The console in front of Zhong lit up like fireworks on National Day lit up the night sky. As the noise of the turbines died, Zhong swore "Fucking flying turtle."
There was no time to attempt a restart – they didn't have the altitude, nor did he have time to reset all the open circuit breakers that they would need to fly the bird. "Brace, brace, brace," he called out. It was time to try and autorotate this turtle down to the ground in what was laughingly called in the flight manual a controlled unpowered descent. At least the Samson had hydraulic backup flight controls, and wasn't reliant on fly-by-wire, otherwise they were really fucked.
Zhong manipulated the suddenly heavy collective, cyclic and pedals – no power assist any more – to slow the chopper's descent, converting the forward momentum into rotation, while he tried to find a spot of ground that wasn't occupied by stampeding sturmbeest.
The scenery blurred as the chopper suddenly spiralled downwards. As Zhong called out, Paklowski lost her grip on the EM Pulse Rifle and screamed. Vitello turned at the unexpected cry and yelled, "Linda!" His heart leapt into his mouth as she slipped out of view, falling out of the chopper, only to be blocked by the sight of Sylwanin lunging out of the door, impossibly fast. The Na'vi female grunted, one hand gripping the door frame, while the other one hauled Paklowski back into the chopper by her right ankle.
No-one was given any time to congratulate Sylwanin on her action. The Samson did not make a smooth landing – instead it smashed into the ground in the hardest landing any of the Sec-ops troopers had ever experienced, knocking those still standing off their feet. The chopper ground its landing skids into the ground and slid, raising a huge dust cloud. Somehow, no-one else fell out of the chopper, more through luck than good management.
Zhong called out, "Is everyone alive?"
The dust settled as each of the troopers called out their name, except for Vitello. He screamed, "FUCK!"
The dust had cleared slightly, and he saw the most terrifying sight he had seen in all his life. An adult sturmbeest trailing the main herd was charging directly for the chopper. The dumb animal had apparently correctly identified the chopper as the originator of the herds torment, and was moving to eliminate the danger to the herd.
Vitello sprang to his feet, forgetting his bruises, grabbed the door gun and aimed the tribarrel at the charging beast. When he squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. "Fuck!" he yelled again. The impact of the landing had created some kind of stoppage. A sudden picture popped into his head of his firearms instructor from boot, telling him no matter what, when clearing any stoppage, take your time and run through each step of the procedure. As Lewis was yelling at him to shoot the charging behemoth, Vitello cleared the weapon, ejecting the rounds up the spout and pulling back the cocking lever.
He breathed out and remembered the one time Sara the Smurf went on a sturmbeest hunt, of how she saw a hunter kill a charging sturmbeest with a single arrow. He took aim and squeezed the trigger. The point five inch depleted uranium rounds – the design based on the ancient point five BMG round first used over two centuries before – fired at a rate of one hundred rounds a second, the sound of the weapon firing like the tearing of cloth.
His aim was true – at least forty of the rounds he fired in the first second were on target penetrated the sturmbeest through its left breathing spiracle, vaporising a lung and the immense heart that powered the huge beast. It smashed into the ground, the immense body sliding until it stopped, touching the chopper and making it rock gently from side to side. Vitello took a shuddering breath, and said shakily, "Vitello, ok."
Sylwanin was impressed by the steadiness that the tawtute warrior had shown. It took great courage for a hunter to stand in front of a charging talioang, and without flinching calmly target the fearsome beast and make his kill. She recognised that Vitello could have abandoned the chopper and ran, but that would have likely ended in the death of his comrades – and possibly herself. It was also interesting to see the effects of the tawtute weapon. It had blown a great crater into the beast, penetrating deep into its body. The stories of the watchers were right – the weapons of the tawtute were indeed fearsome. It would be interesting to see how the weapon would perform against an 'angitsa – a hammerhead.
She clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, "Sìltsan tspang." A good kill indeed.
"Fucking A!" said Paklowski, proud of her man.
"Paklowski, Vitello, stay with the chopper," said Lewis. "I'll take Sylwanin and look for Sara."
Sara shut her eyes and clutched at Tsawlontu, as the world dissolved into a confusion of dust noise and vibration, the roaring of the talioang and thundering of their hooves filling their minds. She did not even notice the bracelet on her wrist and her necklace growing hot and blistering her skin.
After the noise died, the two Na'vi did not move for a time, until Sara asked, "Are we still alive?" She slowly opened her eyes to see her mate grinning at her.
