“Sir,” Twink said.
“Yes,” Seven responded without moving his eyes.
“If you die, do you have any idea what’s going to happen around here? I mean, to me and to… and to all of us?”
Seven looked up at Twink. “Yes I know, Twink. But I’m not going to die. Dying’s not on my plan. Look at the checklist – do you see it there? No, because death is definitely not a part of the procedure. So stop worrying. I’m not going to die – that is unless I crash on runway 12 at Dutch Harbor tomorrow morning because I didn’t know its true heading or the wind direction!”
“I’m on it,” Twink said, dashing quickly away.
The hours to takeoff passed in a blur. There was no time for Seven and Serea to rest, so they agreed that during the long night flight, they would take turns sleeping, with Seven manning the controls from takeoff.
They found themselves in their room just an hour prior to departure, packing their meager supplies into the single lightweight bag they were allocated. Seven could see the strain in Serea’s eyes. He knew her well enough to know exactly what she was worried about.
“He’s gonna be fine,” he reassured her. “Your father and the Commander will be on time, on station and ready to fly out just as we planned.”
Serea looked up from her bag into Seven’s eyes. “I just can’t believe all this is happening. No one ever expected any of this. And who knows whether they’ll be able to find fuel to make it Seattle , or shelter. What are they going to do…?”
“Serea, listen,” Seven responded, moving over beside her. His right hand slid along her shoulder and down her arm in a single, gentle stroke. “Twink had a long list of terminal worries just like that this morning. And I gave him the same advice I’m about to give you,” he said tenderly and reassuringly.
Serea looked into his eyes, obviously desperately needing to hear some words of encouragement from the man who had saved humanity from extinction.
“What?” she asked.
“It told him to go find out the wind direction at Dutch Harbor on runway 12.”
Serea looked at him with tears brimming in her eyes, and burst into laughter.
“Now that’s my sweet Aaron Seven!” she responded. “The whole world’s going to hell in a hand basket and you’re perfectly content with another data point!”
He wiped a trickle of tears from her cheek with his right forefinger and slipped it into his mouth. “And you also have a manganese deficiency. Not keeping up on your multivitamins, ey?”
She slapped his arm with a smack. “Frank’s absolutely right about you. You’re an incorrigible smart-aleck.”
He drew her tightly to him and kissed her deeply and passionately. “And you’re the most beautiful woman on earth.”
After a lingering moment, she withdrew and held him at arms length. “Considering the number left alive, that’s not saying very much.”
His eyes scanned her face and lingered, then began to sweep over her body. “This whole thing, this adventure we’ve got ahead of us… it all just makes me wanna get naked.”
Serea laughed deeply as she pushed him away. “Oh yeah? And what doesn’t?”
Seven looked at his watch. “We have time you know. I mean, you must realize how difficult this will be on the plane…”
gh
An hour later Seven and Serea sat in their seats in landing platform 2. They had briefed a sullen and unresponsive Spencer, then held a much more detailed briefing with a nervous but determined Sean Conlin, who clearly understood his position of authority, acting on behalf of Seven and Serea in their absence. Conlin was instructed to back off and allow Spencer to run the show, and to intervene only if sanity was about to be lost. In that event, his instructions were clear: detain and confine Spencer until Seven and Serea could return and sort it all out with the help of Raylond Desmond.
Crewmember Kevin Leighthouser would pilot the submersible platform–hangar, LP2, to the surface alone. Each of Pacifica’s two submersible platforms held a lightweight, VTOL aircraft in its interior, capable of lifting off from the small area and entering horizontal flight immediately after liftoff. Each of the composite carbon skinned aircraft optimally seated four passengers with limited cargo. They were designed after the remarkable world circumnavigating craft built by Burt Rutan in the late 20th century and Sir Laurence Quonsette in the early 21st.
