Mission Hindenburg

by C. Alexander London

  “What have you done with Ian?” Cara demanded.

  “Why?” Eriele asked. The typing stopped. “Jealous?”

  “I’m not jealous,” said Cara. True or not, it didn’t matter. She just had to keep Eriele talking. “It’s just that I know he could do better than you.”

  “Oh, like you?” Eriele laughed. “Don’t worry. I have no romantic interest in Ian Kabra. He’s too much of a wuss for my taste.”

  “Ian is not a wuss!” Cara said. And she meant it. “He’s smart and he’s brave and he is kind in spite of himself.”

  “And that’s the problem,” said Eriele. “Joining up with the other branches has made him weak. He isn’t willing to perform the brutal work that needs to be done to secure the Lucian branch’s future. He’s no leader. Now, be quiet before I zap you with the Taser again.” She tapped a few more keys on a keypad. Cara ground her teeth together.

  124,000 feet.

  124,200 feet.

  The acceleration had slowed.

  “Ian Kabra is the best leader the Cahill family has ever had,” Cara said, risking Eriele’s anger. “He may be a conceited moron sometimes, but he is one of the finest people I know and I’d gladly lay down my life for him.”

  “You would?” said Ian, suddenly standing in the doorway to the bladder control room.

  Cara felt her cheeks blushing red.

  Katlyn rushed past Ian into the control room. She stopped short when she saw the Taser. “Eriele? What are you doing?”

  “Sorry, Katlyn,” Eriele said. “You won’t be winning any prizes today.”

  She hit one more key, and the images on the monitors flickered and turned into gibberish.

  Katlyn shook her head. “You can’t do this!”

  “I already have,” she said. Then she grabbed Cara’s chair from behind, wheeling her forward like a shield. She pressed the Taser to Cara’s neck. “Get out of my way or your girlfriend’s going to be in for quite a shock.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Ian said automatically.

  Eriele scoffed.

  “Really,” said Ian. “All she does is insult me and undermine me. The only time she has a kind word about me is when I’m not around to hear it. What do I care if you shock her?”

  Cara’s nostrils flared at Ian, but she understood what he was doing. It was the only way to slow Eriele down.

  “She is a sketchy, shady, bullheaded Ekat with as much taste and refinement as a chimpanzee in the zoo, and to think that I would ever call such a girl my ‘girlfriend’ is quite preposterous.”

  “You’re lying,” said Eriele.

  “Shock her,” said Ian. “See if I care. But I will stop you from sabotaging this ship.”

  Cara saw Dan glance at the altimeter. 129,000 feet. “Hey, Eriele?” he said. “You know what’s funny?”

  “What?” Eriele asked.

  “You’re so busy yelling at Ian,” Dan said, “you didn’t notice our altitude. Time to change the gas mixture.”

  Eriele turned to look at the altimeter, but it was too late. There was a hissing in the pipes and the whole airship shuddered. Amy fell into Ian. Katlyn stumbled into the doorframe and Eriele, knocked against a wall, lost her grip on Cara.

  Cara head-butted the Taser from Eriele’s hand and Amy rushed forward to snatch it from the floor, but it bounced away as the shuddering intensified.

  Eriele kicked Amy, who caught her leg and tossed her with a jujitsu throw, but a sudden shudder made her lose balance, too, toppling over onto Cara, whose legs kicked up into Ian’s chin as he’d stepped forward to help. They were all on the floor, struggling to get to their feet, all but Dan, who held on tight to the doorframe.

  Eriele lunged at him, tackling him into the hallway and jumping back to her feet. She stumbled down the corridor away from them.

  “You’ll pay for this!” Katlyn called out from the shaking floor.

  “Wrong!” Eriele yelled back. “I’ll get paid for this, and handsomely!”

  She vanished around the bending hall, keeping herself upright by leaning on the walls as she ran.

  The shuddering stopped when they airship cleared 134,000 feet.

  Ian untied Cara from the chair. “Nice job distracting her before the turbulence,” she told him. “I’ll work on fixing the controls here. You guys go get her. If I can’t break through her computer lockout, we’ll need her help.”