"I think we are," answered Tsawlontu, and kissed her.
That was how Sylwanin and Lewis found them. "Hey Sara, get a room," said Lewis drily.
She jumped at the unexpected sound of English in this place. Her face coloured and she leapt to her feet. "Hi, Lewis," she replied in the same language. To her pleased surprise, she observed Sylwanin standing alongside her human friend, and she added happily in Na'vi, "I See you, my sister. What do you do here, in this place, with my friend Lewis?"
"I think it is best for Lu'iss to explain," replied Sylwanin.
Tsawlontu growled threateningly, "You made this stampede." He glared at Lewis, fingering the hilt of his knife as though he wished to use it. "Knowing we were here."
"It was do this, or take Sara from you when you arrived at Hell's Gate," replied Lewis calmly. Not another pissing contest.
"I would like to see you try," snarled Tsawlontu.
"You could not have stopped us," replied Lewis calmly, regretting the words as soon as he said them. He had a gift for aggravating any situation, it seemed.
As Tsawlontu's fingers tightened around his knife hilt, Sylwanin snapped, "Lu'iss is right. I have seen the power of the tawtute weapons, Tsawlontu. You would be dead if you tried to stop them."
"But why?" he asked. "Why not tell the tawtute that Kalinkey is gone?"
Sylwanin replied, "The tawtute can see everything that she says, through the magic of her necklace. The ones who watched had to see Kalinkey die."
Lewis nodded. "We are a very persistent people," he said. "If we knew that Sara - I mean Kalinkey – was still alive, the tawtute would not rest until she was in their custody."
"I do not like this," frowned Sara. "It is not truth." She felt the wrongness of the lie that was about to be made, of it crossing against her rules.
Lewis laughed, and drew his knife. "I need your necklace and bracelet, and some of your blood." Sara bent down and allowed him to cut the two ornaments from her. Lewis said, "If I am asked, I will say that I cut the necklace from your body. I will say that they were soaked in your blood, and that your life-mate Tsawlontu took your body back to Hometree, so that you could be one with Eywa."
Sara looked at him and said wonderingly, "If I give you my blood, then this will be truth, and I may stay with the Omaticaya always."
"Yes," agreed Lewis. "If the tawtute leaders choose not to question what they are told, that will be the case. It is telling the truth in a way that it means that we want it to mean, not what actually happened." He picked up two rocks, and crushed the tawtute stone between them. It split in two, and something small and glittering fell from its interior.
Sara nodded, and used her own knife to cut her arm, allowing her blood to drip onto the necklace, until the soft material of the choker was soaked. When Lewis gave her the bracelet to do the same, she closed her fingers around it and said, "No. You gave me this, and though I know I may not wear it again, I would keep this as a keepsake of your friendship."
Lewis looked a little embarrassed, but after a slight hesitation he nodded in agreement.
"I may not see Lissa and Phred again, if I am to be dead to the tawtute," said Sara. The realisation of her position was penetrating her mind, opening up the ache in her heart that had begun when she had learned that Lissa was dying.
"We'll see," said Lewis cryptically.
Paklowski had unlimbered the EM Pulse Rifle and replaced it with an M60 machine gun. It took several attempts to get it to lock into the door gun mount due to the shaking of her hands. "I thought I was dead," she said. "If it hadn't been for Sylwanin..."
"I thought we all were," replied Vitello. He switched his comm unit to vox and asked, "Excuse me sir, is this bird going to fly again?"
Zhong had been working his way steadily through a checklist, resetting circuit breakers and testing the related systems. "I'll know in about five minutes, Vitello," replied Zhong calmly, as though they were sitting on the tarmac back at Hell's Gate running through pre-flight checks. "At the moment, I would say it is highly probable but not certain."
He was interrupted by some com-chatter, as he had just tested the comms system and put it back on light. "...Zero Eight. This is Hell's Gate Tower, calling Samson Zero-Eight. Please respond."
"Hell's Gate Tower, this is Zero-Eight," replied Zhong. "Over."
"Where have you been, Zero-Eight?" asked the controller. "I've been trying to raise you for the last ten minutes."
"There was an electrical surge, Tower," replied Zhong. "It knocked out virtually every system. I had to put the bird down hard, and I'm just getting it back on-line."
"Will you need rescue?" asked the controller anxiously, even though it would take an hour or so to get another bird to Zero-Eight. He did not fancy telling RDA senior management that he had not done everything in his power to recover Administrator Zhong.
