The Secret Intelligence Service was getting increasingly alarmed about the developments regarding these mysterious 'windows'. The family of one man who had reputedly become trapped in whatever lay beyond one had apparently linked up with one Dr Malone, whose researches had taken her towards that subject. No sooner had a careful investigation revealed that most of the 'windows' were sealed than yet another mystery began.
Group Captain (retd.) David Savage-Marshall (he normally only used one surname, but didn't take too much care which one) had also got into contact with the three of them, and begun acting somewhat suspiciously. He had taken a long trip to Colon, Panama, a city more renowned for its black-market arms bazaars than appeal as a tourist spot. Several rather large packages had been delivered to his house shortly afterwards- coincidence, or was he investing in military ordinance?
Then there was the series of six-week 'business trips' to Russia. He was admittedly a partner in a small air freight firm, but Dr Malone was on the same flight to Moscow, ostensibly to give a lecture at the Academy of Science. Marshall spent most of his time at an aircraft works. This is what transpired there, though the SIS didn't get to hear of it until many years later.
Will staggered off the Aeroflot jet airliner, wincing as the circulation returned to his legs. //Whatever you've built had better be a damn sight comfier than that thing, Dave,// He thought to himself. //And to think I was actually quite excited about leaving Britain for the first time...//
Elaine joined him, rubbing her calves and wondering aloud how you knew if you had deep vein thrombosis.
"When you unexpectedly drop dead," Will replied slightly testily. "Come on, Mum, let's get a coffee or something."
Mary called Will on his expensive mobile phone a few minutes later. "I'll be outside the terminal in five minutes," she informed them. "The plane looks absolutely fantastic, and Dave says he'll have it ready for a test flight by tomorrow."
"Great! Can I speak to him?"
"He's at the plant still. Last time I saw him he was fitting a minigun to one of the turrets."
"Okay. See you later." He hung up, and finished his coffee.
"You've missed Dave, haven't you?" Elaine said perceptively. "He's almost a replacement father."
"Oh, come on, Mum!" Will laughed. "Would a responsible parent let me get away with some of the stuff he does? You're only saying that because you fancy him!"
"I bloody don't!" she retorted, also laughing. Will simply raised one eyebrow.
An hour later, they were standing in front of a huge aircraft, in a low concrete building in the Russian countryside. It wasn't complete, but it looked quite something.
It wasn't an elegant or graceful aircraft. The fuselage was something like twice the width of a railway carriage, with an underbelly like an unusually large rowing boat. The wings were straight and surprisingly thick, with two huge jet engines underneath. The rudder and tail looked pretty much like any aircraft's. It was the colour that got to you, really. The whole skin GLEAMED, reflecting light in a strange way that gave it an oily sheen. Will glanced at the knife he carried at his belt, remembering how it had looked before the original blade had been broken.
"Wow." He looked at Mary. "You two built the whole thing out of the same metal as..."
"Yeah. Manganese-titanium alloy. Lighter than aluminium but twice as strong, low radar reflection properties; the perfect metal for building planes out of! Ah, here comes Dave. I'll let him explain all about his baby."
Dave appeared from within the plane, grinning. He was covered in oil and holding a screwdriver in one hand, and he looked as if he hadn't slept in a week or so.
"Hi folks. Sorry I didn't come down to meet you, but I daren't trust the local help on their own." There were none too pleasant stories about Russian quality control standards. The technicians were getting paid nearly double their usual wage for this job but Dave was taking no chances.
"No worries. Looks nice," Will remarked, indicating the plane. Dave grinned.
"Yeah. The really techy stuff is in the nosecone, but you'd need to be Gordon bloody Freeman to understand all THAT," the other three mutually decided to hide the CD for Half-Life 2 for a bit, "so I'll just explain the bit I designed. Basically, she's sixty feet long with a forty foot wingspan, can exceed Mach 2 for long enough to make a jump, and has transatlantic fuel capacity at cruising speed. Armament is fairly light, but enough to defend ourselves with. We have a full threat warning and countermeasures system; chaff and flare dispensers, ECM and all that. We've also got 360 degree radar coverage."
