8:21 PM

"Can you see the crash site yet?" the commander's voice sounded, curt and irritable, in the pilot's headset. Behind her black goggles, she grinned widely.

"There's only a giant fucking plume of black smoke coming up from it. I'll be over it in T-minus one minute."

Her modified Comanche helicopter, stripped of weapons to maximize its stealth and speed, swept low over the thick evergreen forest. The woods stretched as far beyond and behind her as she could see, and on her right loomed an imposing stretch of the Appalachian Mountains. Some of the higher peaks were still capped with snow.

The aerial view of the forest and the mountains would have been exceedingly lovely, if not for the pillar of smoke just ahead of her. Some of the trees around the crash site were ablaze, and their green foliage only added to the already rapidly swelling black cloud.

"Ok, I'm there," the pilot said, her smile fading as she brought her chopper directly over the site. The breeze carried the smoke at an angle to the east, away from the mountainside. "I'll buzz you again when I'm finished with my scan, Commander, so just sit tight. HrlyQnn out."

She gave her boss a few seconds to reply, but hearing nothing, she set about her work. Bringing the Comanche to a hover, she eased it lower and lower until she was no more than twenty feet above the tops of the trees. Her fingers darted across the instrument panels with an assured quickness that would have made the most seasoned Army pilot green in the face. At her command a panel slid open in the belly of the chopper, and a conical arm extended straight down, fanning out at the end to reveal a polished lens.

Hrly sat back in her seat to look up at the array of small monitors embedded in the aircraft's ceiling. The little eye below the chopper fed into all of these. One showed her a thermal view of the crash site, one would alert her to any unusual motion, a third filtered out the background noise to pick up only sound patterns that matched human voices, and another could pick up the faint electromagnetic pulse of a heartbeat. These and several other monitors were Hrly's way of ensuring that if there were any living people beneath all that smoke, she would be able to detect them.

She peered intently at the thermal monitor. Normally this would have been useless trying to detect a person's heat signature amongst all that fire, but she was looking for anything especially cold. She found nothing of the sort. She had arrived too late for anything in the area to still be cool enough to show up on that screen. The motion sensors provided nothing other than the steady swirling of the thickening smoke. No hint of any human voices crying for help.

"Fuck." She reached to flip the switch that would retract the sensor arm, but halted. On a sudden notion, she instead moved to command the arm to start emitting X-rays. She turned off all the monitors but one to limit the sensor arm to that one task and so enhance the quality of the signal.

It made her wonder why she didn't think to do that in the first place. Right below her, plowed halfway into the ground and completely torn open, was the demolished skeleton of a massive cargo aircraft. Scattered about were shredded pieces of its hull and frame, ample evidence that the plane had slid quite a distance before coming to a halt.

Among the wreckage, Hrly quickly noticed the several human-shaped metal frames lying on the ground. Some were still inside the craft, others thrown out. None were intact—all of them were rent asunder by the impact.

She had expected this, but the sight still turned her stomach. She lifted a clammy, shaking finger to her headset.

"Commander Rook, I've… I've scanned the crash site. They're here. I had to find them on X-ray because I wasn't picking up any heart rates, sound, or movement. They're all dead, sir."

A sigh on the other end. After a few seconds, she heard his Hispanic-accented voice yelling FUCK, far off as if he had moved away from his microphone. There was a small crash. After another short pause, he spoke to her again. "All ten are accounted for?"

"Eleven, don't you mean? Shouldn't there be a flesh-and-blood person in this mess somewhere too?"

"No, there's no pilot, if that's what you're asking. It was an unmanned craft, a free gift Giygax Corp was throwing in along with the ten models. Have you counted ten yet, HrlyQnn?"

"Hang on." She was relieved indeed to know there was no pilot, but it didn't make the scene below her and on the screen any less disturbing. "There are… body parts all over the place. None of them are in one piece."

The superior officer hesitated. "… The heads, then. Just look for ten heads."

Hrly cringed, but nodded. That was the best way to make sure. "Yes, sir." Flipping the goggles off her pretty face, she leaned close to the small image. It was very sharp, and penetrated easily through the wood and dirt and smoke, so she could very well make out several heads. She counted.

