And I couldn’t see squat out of the windows!
“Girls!” I shouted above the buffeting racket that was doing ugly things to the tough, composite-frame airplane, “We’re in real trouble! I’m trying my best to keep us alive, but our little journey may be coming to a quick end! If you can pray to any gods you know, I suggest you start doing that---fast!”
But no amount of praying could help when you didn’t even know what kind of enemy wanted you dead.
Seconds later two terrible impacts, so close together that they literally seemed to be one terrible blow, appeared to smack down from the heavens and suddenly much of our noise and vibration simply vanished...along with both engines and most of the wings they were attached to. This left the three of us strapped into a plastic unpowered cigar that quickly pointed itself down!
Cirrus-brand light aircraft pretty well pioneered airframe-mounted emergency parachutes, and they’d saved many lives over the years when their single-engine planes lost power, or the pilots became incapacitated. One pull of a ceiling-mounted lever would blast a huge parachute out the top of the falling aircraft, and the plane would descend at a controlled rate guaranteed to avoid smashing the powerless aircraft into the ground. It still hit hard, but nothing like a full-out crash-landing. I liked the idea of it so much I’d had Art’s engineers retrofit an experimental parachute system into my little Diamond Twin years earlier, even though the FAA hadn’t approved such a device for my airplane.
It helped to have friends in important places!
I yelled for the vixens to brace themselves, another faint click seemed to sound deep in my head, then I pulled a ceiling-mounted lever. A loud POP sounded as a roof hatch behind the rear seats blew off, then a WOOOOSH sounded as a small rocket deployed the huge parachute, which quickly opened above us. Without the weight of the two water-cooled engines and most of the wings, our little aircraft descended a good bit slower than Art’s engineers had anticipated. Still, the mountainous terrain rushed to meet us all too quickly, and we smacked into the rocky ground with a sickening crunch.
Crunching, however, was far better than splattering, and since the aircraft’s jet-A fuel had been stored in the now-missing wings, the little airplane didn’t explode or burn upon impact. We were firmly belted into our seats, and the tough composite material that made up most of the fuselage protected us better than a conventional metal-skinned structure would have. As soon as the machine quit grinding and rocking---and amazingly was resting fairly well upright!---I released my harness and yelled for the vixens to release theirs. At first both females appeared relatively unharmed, but as B’naah started moving I heard her yelp, then I saw her right arm seemed to have an additional elbow.
“Crap!” I snarled. “L’raan, you got anything broken?”
After a short pause she replied, “Hit my head...but I don’t think there’s a concussion.” Moments later she added, “Arms and legs seem to be OK.”
“We’ve got to get out of this thing and try to find a place to hide. Whatever destroyed the engines and wings will probably come hunting us soon, and we need to be somewhere else fast. Your grandmother’s right arm is broken, but I think we can manage once we’re outside.” Then I popped open my door and got a shock; it was bitterly cold, windy and snowing! “Reach behind your seat,” I instructed L’raan, “and grab the red bag that’s strapped to the floor. It has emergency supplies, including Mylar ‘space blankets’. Move-move-move! If we don’t get away from this thing soon, we may not live long enough to need them!”
Once I literally fell out of the door---no wing to step out on---I stumbled around to the other side and pulled open B’naah’s door. The old Yularian’s eyes were closed and she was snarling in obvious pain. “I know it hurts, dear, but you’ve got to let me get you out and away from this wreck.” She opened her eyes and looked at me with a dazed expression. L’raan popped open the back door and dragged out the red survival bag while I fussed with B’naah’s safety harness, doing my best not to disturb her broken arm.
“Is there anything in the bag that will help her?” L’raan yipped as she helped me ease her grandmother out onto the snowy rocks.