“When I positioned the colony,” Serea said as her eyes scanned their route, “I thought our most probable landing zones were Honolulu or Adak, with Unalaska being a distant third and unlikely destination. I never considered these craft would be making round trip jaunts to the U.S. Mainland! With Honolulu we have a comfortable 15% safe fuel residual on landing. At Dutch Harbor , we’ll have less than five percent. If we run into foul weather or out-of-the-norm headwinds, we won’t make it.”
“We’re free from Pacifica and floating in the stream,” Leighthouser announced as LP2 detached itself with a loud bang and a vibrating thump. They all felt it shudder and swing into the prevailing current.
“Request permission to surface, sir.”
“Granted,” Seven responded instantly. “Let’s take her up.”
Leighthouser’s fingers expertly worked the controls of the platform and her tanks began to fill with air as she gracefully began to rise. It was
PACIFICA ’S VTOL AIRCRAFT
already nearing twilight above, so, at this depth, they were surrounded by near total darkness. Yet, as the platform approached the surface, the water around them began to lighten noticeably. By the time LP2 rested on top of the waters of North Pacific, the sun had just dipped below the horizon and there was at least another half hour of useful twilight. The surface of the ocean rolled in a rare set of gentle swells with but a few whitecaps.
Seven scrambled out of his seat and immediately opened the rear watertight hatch that separated the passenger compartment from the cramped VTOL hanger. Serea followed as Seven turned to face Leighthouser.
“Kevin, thanks for the ride,” Seven said, extending his hand toward the lanky, very capable crewman.
Leighthouser chuckled as he gripped Seven’s hand. A smile spread across the full expanse of his 23 year old face and his perpetually laughing brown eyes sparkled. “You be safe, Dr. Seven, and you, too, Serea. You guys get back soon and stay out of trouble.”
“You think I actually could get into any more trouble out there than I manage to find here?” Seven asked with a barely perceptive wink.
Leighthouser chuckled again and returned an understanding expression. “I suppose you always do pretty well for yourself no mater where you wind up.”
“Kevin, tell Mr. Conlin that I said to take special care to hook you up with Twink and Edgar and keep you all off the radar screen. Tell him those words exactly.”
“Got it,” Leighthouser responded. “I’m going to seal you in now so we can start the take off procedure and get you out of here on time.”
“Seconds count,” Seven agreed. He waved his right hand by his head in a Reaganesque salute, then grasped the wheel of the door and closed it with a bang. He watched as Leighthouser turned the wheel on the door from the other side and sealed them in.
As Seven turned, he saw that Serea had already donned her flight helmet and climbed into the right hand seat of the odd, silver and black VTOL aircraft. She attached the checklist pad onto a Velcro patch sewn on the leg of her flight suit as she closed and latched her hatch.
The VTOL was a radically shaped aircraft that looked more like a bizarre cross between a hummingbird and a grasshopper than an aircraft. It featured vertical jets that could be rotated from upright to horizontal after takeoff and then doubled as wing surfaces. Its fuselage was designed for maximum aerodynamics with a sharp nose and tail, but it had a squat, fat midsection that held up to four adult passengers and modest cargo.
“Starting to configure for flight now,” Serea said briskly and perfunctorily.
Seven leapt into his seat, slipped his own helmet
over his head, adjusted its lip mike and closed the hatch. Then he snapped his helmet’s communications cord into the panel in front of him, tossing their small flight bag onto the seat behind him. “Okay, Kevin, we’re set. Initiating checklist for takeoff. Go ahead and open the overhead doors now.”
“Roger that,” came the metallic voice over the helmet’s headset. “Opening overhead doors.”
Immediately Seven could feel his ears pop as the pressure from the platform finished equalizing with the outside. He heard the whine of electric motors as a shaft of dim light filtered into the tiny hangar from just above their heads. As the wide pair of juxtaposed doors began to slide apart over them, seawater entrained around the door rained down into the compartment and splashed across the craft.
