Chapter 4: I've got you, Darling
She leaned back in her chair, balancing on its rear legs, her weight supported completely by two cold metal rails. She savored a sweet lemon candy in her mouth, letting the plastic twig hang out of her lips.
A low hand-rail encircled the Sunbird control room. Mission controllers occasionally glanced up at a giant holographic display at the center. She saw two golden helmets sitting beside one another in a small amber cockpit.
She heard a voice from behind and removed the yellow lollipop from her mouth, twisting the stick in her fingers.
A man with reddish brown eyes, short cropped hair and a cut across his lower lip looked down at her. She knew the man's face. It was Morisato – she'd flown with him once before. He was Kono's flight instructor.
And he wasn't happy.
"Watchin' the show today, Widow?"
"I'm sure you are too, Sato," she smiled at him, placing the candy back into her mouth.
"I was watching yesterday- when Kono g-locked in the middle of your Immelmann."
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him swing his foot around to kick the chair out from under her. The impact disoriented her briefly. Time slowed to a crawl as gravity took a sudden hold of her stomach and she thought to herself:
Great- another pissed-off asshole.
She felt the chair slide forward as she swung her feet over her head. The momentum propelled her into a cartwheel. She reached out with her hands to catch the ground then turned to deliver a downward kick to his nose. She followed through and landed on her feet.
"I'm disappointed. I thought you came here to watch the launch with me." She looked down at him kneeling on the ground.
He grasped his bloody nose and scrambled to his feet glaring back at her. "You damn freak! How dare you act so smug? He's dead because of you. Don't you get it?" he muttered as he struck his free un-bloodied hand in her face with an outstretched finger.
She bared her canine teeth in a wicked grin. "At least Kono had the balls to fly with me. He knew the risks." Then she turned and retrieved her overturned chair, grabbed it off the ground and resumed her seat on all fours.
"There ain't a damn pilot here who wants to fly with you." Morisato spat beside her feet, then turned and walked away. "All the brave ones are dead, because of you."
A couple of ground controllers stared at her. She waved at them flirtatiously and they hastily looked away.
Ain't a damn pilot here with the balls to fly with me, huh… well what about-
The loudspeaker echoed the pilots voices: "Genista tower we have local control on quad redundant systems. Life support and G-and-C are showing nominal. Aniline pre-pressure is at four oh six psi and holding. N two Oh four is at full pressure and ready to fire."
She grinned in contemplation. I bet one of those guys would. They'd certainly be useful… I just have to convince one of them to take me there. To Ash Cloud.
She spotted a man wearing a slim lab coat at the front of the room hunched over a low microphone. "Cleared for atmospheric egress. Ash Cloud will be in position to rendezvous in sixty four minutes," the man spoke clearly into the mic.
She continued to grind her sharp teeth into the hard candy in her mouth. It released little crystalline shards that lodged in her teeth. The sweet candy mixed with a subtle saltiness of blood from her lip where she bit it in the scuffle. A dull pain seeped into her mouth.
Delicious.
Static rippled in lines across the display.
The video disappeared and in its place columns of black numbers appeared on a white screen.
She got up from her chair and grabbed a small bag from the ground beside her. Then she strode across the room toward a pair of large gray double doors leading outside.
"Heya Cho," she looked up at a man climbing inside a large fighter jet.
Cho stood with one leg still on the ladder of the plane as he looked back at her. She bounced over to him and tucked her spherical bag under her arm. "Where you goin?"
Cho looked around with his eyebrows upturned in confusion. He produced a glistening silver helmet and placed it on the front seat of the plane.
"Where do you think?"
"Without your co-pilot?" she looked up at him from the base of the ladder. The Sunbird was a sleek gray delta-wing with a long protruding fuselage. Three large engine nozzles vented cryogenic vapor and two tail fins stood aloft at its rear. Near the nose were six black hieroglyphs the shape of lightning bolts, one for each recon mission completed. The hangar was open to the sunlight and a low gray mist hugged the ground.
"Victor's out today. I think he had one too many last night. Morisato's backup and he's supposed to be here any minute."
