by J. Thorn
THRUST
DROGUE
ROGALLO
IONIZER
CRUCIFORM
Of the three, the only word I understood was thrust. And since it was numbed “1”, I decided to press it.
Immediately, I heard a hissing sound in my helmet, and my legs shot up and sent me spinning ass over head. As I twirled, I saw a white gas jetting out of the heels of my boots. I brought my knees into my chest and began to spin even faster. While the absence of gravity prevented my inner ear from jostling and causing dizziness, the effect was still very disorienting and more than a little scary. Before I hit a hundred rpm I splayed out my legs, switching from rotation to a single direction. It took a minute to figure out how to move my feet in order to fly straight. I also learned Sata had built speed controls into the soles. Lifting my toes slowed down the jets, and pointing them downward sped them up.
Once I was more or less stabilized, I had a bad moment when I realized I’d lost sight of the TEV. Fighting panic, I flew back toward the space station and the frozen copsicles, then followed their straight trajectory, forging ahead of them. I caught a glint of color, and saw the display.
7:55…7:54…7:53…
Hurrying, I flexed out my toes, accelerating, rapidly catching up to the TEV. I bumped it with my bad arm, causing it to turn toward me. Not the development I’d hoped for. I reached for the TEV again, knocking it to the side and speeding past it. I kept my eyes locked on it, coming around again in an arc, and this time matched its speed before attempting a two-armed grab, the Nife still in my fist.
Once I held the device securely, I postulated which way to throw it. If I faced the lens the opposite way and sent it off into space, it couldn’t transport any matter on earth. But if it had even the slightest spin when I threw it, chances were the wormhole could still hit our planet, or maybe the space station.
I slowed down, steadying my hands, ready to cast it off into the great beyond.
Luckily, I had a sudden realization and caught myself before chucking the TEV away.
The people of Boise, and the people at the elevator station, had all been sent to a dinosaur planet. But there was a good chance they were all still alive.
This TEV might be the only way to get them back to our universe. Not only could it send matter to parallel planets; its destination was already programmed in.
Of course, I had no way of understanding how it worked.
But I knew someone who did.
I tucked the TEV tightly under my arm, put one of its straps over my shoulder, and hit the gas, rocketing toward earth. Sata had a nice head start, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to linger, if only to see if I could catch up. I don’t know what shocked me more—his newly acquired homicidal nature, or the fact that this all seemed like a big game to him. The unrestrained glee on his face while he was imploding innocent people sickened me in a way I’d never known before.
Being a cop, I’d seen a lot of badness in the world. Since becoming a timecaster, the majority of cruelty was confined to crimes of passion, and even that trickled to nonexistence once people knew they could be held accountable at any time.
Sata was something different. Something beyond insane, temporary or permanent. As with Alter-Talon, there was something so twisted, so wrong, about his demeanor that the only word I could use to describe it was evil.
Had that darkness always been there? If so, how could I have missed it? If not, how could someone so good become so bad so quickly?
Then I had a thought. A revelatory thought. But I filed it away for later when I saw the exhaust plume from Sata’s boot jets. As trails went, this couldn’t be easier to follow; two cloudy streaks the width of my dear, departed Corvette.
I pointed my toes as far as they would go, getting an extra little burst of speed. Giving the TEV a quick glance, I saw I had a little more than five minutes before the wormhole event.
My dual goals were to find Sata and follow him to a hopefully safe landing, and to make sure when the TEV counted down to zero I had it pointed toward space.
The change was gradual, so slow I didn’t notice it right away. At first, it was just a small bump against my helmet. Then my whole suit began to vibrate. Softly at first. Then in a much rougher way.
Sata’s plume became larger, more dispersed. I flexed my toes to slow down, take stock of the situation.
My jets cut off, but I didn’t slow down.
In fact, I sped up.
Though it was still black as ink, I realized what was happening. I was going from the thermosphere to the stratosphere, and gravity was taking over. I hit the thrust button, killing the boot jets.
My speed still increased. I was going fast. Real fast. Several hundred miles per hour fast. And the wind really began to bat me around, causing a strain on my neck and arms. I held the TEV tight to my chest, careful not to stab myself with my Nife. Ignoring the growing sense of terror building up inside of me, I managed to get the second strap onto my opposite shoulder, wearing the device as a chest plate like Sata had done. It was just in the nick of time, too. The turbulence had gotten so bad I couldn’t keep my arms next to my body. I would have dropped the TEV for sure. It was all I could do to hold on to the Nife.
That was when I noticed the temperature start to rise.
At first, I’d attributed it to fear and exertion. The suit was well insulated against freezing space, so it made sense my body heat would accumulate.
But then my cheeks began to ache, like a bad sunburn.
Atmospheric reentry.
Like all kids, I took space travel lessons in school. And like all kids, I mostly goofed off in class. So while I remembered some terms such as drag coefficient, angle of attack, and shock wave standoff, I couldn’t remember definitions for any of them, or how they applied to my situation.