"How'd you manage that? I don't see a radaome," Will replied. He'd been reading Dave's extensive techno-thriller collection quite a lot recently. He was referring to the large frisbee-like radar set fitted to the roofs of airborne early warning aircraft. Most aircraft have only a forward-looking radar set, with about thirty to forty degrees of vision on military equipment. Dave grinned broadly. "I can't really claim credit for that. Mary had a friend whose dissertation was on radar systems, and the limitations of convential sets. This bloke had come up with a better idea; build the radar systems into the wing surfaces. You might see the RAF building their AEW planes that way in about three years, but Mary wrote off to him about how we needed the technology for a special project and he sent the blueprints."
"The fact that he was trying to get into my underwear from Freshers Week to graduation helped some!" Mary added, causing Elaine to have a fit of giggles and Dave to mutter something about 'Bloody women.'
The four of them walked through the interior, noting where everything was. There was a small 'hallway' behind the cockpit, with a door on each side. Over the cockpit door was hung a wooden shield, with a carving of the hilt of the Knife. Somebody had taken the shards from the safety deposit box Will normally kept them in and glued them in their approximately correct place, an idea blatantly lifted from the second Lord of the Rings film. Will smiled; he wished he'd thought of that.
Turning towards the rear of the aircraft, they walked down a narrow corridor with five small rooms to one side. "Crew quarters," Dave explained. "The interiors aren't fitted yet, and that's going to be a DIY job." Will tried not to wince; he'd seen Dave's attempts at DIY, which had included drilling straight through a water pipe whilst putting up shelves. The water pipe leading from the roof tank to every flat in the building, in fact. He'd destroyed the carpet, run up a three figure repair bill AND got himself crossed off every other resident's Christmas card list on that occasion.
Next was the kitchen and lounge area, a mess of exposed pipework and half-assembled cabinets. "Looks neater than your bedroom," Elaine remarked. Dave exchanged looks with Will, wondering whose bedroom she was on about.
Finally they took in the cockpit, which was the only part that didn't currently resemble a building site. It looked instead like the inside of a space shuttle. There were five ejector seats arranged in a horseshoe around the interior, with the pilot's seat at the front. The other seats had a screen and keyboard in front of them, as well as a couple of levers and switches. The pilot's seat had a somewhat smaller screen above the artificial horizon, with the keyboard mounted overhead.
"All consoles can assume any of the inflight roles: Navigation, radar, flight systems and jump drive control. If the pilot is knocked out then hitting this button here," Dave pointed to a red button under a plastic cover on the nearest console, repeated on the other three, "on any station will engage the autopilot and terrain-following radar system. It should give you time to shift whoever's flying out of the way and let somebody else take over. It isn't a perfect system but we haven't got space for a second set of flight controls, and I was thinking in terms of only one pilot at the time." Mary had persuaded him to teach her to fly the aircraft earlier that week.
"As you can tell, I'm anticipating five crew eventually, but four people can handle her," Dave continued. Nobody doubted who crew member number five would be, least of all Will. Elaine wasn't sure whether to approve or not, but she knew better than to argue with the others on this issue.
"We'll be able to take her up tomorrow, I hope. The only thing left to fine tune is the actual transition drive." Dave glanced towards the nosecone. This was one area he couldn't explain much about, largely because he had only the vaguest idea of how it worked.
The Malone Dimensional Transition System was the whole point of the aircraft. It focused a high frequency beam of electromagnetic radiation at a fissure, which could penetrate through to the world on the other side. Then, the wavelength would broaden and force the fissure open just long enough for the aircraft to pass through at full speed. Once it had passed through, the portal would spring closed again. As an added bonus the beam repelled Dust away from the fissure, ensuring that there was no contamination, a feature that Mary was quite proud of.
The next day, they were flying through a series of deep valleys near the Finnish border. The aircraft that they had christened the Aurora Borealis shot between two outcroppings with one wing pointed straight at the ground.
