The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (54 page)

Samyaza must have succeeded in bullying the pilots into the lethal course change. When the aircraft attempted to turn, it lost control. Only in the last seconds before impact did the pilots succeed in partially leveling off at tree top height by returning to the old heading. By then, it was too late.

The last thing U’Sumi remembered was the Gihunu River racing beneath them at high speed, with a stand of forest directly ahead. His mind mercifully blanked out the actual crash—a memory so traumatic that he would never retrieve it to his dying day.

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

In his recent autobiographical book,
Forbidden Science
, Vallee summed up his views about the provenance of UFOs, a viewpoint that he’s developed through decades of research: “The UFO Phenomenon exists. It has been with us throughout history. It is physical in nature and it remains unexplained in terms of contemporary science. It represents a level of consciousness that we have not yet recognized, and which is able to manipulate dimensions beyond time and space as we understand them.” So much for anti-gravity-powered starships ferrying Big Brothers from outer space. Vallee thinks UFOs are likely “windows” to other dimensions manipulated by intelligent, often mischievous, always enigmatic beings we have yet to understand.

—
Heretic Among Heretics:
Jacques Vallee
Interview on ufoevidence.org

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

Damnation’s Mouth

G

reen shadows blended into a miasma of lights and voices, neither of which
were
comprehen
sible
to
the Awakening One
—names were still out of reach
. The crackle of flames and smell of pine-oil smoke assaulted his senses from somewhere nearby. Every muscle and bone in his body ached, although a slight test movement of his limbs revealed nothing was actually broken.
Memory started to return somewhat.

U’Sumi’s eyes focused on the devastation around him.

Outside the section of the wreck that had
once
held the
airship’s
lounge, bodies and pieces of bodies lay strewn about a river bank forest clearing. Small scavenger wurms already flitted about their newfound feast.

For several seconds
,
he could not put together what happened. When his memory
partially
returned, a jolt of horror came with it.

He unfastened what remained of his harness and pulled himself painfully from his broken seat to peer ahead through the crumpled cabin. Most of it
had
completely caved
in forward. The bulkhead he had leaned against
while still in flight
lay bent and broken outward at his feet. Only a miracle prevented him from
tumbling
out
in
the last moments of the crash to join the dismembered crew from the pilot bubble. He turned his head.

T’Qinna’s harness must have snapped at the last second, for she
lay
on her side in the aisle
,
her back to him.
Taanyx, miraculously unscathed, watched over her, a graven bright-eyed
sentinel.
S
crapings in the shag carpet between what remained of the seat mount and her body
showed that
T’Qinna
had unsnapped herself and crawled there
post—
impact before passing out.

U’Sumi almost fainted again with relief when he saw that she still breathed. He stooped over her, checking her body for broken bones and head injuries. Aside from some cuts, bruises, and
a
nasty looking abrasion on her cheek, she appeared no worse off than he. He tried to wake her, but elicited only a groan. He wanted to stay by her, but knew he had to move on.

Muffled female shrieks came from under wreckage that used to be the front part of the lounge. The impact had compressed the airframes and telescoped the bulkhead forward
;
leaving the outer fuselage to crumple down over the center sections in
thin
tangled metal drapes.
Debris buried
U’Sumi’s half-sisters just a few cubits beyond T’Qinna. Before pulling them free, however,
he
glanced over to his father and Yafutu.
Sheets of fallen overhead partly hid them
from his line
of
sight.

Fresh blood soaked the carpet under their feet—lots of fresh blood.

Turning from his sisters, he scrambled up the twisted aisle to their seats. A’Nu-Ahki, though unconscious, appeared only slightly hurt.

Not so Yafutu.

The boy’s eyes peered up at U’Sumi with that same calm he had shown shortly before the wreck. A piece of airframe had broken off and pierced the youngster’s side, probably embedded in his left kidney.

Yafutu whispered,
“My brother
…
”

U’Sumi
somehow
pushed aside the
howling vacuum
that
sucked
strength
from his chest. He gently ran his hand through Yafutu’s hair, then set to bringing A’Nu-Ahki back to consciousness. If anyone knew how to save the
boy, it would be their father.

The Seer grunted and slowly came to at U’Sumi’s frantic shaking.

“Wha-what happened?”

U’Sumi spoke quickly, “Yafutu’s badly hurt! We also need to dig out other survivors and get them away from the
astra
. There’s a fire nearby. I think it’s the fuel!”

A’Nu-Ahki twisted around and undid his safety harness. Then he saw Yafutu.

“Oh E’Yahavah, no!”

“Pahp, there’s no time for that now! We have to move him and the other survivors to safety!”

“If we move him
,
it could kill him! Look at what he’s impaled on! It’s all that’s halfway stopping the blood. If he moves now, he’ll bleed out!”

U’Sumi examined the piece of airframe and followed it out from of his brother’s body until it disappeared into a shredded portion of bulkhead.
I can’t lose another Iyapeti all over again!

“Hold that end
of it
steady while I
pull away some of this
wreckage
,” he told his father.

Once A’Nu-Ahki had both hands gripped around the impaling piece of airframe, U’Sumi carefully began to remove each scrap of stressed metal
from off the twisted fragment. Each time one moved, Yafutu screamed at the shift of pressure against his inner organs. Nevertheless, the blood flow did not increase much. Finally, the rest of the fragment became visible. It had snapped clean off on impact and measured
under
a couple cubits in length. U’Sumi thanked E’Yahavah
that he would not have to
she
a
r
it off himself, as he had no idea how
to do that
.

U’Sumi asked,
“If I cut his harness and get one of those broken-off seats in the back, can we transfer him onto it
, straddled, face backwards,
without disturbing the metal or the wound?”

