Thad neither knew nor cared what had gone into the modification; of that, Micah was certain. The man was more concerned with how fast it could get them to the downed firefighters. After pointing Micah toward the spacecraft that had been modified for atmospheric flight, he’d folded himself into the co-pilot’s seat and waved at the grass strip.
“Okay, Navy,” he’d said, pointing toward the towering Ceriban pines in the distance. “Show me what you’ve got.”
That was two hours ago. Since then, they’d been on a ride straight out of hell.
“Pardon the pun,” Micah shouted as the aircraft bucked yet again, “but isn’t using your liberty to volunteer with the Forestry Service kind of like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?”
The woman seated behind him groaned. “Can’t believe you actually led with that, Cap. We already know why he did it. He’s batshit crazy,” Nina announced.
“Careful, cher,” the big Marine chided, “you know what they say about pots and kettles. I don’t call you crazy for flying with this lunatic day in and day out, do I?”
“Dude, we’re not flying into thousand-degree fire on a regular basis,” she countered. “That would be suicide. Aerial firefighting’s scary shit.”
That was saying something, coming from Nina. She was the team’s gunner, one of the frostiest people he knew.
Like Micah, Nina knew what it meant to fly against fire; at one point or another, Thad had conscripted almost everyone from the task force to help the forestry service.
Many of the career pilots who flew fires were former military. Every one of them would agree it was just as dangerous—and even more demanding—than combat.
Micah could vouch for that. He’d done his share of both.
Aerial firefighting often required a pilot to fly in close conditions, under poor visibility. This was despite the augmented optics with which the Alliance Navy had gifted him.
In the midst of a wildfire as big and deadly as this one, enhanced-spectrum thermal imaging wasn’t of much use. Infrared was just one big, superheated smear as the fire turned the aircraft’s sensor suite into a riot of color. Topology was rendered in harsh yellows, oranges, fuchsias, and reds, as the brush and trees fell beneath its fury.
Real-time surface-from-motion mapping wasn’t much better. The currents and eddies within the heart of the fire were best described as a maelstrom, whipping loose materials into a frenzy and uprooting even the sturdiest of trees.
Everyone on the team knew what it meant when humans were thrown into the mix. Flying against fire only happened when a conflagration had grown beyond what drones and nanotech could manage.
The specialized nanomaterials the Firestrikes ordinarily carried in their bellies were the backbone of the firefighting industry. The nano was divided into two basic categories: materials that coated surfaces, making them impermeable to combustion, and nano that saturated the air ahead of a fire, depleting it of the oxygen the flames needed in order to feed.
Both types of nano were colloidene click-assembly bots. That meant they were programmed to rapidly replicate themselves, given enough raw formation material.
There was plenty of carbon floating in the air currents of a wildfire to feed the tiny machines. The trick was to saturate the area with enough colloidenes that the very winds that were feeding the fire would help seed its demise.
Delivering enough nano to an affected area could be challenging, especially when your foe could leap a hundred meters in a single second. Dispersing it evenly in such erratic and unstable conditions was simply impossible.
The fact that they were here, now, flying a Firestrike into the heart of the conflagration, was proof that the fire’s instability had progressed. It was now firmly in the realm of intense heat, unpredictable burn patterns, and spooky, changeable weather.
Flying to fire meant operating an airframe while ‘configured heavy,’ carrying a maximum load. Sometimes that load was fire retardant nanoparticles; other times, it was a crew of smokejumpers standing by to fast-rope their way straight into hell.
Thad patted the console in front of him almost paternally. “Fighting fire in this baby might be serious shit, but she’s up for it.” His tone was a blend of confident affection. “Not like those sissy civilian airframes. They don’t have her raw grit.”
Micah’s mouth curved into a smile. “Not going to argue that one.”
It took a lot of power to claw through turbulent, smoke-filled air. An aircraft had to be nimble enough to evade projectiles flung at more than two hundred kilometers an hour, and tough enough to withstand convective forces that could uproot trees thirty meters tall.