"Whoa!" Will said as they levelled out. Dave grinned, and deployed the turrets. "Okay everybody, this is our first combat training mission. There are a couple of Sukhoi-27 interceptor aircraft going up against us. They only have simulated guns and the pilots are rookies same as us, so this shouldn't be too steep a learning curve. Head for the guns, folks!"
Will scrambled into the cramped dorsal turret and plugged his helmet's oxygen and communication leads into the sockets immediately beneath the yoke that controlled the turret's movements. The sight blinked into his helmet's Heads-Up Display. Will twisted the yoke and pulled it back and forth a couple of times, checking that it was working all right. He fired a short burst, ensuring that both guns were clear. As he did all this, Dave was talking to the pilots in surprisingly fluent Russian.
"Okay, they've got a three hundred foot height advantage and heat-seeking missiles as well as guns. Here we go!" Dave pulled up and to the left, performing a 'corkscrew' manoevre. The two Flankers moved in.
Will spotted one and opened fire with the two huge thirty-calibre miniguns. It veered away, though he doubted he had hit it. The other fired a quick burst with its own cannons. A 'Simulated Damage' caption appeared in Will's HUD, with a hollow rectangle beside it. A small portion of the rectangle filled. Dave banked to the right, spraying the aircraft responsible. Its partner loosed a heat seeker, which immediately began tracking them.
"Look out!" Elaine warned from the rear turret. Dave didn't reply, but dropped a couple of magnesium flares to decoy the missile and violently pulled up. The missile exploded below them, and the Simulated Damage box filled slightly more. Will guessed that this was being calculated from a computer on the gound and transmitted to them; no computer aboard the Aurora could work out the splash damage from a simulated missile. Mary caught one of the Flankers with a long burst, and it withdrew. Elaine peppered it as it departed.
"Boom!" Dave remarked dryly. "One down, one to... Shit!" The Simulated Damage bar grew precipitously. Dave deployed the airbrakes and waited for the fighter to overshoot, and then blazed away with the quartet of miniguns framing the Drive in the nosecone. "Got you, you little bastard. And you're dead as well, then?" The two Flankers took up formation at about a mile distant. "Strange, I didn't think..." His curses rang out as both fighters wheeled around and attacked again.
An hour or two later, all three aircraft had to land to refuel. Dave took the opportunity to stand on the tarmac -a safe distance from the jet fuel being pumped into his aircraft- and have a quiet smoke. Elaine muttered disapprovingly, but without much heat. Will sighed.
"Mum, we both know he'll only stop smoking when he drops dead from it. You won't change him even if you move in with him!"
"I can try," she replied grimly. Will sighed. He had a very bad feeling about this.
A week went past, and they steadily increased in skill. The Flanker pilots became extremely disenchanted and fed up of getting shot down by a seaplane, and threatened to start using live ammunition. The Drive was completed, and they made several dummy runs to test proccedures. They also practiced ejection drill, parachue landings and other essentials with the local air force, who were happy to assist them- ready money in large quantities has that effect on people in countries like Russia.
"I think we're pretty much ready," Dave said after a fortnight. "I reckon we're best off flying out of Sywell; I can get us a hangar there for free." Sywell, an old wartime RAF station in Northamptonshire now given over to civil aviation, was the hub of the air transport firm in which Dave was a senior partner. It lacked a concrete runway, but Aurora was designed to land and take off just about anywhere, the Arctic tundra included.
"One question," Elaine said as she helped him fix an AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile to the number four weapon pylon. "How exactly are we going to get this thing back to Britain without getting noticed?"
"By flying very low most of the way, for a start."
That they brought this off without alerting the authorities is testimony to Dave's skill as a pilot and navigator. He took a roundabout route, flying over and sometimes through the Norwegian fjords before travelling parallel to the eastern coastline of the British Isles, finally veering inland and setting down at Sywell under cover of darkness. His business partner and friend Frank Watson was away on other business, so they had the use of the hangar for a day or two.