  “How will we get her to assist us?” Ian wondered.

  “If she’s still on board a ship about to explode, she’ll help us,” Cara countered.

  “Right,” said Ian.

  Amy and Dan hopped up to chase after Eriele. Ian, too, turned but he stalled a moment. “Cara … I …”

  “Just go get her,” said Cara. She bent down and picked up the Taser, checked its charge, and then handed it to Ian. “No one calls you a hopeless dingbat but me.”

  Ian smiled at her. Cara squeezed his hand over the Taser’s plastic grip. Then he ran off after Amy and Dan.

  Cara turned back to the computers.

  Katlyn was already at work. “We’re completely locked out of the system,” she said. “I can’t do anything.”

  Cara tried. Her first attempt to get around the firewall Eriele had built didn’t work. She looked at the altimeter.

  135,000 feet. 135,5000 feet. 136,000 feet.

  They were still rising, closer and closer to the Karman Line.

  There was no way into the system without Eriele’s help. Hacking in the old-fashioned way would take hours, time they didn’t have. Making Eriele talk was their only hope.

  Through the tiny porthole in the hallway, the earth’s surface kept shrinking away from them.

  137,000 feet.

  138,000 feet.

  The Thermosphere

  They ran and ran, while Eriele ducked and wove ahead of them. Busy engineering students dove out of their way, staring in puzzlement at the strangers racing through their airship.

  The corridor forked. Amy and Dan had to decide which passage to take.

  “We could split up,” Dan suggested.

  “Last time we split up you skydived from twenty-five miles high,” said Amy.

  The display screen on the nearest wall read 200,000 feet. They were 37 miles up now. He had no intention of jumping from that altitude.

  They still had 25 miles to go before they hit the Karman Line, though.

  Then, KABOOM.

  Maybe dying in free fall would have been better than exploding.

  Dan surprised himself with the thought. Had he really become so used to death he could think about his own so methodically?

  “We stick together,” said Ian, catching up to them. “We have to think like she would. Let’s say you just rigged an airship to explode, one that you were still on. What would you do?”

  “Try to get off it,” suggested Amy.

  “Right,” said Ian. “So, Dan, you’ve done this before. Where’s the exit?”

  “It’s suicide to jump from this altitude,” said Dan. “She wouldn’t.”

  “It’s suicide to stay on board now that she’s sabotaged the ship to blow,” said Amy. “So where would she go to try to escape?”

  “I don’t know,” Dan told her. “This is a totally different ship from the one I jumped out of.”

  “Physics is physics, Dan,” Amy told him. “There are only a few places an airlock could be in the design of any airship. I know you memorized the last one you were on.”

  “Right, fine,” said Dan. “I did.”

  “So use that ship as a blueprint for this,” said Amy. “Try to find features that match.”

  Dan thought. He looked around. The other airship had higher ceilings, wider corridors, and a ballroom. This ship was far more functional, designed for one thing only, to win.

  And winning meant they’d all die. Why’d these students have to be so good at designing dirigibles?

  Focus, Dan! he told himself. Focus!

  215,000 feet.

  He had to
concentrate. Everyone was counting on him.

  The designers would want to minimize friction that could slow the airship down. The engineers would want any doors, hatches, or openings to be toward the back to minimize the drag from air resistance.

  He closed his eyes, imagined his way through the other airship like it was a blueprint.

  “Would you please hurry?” Ian interrupted his thinking. “We are running out of sky.”

  219,000 feet.

  “I’m thinking!” Dan snapped at him. He understood the ship’s design now, not just the way it looked but why it looked that way. The balloon was shaped like a wing so that it could generate the most lift from its forward motion as well as its upward thrust from the gas. The gondola was a disc so that air would flow smoothly around it. And the point where that air would slide past it would be at the back. Anything jutting out, like a door, for example, would be tucked back there!

  His eyes snapped open.

  “I know where she’s going!” said Dan. “This way!’

