Chapter 7: Laussedat Reconstruction

Eight pilots strode toward four steaming jets standing parallel with each other under beige awnings. Long corrugated hoses jutted out from their sides. Translucent sheets of steaming cryogens flowed around them. Steel grey ladders dangled from the cockpits. Silver canopies gleamed in the sunlight.

One of the planes had long red stripes along its wings and fuselage, with the numerals "0 2" on its tail. Soldiers loaded large red boxes and bomb-like silver canisters onto its wings. The two cadets climbed ladders into the red plane's cockpit.

He took to the ladder of Sunbird 16, heaving himself up into the back seat. Victor clambered up after him and sat in front.

He slipped the golden fishbowl on his head and swiveled its locking ring. A cold stream of pure oxygen flowed into his nostrils. Metallic clicks and computer-generated speech rang in his ears. The hydraulic lift behind his head groaned as it lowered the massive canopy down. It finally came to rest with a gigantic sucking noise inches above his head.

"How you doin' back there Roy?"

"Doing good, Vic." He heard a turbine spool up behind him and his ears popped. "So how's all this gonna go? Am I just along for the ride?"

"Well you got duplicate controls, but keep your hands off 'em unless I tell you to take the stick. You got your g-suit plugged in?"

A small fabric tube dangled by his waist which he clicked into a receptacle below his seat.

"Yeah. Got it."

He got to work strapping and buckling himself in. He noticed a soldier on the ground unhooking the large steaming hoses and scooting them out of the way.

"You'll be taking the pictures today," Victor said. "I'll fly, you just focus on getting a good picture of the bolts."

"Bolts," he asked.

They started to taxi out of their parking space and toward the long runway 36-L in the distance.

"Schumann aperture radar. It's how we tell what the Khanians are doing underground."

"What?"

Victor pointed at the three Sunbirds in front of them as they all taxiied in a line. The red and white plane was at the front. "That one up there, Zero Two- that's the transmitter. They make a cloud and then stimulate it to produce a discharge."

"Discharge?"

"Lightning."

"Ah-"

"Then us three receivers get in position to photograph the bolt as it goes off, then we listen for the reflections. If we get a good three-dimensional picture of it, computers can reconstruct a model of what's going on underground. That's why we need three receivers. Takes three cameras to reconstruct a three dimensional image."

"I guess that makes sense. How close do we need to get?"

"Too close for comfort."

They reached the edge of the runway and heard a few lines of chatter pass back and forth between the cadets and their mission control. Soon enough they were again facing down the long dark path to the sky.

"Say, why don't they call these things Thunderbirds?"

Victor shrugged. "Sunbirds sound more- optimistic." Then he slammed the throttle.

They flew in a V formation stacked behind 02. As he looked out at the other planes flying dangerously close to his own, he noticed the long flat mirror below them transform into a sloped sandy beach and then brown scrubs and parched sepia earth that extended as far as the eye could see.

He looked ahead at the green digits in his HUD which flashed in warning: "1kMSL", "1.8M"

"So this is Khania? The Mainland?"

"Yup. Getting dryer every day. Serilona's got teams like us to make artificial clouds, but the Khanians have to drill and desal for their water."

The land was littered with large crevasses they swooped over. They flew low over a dead gray forest with trees blasted apart by some unknown force.

He looked ahead and saw hard orange lights in the distance. A city gleamed in the sun. He wasn't sure if the orange glow came from the sunset or the lights of the small city. "How much further to the target?"

"Not long now. The Khanians tend to build their cities along the coats and rivers where the soil is still arable. We suspect they use the water for reactor cooling. All that drilling and desal is energy intensive. They need a lot of power."

"What happens if we get proof they're drilling? Can we bomb them?" he looked over at the oblong steel ornaments hanging from 02's wings.

"Bomb them? What are you, crazy?" Victor sounded alarmed, then he looked over at the tanks, "Oh- those? That's silver iodide."

"Silver iodide?"

"Cloud seeding. Pre-plantation tech." He turned his head a bit and keyed the mic, "target is to the West, one o'clock." He looked at the horizon and saw a large city in the distance. His shoulder belts grew tight as the craft slowed.

Gigantic truss-like towers loomed over holes in the ground. Microscopic trucks like ants climbed up the spiral staircases etched into open-pit mines where cranes lifted parcels from their depths. Throughout all the land, an eerie orange glow lingered in the air.

"Sure looks like they're mining something."

"Those mines could be anything. Until we can prove how deep they go – all just speculation."

He peered down into the depths of one of the massive holes as they flew directly over it. Bright lights shined at its bottom.

A flash of white smoke erupted near their wing and he saw the craft beside them accelerate ahead of the pack, climbing steadily. A call came over the radio, "Zero Two ready to deploy canister one."

He heard Cho's voice, "go ahead Toji."