"We might as well use our bunks for tonight," Dave told them. "Let's fuel her up and then get some sleep." He attached a small battery-powered pump to a hose between the fuel filler point on Aurora and the large storage tank on the back of a trailer he'd had delivered earlier that day.
Will sat on a nearby toolkit, alone with his thoughts. //By tomorrow I could be with her again. A few hours and we'll be in another world. Even if we don't hit the right world straight away, it'll just be a matter of time.// He smiled slowly, exchanging looks with the daemon only he could see. //I hope we get it right the first time. It's Midsummer's Day tomorrow. Maybe I can get into the garden without her noticing, and just sit down next to her. I can just picture her face!//
He went to bed in a cheerful and moderately excited mood, and then slept for twelve hours solid. He awoke to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. Dave handed him a couple of his famous fried egg and bacon rolls and a steaming mug as he entered the lounge area.
"Morning, kid. Your mum's still asleep; she didn't get any sleep while we were in the air. Turbulence, she said!" Dave drank deeply from his own mug. "As IF!" Dave had a rather narrow definition of turbulence, having flown an F4 Phantom through a thunderstorm on a training mission some years previously.
"Damn!" Mary kicked one of the consoles. "It worked fine in every damn test up until now. Why does the fissure targeting system have to only start playing up TODAY?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"The camera head's stuck. It froze in the middle of a search pattern, and it's twelve degrees out of alignment. I can't even blame the Russians, because I put that part together myself!"
"I've known Americans who blame the Russians for the weather," Dave remarked, exiting the plane and crouching underneath. "Well, I'll be... I've found the problem!" He pulled the top of a Norwegian fir tree out of the camera ball's rotation system and showed it to them. "Now that's low level flying taken a bit too far!"
"See why I didn't get any sleep?" Elaine remarked blearily, annoyance and amusement fighting for control of her face. "Are you sure you want to let him fly on the first jump drive test?"
"You'd rather he scan for the fissures and prime the Drive?" Will remarked without looking up. "Thought not. Me neither, to be honest."
Dave rolled his eyes. "Shall we get on with it?"
The four of them zipped themselves into the silvery grey RAF-style flight suits provided for the occasion, and equipped themselves with survival equipment and sidearms. Dave slipped a piece of a Harrier's fuselage into his pocket, by way of a lucky charm.
"Think we'll need it?" Will enquired.
"Suffice it to say that the only time I flew without it I had to ditch a Puma helicopter in the sea with a blown engine seal. I broke two ribs and my collarbone, and have never, EVER left the ground without it again. Get the picture?"
"Guess so."
The four of them stood in front of the plane, radiating nervous excitement. Dave smiled slightly. "Okay, everybody, time to make some history." //And get rid of the box of Milk Tray Elaine bought for a joke,// he added in the privacy of his own thoughts. Will had acquired a tendency to dress in black and listen to Linkin Park and Eminem a lot, which Elaine had been gently poking fun at for a while. It was starting to get on both men's nerves.
Dave opened the hangar door, as the huge silver aircraft's engines began to turn. He climbed aboard as it rolled out and lined up with the runway. It was early -though jetlag had contrived to suggest otherwise- and the sun was not fully up. Dave settled into his seat and plugged his helmet into the console, then began running through the checklist.
"Engines one and two lit."
"Radar green. Hydraulics... green. Weapons green. Forward infared green."
"Jump drive green. Search pattern initiated."
"Main and backup radios green on all bands. IFF transmitting at nominal strength."
"Okay, everybody. Let's go!" Dave pushed the throttles forward to a little short of full. Without afterburners, which is unusual for a jet this size, Aurora lifted from the runway and climbed rapidly to six thousand feet.
A lone planespotter sitting on a forked branch in a lone oak tree near the runway turned to watch the big plane go over. Shorts Brothers would make a fortune with a plane like that, he mused. All-terrain capability, long range, didn't need a long runway... "Huh?" The plane screamed forward, afterburner trails lighting up the sky. "They never said it could do THAT!" he remarked to himself. Suddenly, the plane vanished behind a brilliant orb of light. When it faded, the sky was empty.
