"What's the delay?" asked Zoe leaning on the back of the pair of pilot's seats. "It's been twenty minutes."
"Sorry" said the co-pilot apologetically, "Seems there is a pretty huge storm over the island chain." He pointed at his terminal and Zoe could also see the unmistakable curled star shape of a serious hurricane. She noticed that the co-pilot had been plotting it on his terminal.
"Are you making sure the storm is moving away?" she asked
The co-pilot seemed surprised, "well .. yes, that's it exactly. You know your stuff don't you?"
Zoe pointed at his terminal "Looks like if you drop in 100 clicks or so to the South there, and head North you will neatly slide up inside calm winds. The low pressure zones will be either side of you so although it It'll still be choppy at sea level, and it will still be a bit windy, it won't be much above yellow, we're not a big thing so the approach vector shouldn't be too hard to follow."
"You know" said the pilot, catching the irritated look on his co-pilots face, "that's a pretty daring idea. It's the dead of night down there too. But .. you know what, it's not actually putting the ship at risk, so why the hell not? Lass, get your friends to buckle up, there is still going to be some shakin goin on." He started flicking switches and prepping his ship for heavy planetside weather.
The co-pilot whispered his complaints after Zoe sat down. The pilot simply smiled and said, "This old bucket was used as a medical drop ship in the Vuldrok wars. That was before my time, but I reckon she can take it. Besides you never wanted to do real flying?"

The little shuttle's engines gunned and the pilot headed for the first waypoint, this would take him vertically between the storms revolving tail spirals, around 200km South West of the storm's eye. The co-pilot held on to the edges of his seat with white knuckles. As the ship passed the upper limits of the atmosphere and the planet's weather started to effect the ship, the ship started to vibrate and shake. The co-pilot started yelping out the waypoint reports. This put everyone else on board on edge, they all craned to see out of the portholes and the pilots windscreen.
"Hey what's that?" blurted out Sebastian, pointing to the pilots windscreen.
"What's what?" said Thaygan, "there's nothing there."
"Didn't you see it?" Seb asked "It was a sort of silvery, wispy, snake like thing. Twisting about itself."
"You mean like a ghost?" Said Gunther
"Well no not real .. ohh" Seb was cut short
The ship had jerked suddenly and violently to the right, it banked again, left and up, and then immediately down and right again. The ships motion really tested the seat belts. Zoe furrowed her brow as she watched the silvery image of what appeared to be just another cloud flash passed the portholes and the windscreen, in a seemingly random pattern. Her tracking of it was made much harder due to the shuttles own movements.
Suddenly, the co-pilot grabbed the controls to the atmospheric brakes and powered them in the opposite direct to the ships movements. At the same time the extreme movements of the pilot attempted to turn the ship in the same direction. The result was catastrophic. The little shuttle was soon in both an unpowered fall, and a powered turn. It spun faster and faster. The co-pilot screamed.
Seb had his eyes closed tightly, he opened them for a second to see what was happening. Out of the porthole beside him he saw the most unbelievable sight. The silver head of what could only be described as a mystical fu-lion, but it's body was like a snakes, only it had legs.
Zoe saw it too, she realised that the beast was racing the ship, possibly even playing in its atmospheric wake, maybe just chasing them, maybe a bit of both. She undid her buckle, knelt down behind the pilot's row and undid the co-pilots buckle. She stood and pushed him, using the overiding gravity of their uncontrolled fall to assist in lifting his weight, Zoe pushed the co-pilot out of his seat and into the widscreen. He collided violently with it and let out an "ooph" sound as the wind came out of him. Zoe leapt into his place and calm turned to the pilot, while reaching for the co-pilot's conn button which was on her side of the base of the pilots wheel "don't mind if I have another quick shot flying do you?" she said sweetly.
The pilot was pulling at his controls with all of his strength, trying to turn the ships space thrusters against the direction that the atmospheric air-brakes, which were still on, wanted them to go. He turned his head slowly to look at Zoe. Zoe saw no sign of comprehension nor any reall thought in his eyes, so she flicked the controls over to her side and quickly positioned herself behind the wheel, in the seat but without a seatbelt.
"Hang on everybody!" Zoe yelled, she then pulled an emergency stop on the space engines, flashed the air brakes, then set them to neutral while pushing the pilot's wheel forward, into the low pressure created by the air brakes. The ship's motion did not change, but at least it wasn't being powered into an out of control spin. Zoe then yanked hard on the forward docking thrusters, this caused a sudden and violent backwards jerk as the ships forward facing artificial gravity was powered up. Zoe did not have a seatbelt on, but as the ships nose came up that did not matter, she was essentially flung into the seat she was already sat in. The co-pilot landed on top of her.
The ship seemed to hang for a few seconds with its nose pointing vertically up, it was still spinning but the spin was slower. Zoe saw the silver thing that had caused the whole incident flash past, it was agile, but was still limited by natural physics and so could not pull the same stunt. Of course the pause was only momentary, the artificial gravity burst coupled with the other actions the pilots had done in error before had yanked the ship into this ungainly position, but it was not capable of holding the ship. The ship soon started to fall, backwards, vertically. Although it was still slightly rotating anti-clockwise.
"Zoe!" Yelled Thaygan, "What in the prophet's name are you doing, let the professionals do their job before you get us all killed!"
The pilot looked accross at Zoe and yelled back "We're all fine, now shut up back there and let the girl concentrate." He then pulled his co-pilot up off Zoe and pushed him towards the passenger area.
With her hands free again Zoe leaned forwards and used the fall to kick start the shuttle's atmospheric engines, she needed the pilot to help her with this manoeuvre and he was happy to comply as her assistant. Rather than try to force the engines up to a power high enough to stop their, now imminent, crash Zoe only needed enough power to angle the ships nose with the spin and to accentuate the angle. Mimicking the flat spin they had suffered earlier, only this time upside down Zoe managed to get enough angle on the ship, just in time for the power from the atmospheric engines to become available to her. She couldn't reach the controls and needed both hands on the wheel anyway so she kicked the power controls, which were on the dashboard, up to full with her right foot.
The ship blasted like a rocket, flinging everyone back into their seats once more.
Seb opened his eyes a few seconds after he realised that he was still alive. He could sea the ocean through the windscreen, it was above them. "I feel sick" he said
"urgh, me too" said Thaygan holding his stomach
"Don't worry guys" said Gunther in his usual calm and friendly voice, he seemed almost relaxed. "Zoe's got it covered"
Zoe heard the group chattering and rotated the shuttle so it was upright, she then disengaged artificial gravity, which was by this time partly offline from the damage her emergency stop had caused, and brought the ship fully into atmospheric operations mode. "Is everyone alright back there?" she asked over her shoulder
Soph watched the water through the rearmost port porthole, then changed to looking out of the starboard one. There was a lot of new stuff out there; it was a fairly bright moonlit night, she had never seen a moon before. She was seeing more water than she had ever seen, or even imagined in her life, and it was all over the place. The storm had caused a huge swell, much bigger than their little spacecraft and here they were only a few decametres above the great churning force of nature. Far off above the little shuttle Soph was also watching the dragon. She had been watching it dart and duck under their little ship ever since the pilot had nearly crashed into it. The beast was only the forth animal she had ever seen, but she knew it was unusual. The night sky only partly illuminated it, so she had to squint to amplify the light available. It was around thirty metres long, and coiled like a snake. It had four legs, with large claws on each one. And although it could fly it had no wings. This she realised was because it was not entirely solid, more like a half cloud, half solid animal. If only she knew the right words she thought, maybe she would be able to describe it better.
"I said are you alright?" Gunther, shook Soph from her internal monologue
"Uh-huh?" Soph answered puzzled, "Why, is something wrong?"
"Hah" laughed Gunther, "Yeh, Zoe, we're all fine." he reported.

