Acid Sky

by Mark Anson

  ‘Zero Four, downwind.’

  ‘Zero Four, you are number one for landing. Report visual and fuel state.’

  ‘Zero Four—’ Clare said, but got no further. There was an almighty bang from the left engine, and the aircraft lurched hard to the left, wrenching her neck. The insistent sound of the master alarm erupted in the cockpit. The EICAS display was a mass of red warnings.

  Engine failure, she thought, and her well-trained mind flicked to the emergency checklist that she had rehearsed so many times in the simulator. The asymmetric thrust from the remaining engine was sending her off course, and she countered it instinctively with right rudder and stick as she stepped through the checklist items in her head. She knew she had to act quickly – if there was an oxygen-fed fire anywhere in the engine structure, it could burn through the wing spars in seconds. But there was no fire alert showing, just a list of warnings about loss of readings from the left engine. The engine was clearly not developing any thrust, and she couldn’t make sense of the warnings, so she pulled the thrust lever back to idle, shut off the fuel, and focused on retrimming the aircraft.

  She risked a glance out of the left window, and for a moment she couldn’t take in what she saw. The left engine was gone – the engine pylon was all that remained. Severed cables waved about in the slipstream, and a stream of vapour trailed into the air.

  She raced through the next items on the checklist. She still had power and hydraulic pressure from the right engine, she still had fuel, and she still had …

  Radio. She realised that the tower were trying to call her.

  ‘Zero Four, Tower, come in.’

  ‘Zero Four. I’ve lost my left engine, it’s come off completely. No fire. I need to land immediately.’

  ‘Roger Four. Confirm you have lost an engine, we saw it separate. You are losing something from the left wing, could be fuel or hydraulic fluid. You are twenty kilometres behind us, repeat, twenty kilometres behind, and low. Can you gain altitude?’

  Clare glanced at the altimeter. She was losing height, but she wasn’t alarmed yet; the right engine was still on cruise thrust. She pushed the thrust lever forward and retrimmed the controls, and the aircraft started to climb, though slowly. She was a long way behind the ship now, and she needed to turn round and get set up for landing.

  ‘Zero Four, I’m gaining height now, turning onto localiser. I’m going to climb until I hit the glideslope, then come in for as normal as landing as I can. I still have full control.’

  ‘Roger Four. We have you on the radar, continue your left turn to intercept localiser. Do you need radar vectors?’

  ‘Negative, I can see the localiser now.’

  ‘What’s your fuel state?’

  ‘Two decimal – correction, zero decimal eight tonnes.’ Clare stared in horror at the fuel gauges. She was losing fuel fast, most likely from the ruptured lines in the engine pylon. She changed the fuel flow to tank-to-engine, and hoped that there was enough in the right tank to get her to the carrier.

  She checked her altitude and position relative to the carrier, and glanced back at the fuel gauges again. Now that she had isolated the tanks, she could see that the left tank was draining away to zero, while the right tank was holding steady at four hundred kilos. She felt a rush of relief, but cursed herself for not checking sooner.

  ‘Tower, I have a fuel leak and I’ve isolated it, but I have just zero decimal four to get on board.’

  ‘Roger Four. Keep it coming. You are on the localiser. Keep climbing to intercept glideslope.’ The calm voice, talking as if it was just another landing, reassured her.

  The crabbed attitude of the aircraft, slewed to the right to counter the asymmetric thrust from just one engine, increased drag and fuel consumption, just when she least needed it. The altitude crawled upwards. She looked down at the fuel gauges.

  Three hundred kilos!

  She had to reduce fuel consumption somehow.

  ‘Zero Four, I’m going to reduce my climb rate to save fuel.’

  There was a noticeable pause, then the voice from the tower spoke urgently: ‘Negative Four, maintain climb at expense of fuel, or you won’t have enough height to make a normal approach. Do not reduce rate of climb, please read back.’

