Acid Sky

by Mark Anson

  He closed his eyes and thought quickly. What would you do, if you were coming in and there were no radio-based landing aids, and you had to land?

  Use the ball. Hartigan was experienced enough to use the optical landing system on its own to make a landing. Might take a couple of tries, but he could do it. Yes. That was it. Try to relax. He scanned the sky through his binoculars; they must be getting close now.

  ‘Skydive One Five Two, Tower. we have you on localiser. Maintain current height to intercept glideslope.’

  ‘Tower, One Five Two. We are on course but we can’t see the localiser. I’m holding off dumping fuel. Do you want me to go round?’

  ‘One Five Two, roger, continue approach, await instructions.’ The tower controller punched some buttons, turned to Shaffer. ‘Localiser’s working, sir, it must be their receiver. They need to dump fuel now if they’re going to attempt a landing.’

  ‘Continue.’ Shaffer’s voice came from his mouth, but it wasn’t him talking. His hands clenched the binoculars so hard that they shook.

  ‘One Five Two, continue approach. You are number one for landing, below glideslope, report visual and fuel state.’

  There was a pause before Hartigan’s voice responded.

  ‘One Five Two, roger, dumping fuel to landing weight.’ Through his binoculars, Shaffer could see the long trail of boiling liquid oxygen stream from the tiny speck of the spaceplane. After a short pause, Hartigan’s voice came back again:

  ‘One Five Two, we can’t acquire the glideslope. Continuing on visual approach, please advise course and height.’

  This time the tower controller reached out and pressed another button, and lights on the situation boards went red. ‘Sir, we have incoming recovery, no radio landing aids, no divert possible.’ The controller’s face had gone white.

  ‘Roger.’ Shaffer looked at the crewman at the next console. ‘Sound crash stations. Inform the captain we have an emergency.’ He pointed to the tower controller. ‘Bring them in.’

  ‘One Five Two, roger. You are below glideslope, on course and speed. Report visual and fuel state.’

  ‘One Five Two, carrier in sight. Fuel state is four decimal nine tonnes. Visual approach.’ Hartigan’s voice was calm, as if he was flying the approach in a simulator.

  In the background, Shaffer could hear the sound of the emergency alarms sounding through the ship. He could visualise the scenes below him in the carrier; he could see the pressure doors sliding shut, the crew grabbing facemasks as they ran to their crash stations. If the spaceplane hit hard, it could easily breach the hull.

  ‘One Five Two, your fuel state four decimal nine. Landing lock negative, visual landing. Clear to land, release hook and immediate move to elevator when down.’

  ‘One Five Two.’

  ‘Arresting gear ready, Olympus four decimal nine.’

  ‘Control room ready, Olympus four decimal nine, landing full stop.’

  ‘Deck clear.’

  ‘Go landing.’ Now there were a set of green lights alongside the red CRASH ALERT sign on the tower controller’s console.

  ‘One Five Two, we have the ball, fuel state four decimal seven, established for landing.’

  ‘One Five Two, land.’

  The litany of the landing exchange was done, and they were committed. Shaffer could see the incoming spaceplane now, its landing lights bright against the sky.

  The carrier moved underneath him, and rolled suddenly to one side, then lurched upwards. Shaffer had to grab a console to stop himself from being knocked to the ground.

  ‘Wind shear. Wind shear,’ a computer added its voice to the klaxon.

  ‘Control room! Hold us steady!’ Shaffer yelled into the tower controller’s circuit.

  ‘We’re trying.’

  He turned back anxiously to the incoming spaceplane. It was rolling from side to side, trying to keep up with the ship. ‘Wave them off! The deck’s not stable!’

  On the deck outside, the green lights on the optical landing system changed to a flashing red, and the lines of deck lighting turned red.

  ‘Too late!’ The tower controller yelled as the spaceplane roared over the threshold, its engines screaming as Hartigan put power on. It straightened out, and for a moment, it looked as if it was going to make it clear of the carrier. Then another gust caught the carrier’s left wing, lifting it violently upwards. The giant spaceplane, caught in the swirl of disrupted air, ploughed into the rising deck, its landing gear shearing off with a crump that resounded through the carrier. It collapsed onto the deck, and its momentum carried it screeching across the deck lights, scattering wreckage behind it.

