Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (66 page)

“No sir,” came Mica’s flat reply. “The President sent an encrypted transmission to General Marquez six minutes ago, but I have not been able to reproduce enough data from the transmission to reconstruct the message.”

“It’s still anybody’s guess,” Cole said, shaking his head. “I really figured they’d fold before this.”

“Yeah, but the President has bigger balls than any man I’ve ever met,” Dave chimed in. “Present company excluded, Mr. Taylor,” he added, grinning through the video link.

“Well, we’re gear up,” Cole said. “Are you with me?”

“Yeah. I’m about eighteen inches off your back bumper,” Dave said. “Let’s go bring ‘em home.”

“Ok Mica, arm the projectors. Try not to shoot the jets unless they leave you no choice. Go for the missiles only.” He pushed forward on the main throttles and the massive vehicle slid out into the cool morning air.

***

Outside Stormhaven:

“Watchdog One to Base,” Captain McIverson swallowed hard watching the end of the hangar carefully. “We’ve got an unauthorized launch in progress.” He snapped the Lightning around nosing over toward the ground in an inverted dive, careful to keep an eye on the huge ship that edged out into the open while he sloped down to the relative cover of the low hills.

“Stand by, Watchdog. We copy your unauthorized launch.” The Flight Ops Officer sounded calm. Of course he was calm, it wasn’t his ass out here having a close encounter with who knows what kind of bad voodoo.

“Watchdog One to Base. There’s a second craft coming out. We have two vehicles in the air. Please advise.” Chainsaw rolled out onto the deck, skimming low enough over the rocky grassland that his jetwash fanned the weeds behind him like a boat wake. Dipping into a narrow ravine that he knew would eventually open out into the small valley that hid the hangar from the wind, he eased back on the throttle to buy time for the command chain to rattle its orders back to him.

“Stand by Watchdog, we’ve got a release authorization coming. Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage without permission.” Shaking his head in frustration, he knew if they didn’t make the call in a couple seconds he’d blow his terrain cover and be back in the line of site of those guns before he could make the shot. Even though he focused on staying between the ridges for as long as possible, his mind noted three brief flashes as the other patrol jets doubled around to back him up.

“Stormhaven Rescue to Watchdog One,” A strange voice broke in on the frequency, startling him and nearly sending him into the nearest wall. “Abort your launch run. We are on a rescue mission.”

“Get off my channel,” he grunted as air forced through his clenched teeth. Too close to the edge, he realized, backing down on the throttle a little more.

“This is Colton Taylor. We’re attempting to fly a rescue mission to the ISS. Please do not attack. The White House is making the call on this one."

“Bullshit,” McIverson barked, jamming forward on the throttle and feeling the thrust kick him solidly into the last turn before he was in open air. He wanted to make sure that if he had to be exposed, he’d be moving for all he was worth. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing ...”

The dry-wash ended as he’d expected, but instead of open air, he was staring into the side of a huge white wall. One of the two ships had moved across the end of the narrow pass. “Collision alert, collision alert!” the voice of his navigation computer droned in his ears.

“No shit,” he growled, jerking hard on the stick and snapping to the left. Blood drained from his upper body as the plane popped up. Chuffing hard to try to keep his head clear, he bit down on his adrenaline and glanced over to see the tip of his wing shuddering like a leaf in a hurricane. “That’s not right,” he said to himself, recognizing that the dihedral on the trapezoidal frame had begun to look … wrong. The plane plunged toward the ground, twisting under the belly of the giant craft twenty feet above the dirt. A bullet corkscrewing toward the far edge of the valley.

His mind accelerated while he took in the details. Earth, sky, Earth, sky. He started to count the revolutions in his mind. Two ... Three ... Four ... But not five? Something else caught his attention. A humming vibration. His skin tingled like a million fire ants dancing across his flesh.

And then Captain McIverson passed out, expecting to wake up dead.