  ‘Maintain rate of climb, roger.’ Damn. She should have realised that. With a reduced climb rate, she might intercept the glide slope with more fuel, but she would be dangerously low and close by the time she did so. Far better to be in the right position further out, and be able to get sorted out for landing. There was nothing she could do to reduce fuel consumption as she slowly gained altitude.

  At last, the glideslope capture icon showed in her head-up display, and she could reduce the thrust.

  ‘Zero Four, you are on glideslope, five kilometres to run. What is your fuel state?’

  ‘Zero Four, I am passing zero decimal two on fuel.’

  ‘Four, you have enough fuel to land at your present consumption. You are on speed, keep it coming.’

  ‘Four, roger.’

  Just four kilometres behind the carrier, and she could see it now, a grey arrowhead against the bright clouds, its deck lighting blazing.

  One hundred and fifty kilos. She must be getting close to the point where the fuel pump inlets in the tanks would start to be uncovered, and then there would just be the fuel in the pipes, and then—

  ‘Four, landing checklist.’

  She was losing it, she realised. She should be working, preparing for the landing. She moved the gear selector to DOWN and lowered the hook, and ran through the other items in her head, checking the positions of the controls.

  Two kilometres to go, and just a hundred kilos left. If she made it, it would be by the thinnest of margins, and she absolutely had to land; there was not enough fuel for another try. If she missed the wire, the aircraft would fly off and away from the carrier, maybe start a turn to the left. Then at some point in the turn, long before she could make it back to the carrier and try again, the engine would die, the cockpit panels would flicker and go dark, and that would be it; game over.

  ‘Zero Four, landing system lock. Clear to land, release hook and move straight onto elevator when down.’

  The familiar routine was all she had to cling onto. She could see the flight deck clearly, and the lines of deck lighting, beckoning her home.

  ‘Zero Four, I have the ball, fuel state zero decimal one, established for landing.’

  ‘Zero Four, land.’

  Just one kilometre to go now, and Clare’s eyes were locked on the flight deck as she took control from the autopilot. She could feel the Frigate around her, it felt like an extension of her own body, and she reacted instinctively to the slightest gust, holding the wings level, flying down the beam to that tiny patch of deck where she had to land, or face the long fall to the surface below.

  She was nearly there – the carrier expanded to fill the sky ahead, the deck rushing up towards her, but her whole life, her very being, was focused on that spot on the deck. She didn’t see the crowd of figures on the Engineering deck, watching her come in, willing her to make it, or all the binoculars trained on her from the tower.

  She was over the ramp, and time slowed to a crawl. She felt the main gear hit, then the hook, and as her hand slammed the thrust lever forwards, a terrible, yawning gap, that seemed to stretch forever—

  She was thrown forward and sideways in her seat as the arresting gear hauled the aircraft to a stop. She managed to release the wire and roll forward onto the waiting elevator, and as the clamps went in, anchoring her to the deck and to safety, she collapsed in sobs in her seat.

  Barely ten seconds later, as the deck elevator started lowering her into the hangar, the engine ran out of fuel and began to spool down.

  Shaffer was the first to the cockpit once the elevator was down. He saw Clare, her facemask on now that the hatch was open, desperately trying to hold it together, and waved everyone else back.

  ‘It’s okay. You made it.�
� He put his arm round her shoulder, and unfastened her seat straps. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said, trying to smile through her tears. ‘I’m just glad to be down.’ She reached over to the engine controls, to begin the shutdown procedure, but Shaffer blocked her hand.

  ‘No, don’t touch anything; we need to record it all.’ He saw the shocked expression on her face, and explained gently: ‘Don’t worry, it’s normal procedure for any incident. We have to do these things. Come on.’ He started helping her to her feet. ‘That was a brilliant piece of flying, lieutenant. There’s a whole bunch of people in the ready room wanting to shake your hand and share some of their contraband with you.’ As she walked unsteadily to the hatch and stepped down to the deck, supported by Shaffer, deck handlers came up and patted her on the back, and the tears, which she had been trying to hold back, started again.

