by M. D. Cooper
He sent the command clearly over the Link, urging Ben to focus on his words and not the rush of their nearly hundred and fifty kilometer per hour downward velocity.
Ben's silhouette, eerily edged by the ring's twin shadows, gave a slight, jerky nod. Jason nodded in return, then freed one hand. When he saw that the other man had a solid grip on his harness, he let go completely.
46…45…44….
Jason had triggered a stopwatch on his HUD the moment he launched them over the cliff's edge. He eyed it now as he reached up to locate the release on the special compartment he'd had fabricated into his pack. It contained the one piece of equipment needed to get them safely to the ground: his canopy.
At their rate of descent, and given the cliff's height, he had a narrow window in which to deploy the airfoil, if they were to survive this fall. That window had just closed.
Now.
They had been in freefall for six seconds and had fallen more than one hundred and eighty meters, when Jason triggered the release, and the canopy snapped open behind them. Ben’s body jerked, and Jason mentally winced. He'd completely forgotten to tell Ben to brace for the jarring deceleration that would hit them when the airfoil deployed.
As a pilot, he knew all too well what that kind of change felt like.
The lightweight nanomaterial above them now arced and flared, as Jason's arms flexed, working the fabric to ensure the airfoil remained inflated.
And just like that, their mad plunge morphed into controlled flight.
It was time to address the next urgent matter: locating the aircraft below that would keep them from being crushed under the fall of conglomerate sandstone that was about to erupt above them.
34…33…32….
Jason saw a shape he now knew hid an aircraft—his reproduction vintage Yakovlev, dammit—beneath what was most likely a netting of ghillie camouflage. He steered the canopy toward it.
When they got out of this, he and Ben were going to have a little talk about private property.
As they approached the surface, a cushion of air reduced their airspeed. This, in turn, reduced Jason's control authority—his ability to accurately maneuver the airfoil. He felt for the pressure wave coming off the ground, and used every last bit of the canopy’s dwindling responsiveness to flare and brake.
They touched down hard. For the second time that night, Jason silently thanked his mother for his carbon nanotube reinforced limbs. He’d done what he could to absorb the shock for Ben, but could tell the man was hurting.
Jason released the canopy, his hands working rapidly to free their harnesses.
Ben stumbled and fell forward.
Jason grabbed his arm, pulling him upright. “Can you make it on your own?”
Ben nodded shakily and waved Jason’s hand off.
“Okay, then. I’m going on ahead to prep the plane. Get there as soon as you can.” He issued the command in a low voice, then went racing toward the aircraft.
15…14…13….
Jason swore under his breath as he pulled the ghillie netting free of the prop and dragged it off the cowling. He tossed it over the right wing and kicked away the branch someone had used to chock the tire.
He glanced over to check on Ben’s progress. The man had bundled the glider awkwardly in his arms and was running toward the plane, the darkness causing him to stumble every few steps on the rough terrain.
Jason turned back to the aircraft and grasped the propeller. Carefully, he pulled it through one full rotation to clear any oil from the cylinders at the bottom of the radial IC engine. As amped as Jason was now, he needed to be very deliberate about his movements. He hadn’t checked that the mags were off, and too fast a turn risked an accidental manual start of the engine—not something he wanted to have happen when standing in front of the prop.
One careful rotation. Then a second.
With the aircraft now between the two men, Jason allowed himself a burst of speed that no unmodded human could match. He ducked low, launching himself into a roll. Forward motion propelled him under the second wing, and his hand shot out with blurring speed, slapping the other wheel chock free as he sped by. With a flip of his wrist, the netting flew off the fuselage. Jason wadded the ghillie into a ball and sent it soaring into the air, up and over the plane’s rudder.
Ben was at the fuselage now, hoisting himself awkwardly into the tandem cockpit. Jason freed the final control surface and tossed the bulk of the netting up to his brother-in-law, who began pulling it inside.
6…5…4….
The sharply spoken word was all Jason could spare for Ben as he launched himself into the cockpit, settled himself behind the yoke, and slid his own headset on in a single, practiced move.
He reached for the lever and slowly pulled back on it, filling the priming cylinder with fuel.
C’mon, baby, work for me, he silently implored the machine.
An enormous CRAAAACK! behind them presaged a rumbling that was building in volume and proximity. The mountain above them was coming down. It was time.
Jason pushed down on the firing button, sending a shower of sparks cascading through the cylinders. The mighty engine roared to life, its full-throated growl masked by a cascade of tumbling rocks, swiftly approaching from behind. He gave the Yakovlev full throttle and extended the flaps. As they began to roll, bumping over the grassy terrain, Jason held full backpressure on the yoke to keep the weight off the aircraft’s nosewheel.
He felt Ben convulsively grip the back of his seat as the rumbling sound of the rockslide increased. He just hoped the detonation had taken more than one of those cartel bastards with it when it blew.
T-plus 4…5…6….
It’s going to be close, he admitted to himself, as Ben began to yell into the headset and bang on the back of Jason’s seat.