“Yep, need a military machine like this baby here. Been a while since you’ve flown a Firestrike, hasn’t it?” Thad cocked his head toward Micah.
Micah shook his head, his smile widening to an all-out grin. “Yeah. A few years, give or take.”
The Novastrike was ideal for this kind of job. It had been the Geminate Alliance’s solution for small, fast attack spacecraft for more than a century.
The models the Ceriba forestry service had co-opted were decommissioned ships, stripped of their magnetic shield generators, and their drives altered to meet planetary emissions standards. What remained were lean, mean, fighting machines, converted into atmospheric craft that ruled the skies of the lone habitable planet in the Procyon System.
Thad was right; Micah hadn’t thought he’d find himself flying a Novastrike again. Firestrike. Whatever. Micah knew military machines, and this was one fine specimen.
His day job was inside a different cockpit, one that was a fair sight bigger than the Novastrike’s. His office was a Helios, the Alliance’s biggest and baddest long-range attack craft; his desk was its pilot’s seat.
The Helios he flew was one of a select few adapted for clandestine operations. The Direct Action Penetrator, or DAP Helios, was made specifically for the Geminate Navy’s Shadow Recon teams. It was Shadow Recon that the Unit teams called on when they needed to insert spec-op forces into situations no one could ever talk about.
Micah had flown the DAP for several tours. Until a mission to Luyten’s Star changed everything.
Having fun, are you? a voice insinuated itself into his mind after a particularly strong shear sent them plummeting toward the ground.
Micah grunted. Better’n being stuck inside headquarters.
He received the mental impression of a grimace. Don’t remind me.
Micah had first heard the voice when he’d awakened nine months earlier on a slab in deGrasse’s morgue. That voice had saved Micah’s life, helping him to escape those bent on his destruction.
He’d known there was something odd about the voice from the start. It needed no network connection, and it sounded hauntingly familiar. It was only when he’d come face to face—with himself—that reality had set in.
Micah had fallen victim to unethical experimentation. He’d been illegally cloned, without his consent. Worse, he was not the original, though he felt like it. He had the same memories, the same mannerisms, the exact same skills.
But it was Micah whose genetic code had been altered. He was the mirror twin.
The process of making him into his own chiral doppelganger had an interesting quantum side effect. Spooky action at a distance entangled the two men, enabling them to communicate telepathically—anytime, anywhere.
He and his other self could share thoughts, feelings, and images. Nothing seemed to break that connection. Shielding didn’t affect it. Neither did distance. The only thing that severed it was if one or the other was rendered unconscious.
It was a phenomenon the Alliance was still trying to understand. It was also a capability the Geminate Navy had decided was best hidden from the known worlds.
Officially, there was only one Jonathan Micah Case. Unofficially, there were two. One remained at headquarters, while the other deployed.
Not only did that serve to hide his existence from others, it also gave the t
eam an edge that others lacked—constant contact with an untraceable, unassailable resource.
Today had been Micah’s first opportunity to get away from the base in a month. It was Jonathan’s turn to remain back at the black site, the place Micah now called home.
And instead of finding myself a nice, quiet beach and enjoying the sand and the surf, I get talked into another suicide mission.
A chuckle inside his head reminded him that his thoughts were no longer exclusively his own.
We love this shit, and you know it, so quit complaining. You’re in the air, under blue skies—
Hardly, he shot back, a quick glance at the forward holoscreen showing nothing but smoke and flames.
Stow it, bro. You can’t fool me.
An unwilling grin tugged at Micah’s lips. The flight was right up there with some of the most dangerous missions he’d ever flown.
Jonathan was right; he—they—loved it.
Extreme weather brought on by a conflagration demanded precision control. Retrieving smokejumpers on the ground in an area ringed with flame required intense concentration and pinpoint accuracy. It stretched even his considerable abilities.
Micah never could resist a challenge.