***

Bridge of the Aquila:

“Mica, can you snag that pilot?” Cole bellowed, watching the fragile jet crumble to a shotgun blast of debris as it passed through the narrow space beneath the
Aquila’s
cargo containers. If the wing had held for another millisecond they’d have been drilled right through the middle.

“Tracking,” Mica said, after an excruciatingly long second. “Acquired.” The airframe had already begun to scatter when it started to swing upward, away from the ground in a smoothly decelerating arc. “I believe the pilot is still alive. Where would you like me to set him down?"

Obviously Mica had improved its skill with the gravity lasers. Colton knew that in theory, they should be able to immobilize an object in midair, but this was the first time they’d used the beams for this purpose. It had to be an odd sensation to live through the high frequency oscillations of positive and negative gravity pulses, but it beat the alternatives.

“Watchdog Two to Base. Watchdog One is splashed. Repeat, they shot down Watchdog One.” Colton turned and stared through the windows trying to spot the other jets. A flash of light high to the north gave him their position. “Requesting permission to return fire?” The pilot sounded frantic.

“Affirmative, Watchdog Flight. You have authorization to engage.”

“Wait a minute,” Cole said, trying to cut in on their radio again. “We did not shoot him down. He nearly hit us broadside.” The three jets dropped toward the horizon, separating to get a wider firing position, and Cole knew it was going to get hot in a few seconds. “Mica, we’ve got incoming hostile fire. Can you deflect the missiles?”

“I believe I can get the ones from the north and west, but the projector on the east end of the complex is still involved with rescuing the pilot. Twenty-five seconds before I can get him to ground safely.” After a brief pause the computer continued. “Tracking six inbound targets. Estimating twelve seconds on the two I cannot deflect.”

“Cole, they’re heat-seekers,” Dave broke in. “They might not be able to track us. Jump! NOW!”

Cole hit the vertical thrust, angling forward as he shot upward. Around him he could hear the heavy grunting of the bridge crew as they sucked up the sudden and unannounced burst of acceleration. The rear video showed Dave had angled aft and was accelerating at a little higher rate. The
Draco
was drifting up slowly, from his perspective.

Out the windows, Cole saw four bright flashes as the missiles hit the wall of the gravity shock waves from the two unoccupied projectors. He couldn’t see the other ones yet. “Where are they?” he asked.

“In the dirt. Two o’clock low. Maybe three miles,” Dave answered from the other bridge. Then added, “They’re angling for the doors of the Fabrication Barn.”

“Mica ...” Cole said, but stopped short, his breath catching in his throat. The mini that Daryl had been using as a tool carrier shot out into the air in front of the doors. Banking toward the incoming missiles, it accelerated at a brutal rate. Panning the camera from his control station, Cole tracked the short-lived flight to its inevitable conclusion. A double blinding flash of white flame. The ground around the mini shook with the impact of the vehicle’s debris. It was over in an instant.

“Cole, the missiles obviously won’t lock, but they’ve still got guns. We need to keep moving.” Dave’s voice cut through the fog around Colton’s mind like a knife. Daryl had just died down there.

“Sorry,” Cole said, his voice ringing hollowly in his ears. “It’s hard to watch ...” He couldn’t bring the words out.

“Decisions like that are made in an instant,” Dave said. “We’ll have the rest of our lives to think about it.”

A faint rumble shook the bridge of the
Aquila
. “They’re shooting us!” Danielle said from the navigation console beside him. “Let me fly. We’ve got to evade.” There was no accusation in her tone. A simple statement of fact.
Colton, do not jeopardize our mission by becoming emotional. Get out of the way.
He nodded and gripped the edge of his station with all the strength he could muster.

Lurching forward and twisting hard to the right, Dani slammed them through a set of maneuvers that would have made any fighter pilot green. Brutal, random, and totally unpredictable, until it became obvious that her intent was to close directly on the closest Lightning in a ramming run.