  He ran ahead and the other two followed. They reached the end of a corridor where a ladder rose into a service compartment above the passenger area, to the highest level of the airship’s gondola, just below the balloon’s hull.

  “I think the exit will be at the back of this compartment,” he said.

  “You think?” Ian asked.

  “I’m sure,” said Dan.

  Ian nodded.

  “Let me go first.” Ian held up the Taser. “I’m armed.”

  “Just” — Amy touched Ian’s shoulder — “be careful.”

  “And remember, Cara needs her alive!” Dan added.

  Ian nodded and climbed up the ladder.

  Amy grabbed the rungs and stopped before she climbed up. She looked back at her brother. “If this doesn’t work,” she said, “I want you to know you were the best brother I could have hoped for. Even if you were a pain.”

  Dan just smiled at her. “Amy,” he said, “this is going to work.”

  She climbed and Dan followed her.

  He really hoped he was right. He’d hate for his last words to his big sister to have been a lie.

  The compartment had a ceiling so low they all had to crouch, even Dan, Amy noticed. They crept past hoses and pipes and electrical conduits, junction boxes with blinking lights. The innards of the ship.

  If someone wanted to do some real damage, this was the place to do it.

  Why hadn’t Eriele just skipped the whole control room hack and done her damage up here?

  “Stupid thing, latch on!” Eriele muttered somewhere in the maze of pipes. Ian held his fingers to his lips, telling Amy and Dan to be quiet. They fanned out, creeping toward the sound of her voice in a wide arc so that if she tried to run, she’d run into one of them.

  Eriele was climbing into a jumpsuit just like the one Dan had worn for his dive. It was even branded with the Gas Flight Xtreme logo. She must have stolen it earlier and stashed it away on board this ship once she’d seen it work. The first jumpers had been her guinea pigs … Dan had been her guinea pig. Amy felt like they’d been played for fools from the very beginning.

  Eriele was, however, having trouble getting one of the hoses from the air pack to connect to the controls on her glove.

  “Not easy to put on by yourself, is it?” asked Dan. “You learn on the Internet, too?”

  Eriele looked up. “Stay back,” she warned. Her eyes darted from Dan to Amy, then to Ian. “Let me go.”

  “Tell Cara how to undo the damage you caused to the computers and you can fly to the moon for all it concerns us,” said Ian.

  “You should be thanking me,” Eriele snarled at him. “I am doing what you’re too weak to do yourself.”

  “You keep saying that,” said Ian. “But I do not believe that my reluctance to murder innocent students while the world watches is weakness.”

  “Murder?” Eriele said as she finally snapped the hose into its socket with a hiss. She reached for her helmet. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Outcast’s planned disaster,” said Ian.

  “I don’t work for the Outcast,” said Eriele. “I work for your father.”

  “He works for the Outcast,” said Ian. “It’s all the same. You are in league with my father to blow up this airship. I will not let that happen.” He glanced at Amy and Dan. “We will not let that happen.”

  Eriele shook her head. “You idiot. Your father paid me to do what you wouldn’t do … to sabotage this ship so it’d never reach 327,000 feet, so that it can’t win the competition.”

  “The competition?” Ian wrinkled his brow. “This is just about the competition?”

  “Of course!” said Eriele. “Where do you think Lucian wealth and power comes from? This technology here, the contracts that will come from winning this competition, they are going to be worth billions!”

  “My father was lying to you,” said Ian. “Whatever he had you do, it’s going to blow up this ship.”

  “You must really hate him to think that of your own father.” Eriele clutched the helmet beneath her arm and stepped to the airlock door behind her. “I told him how to sabotage this ship without hurting anyone and he told me to do it. He had top Lucians on all the other ships, but he trusted me with this one.”

  “He used you to lure us here,” said Ian. “Now, tell us how to undo what you’ve done.”

  “All I did was set the gas mixture to get heavier when we hit 326,000 feet. We won’t explode. We just won’t ascend anymore. That’s it.”

  “If there’s no danger, then why are you jumping out?” asked Dan.