The advance team of smokejumpers—elite firefighters that dropped into places most didn’t dare venture—had been felling trees up a slope just ahead of the fire’s leading edge. The trees had been cut so that their leafy crowns fell downslope, back in the direction of the flames. Above the firebreak was a cliff that rose fifty meters, denuded of most growth.
The plan had been to starve the fire out, to deprive it of the fuel it would need to travel past this point. It hadn’t worked.
The wildland fire had broken through on both sides, a flaming tree having toppled to the ground, sheer chance bringing it down in exactly the right spot to bridge the artificial gulf the firefighters had worked so hard to create. Worse, the tree had fallen just in front of a pair of hotshot firefighters, cutting them off from the rest of their crew.
They were trapped, one of them injured, and directly in the path of swiftly advancing flames.
Despite the fact that firefighters in this century had far better equipment than their pre-diaspora predecessors back on Earth, the two trapped firefighters weren’t well equipped to ride out a burnover of this intensity.
Firesuits had the capacity to shield the wearer from temperatures as high as two hundred fifty degrees C. That was equivalent to the protection provided by the EVA suits maintenance workers used on Humbolt, Ceriba’s primary space platform. A firefighter having to shelter in place as the wildfire burned over him would be subject to temperatures more than five times that amount.
Not even current technology could shed heat that efficiently.
That left Micah and the crew of the Firestrike as their only hope.
{Foxtrot Seven! Fire whirl, dead ahead!}
The call from the fireteam’s air tactical group supervisor, or air attack, had Micah doing a quick sweep of their surroundings with the aircraft’s SyntheticVision feed. The SV external sensor suite gave a pilot full situational awareness; it told Micah they had plenty of clearance above, but a scant hundred meters below. With a fire whirl—the fierce and unpredictable tornado-like vortices that could spring up in a wildfire as big as this one—that small amount of separation could become problematic.
He had just enough time to shout his own warning to the crew of the aircraft designated Foxtrot-Seven before the wall of smoke parted, and a twisting column of flame erupted ten meters in front of the Firestrike’s nose.
“Brace for shear!”
The hundred-year-old aircraft bucked as it hit a wall of turbulent air that surrounded the wildfire-induced whirlwind. It sent the Firestrike forty meters straight up, its internal temperature rocketing well past what the cockpit’s climate controls could handle. The fiery vortex’s thousand-degree heat made those inside the fuselage feel like they were on a close pass to Procyon’s main-sequence star rather than flying search-and-rescue on Ceriba.
The sudden upward displacement was met by a muffled curse from the woman behind him, near the Firestrike’s side door. Seconds later, the tornado-like fire whirl sent the craft plummeting.
Micah winced as he heard Nina’s helmeted head slam into the top of the fuselage.
“You okay back there?” he asked as he compensated for the loss of altitude, redlining the drives as the ancient aircraft clawed its way to higher altitude.
He didn’t wait for a response. With one eye on the SV feed, a mental prompt called up Nina’s biosig telemetry so he could see for himself that his crew chief hadn’t broken her neck.
“Spend your leave fighting fires, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.” Nina’s dry comment caused him to snort in amusement while at the same time easing his concerns.
{Closing on location,} he sent, switching their conversation to the ship’s combat net. It was the only way they’d be able to communicate, once Nina opened the hatch. {Fifty meters ahead, in a clearing just below that ridge.}
{I see them.} Nina sent him a visual.
As he banked the Firestrike toward the ridge, he highlighted the external temperature registered on the aircraft’s external sensors and pushed the data to Nina. {Hot out there. Be sure you’re fully suited before opening that door.}
{Sir, yes, sir!} came the smart retort, and Micah could feel the eyeroll that accompanied the words.
Thad handled the comms, contacting the trapped firefighters and prepping them for extraction, while Micah concentrated on steadying the craft at the necessary altitude for Nina to drop the ropes to the figures waiting below.