  ‘Hey, leave that alone!’ Shaffer shouted at a deck handler who was inspecting the left engine pylon. Hydraulic fluid dripped from the severed pipes and tattered bunches of cables that were all that remained of the missing engine. ‘Come on guys, let her through. Look, Foster, you go ahead of me, I’ll see you in the ready room – I’ll be along as soon as I’ve got the evidence secured.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sixty kilometres below the Langley, deep down on the hidden surface of Venus, events were unfolding that would affect the fate of everyone on board the carrier.

  Five hundred million years had passed since the huge, planet-wide eruptions that had buried most of the surface features of the planet. The surface of Venus had lain almost dormant since then, the slow fires of its interior biding their time until they could burst forth once more and cover the planet in molten ruin.

  Small eruptions, mere pinpricks on the planet, were commonplace, but these were nothing compared to the cataclysmic event that was building up below the surface. A huge dome of magma, nearly two hundred kilometres across, some last remnant of the titanic eruptions of the past, had lain imprisoned beneath an ancient caldera. Over tens of millions of years, the magma chamber had swelled, fed by upwelling lava plumes from the mantle, and the planet’s crust had slowly weakened as it flexed under the slow tides induced by the Sun. Now, the rocks had weakened and cracked to the point where the slightest trigger would precipitate a catastrophic failure.

  For days, small tremors and venting had shaken the mountains, sending broken rocks and boulders tumbling into the slab-strewn foothills. In the eerie stillness that presaged the cataclysm, poisonous vapours coiled into Venus’s overcast skies from a hundred small vents in the blasted, sterile landscape. Then, from far below, a distant rumble reached the surface. The ground started to quiver, as it had many times before, but this time it did not fade away, and the tremor became a violent shaking, the echo of rocks failing and tearing apart kilometres below the surface. Rocks fell in great landslides, bouncing into the air as they rolled down the mountainsides.

  The shaking ground bulged upwards, and blew apart in a series of explosions that rocked the landscape, sending fountains of dust, smashed rocks and boulders up into the air. From the open fissures, white-hot lava spewed up out of the planet and gushed out in rivers onto the ground. Great pillars of thick, poisonous gases belched skywards from the newly opened volcanic vent.

  The weakened crust could not hold it back, and in an enormous explosion and shock wave that reverberated round the planet, the entire mountain disintegrated, blown into fragments by the pressure of the rising, boiling magma. Released from its prison, thousands of cubic kilometres of lava erupted into the sky, seething with dissolved gases.

  Lightning, blue-white against the dark orange sky, ripped the heavy air as the searing hot gases forced their way upwards, shifting huge electrical charges into the sky. A boiling, lightning-filled cauldron of hot gas and ash rose up through the thick lower atmosphere, turning and gaining energy as it ascended.

  As the air pressure around it fell, the air mass expanded, until it became a circular storm, rising, growing, fuelled by the titanic powers of the eruption far below. It rotated faster as it rose, fed by the wind shear at higher altitudes, and the winds around its centre increased in speed, until it was a gigantic vortex, flinging great arms of dark storm clouds around itself.

  As it emerged from the upper layers of the cloud deck and encountered the change in temperature gradient at the tropopause, it flattened and spread out across the sky. Within hours, it had swelled to a hurricane hundreds of kilometres across, filled with black volcanic ash, a dark, spreading stain against the clouds.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Clare’s comlink beeped, and she stepped out of the noise of the ready room and into the corridor outside. The hum and throb of machinery seemed quiet after the shouting and drinking going on in there. Her heart swelled as she glanced down at the coveted aviator’s badge on her uniform; on her return from the hangar, they had pinned it onto her, and thrust a plastic cup filled with contraband whisky into her hand. She took another sip, and felt the warmth of the spirit inside her as she glanced at her comlink console.

  There was no ID on the caller, so it must be something official. She pressed the answer key.

  ‘Lieutenant Foster.’

  ‘Next time you might not be so lucky.’ The distorted and resynthesized voice spoke slowly and clearly, and Clare felt a sudden chill descend on her.