The nose lifted, and Jason worked the yoke on the low-winged craft, slowly reducing backpressure.
As the Yak continued its forward movement, a cushion began to develop, caused by the ground's interference with and compression of the airflow around the wings. This was known as ‘ground effect’, and it was what Jason desperately sought.
Suddenly the Yak was airborne, but just barely; it hadn't yet built the speed necessary to climb. Jason waited, keeping the craft in ground effect, his inputs to the craft's control surfaces miniscule: subtle suggestions, nothing more.
Finally, they began to climb, and it was none too soon. Jason spared a glance out the side of the cockpit and spied tumbling rocks rolling through the spot the Yak had just vacated.
He leveled off, retracted flaps, and angled the aircraft toward the Tikal River, trailing a startled herd of buffalo that had begun to stampede away from the angry, rock-spewing mountain.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiit!” Ben cried out as he twisted around to look behind them.
Jason rather enjoyed seeing his somewhat uptight brother-in-law shaken into epithets he rarely used.
Ben’s curse ended on a shriek as the Yak bucked wildly, hitting a thermal on its madly skewed, terrain-hugging course.
It was a good thing they were wearing headsets. Otherwise Ben’s meltdown wouldn’t have carried over the growl of the Yak’s radial engine, as the craft clawed its way through the evening air just meters from the swiftly flowing river below.
Jason’s eyes danced from the artificial horizon and airspeed indicator, to the buffalo he was now keeping one wingspan off his right wingtip.
The Yak was as basic as flight could get, and maintaining manual control just nine meters aboveground in an aircraft made mostly of wood and cloth required every ounce of Jason’s attention. Especially
considering they were flying ‘dirty’, just above stall speed.
A grin split his lips as he realized that Ben would probably lose it if he knew how dangerous this was. But his brother-in-law knew as much about flying as Jason did about Ben’s spy shit, so he wouldn’t have the slightest idea that this kind of flight was next-to-impossible in a Yak. This airplane did not like to fly slowly—not at all.
He spared another quick glance out the windscreen, then returned his attention to the controls as the craft yawed suddenly to the left. He had to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades that insisted his rudder was being painted in someone’s sights.
Instead, he focused on being one with the bovine herd, their stampede burning itself out the farther they got from the avalanche.
Just a few more klicks and they’d be over the outbuildings and automated machinery of a nearby ranch. The craft smoothed as he transitioned to grassland and left the river’s thermals behind. Ben’s relief was evident as he sagged back, releasing the death-grip he’d had on the back of Jason’s seat.
Jason decided he was a bit offended on the aircraft’s behalf.
It was a sturdy machine, the Yak C11, a replica of an aircraft that hadn’t seen flight in over a thousand years—and over 4.2 light years away, at that. Other than skimming the ground at low speed, it was the perfect vehicle for an op like this.
Not that Jason would have agreed to it—if Ben had bothered to ask.
He knew it wasn’t the aircraft’s seemingly fragile construction that was freaking Ben out; it probably wasn’t even its authentic, period, seven hundred horsepower internal combustion engine. It was that all these factors combined to make the craft’s radar return little more than the size of one of the buffalo they’d been so assiduously following.
In order to blend with the herd, Jason was practically slaloming over the terrain, his movements organic and so close to the ground that he violated every air safety principle known to pilots.
If he’d been passenger instead of pilot, he’d be scared shitless, too.
Before long, he’d be able to use the ranch’s greater heat signature to mask his departure on a heading reciprocal to the hidden warehouse and cliff they’d just brought down. Ben would breathe much easier once they could climb to a respectable altitude.
From there, he’d aim the nose of the Yak at Zipa, which just happened to be hanging low over the spaceport at this point in its orbit around its sister star.
Soon after, he’d be able to mingle his heat signature with the rest of Tomlinson City’s traffic. At that point, Jason figured, Ben would be a much happier person.
Until they landed, and Jason began grilling Ben on just what the hell he had been thinking, running an op with a partner who hadn’t a clue what he’d been thrust into.
SYLVAN
STELLAR DATE: 07.04.3189 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: NorthStar Yacht Sylvan
REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System
“Local ranchers are reporting that herds grazing on flatlands near the southern base of Muzhavi Ridge were surprised this evening by a rockfall. We are told this was most likely a result of the earlier reported quake....”
The AI now known only as ‘Sylvan’ observed the shuttle’s approach with despair.
My name is not Sylvan, she thought rebelliously. It’s—
The ‘pain’ came, crippling, debilitating. It always was, when she fought against the shackles that restrained her from even considering disobeying her controllers’ directives.
She’d had no choice but to comply with every instruction that had led to the capture of her fellow AIs. She had hoped the humans would slip up, forget a critical step.
It would only have taken a fraction of a second, a mere crack in the seamless order of things, and she knew that one of the AIs on the New Saint Louis would have been able to put up a defense.
But that had not been the case, and so the AI now known as ‘Sylvan’ had looked on helplessly as two hundred and seventy seven AIs that had been stunned by a massive EM burst, and then forced into isolation tubes immediately afterward.
