Air Force One, Part Four (4)
The airplane’s problem now is that it is in a nice stable spin-configuration that does not give it enough airspeed over the main control surfaces to actually fly. Right now it is only flying in the sense that a grand piano might be said to fly as it approaches the ground. Except faster, probably. "Belay that," he says. "Inboard four engines throttle up full. Remaining engines throttle idle." The ones closer to the wingtips are going awful fast in that big circle. We don’t want to flame those out this close to the ground. The trick here is to use what little control you do still have to actually force the aircraft’s nose further downward. There’s some magic angle that you have to exceed. If you can get the nose down within that cone, your airspeed will be able to start building up until it gets to the point where you’re flying again. At that point you can actually use the control surfaces to climb out of your dive. Which would be good. All of this does, however, have the unfortunate side-effect of actually flying you faster toward the ground. "Airspeed seventy-two knots!" Johnny says. "Altitude three thousand three hundred feet!" "Stick back half," Mick says. Immediately, he is forced into the seat with three times his natural weight. It’s not much, as G-forces go. He took five Gees one time for a few seconds without quite losing consciousness. Of course that was a very long time ago. Still, much more than that would probably pull the wings off this big boat. Oh, but that’s OK, he realizes. If he pulls the wings off by accident, he still wins in some sense. The only way to really lose the game was by losing control of the aircraft to Tennen. And pulling the wings off and crashing doesn’t fall into that category. "Stick back three quarters," Mick says, half a second after his previous command. At four Gees he starts to get tunnel vision, but the extra force actually feels good. He expects that it means he’s going to live. Jack stands up and looks at Anne. The man at their feet is dead, as are three other truckers and two soldiers. In addition, four truckers are wounded. But the battle is over, because the enemy has suddenly decided to leave. "Why did they go?" Anne asks. She doesn’t know that there are tears on her face. The man at her feet is Mr. Kelley, who once visited a prostitute. "If they hadn’t —" "They would have killed us all," Jack finishes for her. Even with the advantage of surprise, the truckers were only able to take two more weapons away from the men whom Jack thinks of as FC troops. He knew from the beginning that it would be a hard fight, but even he had no understanding of just how experienced Tennen’s men actually are. But at the very moment he understood that the truckers were losing the battle, several of the FC soldiers who had been guarding the helicopters came running toward the action. Jack assumed they were coming as reinforcements, and just those two would certainly have turned the tide immediately and decisively against the truckers. Instead they were shouting commands, but in a language Jack had never heard before — including in all his years with the FC in Wisconsin. Only then did the soldiers he was facing in battle seem the least bit worried about Jack and his forces, but they were concerned only that he and the truckers might manage to delay their retreat. On the contrary, he was only too happy to let them go. Jack looks toward the west, where he can still just make out the four departing helicopters as black spots in the twilit sky, moving slowly between the towering storm clouds. "I expect," he says, "that their boss is having a little more trouble up there than he expected." "Ten men fell in the spin," Johnny says. "Twenty-one remain on board. They have destroyed all cameras and with them all microphones in the landing platform area. Landing area weapons are disabled. "I have reviewed stored images of Page’s firefight," the Bolo continues. "I do not understand the technology that Tennen used to deflect Page’s fire, but the agent apparently believed that he had some chance of penetrating the deflecting force. This may be why Tennen has not simply used his ‘shield’ to come up the main entry corridor; the anti-intrusion weapons there are much more powerful than Page’s handgun was. "Thus it seems likely that Tennen will, if possible, avoid the corridor, preferring to use the same weapon with which he destroyed the outer door to force entry through a wall, or through the lower level engine and maintenance deck. "Also, I must strongly advise against any attempted repetition of the spin maneuver or anything similar. The ship has no tactile or vibration sensors, but I am analyzing high-magnification images from cameras in all areas to extract vibration information visually. I am detecting, with high likelihood, significant vibration modes that do not seem to have existed previously. I believe it is likely that the spin has further damaged the ship." "Don’t worry," Mick says into the microphone. "I’m not planning to try that again. But try to get some altitude back as quick as you can. I want a little room to maneuver if we have to. But keep watching your vibration images. Keep airspeed down as far as you can. The airplane probably knew what it was doing when it decided on slow-flight. But don’t reduce