"Doubt it," she replied coldly. "I just saw him. He's got some sinus trouble."
"Son of a bitch. I'll call Command. See if they got anybody else on call."
"Orrrrr…" she smiled up at him and removed her own mirror-like fishbowl from her bag.
"No way in hell." He swung his leg over the pressure seal and plopped down in the seat, grabbed his helmet and began to strap himself in. She followed him up the ladder and leaned down close to his face, stuck out her tongue and licked him. "What the f!" he shouted as he tried to back away but was caught by his own belts.
"I taste a secret!" She smiled.
"Get the hell off my Bird! Go fly with your other Darling."
"My other Darling is dead. Didn't you hear – I need a new one."
"I heard."
"Well, here's what I propose. You can fly this bird all by yourself- and surely screw it up. Orrr- you could let me fly this recovery- with you or without you."
Cho weighed the helmet in his hands. A raised line of white plastic ran down the middle of his skull. Beads of sweat formed on either side of it.
A longitudinal transceiver. I always thought he wore a prefrontal. Maybe he's more interesting than I thought.
"Fine," he said. "Take the bird." Slowly he reached down and unbuckled his belt. Then he peeled the thin strip of plastic off his head. "I'll sit this one out."
She threw him a coy look. "Am I really that scary?" She teased him relentlessly, but of all the pilots, Cho was one she still admired. An intelligent man of few words, and an excellent pilot, second only to her in the squadron rankings.
"You're terrifying." He swung his leg back outside and mounted the ladder inches away from her face. "But it just so happens I met someone who isn't afraid of you."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. And he's on that spaceplane." He pointed at the lone white contrail in the upper atmosphere. Then he stuffed his helmet and transceiver in his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and descended the ladder.
"You don't say." She smiled.
She swung her own leg into the bird and pulled her transceiver out of her bag.
She held it in her hands- a white headband adorned with ruby-red horns. Then she slid it onto her head.
"Alright Kristoff we're T-minus thirty." On the large monitor between them, an upward sloping rectangular tunnel appeared. In the distance they saw the curvature of the Earth. "Bring it onto the heads-up."
A green wireframe tunnel appeared in the center of his vision, stretching away into the blackness of space. To the right he saw a small rhombus with the symbols: 72k MSL. To the left: 0.85M.
He looked over at the wing. It bowed upward like the taught recurve of a giant bow. Then he peered behind him to see a long white column of vapor produced by their single engine.
"T-minus five."
He clicked a button on the yoke and saw the white column change to an expanding ball of gray smoke and orange glowing fire.
"Punch it!"
He swiveled around and advanced the throttle to its stops. There was a sudden acceleration which pressed him into his seat. With his other hand he gently eased back the yoke and felt the plane tilt upward.
That's it, girl. That's where you want to go, I can feel it. It's what you were made for. It's what I was made for.
The plane continued to tilt upward.
No. No, where are you going? That's too much.
He pushed the yoke forward to arrest the assent. They crept closer to the ceiling of the imaginary green tunnel.
"Keep it on glide-slope Roy."
"It's fighting me."
"Shit, we're too light! We didn't adjust for the lack of cargo!"
"Shit!"
"Get the nose down Roy!"
He forced the yoke further forward but it was no use. They passed 30 degrees of pitch. Then 40. Then 45.
"We're out of the ascent path! Kris, power on the reaction control system."
"Wheels aren't active yet! It won't work!"
"Shit, get the thruster pack!"
"Heaters are dead. The fuel's frozen!"
"Shit, no!" They passed 55 degrees and the wings shook violently. High pitched shaking rocked the cockpit and the world turned hazy.
"It's gonna stall! We're in the shaker. Get ready to punch out!"
"No! We're not losing the Crane! I can hold it!"
"You can't hold it! We need to bail."
Royce slammed the yoke forward again and again, trying desperately to nose over, but it was no use.
I can't do it. The front is too light. We've got to slow down. But if I shut the rocket off now we'll go into a flat spin. I've got to nose over before I shut off the engine. How do I get the damn nose down?
Sixty degrees.
"I've got it. Kristoff can you pilot this thing if get the nose down?"