“No time!” I yelled over the gusty wind. “We’ll deal with her arm once we’ve put some distance between the plane and hopefully found some place to hide!” The next five minutes seemed like an hour as we limped, scrabbled and stumbled away from the wreckage, heading in a moderate downward direction since that allowed us maximum speed with the injured vixen. Eventually we found an outcropping of rock that offered a bit of shelter, mainly from the blowing snow. I quickly swept the floor area to check for snakes and scorpions---none found, although they’d probably be frozen by now---and opened the emergency bag, digging out four Mylar space blankets. Wrapping each vixen in one, I urged them to wedge themselves in as tight against the back of the almost-cave as possible. Next I wrapped myself in one and stretched the last one over the three of us as we huddled in a tight pile for warmth. Drifting, blowing snow quickly made it into our makeshift cave, and it also began covering the sheltering Mylar sheet. Our personal links to Bertha were silent, which told me either whatever had caused the sudden weather change was still blocking any signals, or that Bertha was keeping silent to avoid giving our position away. Regardless, we had no communication with the outside world, and apparently something really powerful and deadly was hunting us.
And so we huddled, shivering, injured---but alive.
One good thing about space blankets; they’re extremely efficient in reflecting heat. They kept us from quickly freezing to death---me especially, since I didn’t have a natural, insulating fur coat---and they kept us from radiating heat into the surrounding area like a beacon. Given sensitive equipment and enough time, I knew we’d be found by whatever was hunting us, but since I’d left the airplane doors open---like maybe we’d been thrown out while in the air---I desperately hoped it would think we’d been killed, or had frozen to death. Still, I knew our time was limited before we either did freeze to death, or that B’naah’s fragile old body simply gave out. While her arm break wasn’t a skin-puncturing compound fracture, the trauma had apparently caused her to lose consciousness, and all L’raan and I could do was try to feed her as much of our body heat as possible---and keep quiet.
Above, the F-16V pilot was having a not-so-quiet hissy-fit. “Viper One to Black Art Control! I have a Condition Ultraviolet! Repeat: Condition Ultraviolet!”
“Viper One, this is Goldman. Speak to me!”
“Sir, my SABR system has been tracking our target for the past several hours without difficulty, with my autopilot keeping well above and behind them so as not to attract attention, but within the last few minutes a low-ceiling cloud bank literally exploded below me, and moments later my SABR system---sir, it...it lost them!”
Goldman was silent for a heartbeat, then he demanded, “What do you mean, lost them? That’s the latest, greatest---!”
“Sir! Colonel Goldman, sir! I...I don’t know how it happened,” the pilot sputtered, “but virtually everything in my airplane, including the Scalable Agile Beam Radar system, went blank! Sir, I’ve flown these aircraft with this system since it came out, and I’ve never seen it do that! I...I can report, however, that I visually registered two bright vertical lightning bolts moments after all my systems blanked out. The bolts appeared to be very close together, and I suspect they struck downward in the vicinity of the target.” The pilot paused, and Goldman was silent. “Sir, while I’m slightly above the blanketing weather system, right now I’m flying with no---repeat: zero---instrumentation. All my electronics, except for my fly-by-wire flight controls and the radio, are...are dead. I’m over a strange, flat sea of thick white clouds, with no visible landmarks---and I don’t even have a working compass! Sir---I...I’m over mountains and I’m literally flying blind!”
“Hang in there, Commander---Kitterage---Beth Kitterage, correct?”
“Yes sir,” the pilot replied. “Code name: Mamba.”
Goldman laughed, saying, “I just bet you are, Commander.” After a moment he added, “I’m checking with satellite imagery and---yeah, here comes a shot of your storm.” He went silent, then, “Good god! Where did THAT come from? Nothing like this was on the last frame from...let’s see...ten minutes ago!” He started barking orders, both to those in his cramped Tactical Operations Center and over other radio channels. Short moments later he was back with the F-16 pilot. “Mamba, you are to keep on your current heading as best you can, but climb up a couple of thousand feet to make sure you don’t kiss a mountain hiding under that crazy cloud bank. I’ve got a link to a Navy E-2D AWACS near Los Angeles that should have a lock on you momentarily, and when that happens they’ll guide you to a safe landing. Should any of your systems come back on-line, contact me ASAP. Otherwise, good job, Commander, and Godspeed. Goldman out.”