"Nine, sir."

"What?" He sounded distracted. She could faintly make out other voices—several people were talking to him at once. "You said only nine?"

"Yes. One's missing."

"Thank you, Hrly. I'm going to call Giygax and make sure they definitely shipped ten."

"With what you just went through, I suggest you take it easy and have someone else do it," Hrly replied. One of her commanding officer's oldest and most trusted friends, she did not consider it unprofessional at all to offer him stern advice. Again, she got no reply, a response she was well used to, and simply went back to her business. Retracting the sensor arm, she allowed the Comanche to gain altitude, and veered away from the wreckage. That was when she noticed the single road, a narrow black strip among the greys and browns of the forest floor, occasionally visible through the trees. Even as she watched a car passed directly beneath her, slowing down to rubberneck at the black smoke continuing to billow into the sky.

"Commander," she said sharply, to ensure she had his attention. "I found a road less than a hundred yards from the site. It's paved, so it's likely well used. I suggest a ground search of the forest and any and all nearby towns in both directions from this road."

"That'll take months," Commander Rook growled. "But you're right. If there's a chance that there's even one surviving Darkling unit, we have to take every measure to track it down. We're not going to survive this without it."

Hrly gritted her teeth. About that, he was absolutely right.

"One more thing, Hrly."

"Sir?"

"Doubtless the authorities are rushing to the scene by now. Farceur and I have been delaying them as long as we could, but the news crews want answers and the park rangers are adamant that firefighters get out there this instant to control the damage. Does it look like they might come across anything we don't want them finding?"

The pilot grimaced. She could think of several governments that would be pissed off to find out about the Darkling Project and its intent. "Yes, pieces of the machines are scattered all over the place. I'm not sure what condition they're in after being in the fire this long, but I guess we can't chance it. What would you have me do?"

"Well, if you could…"

Hrly did not hear the rest of what Commander Rook said over a sudden, horrifyingly loud hiss that cut through the racket of her Comanche's rotors. She whipped around to look down through the canopy at the crash site.

An upward rush of pressurized air battered at the smoke, giving her a full, clear view of the entire scene for a brief second. Her eyes locked on the ruined plane. The flames had reached the frame, lunging across a puddle of spilled fuel—that was the hiss she had heard. From a crack in the large fuel tank came the rush of superheated air, along with spouts of flame that resembled the fire from a welding torch.

"SHIT!" she screamed, yanking the stick as hard as she could to her left. The chopper tilted and banked to that side.

A great roar like a thunderclap shrieked up at her from below, and she was buffeted with a blast of rising air. It threw the helicopter another several feet up, bucking her out of her seat and throwing her against the panel. It also saved her life.

Gripping the stick with one arm and her throbbing head with the other, she never saw the fireball that rose up beneath her, a roiling cloud of red flame and black ash that reached up like the jaws of Hell to swallow the Comanche. Had it not been for the preceding burst of superheated air that had thrown the craft several yards upward, it would have been engulfed completely.

Only when she regained control of the Comanche, and sat back in her seat, did Hrly turn again to look behind her. The fire from the explosion had faded, and all she saw was falling debris. But she knew that she'd just had a very close call.

Wiping blood from her forehead, Hrly shook off the pain, vaguely becoming aware of a voice in her ears. In her dizzy state the voice sounded far-off, yet loud, and the words ran together.

"…HrlyQnn you better answer me right the fuck now what's going on what the hell was that noise are you alright Jesus God Almighty what was that noise HrlyQnn talk to me are you alive goddammit say something for fuck's sake"

"I'm here, I'm alright, just got a little stunned, that's all."

Rook's voice was hoarse from yelling. "Thank Jesus…"

"The fuel tank in the cargo plane went off and I was a bit closer than I should have been. But I think that solves our problem, Commander. I don't think we need to worry about anyone recovering anything recognizable, after what I just saw."

"Right… fine. Return to base. Shit, you gave me a scare."

"Sorry." Smiling to herself, she donned her goggles and aimed the Comanche northeast. Below her she could see occasional flashes of blue, red, and yellow. The cops and firefighters were just now arriving, a full forty-five minutes after the initial crash. Well, at least their response time was improving.