She signaled her readiness, and Micah saw the Firestrike’s indicator for the side door seal flash from green to red as Nina triggered the hatch. The craft’s internal temperature rose as hot air billowed into the opening along with the smells of burning timber and hot ash. The deep throated roar of the fire swept in along with it, making it impossible to talk over.
{Foxtrot-Seven, we’re sure glad to see you!} The relief in the smokejumper’s voice that came over the wire was evident.
{Happy to be able to help. Status?}
{Smoke’s done a number on us. Medical nano can’t keep up.} The firefighter’s voice cut out, but was soon back. {Sorry. My partner’s femur’s broken and I’m a bit banged up. We had to dive off that cliff to keep from being crushed by that tree.}
{Dropping lines to you now. You see ‘em?}
{Connecting to them now.} A brief pause. {Good to go. Ready to get the hell out of here!}
Micah’s hands and feet worked in tandem with the onboard Synthetic Intelligence, the craft’s autopilot automatically deferring to his own pilot’s augmentations that superseded its native capabilities. An updraft buffeted the Firestrike, and Micah corrected for it while Thad called out the status of the two firefighters, now airborne and approaching the fuselage.
Nina had the winch cranked to the maximum safe speed, one gloved hand guiding the rope’s ascent, the other braced against the aircraft’s open frame. Her helmeted head breached the opening as she kept a direct visual on the two they had come to rescue.
A resounding crack sounded aft of the Firestrike as a tree exploded, sending limbs rocketing like shrapnel through the air. Micah registered a tree speeding toward them like a wooden javelin at the same time Thad’s voice thundered “Incoming!” over the sound of the fire.
The Firestrike’s SI brain began to lift the vessel, the proper evasion maneuver for an object hurtling toward them—except Micah instantly realized the move would be disastrous for the firemen hanging from the line below.
His hand snapped the controls to the left, overriding the autopilot as he yelled at his crew chief. {Nina! Head inside! Now!}
The Firestrike responded, rolling sharply to the left before falling into a slip, moving the rope holding the firemen to one side, instead of up into the path of the blazing spear that was once a pine tree. The crew chief’s head fell b
ack, gravity pulling her inside the fuselage just as the pine tree’s fiery trunk shot past. The cloud of debris accompanying the tree peppered the water bladder attached to the Firestrike’s belly like miniature missiles, the empty reservoir preventing them from penetrating the fuselage.
He heard Nina’s sharp inhale. {Damn, that was close. Forgot how volatile those trees can be when superheated like that. Thanks, Cap.}
Micah didn’t bother to respond; he was too busy flying the ship. Nina resumed winching the smokejumpers into the Firestrike, the uninjured man assisting his injured partner into the aft of the vessel where medical triage kits were stored.
Blessed coolness returned once Nina resealed the hatch, although the bitter scents of ash and burnt tar lingered. He held the Firestrike as steady as he could, waiting for Nina to confirm their passengers were secured. Scraping sounds from behind told him the gunner was crab-walking back to them, unclipping and reclipping her harness as she went.
After a moment, she called out, {They’re webbed in. Beginning triage. You’re good to maneuver, Cap.}
He sent her a two-click acknowledgment, then pulled up, increasing the ship’s rate of climb and sending it back the way they’d come.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, Micah brought the Firestrike to a rest, wheels gently kissing the tarmac at Mount Huntington Aviation. On-staff medics were standing by to receive the two smokejumpers, both of whom had already received meds and nano for smoke inhalation and blood-clotting.
Micah hopped out and began to shrug out of his fire-retardant flight suit. He let the arms flap behind him as he joined Nina at the vessel’s side entrance and began restocking the medical supplies the medics had brought along with them.
Movement behind the medics caught his eye, and he saw the sleek form of a large cat emerge from the tree line. It came streaking toward them across the clearing.
A piercing whistle split the air moments later, a heads-up from the tower. The cat’s ears flattened in annoyance, but he didn’t break his loping stride. Thad pivoted at the sound, and then erupted in a string of low curses when he saw the animal arrowing toward them.
The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War) Page 4