Chapter 28
…With Clipped Wings
Lemme tellya--- Having a natural fur coat must be wonderful, since it can help you not freeze to death...unlike what I was fast doing huddling under that rock overhang, wrapped in a paper-thin Mylar space blanket and snuggling tight with two Yularian vixens. Luckily, even though B’naah was unconscious, she wasn’t crying out or moaning. Hell, she was barely breathing!
“Y-your hearing is b-better than m-mine, L’raan,” I whispered, shivering and barely able to form words, “s-s-so m-make s-s-sure your g-grandmother keeps b-breathing---b-but try to m-make sure s-s-she makes no n-noise! S-something tells m-me our attacker w-w-w---” I paused, breathing the frigid air was like trying to breathe acid. “---W-will have s-something on the g-ground l-l-looking for us s-soon, if it’s n-not already h-here.”
And the cold bit harder and deeper, to the point I eventually quit shivering---a really bad sign. I could feel that the vixens’ breathing had slowed down, but fur-bearing creatures often slow their metabolisms in brutally cold conditions, allowing them to survive---for a time---frigid temperatures we furless humans simply cannot. I’d had no reason to dress for cold weather when we took off that morning, and that one little detail seemed determined to kill me.
As I faded to black my last thought was, no click?
Colonel Arthur Noah Goldman had never been a Boy Scout, but growing up Jewish in a tough neighborhood had given him a head start on how to think on his feet, and his special forces training reinforced that to an amazing degree. Knowing that the alien enemy was becoming bolder and more overt in its attacks had prompted Tom Barnes’ old friend to buck protocol and try to keep “resources” one step ahead of the all too public---and far too vulnerable---human-and-aliens trio. After the remote-controlled wolf attack, and Goldman’s frantic coast-to-coast jet flight in an F-22 Raptor, he had his staff “pre-stage” support and rescue equipment near major venues where his charges would be appearing. That thinking put critical resources on-site at the Paws ‘N Claws convention, which turned out to be a wise move. It also gave him quick access to the “spy-in-the-sky” AWACS airplane he was hoping could find Barnes’ downed craft, as well as the ability to support the helpless F-16 pilot as she struggled to bring her sophisticated---and thoroughly blind, brain-dead---fighter safely to ground.
But heading up a covert research department was, at times, like herding kittens!
Since Los Angeles Air Force Base was a “non-flying” facility, Goldman had positioned a CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft at the Bob Hope Airport that was to be Barnes’ destination. It was loaded with every kind of practical rescue gadget and gizmo he could think of, along with a few cooler-sized, unlabeled boxes Bertha insisted be included. The huge aircraft lumbered into the air a scant ten minutes after Goldman realized something terrible had happened to his charges, and was soon screaming its way at over three hundred miles per hour toward Barnes’ plane’s last known location.
And after getting caught sitting in his office at Fort Stewart the last two times his friend had been attacked, this time Goldman was leading the operation in person!
In one aspect, Bertha’s plan worked perfectly: The hostile entity had, indeed, continued its attempts to kill Barnes and his two Yularian companions. Fortunately (up to now) its attempts had failed, but unfortunately for all concerned its attacks had grown bolder, deadlier---and this time, possibly successful. And Bertha still didn’t know for certain where the entity was located.
The Osprey soon crested the mountains and began encountering dispersing remnants of the strange cloud bank. “The AWACS is relaying a probable crash site,” one of the Osprey’s flight engineers reported to Goldman, “and I’ve fed the coordinates to our nav system. We should be over the area in the next ten minutes.”
“Master Sergeant Baker!” Goldman barked into his headset. “Have your men and medical officer Lucas ready to rappel with me to the crash site on my signal. And make sure all weapons are hot when they touch down. We don’t know if there are hostiles on the ground; we don’t even know what the hostiles might be, but if they’re anything like those damned Yularian military drones that Bertha’s dealt with before---God help us, ‘cause it’ll get ugly fast.” Moments later the mysterious boxes that had been stored on the ship sprang open, and Bertha’s multi-legged, woods-rat-sized robotic spiders began crawling out.
