This then brought the next age of technology. There were never more advancements made in ship-building and there seems an endless supply of ideas for these ships. That's when Project Patriot came up for an idea. We passed it through first and made it second so we could focus on getting the materials to create Project Patriot. So the refineries fired up and all the best minds thought and thought until they came up with the Ironhide Carrier. Then not even 4 days later the first carrier was created. It was launched the next day with a skeleton crew and more supplies for the bases. 4 hours later it took off and then another 4 hours it was entering the orbit of Scelfor IV.
"Sir we're entering the stratosphere." Said Bridge Officer Sled
"Good activate heat deflectors," replied Bridge Commander Val
The Officer nods and clicks a few things before returning back the diagnostic screen.
"All thrusters and systems green."
"Drop the supplies in 3...2...1."
The ships supplies dropped onto two of the other bases.
"First Objective successful attempting landing procedure at 'Red One' Storage landing pad."
"Landing Granted take her down nice and easy. I'll radio the ground for complete permission. This is IronHide Carrier Lehman permission to land?"
"This is Base to Carrier permission granted, landing pad 3. Safe landing."
As soon as the permission was granted the ship slowed down hovering over the pad. The engines stabled and they began to slowly descend to the ground. As we entered the landing pad the rotor arms latched on stabling us even further. They cut the engines and the arms brought us down and locked us into position. The loading pods were detached and magnetically transferred into the warehouses. The men in the base lifted up all the ore and in around an hour the ship was fully loaded.
"Carrier Lehman you are all filled up. You are clear for takeoff safe travels!"
"Carrier Lehman to base thank you and enjoy the scenery!"
"Goodnight Lehman, safe travels."
"Goodnight base. Lehman out."
The ships engines sparked lighting up all of them. It took around 5 minutes for the ship to gain enough energy to push itself off and escape the much heavier gravity. We fired up the larger engines and we quickly reached escape velocity. As we escaped the planet's gravity we activated auto-pilot which was basically just keeping us on course. The bridge operator came on the Bridge.
"Okay guys you can take your breaks, I'll cover from her to home and I'll see you on the bright side!"
All the people on the bridge yawned, some stayed to finish up their work but most just left. Around 4 hours later we were around 15 minutes from entering Earth's atmosphere. The Bridge Operators voice came over the ship's intercom.
"Um, commander we have a slight problem." The commander sprang out of bed even before he had finished his sentence and sprinted up the stairs getting to the bridge.
"What is it?!"
"We don't have enough fuel to activate the repulsors and land." He said matter-of-factly.
He looked at the fuel gages and we had wasted too much on the return journey.
"Shit okay contact ahead we're going to try and land."
"Sir that's going to kill everyone on board."
"No, we have enough to just leave us with a slight bump when we get down."
He took the controls from the operator and angled them towards Scelfor I's space hub. The ship had come in and already you could feel the ship shudder from the braking not working. At the last moment, he hit it with all the fuel left. It came on sliding forward. The landing gears broke and it slid far forward. It ended up that there was a large leak in the left fuel tank causing the right to waste more of its fuel. That design flaw cost 2 lives and multiple injuries. The next two carriers were called the Val for one of the lost lives and the Andrew fro the other. That was the only loss of life due to engineering mistakes and it was fixed quickly after.