"O-kay. That was VERY strange." The young planespotter never mentioned this to anybody; after all, who would have believed him?
Group Captain (retd.) David Savage-Marshall (he normally only used one surname, but didn't take too much care which one) had also got into contact with the three of them, and begun acting somewhat suspiciously. He had taken a long trip to Colon, Panama, a city more renowned for its black-market arms bazaars than appeal as a tourist spot. Several rather large packages had been delivered to his house shortly afterwards- coincidence, or was he investing in military ordinance?
Then there was the series of six-week 'business trips' to Russia. He was admittedly a partner in a small air freight firm, but Dr Malone was on the same flight to Moscow, ostensibly to give a lecture at the Academy of Science. Marshall spent most of his time at an aircraft works. This is what transpired there, though the SIS didn't get to hear of it until many years later.
Will staggered off the Aeroflot jet airliner, wincing as the circulation returned to his legs. //Whatever you've built had better be a damn sight comfier than that thing, Dave,// He thought to himself. //And to think I was actually quite excited about leaving Britain for the first time...//
Elaine joined him, rubbing her calves and wondering aloud how you knew if you had deep vein thrombosis.
"When you unexpectedly drop dead," Will replied slightly testily. "Come on, Mum, let's get a coffee or something."
Mary called Will on his expensive mobile phone a few minutes later. "I'll be outside the terminal in five minutes," she informed them. "The plane looks absolutely fantastic, and Dave says he'll have it ready for a test flight by tomorrow."
"Great! Can I speak to him?"
"He's at the plant still. Last time I saw him he was fitting a minigun to one of the turrets."
"Okay. See you later." He hung up, and finished his coffee.
"You've missed Dave, haven't you?" Elaine said perceptively. "He's almost a replacement father."
"Oh, come on, Mum!" Will laughed. "Would a responsible parent let me get away with some of the stuff he does? You're only saying that because you fancy him!"
"I bloody don't!" she retorted, also laughing. Will simply raised one eyebrow.
An hour later, they were standing in front of a huge aircraft, in a low concrete building in the Russian countryside. It wasn't complete, but it looked quite something.
It wasn't an elegant or graceful aircraft. The fuselage was something like twice the width of a railway carriage, with an underbelly like an unusually large rowing boat. The wings were straight and surprisingly thick, with two huge jet engines underneath. The rudder and tail looked pretty much like any aircraft's. It was the colour that got to you, really. The whole skin GLEAMED, reflecting light in a strange way that gave it an oily sheen. Will glanced at the knife he carried at his belt, remembering how it had looked before the original blade had been broken.
"Wow." He looked at Mary. "You two built the whole thing out of the same metal as..."
"Yeah. Manganese-titanium alloy. Lighter than aluminium but twice as strong, low radar reflection properties; the perfect metal for building planes out of! Ah, here comes Dave. I'll let him explain all about his baby."
Dave appeared from within the plane, grinning. He was covered in oil and holding a screwdriver in one hand, and he looked as if he hadn't slept in a week or so.
"Hi folks. Sorry I didn't come down to meet you, but I daren't trust the local help on their own." There were none too pleasant stories about Russian quality control standards. The technicians were getting paid nearly double their usual wage for this job but Dave was taking no chances.
"No worries. Looks nice," Will remarked, indicating the plane. Dave grinned.
"Yeah. The really techy stuff is in the nosecone, but you'd need to be Gordon bloody Freeman to understand all THAT," the other three mutually decided to hide the CD for Half-Life 2 for a bit, "so I'll just explain the bit I designed. Basically, she's sixty feet long with a forty foot wingspan, can exceed Mach 2 for long enough to make a jump, and has transatlantic fuel capacity at cruising speed. Armament is fairly light, but enough to defend ourselves with. We have a full threat warning and countermeasures system; chaff and flare dispensers, ECM and all that. We've also got 360 degree radar coverage."