“Aircraft powered up. Countdown clock initialized,” Serea said as her fingers continued to snap switches and dial in gauges across the face of the complex panel before her. A set of glowing red numbers appeared on a tiny strip of panel before them. They read: -11:58:17 and began to count down. Seven knew this was the time they would have to seek deep shelter at Unalaska Island’s Dutch Harbor . The digital clock represented the time until the solar storms would rise again above the horizon at their destination with an unforgiving vengeance. There would be no second chances, no time-outs, and there could be no errors. If this mission did not operate smoothly, they would never return.
“Doors are in position. Raising platform now,” Leighthouser intoned.
“Do it,” Seven responded.
“GPS initialized,” Serea said briskly, reading from her checklist and matching switches with functions. “Navigation routine engaged and verified. Fuel on and verified. Platform locks de-energized…”
“Stop,” Seven said, placing his gloved hand in front of hers. “Keep the locks engaged.”
“But it’s next on the list,” Serea said with unconcealed annoyance.
“Then the list is out of order,” Seven responded coolly. “If you disengage the platform locks now we could roll off before the engines are up to speed.”
Serea looked genuinely surprised. “You’re right! I can’t believe that you’re actually listening to me while you’re working your own list. That’s kind of…”
“Amazing?” Seven responded with a sly smirk.
“Well, actually, I was thinking more like mutant,” she responded with her own smirk. “It is, after all, my job to keep you sufficiently humble to actually be of some use.”
“It’s working,” Seven responded flatly. “Now get back to your list before we slide outta here late.”
As they spoke, the canopy of the aircraft peeked above the platform level and continued to rise with the moving LP2 until it lurched to a stop. All around them they could only see the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the gathering twilight.
“Platform engaged at upper level,” Leighthouser reported.
“Roger that. We’re nearly though the checklist now,” Serea responded.
Seven felt suddenly queasy as his eyes drank in the incredibly wide expanse around him gently rolling with the swells. He had grown accustomed to the confines of Pacifica , and, while it was magnificently large for an underwater structure, this expanse seemed visually infinite in its extent. His mind would again have to grow accustomed to the vast scale of the outside world. His eyes shifted to his left and he saw the red-orange glow of the Pacific sunset, the deadly hue of the quantum storms that would soon rise again and face them over the opposite horizon - relentless, lethal, inevitable and wholly unforgiving. No longer were sunrises and sunsets romantic, they were windows of certain death that once opened, could not be closed by the mere hand of man.
“Checklist complete,” Serea said crisply. “Ready for engine start.”
“Affirmative, ready for engine start,” Seven responded as his hand moved to the panel and twisted the start switch fully right.
There was no hesitation. The advanced, powerful, featherweight engine began to whine just behind their seats, starting with a muted scream and then building to a high pitched, shrieking roar. Seven could feel the craft begin to vibrate then lightly lurch against its hold-down restraints.
“We have full thrust, 112 percent. Ready to disengage locks,” Serea said, looking over to Seven who simply gave her a thumbs up and a flat smile.
Serea’s hand toggled the hold-down switch and the craft literally leapt off the deck to a sharp vertical take-off.
“Liftoff!”
“Godspeed and God bless Aaron Seven,” Leighthouser’s voice said over the radio.
“Have courage, Kevin and all of our family and friends at Pacifica. We shall return just as we have departed,” Seven replied, knowing his voice was being carried throughout the colony.
Seven could feel the tug of the craft’s G forces pulling him back into his seat. He had calculated a carefully designed trajectory out of Pacifica, threading a dangerous needle of time and space. If they rose too high, they would reenter the sun’s dangerous quantum storms again. But if they did not rise high enough, the denser and moister layers of the lower atmosphere would eat up their fuel too quickly and they would not be able to make their destination before running empty. In half an hour, they would be able to climb to the craft’s most efficient altitude, but in this window of time, they were forced to fly on a careful path upward, climbing just beneath the sun’s ever diminishing layer of deadly radiation energy.