“Shit,” Sophie hissed from the engineering station behind her. She was struggling to keep her head pointed at the instruments on her display. “Four-G,” she said, to the room in general.

The fighter ripped sideways into a tight turn and skimmed away towards the roof of the Biome, barely pulling up in time to miss hitting the Kevlar fabric, and heading directly toward the military encampment on the ridge. Cole watched the process from a distance, once again feeling like he was playing in a kids’ game where he was too old and too soft to keep up.

“Good move over there,” Dave said. “Damn near got him.”

“The jets have been neutralized,” Mica interrupted. “All I needed was position to catch and hold them as I had with the first pilot. They are being repositioned to the ground.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Cole said, recovering his focus somewhat. “I’m sure we’re going to have more company once they get the Starhawks airborne.”

***

Camp Kryptonite:

General Marquez stood in the front door of the tent shaking his head in disbelief. He’d grabbed a videolink from his desk and run out to watch the battle with his own eyes. He knew all the latest air combat tactics, and expected this to be a slam-dunk attack. Get the flying houseboats with a couple missiles each, and then the fight would go out of them.

But as he stared up in the sky over Stormhaven, he realized he couldn’t have ever expected what had happened. Not ever.

Hanging in mid-air, motionless above the open area at the front of his camp, were the three surviving Lightnings, their engines dead and their pilots unconscious. The fourth pilot was lying on the ground in a crumpled heap, still alive.

In the background the two massive ships hurtled toward space in unbelievable silence.

Agent Shapiro leaned against the wooden door jamb, laughing to himself. Marquez spun, shooting him a glare that caused him to explode into a deep belly laugh. “Sorry General,” he gasped out. “You had to see it for yourself.”

“Fuck you, ok?” the General growled, shaking his head again, trying to clear the feeling of being trapped in a bad dream. His military composure reassembled itself from a shattered pile of rubble into a temporary wall.

“Look, no one can predict these guys,” Shapiro said, handing Marquez his phone. “There hasn’t been one single day since we’ve gotten here when we’ve had a clue as to what they were up to. Even when they tell us what they’re going to do first.”

“You need to get the Starhawks launched, don’t you?” DeMarko pointed up at the disappearing ships to make his point. He’d been watching the events too, the cup of coffee in his hand the whole time, only adding to the surrealism of the situation.

Nodding, he punched in the orders from his vidlink to launch the 152nd Space Wing in pursuit. Confirmation came back almost immediately. “Done,” he muttered.

A deep groan startled the medic who’d run up to tend to the pilot on the ground. “He’s waking up sir,” he hollered. “He looks ok.”

“They went out of their way to deliver him unhurt.” Marquez shook his head as the phone in his hand beeped. Startled, he realized that he’d not brought his phone out with him, and he glanced at Shapiro.

“It’s mine, but you go ahead and answer it. It’ll be for you, anyway.” He smiled, pointing up at the fighter jets, still suspended over their heads.

“Hello?”

“General Marquez. This is Mica. Where would you like me to put your aircraft.”

***

Adrift

ISS Alpha:

The lifeboat drifted near the wrecked station. Clear from its docking hatch and as helpless as the astronauts who floated around her. A queen bee, surrounded by workers. Promising a future, but as unable to do anything on its own as the monarch of a colony.

Sergei and Scott had exhausted almost all their options, and all of the fuel in his MMU trying to find resources to buy time for the survivors. The inevitability of their situation drug them deeper with every breath they took from their dwindling air supplies. The twisted wreckage of the station had yielded no hope of shelter. No usable resources could be found in the areas they could reach, and those that hung in the various supply caches were victims of another of NASA’s oversights.

The fittings that were designed to work in space, in the gloved hand of a space suit, would not attach to the suits themselves. Those were intended to be refilled inside the pressurized station habitat. So now, they found themselves clinging to the outside of the lifeboat, thirsting for resources that hung tauntingly nearby. Sailors of the high sea, dying of thirst in a salt-filled ocean.