“
E
xcellent idea! Moving him will still be difficult. But if it’s possible, that’s the way to do it.”

An explosion rocked the cabin from just outside, where a piece of the port wing had broken from its cantilever and ruptured the alcohol-glakka spirits fuel tank.

U’Sumi shouted,
“
Let’s
move!”

He turned to notice that T’Qinna had come around and seemed to have already assessed the situation. She tugged at the fallen stressed-skin metal plates that covered Uranna and Tylurnis. She had her back to U’Sumi
,
though
,
and he did not want to distract her. Instead, he scrambled aft toward where the
combat
command center used to be and grabbed one of the seats wrenched from its mount by the twisting deck.

The door to the command room swung on its hinges,
giving him
a quick glance at what lay beyond. Most of the cabin had sheared away. Only one of the occupants had survived.

Isha’Tahar lay buried up to her waist under a pile of dead quickfire equipment. Her
weary
eyes
gaze
d up at him, as he hefted the chair tight against his chest.

“Help me,” she called weakly in her own voice.

“I will,” U’Sumi said, “but first I have to get my little brother out—he’s badly injured. I promise I’ll be back!”

She nodded and rested her head back down on the cluttered deck.

When
U’Sumi returned forward, A’Nu-Ahki had cut Yafutu’s harness loose one-handedly with a piece of sharp metal. He had repositioned himself in front of and facing the boy, where he
held
the fragment still with his other hand. From there he
was
better able to control the motions of the air frame fragment
when
they tried to move Yafutu.

Once
they cleared
a path, the two men lifted the boy
;
careful to maintain his body position
,
and shifted him sideways over A’Nu-Ahki’s seat
, legs straddling,
onto the portable chair. U’Sumi bore the brunt of Yafutu’s weight, while their father controlled the awkward motions of the metal fragment against the boy’s lower back. Once they wrestled him into his new seat, they carried him diagonally across the aisle and out of the wreckage through the hole by U’Sumi’s old chair.
When they reached
a safe distance
,
they gently set him down on some soft forest moss
in a large clearing
.

A’Nu-Ahki stayed with Yafutu, while U’Sumi went back to help T’Qinna with his sisters and to retrieve Isha’Tahar.

By the time he reached the fuselage again, a towering fire raged on the other side of the wreck, dangerously near to what remained of the astra’s skin. T’Qinna, Taanyx, and U’Sumi’s half-sisters scurried from the jagged hole just as he arrived.

“I’m going in for Isha’Tahar!” he shouted over the fiery roar.

T’Qinna shouted, “Let me help!”

“No! Yafutu’s badly hurt! My father may need you!”

Uranna, who seemed dazed from a gash across her forehead, followed T’Qinna into the woods.

Tylurnis,
relatively
unhurt, said, “I’ll go in wit
h you after my Motherin-law!”

U’Sumi nodded and entered the
now
-
smok
ing
hole.

Turbid blackness choked them each step of the way. Sheets of flame approached the remains of the command suite in the aft section.

U’Sumi stepped through the door and down to where Isha’Tahar lay trapped. One shattered console at a time, he tossed the equipment over his shoulder into the onrushing fire. Tylurnis did the same on the other side of the old woman.
Smoke nearly as hot as the flames seared his coughing lungs
, and
b
y
the time they pulled her free, U’Sumi could barely breath
e
.

They lifted Isha’Tahar and dragged her through the cabin door. Both stumbled in hacking fits during their trek back down the twisted aisle to the hole, which they could no longer see.
H
ot
grimy
air
moved
against
U’Sumi’s
skin, funnel
ing
toward the
outside
,
pulling them to
the opening.

Finally
,
they fell out
of
the hole
into the shrubbery, gasping like grounded fish. The wing tank went up, taking the rest of the fuselage with it. The concussion slammed them to the ground as they scrambled away.

Heads still spinning from lack of air, they dragged the Queen’s body across the clearing toward where A’Nu-Ahki worked on Yafutu. Too weak to make it in one sprint, they rested about half way even though the inferno baked
their skin
from behind.

When they released Isha’Tahar onto a bed of ferns, the old woman clasped U’Sumi’s wrist with fingers of steel and pulled him down on top of her. The scorpion eyes returned and her breath reeked
up at him
of
decayed flesh
even over the smoke
. She cocked her head sideways, opened her mouth wide
as
some
feeding snake, and vomited out a long irregular lump of sticky greenish-brown filth.

All U’Sumi could think as he watched her was how glad he was that she had turned her head and not fired the stuff up into his face. After she finished retching
out the long mass
, she loosened her grip on his hand.

U’Sumi pulled free and scrambled away on his hands and knees, afraid
even
to take the time to stand lest she grab at his foot. When he reached a safe distance, he turned and
pulled himself up against a tree
.

Isha’Tahar lay where he had left her, with
a cowering
Tylurnis
just
a few paces off. Over the old woman’s body, aglow with a pale off-white shimmer against the forest shadow, squatted a strange man-like being of a type U’Sumi had never seen before.

The coldly glowing man-thing examined the ancient Queen almost tenderly, touching her as if to revive her or check for injuries. U’Sumi
pressed
himself against
the
tree and watched the
creature with a mixture of fascination and dread. It seemed that the very fabric of reality curled and wavered around both it and Isha’Tahar, though this might have been heat from the burning
astra
so close behind them. Soft horn-like protuberances grew from the glow-man’s large ovoid head vaguely suggestive of the cranial spikes on Samyaza’s sons, but more like tentacles that writhed back and forth to sense something not in the air, but in
the
currents
of
some
thing
else.