The only thing I knew for certain was that reentering earth’s atmosphere caused friction, and with friction came heat, and very quickly I was going to reach a temperature of several thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Even wearing Sata’s ingeniously designed space suit, I would roast alive without some sort of heat shield.
It rapidly became too hot for me to even think. My mouth went dry. My sweat evaporated, steamed up my visor, and then that baked onto the inside, leaving a thin white film.
Losing consciousness, I barely noticed something below me. A tiny red speck, in the shape of a triangle, bright red contrasting against the expansive blue-green of the earth.
Sata? Where’d he get a triangle? Why didn’t I have one?
And right then, with my brain feeling like it was simmering in a Crock-Pot, I remembered what rogallo meant.
FORTY-NINE
In the past twenty-four hours, I’d been frightened so many times I’d lost count. But prior to these recent life-threatening events, my biggest scare had been skydiving with Vicki. While giving us a last-minute pep talk in the heliplane, our instructor had regaled us with a history of the sport, along with the many types of parachutes developed.
Rogallo, drogue, and cruciform were all chute shapes, used for different purposes. A rogallo was a fancy name for a flexible airfoil. Though made of triangular cloth, it functioned more like a wing than a parachute, and was used on hang gliders and Parasevs. Sata’s triangle a few miles beneath me was a rogallo chute.
Mustering up my remaining dregs of common sense, I knew it was too soon for the rogallo, partly because it seemed like I was traveling too fast for it to work, but mostly because Sata had labeled it “3.”
I hit button number “2” on my wrist instead, launching the drogue.
Drogue chutes were invented to be deployed by rapidly moving objects, just as spacecraft, missiles, and, in this case, me.
The effect was instantaneous. Though I’d never had my limbs pulled off, I could imagine it felt similar. The drogue parachute exploded out the back of my suit and immediately reduced my speed, so fast I felt blood slosh into my hands and feet, making them swell up. The suit’s infrastructure
focused the brunt of the force on my shoulders and hips, which instantly ached. My vision blurred, and I swung back and forth like a pendulum, fighting not to pass out.
Eventually, thankfully, the terrible heat diminished. Inside the suit, the circulating air slowly cooled, so it no longer felt like I was breathing inside an oven. The swaying eventually evened out. I became lucid enough to pull back the TEV and check the timer.
5:23 and counting.
While the drogue had slowed me down considerably, I was still going much too fast to land. A glance upward revealed a chute that looked like a long, tapered sleeve, with a large hole in the top. If I hit the ground using only this, I’d pancake myself.
Luckily, Sata had more buttons on his clever little space suit. Keeping in sequence, I hit “3,” the rogallo.
The drogue detached and a triangular wing popped out the back of my suit, immediately slowing me down even more. My angle of descent went from a straight plummet to a thirty-degree angle. But it was a smooth transition, rather than a jarring one like the drogue.
I leaned backward, cutting my angle of attack even more, reducing my speed while learning how to tilt and twist my body to go in the direction I wanted to. After a few arcs and turns, I located Sata, perhaps half a mile below me. I aimed myself toward him.
Beneath us, the earth was huge, dominating my vision. My fear of drifting solo through space was replaced by the larger fear of free-falling. Plummeting through biorecycle chutes and jumping off of fifty-story buildings was scary enough. This awesome height made me want to puke. Which, inside a helmet, wouldn’t be a smart idea.
I took large, deep breaths, focusing on Sata, concentrating on getting closer. Around me, the sky was changing from black to blue. I got within a few hundred yards of Sata, and closed the distance even more. Though part of me wanted to swoop down and cut his chute to ribbons, I needed him alive if I wanted to save Chicago.
“So, Talon, I see you’ve managed to follow me.” The speakers were in my helmet. “What did you think of reentry? Hot stuff, huh?”
I wondered how to activate the microphone. Maybe it was voice-activated.
“The microphone is voice-activated,” Sata said.
“I knew that,” I told him.
“We’ll still be in the air when Chicago transports to the parallel world. But we should be able to see it from up here.”
“Guess again, asshole. I’ve got the TEV on me.”
I patted my chest and checked the time.
2:35.
“What? You fool!”
Sata’s airfoil turned a hundred eighty degrees. I altered my trajectory to get out of his flight path. He adjusted his as well, so we were both heading toward the same point. We closed the distance quickly, proof that even with the rogallos we were still falling at very high speeds.
A second before we collided, I veered right and Sata veered left, so we flew side by side.
“Give me the TEV!” he thundered, his shout making my ears hurt.
“Come get it, Grandpa.”
Ducking his shoulder, Sata turned hard and slammed into me. The impact made my teeth rattle. Both of our rogallos became entangled, and we began to plummet in a twisted, spinning mass. Sata tugged at the TEV straps across my shoulders. Without even thinking, I lashed out at his face, the Nife cutting a line across his helmet visor. He grabbed my wrist and locked his legs around my waist, squeezing my lungs to the point of bursting. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder, and saw a metal knife blade protruding from his gloved finger. He twisted it into my flesh as I fought to push him away.