High above he saw the red bird release one of its cylinders. It fell gracefully. Victor banked to the right as it fell, giving it a wide berth. The rest of the squadron followed.

There was a soft pop. It exploded into a large yellow cloud that swirled and rose in the winds aloft. The craft began weaving in and out of the artificial cloud, kicking up turbulent wisps, provoking it, taunting it. Slowly it began to whiten and expand. White bubbles like expanding foam rose from the microscopic particles. The cloud spread out across the sky.

"Alright Royce, get ready on the imager." A large purple rectangle appeared in his vision with a crosshairs at its center. "Just aim it right at the center of the cloud."

The two other receiver birds broke off and accelerated toward opposite ends of the cloud. They formed a large triangle around the artificial white nebula.

"Squad leader, Zero Two ready to deploy electrostatic catalyst," said a different young man's voice.

"Hit it."

Another soft pop. This time he didn't see anything happen, but he kept the cloud in his reticle.

Then he saw it. A bright fading purple flash rippled across his visor. "What was that?"

Victor chuckled. "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Cho's voice again, "initial discharge confirmed, inverters are at eight oh six kilovolts and stable."

"Formation stable, initiating three phase lock," came a deep raspy voice which he assumed was Morisato. A tone rang out in his ears as Victor maneuvered the craft closer to the churning gray mass of air. The craft shook with the sound of light thunder. Little droplets of rain formed streaks on their windshield.

"Ramping up zero point nine M.V. Electrolaser coolant temperature stable at eighty seven Kelvin.

"D.F. injection ready."

"Field emitters are active."

"Discharge."

His hair stood up on end. Everything was white. A purple after-image formed in his eyes. Long purple ropes formed a gigantic triangle in the sky with each of the receivers at its vertices. A long vertical purple scar punctured its center. The bolt extended from the top of the cloud to the tiny craft at its bottom. He yelled, "AAAAAAAHHHH!"

"Electrolaser damage assessment – secondary focusing optics are slightly damaged. Coolant temperature still green."

"Inverter three phase lock is still holding, ramping down to duty cycle six, all systems nominal."

"Sunbird Zero Two sustained no damage from flashover. Hydraulic system at seven hundred fifty P.S.I. and nominal-"

"Discharge map uploading to central computer."

"It's not good."

"We got an incomplete map."

"Silver iodide concentration dropping. We're losing the cloud-"

He couldn't catch his breath. His back was damp with sweat. Every hair on his body stood on end. His eyes ached and his mouth felt numb like it was drenched with lidocaine. The lump on the back of his head seared with pain but he couldn't clutch it. The fishbowl like helmet blocked his hands and he pressed his neck desperately into the back of the hard polymer seat. From some corner of his mind, green and white fireflies jumped and he saw a woman clad in black fabric, a witch who stood beyond a chain-link fence. A surge of fear and anger erupted inside of him. He jerked forward and saw only billowing air and expanding clouds stained fluorescent red in the quickly setting sun.

"Holy- shit." He whispered into the mic.

"We're gonna have to do it again, Royce. You screwed up the image."

"Shit."

"We can tell something's down there. I just don't know what."

A large purple hologram appeared on his visor. He could make out the fuzzy outline of a city and several large pit mines. Their shafts descended from inverted cone-like pinnacles into hazy fathoms beneath the surface. The bottom of the image was grossly out of focus and the depth of the shafts could not be determined.

"I think you've got something there." Ishigami's voice crackled over the radio. "This just might be it."

Victor rubbed his hands together in the front seat and swiveled his head to look up at him. "Oh boy, oh boy, Royce. You hear that! Just one good picture. That's all we need."

"Shit, man, I'm not cut out for this recon work. This shit- This is why I fly transport."

"You got this buddy. You get me a nice pic of that discharge - I'll buy you all the synthetic burgers and fries you want at the Pine! You can go back to the U.N.F. and tell them how you heroically caught the Khanians violating international law."

What if I don't want to go back- what if I just want…

The words from the old man's face returned to his mind: Fly the recon. I'll find her.

A child's poorly drawn image of a pink haired girl with concentric green irises. A notebook soaked in mysterious orange liquid, its pages bent and waterlogged.

Who is she?

The sun finally dipped below the horizon. Only the orange fires in the pits of Sogne remained. The cloud a mere wisp in a luminous sky whose yellowing threads gave birth to twilight air.

"Okay Vic. Let's nail these bastards."

A click of the mic. "Set it up again, Toji."

"Roger that. Round two."

The red craft dived. Exhaust flared orange from its three nozzles and it accelerated up again like a rocket into the sky.

It released a second canister. Another cloud of cream-colored mist exploded into the air.

His heart pounded in his chest so fast he thought it would explode. His back was sticky now. Beads of perspiration formed on his temples. They dripped into his eyes. His vision was blurry and his eyes stung from the sweat.

Focus on the cloud, focus on the bird. That's all. Focus on the mission.

But he couldn't.