“Art,” Bertha’s calm, inhuman voice sounded in his headset, “I’m sending a spider down with every soldier, including you and the medical officer, and your men will also be able to receive any instructions I pass along.” The little mechanical horrors quickly made their way towards each cringing soldier, and it was a credit to their special ops training and their loyalty to Goldman that no soldier balked as the spiders crawled up their bodies and settled themselves between each humans’ shoulder blades. “As your people reach the ground, their spiders will deploy and provide support as needed. You’ll notice that each one has a number painted on its back, and can be directly addressed by simply stating ‘Spider ---‘ and the number. It will respond as directed.”
“Everybody got that?” Goldman barked, and the small squad all acknowledged, after which each spider also spoke its individual number to its human companion. Goldman’s was seven. “Gad?” he muttered in Hebrew, not realizing Bertha could hear him.
“For luck, Art,” the alien voice acknowledged in his ear. “We’ll need it.”
“Colonel Goldman?” the Osprey pilot broke in. “We’ll be over the target in about ninety seconds. Orders?”
“Bring us to a hover a hundred feet above the main wreckage, and lower the ramp. We don’t want to be too close to the ground in case of hostile fire. Once we’re down, move off a mile and orbit until further instructions, but have your flight engineers prepare rescue baskets, along with retrieval lines. If you begin taking fire from the ground---or any other direction---defend yourself if possible and get to safety. This thick cloud mess appears to be dissipating fast, so stay on top of the situation and await further orders.”
Goldman and his squad rappelled out the back of the Osprey in a textbook perfect operation---and touched ground into a nightmare! Immediately the soldiers’ threat warning signals (courtesy of Bertha) began squealing in their ears, and several blinding-white plasma beams centered on the first man to touch down. He screamed as he collapsed, and was a smoking corpse before he hit the ground, his ceramic battle armor no match for the plasma beams’ ferocity. The spider riding his back had jumped free and quickly targeted one of the fearsome Yularian military drones with its laser, while other spiders jumped from their human companions and concentrated fire on the half-dozen drones in the vicinity. The surviving soldiers opened fire with their M-16 rifles, and surprisingly, the tiny caliber, high-speed bullets quickly picked the alien drones apart. Bertha’s spiders disabled the drones’ tail-mounted power supplies in a series of small, sharp explosions, and within twenty seconds the firefight was over.
“Casualties---report!” Goldman barked, and was surprised to find no other wounded or dead in his squad. “Captain Lucas. What about---?”
“S-
sorry, Colonel. Sergeant Timms is...is beyond help.” The medical officer looked like he was in shock. Timms had been a good friend.
“We can’t help him now,” Goldman said, looking around the rugged terrain in disbelief, “but we also can’t drop our guard. There may be more of those little monsters out here, so make use of Bertha’s spiders---let them scout ahead of you like we trained back at Fort Stewart. They saved our butts once, and they can do it again.” The thick clouds were lifting, being blown away by the bitterly cold wind, and even the snow had mostly stopped falling. “I can’t see our crash victims getting very far in this mess before going to ground, so check what’s left of their airplane and begin fanning out.” They left the dead soldier and began their search, Goldman fearing the worst. He’d mourn his lost soldier later; he just hoped there’d be no more joining him.
Five minutes into their search the threat alarms sounded again, and a white plasma beam sizzled into the sky, accompanied by a soldier’s scream, an M-16 chattering on full-auto and several searing laser flashes. Then there was a small explosion as yet another Yularian drone’s power pack detonated. “Report!” Goldman yelled, running toward the direction of the commotion. But when he reached the location of the brief battle he found the only casualty to be the smoking alien drone. Sergeant Alton Brown was busy cursing and rolling on the snow-covered ground, trying to cool his smoking battle armor vest. “Brown! Report!” Goldman barked.
“Damned thing jumped me but didn’t get a clean shot,” the man snarled as he tried to unfasten blistering hot buckles, “but my spider nailed it, and a couple of others helped, too. Sir.” Still cursing and struggling, Brown finally managed to get the ceramic armored vest off, and left it steaming on the ground. “If I hadn’t stumbled just as it shot, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Colonel sir!”
Last Dance of the Phoenix Page 23