He screamed something at me, but all I could hear was the wind whistling in through the hole I’d made in his helmet. I felt his finger knife twisting inside my chest, nicking my ribs. Then he pulled out and punched the awful blade into my opposite shoulder.
I understood the point of his attack only when he withdrew the weapon. He wasn’t out to harm me.
He was cutting the TEV straps.
Sata kicked away from me, dropping at a faster rate.
I don’t know if he was trying to escape, or if he’d had a major wardrobe malfunction, but he left his rogallo twisted up in mine and began to free-fall again, sans chute.
He also managed to get the TEV. I watched him wave at me as he dropped into a blue-and-white storm cloud, disappearing from my sight.
I tried reaching up over my shoulder with my Nife, to cut the lines. But our two wings had tangled into a sort of propeller shape, making me spin. The wind resistance was so strong that no matter how I strained, I was unable to flip over and reach the ropes.
I tried twisting my body. Contorting my sore shoulders and pelvis. Stretching out my arms. Tucking into a ball.
Nothing worked. And the spinning became faster, and faster.
In space, spinning was confusing.
But under gravity’s grasp, the fluid in my inner ears was being shaken like a snow globe, bringing disorientation, dizziness, nausea, and an overwhelming feeling of panic.
Chicago was going to implode in less than two minutes, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Then the centrifugal force became too much, and once again I began to black out.
And then I actually did black out.
Unconsciousness wasn’t peaceful. Even knocked out, every synapse in my brain was firing in panic. I somehow managed to startle myself awake, and when I did I saw I’d dropped the Nife, which made me panic even more.
That meant I had only one chance left for survival.
I stared at the button on my wrist and hit “1.”
Nothing happened.
I tried “2.”
Nothing.
“3.”
No change at all.
I stared at the last two buttons, “4” ionizer and “5” cruciform. I knew cruciform was another type of parachute, but if I hit the button now, would it get tangled up with the dual rogallo death spiral? And should I even try to hit a button out of order?
I had no idea what ionizer was. But at this point I had nothing else to lose.
I pressed “4.”
The rogallo detached, taking its snarled twin along with it, and I once again was free-falling. All too soon I reached the storm cloud Sata had disappeared into. I was so elated to be free of the chutes that I didn’t even think to question what the storm cloud was.
I found out twenty seconds later, when I drifted into it and the world became a brilliant explosion of blue.
I’d reached the Tesla field.
FIFTY
The Mastermind clutches his prize to his chest as he hits terminal velocity, falling at close to six hundred miles per hour. The slit in his visor is letting cold wind in, but he can still see if he squints, and the rebreather is still feeding him oxygen.
He smiles. The finger knife had been a last-minute addition to the suit—a precautionary measure in case the parachutes didn’t detach as designed. It turned out to be a very smart move. He never would have gotten the TEV from Talon otherwise.
Who could have predicted the mouse would have a Nife? Talon had played it smart, kept it hidden until the last possible moment. But in the end, even that hadn’t been enough.
Sata plummets into the Tesla field. He’s already pressed the ionizer button, shielding his suit against the incredible amount of electrical energy. The whole world turns bright blue.
Bringing the TEV close to his face, Sata squints at the clock.
1:01…1:00…0:59…0:58…
This next part is going to be tricky. Sata should still be able to vanquish most of Chicago, but he’ll have to aim it manually. He won’t be able to implode as wide of an area, but—
Sata hears a tremendous thunderclap, louder than anything he’s ever experienced before, and at the same time sees a flash of superbright light.
Then he doesn’t see anything at all.
Sata understands what just happened. The ionizer is supposed to form a defensive antistatic barrier around his suit. But when Talon had
slashed his visor, he’d also put a hole in the ion shield. Lightning, like water, takes the path of least resistance.
The Mastermind screams.
He screams at his miscalculation.
He screams at the ruination of his calculated plan.
He screams at the mouse, who somehow managed to beat him.
But most of all, he screams in pain, because both of his eyeballs have just exploded and are leaking all over his cheeks.
FIFTY-ONE
I braced my entire body as I fell into the Tesla field. You’d think I would have gotten used to being zapped by electricity by now, having been subjected to enough volts to power a small city for a year, but the thought of the ensuing pain still made me want to curl up in a fetal position and suck my thumb.
Incredibly, the pain didn’t come.
Everything became bright blue, and thousands—millions—of lightning flashes streaked sideways, diagonally, up and down, all around. Beautiful, and potentially deadly. But none of them zapped me.
I credited the ionizer button, and then tilted my body face-first, looking for Sata.
Incredibly, I found him.
Even more incredibly, he was the one curled up fetal, clutching the TEV to his chest. By dipping my shoulders I was able to increase my rate of descent. We both fell through the bottom of the Tesla field and into open sky just as I bumped into him.
The TEV went spinning off, away from us.
I stared at my mentor for a moment, saw the blood caking the inside of his visor, and wondered if he was even still alive. Then his fist shot out and he chucked me under the chin, knocking me away as he sailed off in the opposite direction.