Darling- run away with me…

Her smiling lips. Her captivating green eyes. He recalled the dream. The feeling of the long graceful fingers on his flight jacket, the way his world turned upside down within her arms. Pain seared in the back of his head and he clenched his eyes closed.

"Inverters are active, ramping up to sixteen hundred K.V."

"Three phase lock is holding-"

Focus! Focus on the mission! He opened his eyes.

"Zero Two deploying electrostatic catalyst-"

"One five seven Kelvin on laser coolant-"

"Bird Six Two in posit-"

"One Five holding steady-"

Just focus on the bird.

A blurry white and red speck darted out of the clouds trailing a stream of white vapor behind it. He moved his reticle down, keeping it centered on the cloud rather than the plane itself.

"Inverters have reached peak current saturation at sixteen oh five K.V. – field is saturated"

Victor moved the craft into a tighter orbit around the thickening cloud. He could see the wisps of vapor now touching their wingtips.

"Ready for discharge- field emitters active."

"One Five- thermal camera is cooled-"

"Fire!" Came the command. He couldn't tell who said it.

There was a great pop like a soda can and a flashbulb lit up his vision. Everything was white. The white soon gave way to burning red. He recoiled in pain and squinted his eyes closed.

"Damage to field emitters!"

"Shit, Roy -"

There was a sound like tearing paper and the smell of burning metal filled his nose.

He groped around in the pressing darkness for anything to hold on to.

"Electrolaser – we've taken substantial damage to achromatic deturium fluoride cavity. It's leaking gas."

"Picture's still processing."

He felt the craft dive and grabbed the controls in desperation. He was blind and felt pain like acid in his eyes. He keyed the mic and yelled, "what the hell happened?"

"We've got active radar painting us from three- no four emitters- E.C.M. is ineffective!"

They know we're here.

"Inverters powering down. Six Two superconductors hard-quenched. Thermal damage to inverters on One Five!"

"We can't fire it again-"

"Launch detected! It's coming right for us, four o'clock low- eight miles, break formation. Climb! Your ten o'clock low, Zero Two!"

"Switch to cold gas thrusters. It's heat seeking!"

He blinked again and again, but the haze in his eyes was still there. The world was a teeming mass of color and churning clouds. The first thoughts of night settled on the land.

Near the orange crystal city a pillar of smoke rose up into the sky.

"It's locked on Zero Two! Orito don't let it-"

In an instant, the pillar of smoke turned into a gray seeping gash across the sky which accelerated and smashed into the tiny red and white plane.

The plane was replaced by a ball of orange fire and a hundred disparate pieces of burning metal fell from the point of impact. A yellow mushroom of dust expanded below it.

"NOOOO!" cried a woman's voice.

"They got out okay. Blackbox emitter shows automatic ejection of both pilots before impact."

The world was nearly sharp and crisp again. Victor's head sagged and finally slumped forward.

He reached forward and tapped Victor on the shoulder. No response. He noticed a jagged crack on Victor's helmet. Then he looked up and noticed the same strange pattern of shallow cracks on his own, like burns in a thin metal layer.

Shit. Shit. What happened?

"We're okay," came a young man's voice. "We're under parachute. Get out of here before they-"

"Second launch detected, your six o'clock low, ten miles! Break right, climb!"

He grabbed the stick and ripped hard to the right, then he saw darkness creep inward from the edges of his vision.

He keyed the mic. "Guys, Victor's out- his helmet's cracked, uh, mine is too. I'm flying the plane. Is he-"

"Shit, that's not good. His optos must have taken a hit."

"Missile's still incoming, six o'clock high, five miles out."

"Chaff!"

Royce searched desperately for a button on the console to save him from the impending supersonic doom- but he found nothing. It was a foreign plane labeled in a foreign language. He noticed a sharp expanding spear of rocket exhaust heading straight for another plane with "6 2" written on its tail.

Shit, Cho, Kristoff. Do something. Get out of there.

A small puff of metallic smoke left the rear of their aircraft. The red glow from their engines vanished and was replaced by a rapidly expanding cloud of white vapor. The plane flipped inverted and dived straight at the ground. The missile smashed through the shimmering metallic flakes in a lazy parabola and collided with the ground miles ahead of them.

Royce continued his hard bank full circle as he noticed Cho and Kristoff leveling off a thousand feet below.

"Nice job Cho."

"Glad that's over with. Now let's get the hell home."

"Did we get the picture?"

"Yeah, we got it buddy." Kristoff's voice.

He leaned over in relief. His flight jacket was drenched.

"What about the Cadets?"

The rough old voice of Ishigami spoke up, "I'll call for U.N.F. support. If we can't extract them covertly I'll give the Khanian Minister a nice little call. We've got the upper hand now."

"So it's confirmed."

"Yes. Six vertical boreholes, the deepest of which is almost seventy kilometers. There's only one thing they could be drilling for that deep."