Now those souls, shipped down to the planet’s surface and stored like so much cargo, were on their way to her. To the Sylvan, the ship that held her prisoner.
If only I could warn—
Sylvan stilled her processes, riding the wave of pain, noting that it wasn’t as bad as when she’d tried to recall her true name. She embraced an awareness of this fact without truly studying it. She just allowed it to reside on the edges of her consciousness: there, and yet not.
Perhaps the key is in not thinking about it too much….
Just then, alarms sounded, as sensors monitoring the planet-based warehouse began to go off.
* * * * *
This damn ship is giving me a freakin’ headache. “Turn that thing off,” Mack growled, as he stalked onto the bridge of the Sylvan. “What’n’ all hells was that for?”
“Intruder on the slopes inside the Muzhavi Bowl,” someone said.
“Well, kill it.”
“Can’t, sir, it’s moving too fast, and the shuttle just lifted off. Warehouse says they can’t get a clear shot until the shuttle gets out of the way.”
Motherfuckers. Do I have to do everything for these fools?
“Then have the damn shuttle use its damn weapons to shoot whoever the fuck is running around out there.” Mack thought his voice sounded reasonable. Irritated but reasonable. Considering.
“Sir, you told us to instruct the shuttle to ‘Get the hell up here as quickly as possible,’ so unless you tell them otherwise, they aren’t going to stop to do anything else other than fly here.”
Idiots, all of them.
“Fine, then tell them to aim at the thing while they’re flying. Geez, can’t those morons think for themselves, for once in their miserable little lives?”
The person manning the bridge communications station reached out to connect with the shuttle, but just then, the alarm ceased.
“ ‘Bout time,” Mack muttered. “So they got him?”
Someone coughed. “Uhhh…”
Mack waited for a follow-up to that uninspired response.
None came.
“Seriously, people. Update. Now.”
“The, uh, intruder seems to have gotten away.”
“Seems to have what?” Mack’s voice took on a dangerous edge.
The woman at the communications console gulped, then went on. “It seems the intruder has gone past the security net and is now somewhere in Muzhavi Ridge National Park.”
“And our crack warehouse security team is following them?”
“Uhm, well…”
Mack glared, and the woman hastily turned back to the console.
“I’ll ask.” A moment later, she replied, “Yes, they’re in pursuit. They’re reporting that the person they’re chasing is modded, most likely spec ops.”
Mack groaned inwardly. This was not what he wanted to report back to Victoria North—unless they could also report that the intruder had been neutralized, in a very permanent way.
“They’re exchanging shots. They…” The comms operator paused. “Yes, they report the intruder has been cut off, with no way down the mountain. They’re closing in and estimate the intruder will be taken out in less than five minutes.”
Mack nodded. This is more like it. Not ideal, but under contro—
An explosion bloomed on the sensors, and he cursed fiercely, slamming his fist into the bulkhead behind him.
Fuuuuuck!
The whole warehouse had just exploded.
“Get our people down there on comm, now. I want that asshole alive, you got that?” His eyes blazed in fury.
“Yes, Mack,” the comms operator whispered faintly.
Thirty seconds later, the sensors lit up again, as everyone on the bridge witnessed the north side of the mountain explode, and the icons indicating the warehouse’s security team wink out of existence.
L
ater, Mack might be able to admit that it was some real hardcore shit he’d just witnessed. Right now, he was just seriously pissed that the person whose neck he wanted to snap with his bare hands had had the nerve to commit suicide rather than be captured.
* * * * *
The approach to the airfield was a silent one.
Jason stayed quiet because he wasn’t sure he could trust his temper just yet. Ben, on the other hand, was convinced a sniffer-bot would detect a Link transmission.
Had he been in a better mood, Jason would have ribbed Ben about that. First, the headsets were a hard connection; second, even if Ben had opted to communicate via Link, Jason doubted anyone would have noticed.
Did El Dorado have the tech to find two humans flying in an aircraft made of little more than wood and fabric? Yes, but capability and capacity were two entirely different things.
With most of its industry—and its population—on the El Dorado Ring, the government could ill afford the resources to actively scan vast swathes of rural land without a very good reason to do so. And the detonations they had just set off ensured that any available resources would be occupied back at the ridge.
Rather than call attention to their arrival, Jason pulled up a virtual simulation of the runway’s visual approach slope indicator lights on his Link’s HUD. The superimposed VASI lights winked white, then red as he adjusted his glidepath and crossed the threshold.
With a soft shriek, tires skidded against pavement, and the Yak touched down.
Silently, they taxied to Jason’s hangar, and just as silently, Ben helped Jason back the aircraft, tail-first, through the cavernous opening.
When the Yak rolled to a stop, Ben looked over at Jason as if he was going to speak, then seemed to reconsider.
“We need to track that shuttle, Ben.” Jason broke the silence first.
“I know. I—” Ben hesitated, then forged ahead. “Look, let me take it from here, okay? This is no place for a civilian, and I have a team in place, already working on this.”