  ‘Go and see Coombes and apologise for what you did. Do exactly as he asks, or there will be another accident.’ The voice clicked off, and Clare stood there in astonishment, her mouth half-open. Her comlink display had returned to the home screen, instead of showing the call details as it normally did. She checked the call history, but there was no record – it was as if the call had never happened. How could they do that? Unless they were in control of the ship’s communications systems.

  Next time you might not be so lucky.

  The words ran down her spine like ice. It could only mean one thing. The hangar airlock was almost in front of her, on the other side of the corridor to the ready room. She walked quickly into the airlock, and pulled on a facemask while she waited for the lock to cycle.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered as the lights slowly went through their sequence, then finally she could open the inner door and walk across the hangar deck to where the damaged Frigate had been parked, but it had gone.

  ‘Where’s Zero Four?’ she asked one of the deck handlers.

  ‘Been moved into the pressure hangar.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the rearmost hangar. ‘The chief wants to take a look at it. Hey, slow down!’ he shouted as Clare ran off, nearly tripping over a fuel hose in her haste.

  She had to go back through the airlock section, and wait for the pressure to equalise again, before she could open another door and emerge in the pressure hangar. There were three Frigates inside, including Zero Four, and she forced herself to walk as casually as she could up to where the engineering chief was examining the left engine pylon.

  Seen up close, the damage was far greater than she had realised. Parts of the metal skin of the pylon had peeled back, and the leading edge of the wing had been damaged in places. A technician was taking pictures of the damage, under the direction of the chief.

  ‘Ah, Foster, thought you might be along at some point,’ Neale said. He turned to the technician. ‘Can you take some more, from the rear, I want to show the buckling.’ He moved to one side, and looked carefully at Clare.

  ‘Found anything?’

  ‘Well, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it’s clear that the engine jettison system malfunctioned in some way. You didn’t fire it accidently, I take it?’ He spread his hands, an apologetic expression on his face. ‘I have to ask.’

  Clare knew the question had been coming, but it still annoyed her. She shook her head firmly. ‘No, I didn’t. You know those switches are guarded, and you have to arm the system first – it’s not possible to fire it accidentally.’

 
‘No. Well, the arming switch is certainly in the safe position, and the flight recorder will back you up when we’ve analysed it. But however it fired, it didn’t separate cleanly. You see all this damage to the pylon structure? The jettison sequence is meant to close all the valves to the engine, separate all the couplings, and only then fire the explosive bolts to release the engine. What seems to have happened – at least from what we can see right now – is that the bolts fired on their own, and when the engine rotated up and away over the wing, it just tore out all the connections.’ He waved his hands to the mass of trailing cables. ‘That’s what caused your fuel leak – the fuel supply pipe was ripped off the mount, along with its valve. The internal tank pressure drove the fuel out very quickly. You’re lucky it wasn’t the LO2 supply.’

  ‘Hey, Chief,’ his assistant called, ‘take a look at this.’

  The chief went back to the pylon and peered at whatever the technician was showing him. ‘What am I – oh, I see.’ There was a pause while he pushed at something with his fingers to get a better view. ‘Hand me the borescope, will you? Let’s take a pic of that before we disassemble it.’

  The technician passed over the long rod of the borescope, and as Clare watched him manoeuvre the instrument into the pylon’s innards, she found herself wondering if she really had pressed the jettison button herself. But how could she? No – she frowned angrily. It was just the formless words of doubt whispering in her ear. She had done nothing wrong, and she certainly hadn’t switched the jettison system to ARM, lifted the safety cover on the left engine switch, and pressed FIRE. This thing had fired on its own. All the same, she wished that it had happened while Shaffer had been on board, then she would have had a witness.

  ‘Did you get any warning beforehand?’ The chief’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He was still staring into the eyepiece of the borescope.

  ‘Not that I noticed. It was running fine, I’d just turned onto the downwind leg. I made the call, and then it went bang. I thought it was a compressor stall at first, but then I saw the engine instruments.’