"Negative," replied Zhong. "I expect we will back in the air in a few minutes, although I think the Samson will require a complete overhaul. The landing was very hard."
"What caused the problem?" asked the controller.
While Zhong normally appreciated underlings who were dedicated and persistent in their duties, at this very moment he wished the controller was a little less efficient. "I expect it was some freak electromagnetic condition," he replied. "Pandora is a very strange place."
"You've got that right, sir," replied the controller.
"I prefer flying my ikran," commented Tsawlontu, as he stood with Sara and Sylwanin at the LZ below Kelutrel, following the chopper's departure with their eyes. The ride back to the familiar surrounds of his birthplace had been disconcerting. "One can hear oneself think, and feel the rushing of air on one's skin."
"Srane," agreed Sylwanin. "It is not right for dead things to fly."
It was with mixed feelings that Sara watched the chopper leave. She could no longer seek out human contact. Instead, she must be dead to the tawtute, and only be Na'vi. Although this had been the most likely outcome of the plan she had made in the forest under the dome, Sara had not expected to be in this position quite so soon. A feeling of dislocation, of uncertainty surrounded her heart.
Sylwanin glanced at her sister of the tsumuke'awsiteng, observing the restless movement of Sara's tail and the searching expression on her face. "It will be well, Kalinkey, my sister," she said reassuringly, correctly interpreting Sara's disquiet. "This is your home now, with the Omaticaya. It is time to let go."
Sara smiled wistfully at her lover, and at her life-mate. "I miss Lissa, my mother, and my foster father Phred. Lewis too was my friend."
"I am sure you will meet with them again, someday," replied Tsawlontu. He had been impressed with Lewis, especially after he had inspected the carcass of the talioang that had charged the kunsìp. The hole was large enough to stick one's head into the body of the dead beast.
"I hope so," replied Sara.
Lewis walked into the research lab, and asked for Doc Palmer. The glum looking research assistant pointed to the office. "Did you find her?" she asked dejectedly.
"Yes," replied Lewis. He did not have to say anything else.
When he entered the untidy office, Phred pointed to the visitor's chair without a word. Lewis shut the door behind him and flopped tiredly into the chair. He dug into his breast pocket and withdrew a clear zip-loc bag. The bloody strap of the choker necklace was the only contents. Without any ado, he tossed it on to the desk.
Phred looked down at the evidence of the maskirovka, and his shoulders slumped. He wondered how he was going to tell Lissa of the events of the past three days. There was no privacy in the hospital.
"You're going to have to fill out a DD1840R," advised Lewis. He was going to miss watching the Adventures of Sara the Smurf. "You know. Loss of a major asset in the field."
"Did it..." started Phred.
"Pretty much as expected," answered Lewis. There was no telling who could be listening, and even though Zhong was apparently on their side, there was no point in saying anything definitive. "There is something else," he mentioned. "Sylwanin was not happy with the thought that we have seen many things, including Uniluke. She said that many of these things are not for aliens to see. I assured her that this could be addressed."
"I see," replied Phred. He swept the document on his monitor he had received from the latest superluminal transmission to a data tablet with a practiced flick of a hand, and passed the tablet to Lewis.
"All mention of permanent personality transfer to Avatars is classified on a need-to-know basis," read Lewis aloud. "All record of the method used to collect data for the Na'vi cultural study is to be suppressed, including all original research materials, and is only to be released with the authorisation of the RDA CEO or Director of Research and Development. What the fuck?"
"It appears that head office do not want anyone to know that permanent personality transfer is possible," explained Phred. "Can't have the labour force becoming restless, you see. So I think we can satisfy Sylwanin's requirement that no-one reveal the content of anything sensitive from a Na'vi perspective. I had already anticipated her request in my report. This is a normal part of standard anthropological protocols."
"But everyone on base knows about Sara the Smurf," objected Lewis. "The whole damn lot of us."
Phred shrugged. "They will be required to sign an additional non-disclosure agreement before the Evening Star makes planetfall. Failure to do so will result in cancellation of their contract, and expulsion from Hell's Gate. Any disclosure after return to Earth will meet with substantial financial penalties."
Lewis frowned. "Transport back to Earth? That doesn't sound too bad."
"That's not what I said," replied Phred.
An expression of horror spread over Lewis' face. The thought of being thrown into the Pandoran forest – presumably without minimal survival gear – well, it was a death sentence, pure and simple. "These guys don't fuck around," he said grimly.
"No, they don't," replied Phred.