggo to shift the levers to steer Xeen’e against the tides at the same time as he gasped for breath.
The impact buffer shield, had it been working, would have tempered the gravity waves, reducing them to a soft rolling motion, similar to that of a nautical ship on a rough sea, but without the shield, Xeen’e was thrown about as if caught in a hurricane, tilting and falling with the tides. Viggo’s mouth was pressed tightly together as he was jolted in his seat, muscles aching against the strain of the harness digging into his flesh.
The alarm signal started howling, warnings blinking in red on the data screens, and Viggo didn’t dare to glance at them, not wanting to know which of the systems was failing now.
Malgn’a’s gravity was pulling them in, and Viggo had to look back at the data readings, checking their altitude. The shells were holding on, at least something, and he hoped to all hells and back that he wasn’t losing the lift.
There was a deep shudder running through Xeen’e, and the lights went off as Viggo was pressed back in his seat.
Heart pounding out of his chest, resounding in his ears so loud it drowned out the noises of the ship, Viggo’s eyes flew back to the data screen. The engines were loosing power, lift strength was falling and Xeen’e’s speed accelerating.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” Viggo muttered, trying to get the computer to tell him anything other than ‘system failure.’
With too little propulsion working against the drag of Malgn’a’s gravity pulling them in, they were going to be too fast, and Xeen’e’s angle had already change, becoming steeper. Too steep and they’d be toast, hitting the moon’s surface with so much force they’d be blast into pieces.
He didn’t have a choice really, and Viggo grasped the navigation levers again, jamming them hard to change the course. It was insane, but there was nothing else he could do now.
Xeen’e groaned in protest, but then she obeyed at last, changing the angle at which she raced towards Malgn’a. The navigation reacted delayed, but it reacted, and Viggo breathed out in momentary relief, regaining some hope.
Aerobreaking was difficult, and to even attempt it without a ground crew and all kinds of fucking computers that observed the entry was almost doomed to failure. Viggo’s body was bathed in sweat by the time the data showed that their speed had stopped expanding rapidly, though what he was doing couldn’t be called aerobreaking really.
A constant beeping alerted him to the fact that the temperature of the outer shell was in critical ranges again, and Viggo switched the irritating sound off and looked up, towards the space screen. Malgn’a was huge now, and he could see the landmasses wherever the dense cover of clouds broke open.
Xeen’e lurched once more, the lights flickering, and she lost her course, tilting towards a steeper angle again, despite Viggo thrusting the navigation levers the other way.
Viggo’s curses were lost amidst her yowling and the shriek of the alarms.
Part II
Author: Moraya
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Rating: NC17
Genre/Warnings: sci-fi AU
Summary: After crash landing on Malgn’a, a small outpost in the back of the Sjöstedt star system, trade pilot Viggo Mortensen has no other choice but to accept the price of a scavenger called Orlando to lead him out of the forsaken wasteland he finds himself in. But handing over a part of his load is only the beginning of it.
Disclaimer: If you think this is the truth, please hand over some of the drugs you’re taking.
Feedback: is loved very much so!
Beta: liriel1810 *hugs*
Notes: Thanks to jeyhawk for being an immense help with the plot. This is somewhat more sci-fi than what I've written before. Don't let that deter you; ultimately it's still about the characters.
Dedicated to nurseowens. Remember I told you last year that I’ve started three completely different version of my early_theory fic before settling on the third one? This is version #2. Happy birthday, sweetie *hugs*
Part I
‘Good as new,’ Nal had said, and ‘shan’t have any more probs with her.’
Viggo’d kill him if he ever made it back to Dyl Four. Slowly and cruelly. He’d skin him, disembowel him and then hang his entrails from the radar pole for the vultures. Or maybe he’d stick him headfirst into one of the blubbering pools of hot sludge. Nal hated the swamps.
Xeen’e trembled and quivered, her metal parts jittering and clinging. Viggo’s knuckles were white, holding on with almost inhuman force to the steering lever. Floating pieces of space debris jarred Xeen’e’s hull, the screeching contacts resonating through the battered ship.
Taken down by fucking garbage, Viggo thought and cursed colourfully as another chunk jolted Xeen’e. The lights flickered out, then on again, and Viggo kicked hard against the console to stop the irritating howl of the alarm signal. He knew he was in the middle of a debris field, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Not with half of Xeen’e systems failing.
The impact buffer shields refused to go up and the steering worked only with several seconds delay, too much to dodge chunk after chunk of debris. It had been bad enough manoeuvring her down on Dyl Four, and then there hadn’t been any garbage trying to disrupt his course.
Xeen’e tumbled and groaned, and Viggo prayed to any deity that eventually listened in to let him survive this. Not taking his eyes off the space screen - fucking radar screens had given out first - he jabbed the steering lever hard to the right, narrowly avoiding another huge piece of metal coming right at him. His heart was beating up in his throat as the metal scraped against Xeen’e’s side and the pressure made her shift off course yet again.
Time stretched on endlessly, and Viggo was bathed in sweat as abruptly the space ahead was all black with tiny white specks of stars again, the debris field behind his ship. His hands ached as he pried them off the steering lever, pinpricks of pain bursting in the joints. They shook too, violently, and Viggo suspected his legs would be no different if he tried to stand up.