  In the last few moments, Shaffer took the binoculars from his eyes and saw the spaceplane, a river of black smoke streaming from its underside, sliding in slow-motion across the flight deck, straight towards him.

  Oh, no—

  Liquid oxygen sprayed from its ruptured tanks in a fan of white vapour, turning it into a fifty-tonne bomb.

  One wing scythed into the Langley’s tower, taking a huge chunk out of the base. The spaceplane, spinning wildly, screeched on over the wing and slid over the leading edge. It broke apart, sending wreckage and fuel into the intakes of the Langley’s outermost engine. Tonnes of metal, fuel and liquid oxygen plunged straight into the spinning blur of fan blades and compressor. The nose and forward fuselage of the spaceplane, shorn of its wings, fell away from the carrier, arrowing down towards the clouds below.

  The Langley’s outermost engine exploded as its entire kinetic energy was released in a split second; the fan blades and compressor disintegrated and ripped outwards, tearing out huge holes in the right wing, and driving blade fragments deep into the neighbouring engine. The inboard engine’s compressor stalled with a huge bang and then gyrated to a shuddering, catastrophic halt, choked with debris and the gases from the first explosion.

  The stream of call traffic from the tower was cut off abruptly when the spaceplane tore through its base, severing the communications links. The tower, half its supporting structure gone, toppled slowly over in the roar of the slipstream. For a moment, it looked as if it might hold, then as the Langley’s engines exploded in ruin directly underneath it, the entire structure toppled back and away in a shower of debris and severed cables. The remains of the tower tumbled over the back of the carrier’s wing, taking great chunks out of the structure before tearing through the main elevons as it fell off the back of the carrier and down into the sky.

  A trail of black, radioactive smoke, flecked with fire, belched from the remains of the Langley’s engines. The reactor core had been torn open on the outermost engine, and the uranium fuel pellets blazed like fireflies as they streamed out of the stricken reactor. The innermost engine had stopped and was on fire. Another explosion tore through the twin engines, belching flames and debris from the severed stump of the tower.

  Shedding wreckage from the damaged wing, the enormous carrier rolled slowly to the right, and began to fall from the sky like a wounded bird.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Colonel Donaldson was in his personal stateroom when the crash alert sounded. He had been changing into his uniform ready for Simmons’s arrival. The bruises from Shaffer’s attack made him wince, but he was damned if he was going to surrender his command in anything but full uniform.

  The moment he heard the strident blare of the klaxon in the corridor outside, he dropped everything and ran instinctively for the control room, banging the doors open as he raced through his day cabin.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded. The carrier moved suddenly beneath him, and he grabbed a console to steady himself.

  Conway turned to face him. ‘Landing emergency, captain – incoming spaceplane can’t get a landing system lock, so they’re flying a manual approach.’

  Donaldson moved swiftly over to the traffic radar display. The dot of the incoming spaceplane was aligned with the graphic of the Langley’s deck, and was moving closer with every second. The bore
sight camera on the optical landing aid showed the magnified speck of the craft, rising and falling against the crosshairs as it came in.

  ‘Jesus, we’ve got a pitching deck – can he go round?’

  ‘He could, but the conditions are getting worse; this is his best chance.’

  ‘Who’s flying?’

  ‘Hartigan. If anyone can pull it off, he can.’

  The captain nodded grimly. ‘I suppose it’s too late to divert now?’

  Conway pointed out the positions of the other carriers on the situation display. ‘The Curtiss was our last one, and they had to move out of diversion range a few minutes ago; they hit the edge of the storm and took damage to one of their rudders. Hartigan’s got to land here.’

  The carrier heaved beneath them, more violently this time.

  ‘Caution, turbulence.’

  ‘Helm, hold her steady!’ Donaldson yelled above the noise of the automated voice alert. ‘Override the autopilot if you have to!’