  “Because I don’t want to go to jail, kid!” Eriele said. “That’s what the rest of you are for.” She smirked at Dan. “Don’t worry, you and I will be the only ones to know that I beat your world record. I’m not about to call a press conference.”

  She opened the door into the airlock compartment.

  Ian drew his Taser and pointed it at her.

  She met his eyes.

  The altimeter read 250,000 feet.

  “Don’t do it,” Dan warned her. “At this height there’s not enough air resistance. You’ll go into an uncontrolled spin while you’re falling way too fast. You won’t be able to get out of it and, like, blood will pour out of your eyeballs. You won’t survive.”

  “Unlike you, Dan, I trained for this.”

  “Listen to my brother, Eriele,” said Amy. “He knows about this stuff. He’s trying to save you.”

  “Sorry, kids,” Eriele said. “This is where I leave you.”

  She began to close the airlock door when Ian’s hand rose up. A blue bolt shot from the end of the Taser and hit Eriele square in the chest.

  She fell back against the hull, hard, twitching and squirming. Her eyes rolled back in her head and the helmet fell from her grasp. Ian kicked it away from her.

  “She won’t be getting away now,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Amy added. “But she also won’t be conscious to help us. We need her.”

  “She’s alive,” Ian replied.

  “We need her awake.”

  “She said the ship wasn’t going to explode,” said Ian.

  “What if she was wrong?” said Amy. “The Outcast has manipulated everyone to be just where he wants them, moving us around like chess pieces. What if this is how he gets rid of us for good?”

  Silence fell. Ian clenched his jaw.

  “I made an executive decision,” said Ian. “Right or wrong, I’m the leader and I made the decision that she was telling the truth, that she didn’t want to kill anyone. She wanted to get rich.”

  “But how can you know that?” Dan wondered. “You’re gambling with our lives!”

  “That’s what leadership is!” Ian yelled back. “You of everyone should know that!”

  Ian had tears in his eyes. Amy saw the weight of responsibility crashing down on him. He was right.

  They all stared out of the small porthole at the other end of the airlock
into the blackness of space. The lower atmosphere radiated blue below them, like an ocean above the earth.

  “If you’re wrong, Ian.” Amy shook her head, barely able to find the words. “If you’re wrong, this is it for us. We’re all going to die when we hit 327,000 feet.”

  She glanced at the altimeter. 265,000 feet and climbing.

  “I made a decision,” Ian repeated, his jaw set but his face losing its color. Amy knew the feeling all too well. The doubt creeping in. The fear of failure. The fear of putting the people you love in danger.

  Leadership was taking its toll on Ian Kabra.

  All Amy could wonder was, what would Grace have done in this situation?

  “Let’s go back to the others,” she suggested.

  One thing Grace Cahill always counted on was family, even to the end.

  Especially at the end.

  The Thermosphere

  By the time they got back to the control room, the altimeter read 310,000 feet. Katlyn was on a red phone talking frantically to the captain.

  “I can’t get back into the system to change the gas mixture!” Cara cried out when she saw them. “Make Eriele tell us how!”

  “We can’t,” said Ian.

  “Ian turned her off like a light,” Dan told them.

  Cara cocked her head at him. “That was not very smart.”

  “She was going to jump,” Dan said. “Forty-seven miles up.” He made a whistling sound to emphasize the very long fall she had in store. “It was the only way to stop her. No one deserves to be splattered into human gravity goo, not even a ruthless Lucian saboteur like her.”

  “She said we’re not going to explode,” Amy told Cara and Katlyn. “Just that we won’t reach the Karman Line. We won’t win.”

  “That’s it?” said Cara. “She tased me for that?”

  “Well, winning this contest is worth billions of dollars,” Ian said.

  “Don’t you dare defend her, Ian Kabra,” Cara told him.

  “I didn’t mean to — I —” Ian stammered.

  Amy shook her head. Those two really had to work out their romantic issues ASAP. If these were the last moments of her life, she didn’t want to spend them watching the two of them flirt-argue with each other.