He had been in life threatening situations before, but rarely had he felt this much at the mercy of pure luck. No matter how much experience in piloting anyone had, when a ship’s systems stopped working, there wasn’t anything you could do except hope and pray. And fix them, but Viggo wasn’t a mechatronician and his knowledge of Xeen’e’s inner workings was terribly limited, just enough to repair small every day problems on a ship as old as his. Her system failures proved to be more than he could handle, and apparently more than fucking Nal could handle as well.
Absentmindedly flexing his hands to get the blood flow back in his fingers, Viggo looked around the bridge, taking in the chaos. Parts of the boarding had come loose, leaving unimpeded view of twirling cables and oozing out filling material. If that was how bad the bridge looked, Viggo daren’t think of how other, less stably constructed parts of her looked now.
“Think this’s your last trip, Xeen’e,” he muttered wryly. The ship gurgled as if in response, and Viggo returned his attention back to the screens in front of him.
It took a couple of minutes to get her to display the readings without flickering so much. Viggo couldn’t see any more than wobbling smears, but a well placed hit against the side of the screens finally did the trick. Viggo cursed under his breath at seeing the complete list of damage in faintly green shimmering letters. There were hairbreadth thick fissures on the outer shell on top of the not working buffer shields he already knew about now, though at least the two inner shells appeared to still be intact.
Getting up from the chair he’d been perched on for far too long, muscles protesting vehemently, Viggo went to pick up the thermos bottle that had fallen down at the first jolt. Caffeine was what he needed, then a fucking good idea.
Xeen’e wouldn’t make it through another cosmic debris field, even nebulae could be dangerous now, and entering the atmosphere of a planet might very well be a suicide mission. A space station was the most sensible option, if not the only possible one, but the nearest one would take at least three weeks to reach at current speed and Viggo doubted he could coax Xeen’e to go any faster.
He didn’t have enough provisions for three more weeks. There was food for a week longer, liquid for maybe 14 days if he rationed it very carefully.
Why the fuck had he taken this trip into barely civilized territories again? Oh yeah, because it was better paid and Xeen’e’s repairs had gouged a deep hole into his assets. Nal was as good as dead.
Plonking himself back into the pilot’s seat, Viggo drew the screens towards himself, pulling the navigation panel back up, then brought Xeen’e back on course and checked the maps. The debris field hadn’t thrown him off too much; he could still reach his original destination, Malgn’a, one of the Dhraa moons, in less than two days. If he had to bring Xeen’e down on something with an atmosphere, he could just as well do it on a fucking moon in the boondocks.
***
By the time Viggo reached Malgn’a, he just wanted to get over with it. He hadn’t slept in what felt like forever, because his mind didn’t shut up for long enough to do more than dozing for a few minutes a time, and Xeen’e’s usual whirring that he had long ago stopped registering as more than a background noise now grated on his nerves.
Dhraa was a huge red-orange planet on the left of the space screen, towering over the lighter and much smaller Malgn’a, and Viggo made sure to strap himself carefully into the safety harness, then switched the radio transmitter on. White noise filled the bridge with crackling, and Viggo fiddled with the settings, trying to find a stable connection.
The static died away at last, and Viggo typed the request to open communication and send it down to Malgn’a, putting the transmission on half-minute repeats. He reduced Xeen’e’s velocity and set her on a slow circular orbit a bit out of the moon’s atmosphere while waiting for someone to answer him. Malgn’a was far too sparsely colonized to just go down on chance; he needed some coordinates.
Minutes tickled by without any response from the shining moon below him, half hidden beneath reddish clouds. Viggo cursed, checking data and maps, just to be sure that he was actually above Malgn’a. The computer persisted in its claim.
Fuck it to all hells and back. He’d half circled the moon now and still no one appeared to pick up his signal. There couldn’t be that little habitation on it; according to the data he’d been given when he took the cargo trip there were several settlements on the moon, spread out all over its surface. It was highly unlikely that no one had received his signals.
Which could only mean one thing: Xeen’e’s communication had died as well.
“If that’s how you want it, old girl,” Viggo said through gritted teeth, reaching for the steering levers, “We’ll just go down like this. Have us a nice little crash.”
Xeen’e whirred agreement, and Viggo decelerated her further, getting down to 27.000mph, and left the circular orbit. He wouldn’t have more than one try. It was either going down, preferably in one piece, or being thrown back out into space.
The readings flashed over the screen, showing speed, direction, and atmosphere data, and Malgn’a slowly grew on the space screen. Tilting Xeen’e, Viggo brought her into angle of attack, ready for re-entry, and sent a last deep prayer to the gods.
Xeen’e started quivering slightly, and Viggo tilted the levers carefully, gradually bringing her nose down bit by bit. Malgn’a’s atmosphere was a light green shimmer hugging the moon, losing its intensity the more Viggo brought the ship down. The tremors running through Xeen’e changed as she rushed into thicker layers of the atmosphere, until every single piece of metal and wiring seemed to convulse under the high pressures of entry.
