And only then did anyone who cared to finally realize that what seemed impossible just a few months before was now a reality.
Hawk Hunter, the Wingman, was at last, going into space.
Six hours later
On the edge of the cliff at the top of the mountain called Ch’ayu, Chloe pulled her robes closer to her face and shook off the dark, early morning chill.
High above, the stars seemed to be twinkling with extra luminescence tonight. The wind was whipping through the valley below, causing a sprinkling of pure crystal snow to rise up and wash across her face. Through these sparklings, she saw a bright light pass overhead, speeding across the sky, leaving a faint trail mixed in among the stars.
She watched it sadly, a single tear rolling down her cheek. Then she raised her hand and waved to it as it raced over, watching until it passed out of sight to the east.
Then she gathered up her robes again and walked back to the temple.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Wingman Series
Part 1
One
IT WAS A CALM night in the Himalayas.
Where usually the winds blew at 50 knots or more and snow fell almost continuously, this night there was no gale, no frozen precipitation, no sign of the elements at all.
At the top of the mountain called Ch’aya, known as one of the coldest, windiest, most inhospitable places on earth, an eerie silence had settled around the small Be’hei temple and its row of guesthouses nearby. It was close to midnight and the stars above were twinkling madly. The monks within the temple grounds were awakened by the lack of wind; they were so unused to the silence, it actually roused them from their slumber.
Concern quickly gripped the Be’hei monastery. Candles were lit, prayer bells began tolling. The monks had read about this sort of thing. It was a phenomenon that had been written down in their ancient texts by hands that had passed on centuries before. No wind. No blowing snow. The sky seemed as if on fire. Be warned, the ancients had written. You are not being spared from the never-ending tempest that makes Ch’aya the holy place it is.
Rather you are in the eye of the eternal storm.
In one guesthouse, however, no candles had been lit. This was the small hut at the far end of the temple grounds, the dwelling closest to the edge. Inside slept a beautiful girl. Blond, supple, and youngish in face and form, she was named Chloe. She was naked, her enchanting body covered with a single layer of lambskin. She did not realize that a frightening calm had come over Ch’aya Mountain. She was too busy having a dream.
Out beyond the orbit of Pluto, in a region of space millions of miles from the sun, there is a place known as the Oort Cloud. It is here, scientists discovered years ago, that comets reside—massive chunks of ice and space dust, some weighing trillions of tons. Most are caught in a gravitational netherworld, slaved to travel long, looping flight paths, just out of reach of the pull of the sun. They are orphans, second-class citizens of the solar system that if not for a quirk of fate might have formed into planets 15 billion years ago. Instead, they are eternal transients.
But the universe could be a funny place as well as a mysterious one. Sometimes it would rely on the Oort Cloud to provide a cosmic joke. One of the comets would stray just enough toward the sun to get caught in its gravitational pull and thus begin a long, perilous journey inward. In Chloe’s dream, she could see exactly that kind of thing happening. A massive comet many times larger than what would be considered normal had been captured by the sun’s attraction and was slowly but surely heading into the solar system. But in her dream, Chloe could see a gigantic hand actually pushing the comet, steering it, controlling its movements as it began to tumble at a velocity rising to 100 miles per second. And behind the gigantic hand came a screech that echoed across the cosmos. It was a rather frightening sound—and an indistinguishable one as well. Was it a man’s voice or a woman’s? It was hard to tell. But in Chloe’s dream, the voice belonged to what she perceived to be the Supreme Being.
God was laughing.
This hand had flicked the gigantic comet not just toward the sun, but right at the planet Earth. It must have happened centuries earlier, for the trip from the Oort Cloud to the inner solar system was a long one, even at a speed of 360,000 miles an hour.
That was the cruel thing about cosmic jokes.
It could take eons before the punchline was delivered.
When Chloe woke up in tears some time later, two monks were standing over her bed.
Though bound to a life of celibacy and denial of earthly pleasures, the pair of holy men could not help but look down at her lovely naked body and begin thinking thoughts they shouldn’t.
She stirred and was surprised that her eyes and cheeks were so wet. The men startled her for a moment—she caught them looking and quickly pulled the lambskin back around her. But she knew them and knew they would not harm her and that the only reason they were here was because they were concerned for her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, wiping away the tears.
“We heard you weeping,” one monk said, gathering his saffron robes around him. “And…”
“And?”
“And things are wrong… outside.”
“What disturbed you?” the second monk asked. “Why were you crying in your sleep?”
Chloe thought a moment—then it came flooding back to her. The huge comet. The gigantic hand. The frightening laugh.
She told them everything and began crying again, and the monks did, too. They really didn’t have to hear very much. They knew what she had dreamed, knew what it meant. They sat down on her bed and hugged her. All concern of modesty forgotten, she allowed the lambskin to slip away and hugged them back.
“The stars have begun to fall,” one of the monks whispered. “Just as it was written. Now it is only a matter of time…”
They sat there, the three of them, and cried until morning.
By that time, the wind outside had picked up again and the blowing snow had returned.
About the Author
Mack Maloney is the author of numerous fiction series, including Wingman, Chopper Ops, Starhawk, and Pirate Hunters, as well as UFOs in Wartime: What They Didn’t Want You to Know. A native Bostonian, Maloney received a bachelor of science degree in journalism at Suffolk University and a master of arts degree in film at Emerson College. He is the host of a national radio show, Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Brian Kelleher
Cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4804-0677-3
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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