"How'd you manage that? I don't see a radaome," Will replied. He'd been reading Dave's extensive techno-thriller collection quite a lot recently. He was referring to the large frisbee-like radar set fitted to the roofs of airborne early warning aircraft. Most aircraft have only a forward-looking radar set, with about thirty to forty degrees of vision on military equipment. Dave grinned broadly. "I can't really claim credit for that. Mary had a friend whose dissertation was on radar systems, and the limitations of convential sets. This bloke had come up with a better idea; build the radar systems into the wing surfaces. You might see the RAF building their AEW planes that way in about three years, but Mary wrote off to him about how we needed the technology for a special project and he sent the blueprints."
"The fact that he was trying to get into my underwear from Freshers Week to graduation helped some!" Mary added, causing Elaine to have a fit of giggles and Dave to mutter something about 'Bloody women.'
The four of them walked through the interior, noting where everything was. There was a small 'hallway' behind the cockpit, with a door on each side. Over the cockpit door was hung a wooden shield, with a carving of the hilt of the Knife. Somebody had taken the shards from the safety deposit box Will normally kept them in and glued them in their approximately correct place, an idea blatantly lifted from the second Lord of the Rings film. Will smiled; he wished he'd thought of that.
Turning towards the rear of the aircraft, they walked down a narrow corridor with five small rooms to one side. "Crew quarters," Dave explained. "The interiors aren't fitted yet, and that's going to be a DIY job." Will tried not to wince; he'd seen Dave's attempts at DIY, which had included drilling straight through a water pipe whilst putting up shelves. The water pipe leading from the roof tank to every flat in the building, in fact. He'd destroyed the carpet, run up a three figure repair bill AND got himself crossed off every other resident's Christmas card list on that occasion.
Next was the kitchen and lounge area, a mess of exposed pipework and half-assembled cabinets. "Looks neater than your bedroom," Elaine remarked. Dave exchanged looks with Will, wondering whose bedroom she was on about.
Finally they took in the cockpit, which was the only part that didn't currently resemble a building site. It looked instead like the inside of a space shuttle. There were five ejector seats arranged in a horseshoe around the interior, with the pilot's seat at the front. The other seats had a screen and keyboard in front of them, as well as a couple of levers and switches. The pilot's seat had a somewhat smaller screen above the artificial horizon, with the keyboard mounted overhead.
"All consoles can assume any of the inflight roles: Navigation, radar, flight systems and jump drive control. If the pilot is knocked out then hitting this button here," Dave pointed to a red button under a plastic cover on the nearest console, repeated on the other three, "on any station will engage the autopilot and terrain-following radar system. It should give you time to shift whoever's flying out of the way and let somebody else take over. It isn't a perfect system but we haven't got space for a second set of flight controls, and I was thinking in terms of only one pilot at the time." Mary had persuaded him to teach her to fly the aircraft earlier that week.
"As you can tell, I'm anticipating five crew eventually, but four people can handle her," Dave continued. Nobody doubted who crew member number five would be, least of all Will. Elaine wasn't sure whether to approve or not, but she knew better than to argue with the others on this issue.
"We'll be able to take her up tomorrow, I hope. The only thing left to fine tune is the actual transition drive." Dave glanced towards the nosecone. This was one area he couldn't explain much about, largely because he had only the vaguest idea of how it worked.
The Malone Dimensional Transition System was the whole point of the aircraft. It focused a high frequency beam of electromagnetic radiation at a fissure, which could penetrate through to the world on the other side. Then, the wavelength would broaden and force the fissure open just long enough for the aircraft to pass through at full speed. Once it had passed through, the portal would spring closed again. As an added bonus the beam repelled Dust away from the fissure, ensuring that there was no contamination, a feature that Mary was quite proud of.
The next day, they were flying through a series of deep valleys near the Finnish border. The aircraft that they had christened the Aurora Borealis shot between two outcroppings with one wing pointed straight at the ground.
