Shipwrecked on Paradise

An excerpt from my current work-in-progress

The sirens and flashing lights on his flight control panel told Jack he was going to die in a ball of fire.  Riley, the ship's Artificial Intelligence, would call it a shroud of incandescent plasma.  She obsessed about details like that.

Jack's hands flew back and forth across the controls, trying to boost their ship back into orbit. "Riley!  What the hell happened?"

"A meteor holed our engine. It knocked us out of orbit."

"Is there a back-up? How do we keep from burning up in the atmosphere?"

"I'm sorry, Jack." Riley muted the sirens. "I had to dump the fuel rods before they exploded. The stabilizers aren't strong enough to move the ship back into orbit and the Jump Drive is useless this close to a gravity well."

Jack hammered the panel with his fists.

"Why didn't we see it coming?  I thought we were keeping track of all the debris circling this planet?"

"The speed and vector indicate it didn't come out of the asteroid ring.  It didn't show up on our scans and by the time it hit us, it was too late."

"Damn."  He looked at the planet on his forward screen.  "Did someone from down there throw it at us?"

"That is unlikely.  Initial scans indicate they only have a pre-industrial technology."

"How much time do we have?"

"We have eleven minutes before we begin to burn."

"Eleven-- why didn't you say something?"

"You didn't ask."