Turbulence Ahead.

A man enters the Wastelands under the authority of the Government of Gondwana. His mission is as of yet undecided. A part of a novel I'm working on; it's still growing.

The drone of the shuttle engine does little soothe his wracked nerves. He wipes the sheen of sweat from his pallid brow and glances out the window. He is approaching the city perimeter now, and far below him, he sees life moving as it always does; all those people - mere specks below him - are oblivious to the immense danger that lurks at their door.
“Approaching Gate 12” a harsh voice squawks over the intercom. He jumps, startled. He is accustomed to the soft, reassuring feminine voice of the passenger shuttles. the people who frequented these military vessels clearly had no need of the sugar coating.
The harshness of the voice seems to add a painful layer of reality to his predicament. This is real, this is happening, and there is no way around it.
He looks out the window and sees Gate 12 - a vast portal, identical to the 14 other gates leading out of the city. The shuttle slows as the massive metal doors begin to slide open. Through them, he can see a vast expense of black; a dead forest, razed almost to the ground.
The shuttle moves through the gate, and the final vestiges of hope that he has held onto up until now - that maybe this is all a bad dream, and that he would wake up back in his comfortable quarters in the Capital, unaware of the horrors he would now have to face.
Then the gates are closing behind him, and, in almost perfect synchronization, his hope begins to ebb away.
“Now leaving city perimeter” the intercoms blares, compounding his misery.
He cracks his neck, clenches and unclenches his fists, and looks up at the ceiling of the vessel. The metal plating inside is beginning to rust through, and he can see shreds of the anti-rad foam within, peeking out like a lunatic, staring through the bars of an asylum.
He shakes his head. That sort of imagery was hardly befitting this situation, he tells himself. After all, it is a great honour. One that many of the loyal would die for.
Perhaps you will die for it, suggests a snide voice in the back of his head. He ignores it, focusing instead on the dead trees, stripped of leaves, that are whizzing past below him.
They are not yet at the heart of the wastelands, but he can feel it approaching. The engines of the shuttle begin to whir ominously as the vessel beings to suddenly buck and shake violently.
He grasps the edge of his seat tight, and closes his eyes. I cannot die now, not yet. I have barely begun my mission.
“Turbulence ahead” the voice squawks.
This is going to be a long flight.
The shuttle once again begins to buck and shake, and he notices that the sky outside seems to be darkening. They are leaving the light of the city behind them, and plunging into the poisonous darkness of the outside world. The trees seem to be getting thinner, and then, suddenly, and frighteningly, they have left all trees behind, now flying over a vast, stagnant ocean. He can see the putrid fumes rising off the surface of the black, sludge-like water, and he fancies he sees movement just below them. He jerks his head around for a closer look.
Something scaly and spiny follows them, effortlessly keeping pace with the speeding shuttle. Then it is gone, disappeared beneath the still water. Somehow he is more intimidated by the beast’s sudden disappearance than by the sight of it following him. What horrors were they heading for that this leviathan would not dare follow them?
He shudders as he recalls the sights he has seen, sights he has tried valiantly to forget. Images of pain and suffering that were seared into his memory like a hot poker to his brain. He kneads his forehead, feeling suddenly nauseated. He decides to check for a progress update with the pilot. He shakily gets to his feet, almost tripping over the hem of his long black cloak, and makes his way - step after shuddering step - to the door to the cockpit. He does not bother to knock, but pulls the door open and flops into the empty seat next to the pilot.
“How much longer until we reach the rebel base?” he asks.
The robot that is flying the shuttle does not move, but a crisp voice answers him, after a pause.
“I would estimate the time of arrival at four hours.”
He nods his head. Then gets back to his feet. he decides he will spend at least two of those hours sleeping, in that blissful state where all his worries ceased to be anything more than a half-remembered memory.
“I will have a nap now,” he says, and the robot’s head jerks up, then down in a nod of acknowledgement. “Don’t bother to wake me.”
The robot turns it’s head and looks at him.

He is dreaming of a colour. Blue? Yes, it was blue. it was a vast body of water, but it was blue. Pure, dark, rich blue of an almost impossible shade. He had never seen anything like it before. He was swimming through it, enjoying the feeling of blissful weightlessness, and smiling away. He had been worrying about something, he was sure of it, but how could he? This dark ocean was perfect; how could he worry about trivialities now?
“We have arrived at our destination”
He does not care for the real world anymore. In fact, he barely remembers it at all. There is a whizzing sound, like a firecracker, which gets louder and louder until it finally goes off with a loud bang. With the sound, he is suddenly back in his room, and his bed beckons to him like a sultry lover. He runs happily towards it and leaps, but he falls through it, and continues falling, plummeting for longer than he has ever done before.
“Mayday, mayday!”
There is an intense heat now, and it spreads across his torso like a fiery brand, and the pain is unbelievable. This has never happened to him before. He has never had a dream that was this unpleasant.
“We’re going down! Brace for crash-landing!”
He feels a sudden darkness coming over him, and a great weight, or a being of terrible presence and magnitude approaching him at high speed, thigh he cannot see it. All of a sudden there is a blinding, gut-wrenching crash, and his world explodes into pain and fear.