  ‘It’s shearing too much, sir,’ the helmsman said, sweat beading on his forehead as the carrier rolled again.

  ‘Control room! Hold us steady!’ Shaffer’s voice came over the tower controller’s circuit.

  ‘We’re trying,’ Conway answered calmly, but his gaze flicked between the helm and the traffic radar, and the looming blip of the spaceplane. ‘They need to go round – we’re not stable,’ he muttered. Just at that moment, the wave-off lights illuminated.

  ‘He’s going round.’

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Donaldson urged, watching the spaceplane rising up against the crosshairs of the glideslope. ‘Power!’ For a moment, it looked as if they would make it; the spaceplane’s nose was rising as it passed over the threshold, and they could hear the thunder of its engines.

  Suddenly the control room rolled hard to the right as an enormous gust seized the carrier and heaved it over. Donaldson and another crewman were thrown against the wall.

  ‘Hard left stick!’ Conway yelled, but it was too late. A heavy thump, then another, came through the structure from behind them, and the carrier shuddered.

  ‘Control room! We have a crash on the deck, they’ve hit the deck! They’re coming towards us, they’re …’ the voice disintegrated into a tangle of broken words, before cutting off altogether. The Langley continued its roll to the right; the heavy spaceplane was sliding over the wing.

  The Langley suddenly lurched upright, and then the entire ship was battered by a loud boom, and following hard on that, the control room erupted in alarms.

  For a moment, nobody said anything; they were staring in disbelief at the growing sea of red text on the control panels. They had never seen anything like this, not even in emergency simulations. Another boom, longer this time, shuddered through the ship, and it began to roll to the right again, but the roll kept on going.

  ‘Bank angle,’ the flight computer added its voice to the strident warning alarms.

  Conway recovered first, hauling himself over to the helm position against the steepening tilt of the deck. The autopilot had disconnected, and the helmsman had taken control, holding the steering controls over to the left.

  ‘Can you get us level?’ Conway gasped.

  ‘She’s hard over, sir – she’s not responding!’ The helmsman’s eyes were wide as the roll continued. Conway glanced at the engine control panel and saw to his horror that both of the right engines had stopped and were on fire; alarm messages filled the screen. The fires were Engineering’s problem; somehow Conway had to keep the Langley in the air with only two engines.

  ‘Hard left, all rudders.’

  ‘Sir, that’ll risk—’

  ‘Do it!’ Conway barked. ‘Forget the manuals; we’ve got to stop this roll. And give me full thrust, both left engines.’

  The helmsman dialled in the settings and watched as the remaining engines’ thrust readings rose. The engines were so big that it took several seconds to change power settings. The carrier continued to roll, and was going past forty degrees of bank.

  Donaldson pulled his way past the crazily tilted consoles to stand behind them.

  ‘How bad is it?’ he asked Conway.

  ‘We’ve lost both right engines and there’s no elevon control on the right wing; it must have been damaged.’

  ‘I’m losing her, sir!’ The helmsman looked up in panic. ‘We’re going over!’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Conway muttered, and sat down in the right seat, pulling the seat straps over his shoulders. ‘My aircraft.’ Outside, a roar of air started to buffet the front of the ship as the airflow started to break up.

  ‘Bank angle, stalling.’

  ‘Have we got full power on the engines?’ Conway shouted. It was becoming hard to hear above the noise.

  ‘Yes sir!’

  Conway pushed the controls forward to keep the nose down in the turn. ‘Loadmaster!’

  ‘Yes sir!’

  ‘Pump everything you’ve got into the left trim tanks – don’t stop until the tanks are full. Then dump all our spare fuel; we need to lose as much weight as possible!’

  ‘Bank angle sixty degrees, stalling.’

  ‘We’d better transmit a mayday.’ Conway looked at the captain.