The ship skimmed the surface of the stormy ocean and it's underside wake hit the crest of a wave a few times before Zoe pulled up to a safe height.
"Sorry about your forward docking system" said Zoe
"Don't sweat it kid, that was some crazy good flying, a pleasure to watch." said the pilot
"Yeh, but I broke something, the least I can do is fix it when we land." Zoe added
"Seriously it's fine, look if it means so much to you buy us a drink and we'll call it quits."
Zoe smiled a big grin, "That was kinda cool though."
"Trust me, I've been flying twelve years and there is no way we should be alive after that cock-up. Even that lummox will be thanking you." the pilot indicated his co-pilot who grumbled a response.
Zoe handed controls back to the pilot and swapped seats with the co-pilot, "sorry about your nose" she said as they passed. The co-pilot's nose was bloody from the bump he had taken.
The co-pilot mumbled an "s'ok I guess" as he took his seat

As the shuttle closed in on the town it entered heavy rain and blustery winds. The ship first circled the flitter port, then landed.
"that's odd" said the pilot, "There's no response from the tower"
"There's no traffic, maybe they've gone home to wait out the storm?" suggested the co-pilot
"could be I guess, it's only a small place." agreed the pilot

Soon the ship was on tarmac, the door was open and the passenger's were collecting their bags and luggage from the hold. As Zoe descended the steps she reminded the two pilots, "This wind is still pretty strong. We're going to find the nearest bar and get ourselves a stiff drink. We'll let you know where we are then you can join us if you like."
"That's real kind of you, yeh we'll set the ships comm to your frequency. I think we'll stay on the ground at least until morning, then probably have to spend at least a day fixing that nose cone." said the pilot
Zoe gave the pilot enough information so that he could set the ship to the groups current comm frequency, adding "I am really sorry about that damage, are you sure you won't let me fix it?"
The pilot whispered "Relax, it's an hours work tops. But on a tropical island, I am going to make take at least a day, maybe two. I'm also not a guild engineer so it might take me a week to find one to do the work for me. Who knows eh."

Zoe was still on a high when she entered the flitter terminal, inspite of the rain.