Sixty five degrees.
"What are you gonna do?"
"Newton's third law," he grabbed the belt straps on his shoulders and tightened himself in.
"Royce!"
"You ready?"
"Don't do this."
"Kristoff!"
"Yeah?"
"Keep the stick forward- I've got this."
He reached down and ripped the black and yellow cord between his legs.
Instantly the world stopped shaking and he heard explosive charges fire. His shoulders rocketed back and his legs ripped backward with such speed he thought they would break through and hit him in his own ass.
Another explosion. Glass shattered above and his head fell forward. An impact struck his back and tilted him sideways. He started to tumble out of control. Black rocket exhaust obscured his vision. As he tilted away he saw the plane shrinking below him. Kristoff stared at him through the broken windscreen. The plane's nose dived downward. An equal and opposite reaction. Darkness engulfed the Earth and through the corner of his eyes he saw the Crane shut down its rocket, pointing back toward the ground.
There was a soft clicking noise as Diana positioned her bird thirty thousand feet below the Crane as it started its ascent. It was no more than a speck against the black sky, a distant white trail of smoke like a feather in the cosmos.
She saw the progressing tip of a contrail arc turn gray and expand as it accelerated across the sky. She advanced the throttle to keep up with it, glancing down to see the throttle lever moving instinctively.
A voice shouted from insider her own head. "Zhen! What are you doing in Sunbird six two!? Who authorized you to fly that recovery!? I'll have you court martialed! You'll never fly again!"
She sighed. "Cho didn't want to fly with me and he didn't have a co-pilot."
"That's no excuse. You should—" she shut down the radio. There was a soft click from far away.
Something's wrong.
A small black speck detached from the white point of light at the end of the contrail. The sun obscured her vision and she lifted her hand to block it out.
What the hell is that? Did they eject? Where's the other one?
A small black speck reminded her of the injured bird falling from the control tower. Alone and helpless- slammed into a wall that it could neither avoid nor comprehend.
From some corner of her memory she heard another voice.
It just so happens I met someone who isn't afraid of you…
She ripped the plane around to aim straight at the speck then brought up the bird's telephoto imager. It was a man in a tan flight jacket with a long gash along his unopened parachute. He was in freefall. Unconscious and rag-dolling, he was tangled up in torn paracord and chute fabric.
He's not gonna make it.
She advanced the throttle to full afterburner and accelerated toward the falling body. Streaks of green light appeared before her like a rectangular corridor in her vision, showing the computer's predicted path to intercept. Like a snake it writhed around in agony, twisting and contorting to match the falling man's constantly shifting terminal velocity.
Shit, he's all over the place. I can't get a lock on him. She ripped the throttle back to idle as she tipped the nose over and entered a zero-g parabolic, gliding effortlessly down the rectangular corridor. His arms and legs were visible now. Matching speed. One thousand feet. Time to piss Ishigami off. She flipped a manual switch below the control console and activated the canopy fracture system.
"You trashed another cockpit!" she imagined his old wrinkled face contorting in rage.
Instantly the wind hit her, blowing her back into the seat. Shards of glass tumbled away into the deep unknown and she glanced back at the empty rear co-pilot seat. Then forward at the tumbling unconscious body. Then down at her ankle restraints.
Okay, just a little closer. The plane inched forwards and she looked down at the ground in front of her. She saw the now distinct outlines of buildings and hangars at Genista base and the slow transit of cars on the highways of Serilona. The tumbling tan body was within an arm's reach now. She stood up in the wind stream and pushed back hard against the punishing air. She reached out her arms as she nudged the plane over with her mind. It responded instantly. Forward. Up. Just a little further… He was inches away. Come on. She nudged the ailerons again and the body tumbled into her arms. Got you, Darling!
She commanded the control stick to pull back and the pair collapsed back into the plane under the weight of the crushing g-load.
The golden helmet looked up at her.
I've got you.
Author's note:
Just wanted to respond to comments here! Franxxfan, Edgar and Cheese - thanks so much for the kind words! The beginnings are always the weakest part of my stories. I promise things will get more interesting later on.