"Whoa!" Will said as they levelled out. Dave grinned, and deployed the turrets. "Okay everybody, this is our first combat training mission. There are a couple of Sukhoi-27 interceptor aircraft going up against us. They only have simulated guns and the pilots are rookies same as us, so this shouldn't be too steep a learning curve. Head for the guns, folks!"
Will scrambled into the cramped dorsal turret and plugged his helmet's oxygen and communication leads into the sockets immediately beneath the yoke that controlled the turret's movements. The sight blinked into his helmet's Heads-Up Display. Will twisted the yoke and pulled it back and forth a couple of times, checking that it was working all right. He fired a short burst, ensuring that both guns were clear. As he did all this, Dave was talking to the pilots in surprisingly fluent Russian.
"Okay, they've got a three hundred foot height advantage and heat-seeking missiles as well as guns. Here we go!" Dave pulled up and to the left, performing a 'corkscrew' manoevre. The two Flankers moved in.
Will spotted one and opened fire with the two huge thirty-calibre miniguns. It veered away, though he doubted he had hit it. The other fired a quick burst with its own cannons. A 'Simulated Damage' caption appeared in Will's HUD, with a hollow rectangle beside it. A small portion of the rectangle filled. Dave banked to the right, spraying the aircraft responsible. Its partner loosed a heat seeker, which immediately began tracking them.
"Look out!" Elaine warned from the rear turret. Dave didn't reply, but dropped a couple of magnesium flares to decoy the missile and violently pulled up. The missile exploded below them, and the Simulated Damage box filled slightly more. Will guessed that this was being calculated from a computer on the gound and transmitted to them; no computer aboard the Aurora could work out the splash damage from a simulated missile. Mary caught one of the Flankers with a long burst, and it withdrew. Elaine peppered it as it departed.
"Boom!" Dave remarked dryly. "One down, one to... Shit!" The Simulated Damage bar grew precipitously. Dave deployed the airbrakes and waited for the fighter to overshoot, and then blazed away with the quartet of miniguns framing the Drive in the nosecone. "Got you, you little bastard. And you're dead as well, then?" The two Flankers took up formation at about a mile distant. "Strange, I didn't think..." His curses rang out as both fighters wheeled around and attacked again.
An hour or two later, all three aircraft had to land to refuel. Dave took the opportunity to stand on the tarmac -a safe distance from the jet fuel being pumped into his aircraft- and have a quiet smoke. Elaine muttered disapprovingly, but without much heat. Will sighed.
"Mum, we both know he'll only stop smoking when he drops dead from it. You won't change him even if you move in with him!"
"I can try," she replied grimly. Will sighed. He had a very bad feeling about this.
A week went past, and they steadily increased in skill. The Flanker pilots became extremely disenchanted and fed up of getting shot down by a seaplane, and threatened to start using live ammunition. The Drive was completed, and they made several dummy runs to test proccedures. They also practiced ejection drill, parachue landings and other essentials with the local air force, who were happy to assist them- ready money in large quantities has that effect on people in countries like Russia.
"I think we're pretty much ready," Dave said after a fortnight. "I reckon we're best off flying out of Sywell; I can get us a hangar there for free." Sywell, an old wartime RAF station in Northamptonshire now given over to civil aviation, was the hub of the air transport firm in which Dave was a senior partner. It lacked a concrete runway, but Aurora was designed to land and take off just about anywhere, the Arctic tundra included.
"One question," Elaine said as she helped him fix an AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile to the number four weapon pylon. "How exactly are we going to get this thing back to Britain without getting noticed?"
"By flying very low most of the way, for a start."
That they brought this off without alerting the authorities is testimony to Dave's skill as a pilot and navigator. He took a roundabout route, flying over and sometimes through the Norwegian fjords before travelling parallel to the eastern coastline of the British Isles, finally veering inland and setting down at Sywell under cover of darkness. His business partner and friend Frank Watson was away on other business, so they had the use of the hangar for a day or two.
"We might as well use our bunks for tonight," Dave told them. "Let's fuel her up and then get some sleep." He attached a small battery-powered pump to a hose between the fuel filler point on Aurora and the large storage tank on the back of a trailer he'd had delivered earlier that day.