  ‘Yes.’ Donaldson turned to the communications console. ‘Send a mayday, give our position, request the other carriers get over here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Donaldson turned back to the helm. Was the roll slowing? The carrier was so big that it was hard to tell. But the numbers on the console were slowing; the dumping of excess weight and Conway’s actions were having an effect at last. The roll slowed, stopped, and then started to move back – the carrier was gradually coming upright again. Conway blew out his cheeks in relief. He eased the giant aircraft back to an almost-even keel, and held it there while he sorted the trim. The Langley moved about unsteadily while he experimented, until he announced:

  ‘Okay, I think I’ve got it. We’re flying with almost full left rudder, and all our trim over to the left. I can just maintain altitude, but only in a very slow right-hand turn. If I try to fly straight and level, we just lose altitude.’

  ‘Well done. Just keep us flying.’ Donaldson clapped Conway on the shoulder, and turned to the rest of the room. ‘Get me the tower.’

  ‘The tower’s gone, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘I mean it’s missing sir – broken off completely. The spaceplane crashed into it and took it off at the base.’

  Donaldson’s face paled as he heard the words, but the external camera displays were telling him the same thing – there was nothing left of the tower except a jagged stump, and both the engines on that side were belching smoke into the sky behind them. The wing—

  Jesus. The wing.

  The leading edge had been torn open and the wing ribs exposed where the spaceplane had tumbled over it. In the distance, on the wing’s trailing edge, he could see that the main elevon had gone completely, and one of the others was badly damaged and stuck in one position. The surface was covered with gouge marks and was missing panels. It didn’t take an aerodynamicist to know that the wing was only producing about half the lift it should. And if it stalled, if the airflow over its surface broke up and the lift collapsed, then the carrier would flip over and go straight down.

  ‘Helm,’ Donaldson said, as calmly as he could. ‘Right wing is severely damaged. Watch your angle of attack. Let us turn if you have to, but keep the airflow moving over the wing.’

  ‘Roger that. Can we get any thrust from three and four?’

  ‘Negative. Four’s in pieces and three’s shut down, both look like they’re on fire. The right main elevon is missing, and the one next to it looks like it’s jammed. Don’t let the airspeed drop, that wing will stall if you give it the slightest chance. Damage control!’

  ‘Sir.’ Neale’s voice came on the intercom.

  ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Sir, the corridor to
the tower’s breached but the pressure doors are holding. Radiation leak and reactor fire in engine four but temperature’s dropping. Engine three shutdown, fire is out. One and two are holding. Mains bus B is offline but power is holding.’

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘Seven missing in the tower, including Captain Shaffer. Plus the crew of the spaceplane. Three crewmen injured in the hangar and the galley, one serious.’

  ‘Deck elevator?’

  ‘Operational. We can launch aircraft.’

  ‘How many aircraft have we got?’

  ‘We’re checking them over now. They were all chained down for the storm, but Zero Nine broke free and hit the hangar wall, so we’ve only got eight operational. Zero Four’s still missing an engine but we can get it flying if we have to.’

  ‘Roger.’ Donaldson considered for a moment, glancing down at the radar display on the chart table in the centre of the room, and then he looked round at the control room personnel. ‘Okay. Listen up. Open pressure doors down the port side of the ship so that we can get casualties to sick bay. Bring generators up to maximum power. And I want heads of all sections, and all our pilots, here to the control room in five minutes.’ He paused. ‘And get me the captains of the Wright and the Curtiss.’

  The Langley continued its fight to fly in the turbulent air at the edges of the great storm. The thick trails of smoke from its shattered engines subsided to a faint trickle, but the giant carrier was heeling over slightly to the right. It pursued a slowly curving course that took it round closer to the storm. Below the carrier, tonnes of stored liquid propellants fell away in great streams of boiling gas, to lighten the ship and make it easier to handle.

  Elsewhere over Venus, the Wright and the Curtiss altered course and raced towards the Langley. The huge storm prevented the Curtiss from flying the most direct route, and even the Wright would take nearly two hours to get here. Somehow, the Langley’s surviving crew had to keep the stricken carrier flying until then.

  Ahead of the Langley, the sky had turned a dark grey. A slowly turning maelstrom of dark cloud, shot through with lightning, dominated the skyline, stretching out towards the horizon on either side.