Serea’s hands gripped the stick between her legs as she expertly guided the craft from vertical flight to near horizontal in just 20 seconds. As she did so, Seven’s right hand eased back on the craft’s throttle. Making the transition from vertical to horizontal flight was a critical maneuver, for the VTOL consumed six times as much power in the vertical take-off and landing mode than in level flight. During this expedition, careful fuel consumption would make the difference between life and death.
Serea expertly piloted the craft. She was a licensed pilot in fixed wing, jet engine and helicopters. Seven was also a licensed private fixed wing pilot but felt thoroughly comfortable at the controls of nearly any moving object of intelligent design. Between them both, they felt entirely confident to carry out the mission that lay ahead.
“Switch to autopilot,” Seven commanded.
“Switching now,” Serea responded. The autopilot carried little operational risk and the computer could actually conserve fuel as it responded much more efficiently to slight variations in aerodynamics than any human ever could.
“Ten hours and fifty two minutes till ETA,” Seven said, removing his flight helmet and looking to Serea with a grin. “Now what do we do?”
“You decide, flyboy,” she responded slyly, removing her helmet as her hair spilled out and fell across her shoulders.
“I hate it when you’re always so agreeable,” Seven said, his voice laced with fatigue. Neither of them had slept for 20 hours.
“I just love a woman in uniform,” he added, not able to take his eyes off of Serea. Seven could not believe a female could be so unbelievably attractive in a green flight suit. His eyes drifted back to the two tiny, cramped seats behind them.
“Know what I’m thinking?” he asked her with a wink.
“Yeah, I do,” she responded coyly. “As this mission’s Commander, you’re thinking ahead and wondering just how we plan to stuff both dad and Joseph into those two small seats.”
“No. Wrong,” Seven responded. “As this mission’s Commander, I’m about to order you to a duty you won’t be able to refuse.”
“Fine. But it’s coming out of your sleep time, dear,” she responded unzipping the front of her flight suit. “By the way, do you really trust the autopilot on this thing?”
“Oh yeah… oh yeah… you bet your sweet life I do!” he responded with a wicked smile, his eyes no longer focused on hers.
47
The sun finally set over Concharty Mountain. There was a space of time they called the “twilight window” when the sun was far enough down behind the ho
rizon, or the minutes just before sunrise, when they would not be scorched with radiation but there was still enough light to see. The residents of Miller’s cave walked toward the outer door to remove the branches that had been set before it for camouflage, but they were gone. Warren stopped before the normally dark entrance that now audaciously glowed with the evening light, and then led the way, stepping out slowly and cautiously.
“Oh my God!” he whispered as Wattenbarger, Charles and Mel followed.
A scene of total destruction and desolation lay before them. Trees, branches and even rocks lay in jumbled piles all around. Huge tree trunks lay over other trunks in a maddening, nonsensical insanity. It appeared as though the mountain had exploded onto itself and had fallen in a splintered chaos all about them.
“I’ve seen tornado damage in my day, but nothing, nothing, like this,” Wattenbarger observed solemnly.
“The closest thing I’ve seen to this is Mount St. Helens, but this even tops that,” Warren responded, his eyes sweeping the desolation that spread in both directions as far as they could see across the face of the mountain. His eyes scanned tree trunks not only snapped and twisted off at their bases, but at a wide range of heights. Some had been torn out by their roots and others snapped off cleanly halfway up. Other trees were tortuously twisted and lay or stood in odd, pretzel like shapes.
“I can’t believe this,” Charles said.
Warren ’s eyes scanned the mountainside. The trail they had used was now totally obliterated and it was impossible to even see where it had been. Then he picked out a small pathway through the heaps of debris that led to the crest of the bluff above them. Without speaking, he began walking through the piles toward the bluff.
“Are we invited?” Charles asked sarcastically from behind Warren .
Warren stopped and turned to look at Charles with a blank, vacant expression.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 38