Will sat on a nearby toolkit, alone with his thoughts. //By tomorrow I could be with her again. A few hours and we'll be in another world. Even if we don't hit the right world straight away, it'll just be a matter of time.// He smiled slowly, exchanging looks with the daemon only he could see. //I hope we get it right the first time. It's Midsummer's Day tomorrow. Maybe I can get into the garden without her noticing, and just sit down next to her. I can just picture her face!//
He went to bed in a cheerful and moderately excited mood, and then slept for twelve hours solid. He awoke to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. Dave handed him a couple of his famous fried egg and bacon rolls and a steaming mug as he entered the lounge area.
"Morning, kid. Your mum's still asleep; she didn't get any sleep while we were in the air. Turbulence, she said!" Dave drank deeply from his own mug. "As IF!" Dave had a rather narrow definition of turbulence, having flown an F4 Phantom through a thunderstorm on a training mission some years previously.
"Damn!" Mary kicked one of the consoles. "It worked fine in every damn test up until now. Why does the fissure targeting system have to only start playing up TODAY?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"The camera head's stuck. It froze in the middle of a search pattern, and it's twelve degrees out of alignment. I can't even blame the Russians, because I put that part together myself!"
"I've known Americans who blame the Russians for the weather," Dave remarked, exiting the plane and crouching underneath. "Well, I'll be... I've found the problem!" He pulled the top of a Norwegian fir tree out of the camera ball's rotation system and showed it to them. "Now that's low level flying taken a bit too far!"
"See why I didn't get any sleep?" Elaine remarked blearily, annoyance and amusement fighting for control of her face. "Are you sure you want to let him fly on the first jump drive test?"
"You'd rather he scan for the fissures and prime the Drive?" Will remarked without looking up. "Thought not. Me neither, to be honest."
Dave rolled his eyes. "Shall we get on with it?"
The four of them zipped themselves into the silvery grey RAF-style flight suits provided for the occasion, and equipped themselves with survival equipment and sidearms. Dave slipped a piece of a Harrier's fuselage into his pocket, by way of a lucky charm.
"Think we'll need it?" Will enquired.
"Suffice it to say that the only time I flew without it I had to ditch a Puma helicopter in the sea with a blown engine seal. I broke two ribs and my collarbone, and have never, EVER left the ground without it again. Get the picture?"
"Guess so."
The four of them stood in front of the plane, radiating nervous excitement. Dave smiled slightly. "Okay, everybody, time to make some history." //And get rid of the box of Milk Tray Elaine bought for a joke,// he added in the privacy of his own thoughts. Will had acquired a tendency to dress in black and listen to Linkin Park and Eminem a lot, which Elaine had been gently poking fun at for a while. It was starting to get on both men's nerves.
Dave opened the hangar door, as the huge silver aircraft's engines began to turn. He climbed aboard as it rolled out and lined up with the runway. It was early -though jetlag had contrived to suggest otherwise- and the sun was not fully up. Dave settled into his seat and plugged his helmet into the console, then began running through the checklist.
"Engines one and two lit."
"Radar green. Hydraulics... green. Weapons green. Forward infared green."
"Jump drive green. Search pattern initiated."
"Main and backup radios green on all bands. IFF transmitting at nominal strength."
"Okay, everybody. Let's go!" Dave pushed the throttles forward to a little short of full. Without afterburners, which is unusual for a jet this size, Aurora lifted from the runway and climbed rapidly to six thousand feet.
A lone planespotter sitting on a forked branch in a lone oak tree near the runway turned to watch the big plane go over. Shorts Brothers would make a fortune with a plane like that, he mused. All-terrain capability, long range, didn't need a long runway... "Huh?" The plane screamed forward, afterburner trails lighting up the sky. "They never said it could do THAT!" he remarked to himself. Suddenly, the plane vanished behind a brilliant orb of light. When it faded, the sky was empty.
"O-kay. That was VERY strange." The young planespotter never mentioned this to anybody; after all, who would have believed him?