As the Viper squadron passed slowly over the funeral, Achillies furrowed his brow as he looked over the HUD and power displays, something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but his Viper, felt different than it should. Going over the computer diagnostic readout didn't give him any answers, but it still just felt wrong. Any other time he would have turned his ship around and had the crew chief take it apart to find what was wrong, only to be told that the secondary fuel system was out of calibration or something mundane like that, but this time he was in formation for the colonies. There was no way out, and no real reason to get out anyway.
"I'm getting over frakin sensitive in my old age" He said to himself as he shut off the diagnostic computer seeing all green lights across the board.
Settling back in his seat he looked across the horizon. "This flight shouldn't take too much longer" He thought with a smile." Once I land, Call Girl wont have any reason to keep me on the Avalon. I'll land, put my ship in for an inspection and it will be off to a Tauron bar for some local action. I wonder if the women put tattoos in interesting places"
His thoughts of hot blooded Tauron women was interrupted by a flicker in the engine fire warning lights. Looking down at the now dormant light he started to think he had imagined the light flickering. He was about to turn the computer back on to run another check when Viper started to shutter violently, like a car that had a tire blow out. Holding both hands on the stick he tried to keep the Viper stable as he ran over emergency landing strips in the area.
"What the frak is this" He said to himself as the Viper started shake it's self apart
As the fire warning light came on for the two lower engines, alarms and warning lights started to go off across the board. Pulling back on the stick Achillies pulled away from the formation, trying to put some distance between him and the other Vipers. As his Viper banked hard away, the entire back, lower part of the Viper disintegrated in a shower of flame, smoke and metal shards, sending the fighter spinning towards the crowd below trailing smoke and flame. Achillies was thrown violently froward and then to the side in the cockpit, hitting hit head and shattering his faceplate on the Vipers canopy, sending him into darkness.
Achilies eyes opened after a moment of unconsciousness. Blood flowed freely from a large gash on his forehead over his right eye, clouding his vision. Opening the now shattered faceplate, Tra whipped the blood from his eyes. With his vision clear he saw more than he wanted. The Viper was going down like a rock, spinning in all four directions. The ground filled his vision as it spun by getting closer and closer. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware of both pilots and controllers screaming for attention over the com. He also knew he didn't have the time to answer them
Achillies knew that he had two choices at this point. The first was standard procedure. He should punch out. Save himself and let the Viper crash into the crowd. The second was he could try to get the Viper out of the flat spin and then try to nurse the damaged fighter to an unpopulated area or one of the inland seas and punch out when it was safe. It was a long shot at best. It didn't take long for him to decide. Setting the flaps to full he thrust the stick in the direction of the roll. As he did the Viper snapped out of the flat spin and flipped into a regular spin, he knew how to get out of that. At two thousand feet the Viper leveled off, barely under his control. Now as he tried to get it away from the crowd he had a moment to answer the com.