Viggo’s eyes flew back and forth between the space screen and the hectically flickering displays. The temperature readings from the outer shell were climbing rapidly, and the air around Xeen’e must be already burning, her speed breaking and vaporizing the atoms. The outer shell was still holding, the fissures not opening further, but they had just begun entry and the hardest parts were still ahead.
One, two, three, four seconds passed, and Viggo’s hands started cramping as he clutched firmly onto the shaking levers, not daring to lose control of navigation for even a split second.
Everything was vibrating, and the displays rattled down lines and lines of data almost too quick to be read. Viggo strained the fingers of his right hand to reach the input screen attached to the lever he was clutching, correcting the degree of entry minimally. Xeen’e ached, screaming as she shuddered, her engines powered up to the max as she strained to comply despite the compression of atmosphere and speed working against her.
Viggo let out a breath of relief as the data readings showed the corrected angle, then was jolted in his seat as Xeen’e shot further down towards Malgn’a. The temperature readings were still climbing, higher and higher.
Too high.
Shit.
Wasn’t there anything working as it should anymore? Frantically, Viggo pulled up the heat shield readings on the main display. Down to 82.8% and falling. Any lower than 75% and the hull would start to melt away under the insane heat.
Anxiously keeping his eyes on the data, Viggo clutched the levers as Xeen’e started to groan lowly. The vibrating turned into a turbulent shuddering that forced him to clench his teeth together to stop them from rattling violently.
He counted the seconds, making it to eight until the turmoil waned and the inhuman sounds Xeen’e was making stopped. Everything fell silent, though the displays still flickered with data.
Forcing his fingers to uncurl, Viggo turned to check the readings. Entry angle still okay, the outer shell was down to 78.3%, but they’d passed peak temperature now. He might just make it yet, even though impact was going to be bumpy, with no working shields to absorb the shocks.
Malgn’a’s surface was visible now on the space screen, and Viggo thought the huge orb looked little like an inhabitable body. He barely had any time to look closely at the moon before Xeen’e plunged into the next atmospheric layer.
Grasping onto the levers again, Viggo activated the propulsion quickly and pulled up navigation control. They’d be going down one way or the other now; he was just praying for it being mostly in one piece.
Xeen’e hummed and whirred around him as she plunged towards the moon, ever gaining speed, even though her engine worked to accommodate for the atmospheric drag. Viggo’s fingers started to ache, so tightly was he gripping onto the levers, waiting for the first gravity wave to pummel Xeen’e about. The surge, when it came, propelled him against the safety harness, driving the air out of his lungs, and only years of habit enabled Viggo to shift the levers to steer Xeen’e against the tides at the same time as he gasped for breath.
The impact buffer shield, had it been working, would have tempered the gravity waves, reducing them to a soft rolling motion, similar to that of a nautical ship on a rough sea, but without the shield, Xeen’e was thrown about as if caught in a hurricane, tilting and falling with the tides. Viggo’s mouth was pressed tightly together as he was jolted in his seat, muscles aching against the strain of the harness digging into his flesh.
The alarm signal started howling, warnings blinking in red on the data screens, and Viggo didn’t dare to glance at them, not wanting to know which of the systems was failing now.
Malgn’a’s gravity was pulling them in, and Viggo had to look back at the data readings, checking their altitude. The shells were holding on, at least something, and he hoped to all hells and back that he wasn’t losing the lift.
There was a deep shudder running through Xeen’e, and the lights went off as Viggo was pressed back in his seat.
Heart pounding out of his chest, resounding in his ears so loud it drowned out the noises of the ship, Viggo’s eyes flew back to the data screen. The engines were loosing power, lift strength was falling and Xeen’e’s speed accelerating.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” Viggo muttered, trying to get the computer to tell him anything other than ‘system failure.’
With too little propulsion working against the drag of Malgn’a’s gravity pulling them in, they were going to be too fast, and Xeen’e’s angle had already change, becoming steeper. Too steep and they’d be toast, hitting the moon’s surface with so much force they’d be blast into pieces.
He didn’t have a choice really, and Viggo grasped the navigation levers again, jamming them hard to change the course. It was insane, but there was nothing else he could do now.
Xeen’e groaned in protest, but then she obeyed at last, changing the angle at which she raced towards Malgn’a. The navigation reacted delayed, but it reacted, and Viggo breathed out in momentary relief, regaining some hope.
Aerobreaking was difficult, and to even attempt it without a ground crew and all kinds of fucking computers that observed the entry was almost doomed to failure. Viggo’s body was bathed in sweat by the time the data showed that their speed had stopped expanding rapidly, though what he was doing couldn’t be called aerobreaking really.
A constant beeping alerted him to the fact that the temperature of the outer shell was in critical ranges again, and Viggo switched the irritating sound off and looked up, towards the space screen. Malgn’a was huge now, and he could see the landmasses wherever the dense cover of clouds broke open.
Xeen’e lurched once more, the lights flickering, and she lost her course, tilting towards a steeper angle again, despite Viggo thrusting the navigation levers the other way.
Viggo’s curses were lost amidst her yowling and the shriek of the alarms.
Part II