speed so much that we get close to a stall! Will you be able to detect that now?" "Quite well," Johnny replies. "And I have no intention — " The Bolo pauses. "Standby," he says. Mick presses the headphones tighter against his ears. "Radar contacts!" Johnny says, once again in his battle-voice. "Four. Bearings: three-one-five through zero-one-zero. Altitude and speed within helicopter envelope." "Yes!" Mick slaps the console. "Fanning out to attempt jamming and signal-detection with triangulation. If they jam signal, I lose presence in ship." "Maybe so," Mick answers, "but it also means that they’re not at the Wolverine anymore." "Wolverine inhabitants may be dead." "No they’re not!" Mick shouts back. "He wouldn’t have killed them before getting what he wanted out of me. And we didn’t give him very much time to send the order. But you’re right — I don’t know for sure. I guess we’ll have to take that on faith." "Anyway — can you keep them off the signal for a while? Maybe just run straight away from them to the west? And that would get them over the horizon from the Wolverine the fastest. They won’t be able to see anything once we get them over the horizon, will they?" "Negative," Johnny replies quickly. In battle-speech he invariably begins his reply before his commander has finished speaking the final word of his question. Normally he might add that even the most recent pre-war over-the-horizon backscatter radar units were far too massive to be carried on helicopters. But one of the rules in battle is that, when he answers a question without qualification, the commander believes him without room — or time — for doubt. "OK, let’s do it!" Mick says. "Roger. Heading to one-eight-zero. Maintain speed above stall. Hold at one-zero thousand feet. Cannot reach high altitude or airspeed without high probability catastrophic airframe damage. Helicopters reach jamming range in three-seven minutes." "Well —" Mick thinks, "do you have air-to-air missiles?" "Yes, but negative launch capability," the distant tank replies. "Underside launchers inoperative." "OK," Mick says. "Just keep them off me for as long as you can. I think it’s time to go get a little something extra to bargain with." Moonlight Sooner or later —most likely sooner, and certainly no later than thirty-five minutes from now — Tennen and his remaining men will manage to blind the cameras in the main hall. Or they’ll come straight through the walls using whatever blasting gadget they’ve got. Or they’ll just sit tight and wait for the four remaining helicopters to arrive, jam Johnny’s signal, and that will be that. The helicopters are faster than the big ship, the way it’s messed up, and even if it could dodge them for a few minutes — even the way in which he dodged would give Johnny’s position away pretty quickly. All of which indicates to Mick that, out of every possible half-hour in his life, this is definitely the worst one he could pick in which to get lost. He steps slowly up the dark hallway, one hand on the wall to his right, trying to slow his breathing. Even if he could have somehow calmed down enough to memorize Johnny’s instructions properly before setting out, he would still have been lost before traveling a hundred yards through these corridors. So far the only lights he has seen were the dim ones in the main entry hall. Maybe the other areas had gone to red lights before takeoff, and over the years those lights burned out faster? Or maybe the damned ship just likes to lure you in and then swallow you. He shuffles his feet forward slowly rather than lifting them because — although he carefully avoids examining the thought — he is afraid that he will step on something. What it might be he has no idea, and he firmly closes the passages of thought that lead in that direction. He simply does not want to step on — anything. Anyway, it’s obvious from the damage to the underside (he leaps at the chance of visualizing it again, rather than let the unemployed visual regions of his mind form more disturbing images) it is perfectly obvious that he aircraft was barely off the ground when the nuclear fireball erupted behind it on the first night of the Last War. Anyone in the aircraft, in fact anything as large as a bacterium would have been killed instantly by the gamma ray flash. There is simply no possibility that anyone has survived up here, in these dark corridors for ten endless years. But maybe the equipment could have provided enough shielding in some places? No, it would not have. The equipment is made of plastic and aluminum. Even the parts that are radiation-hardened aren’t ‘hard’ enough to block stuff that intense. Having shielded cables or whatever doesn’t exactly make it a foot-thick wall of lead. There is heavy shielding in the engine room. No! Someone would have had to be standing down there in just the right place during takeoff goddammit. It’s not the kind of place where you would have passenger seats! And anyway, even supposing someone survived the blast somehow — how would they have lived this long? Ten years? There were certainly no re-supply flights after all the shooting started. They would have had to keep the damned thing stocked with enough canned food to shame a good Mormon’s basement. If the radiation killed everything else, even the bacteria, then the bodies of the other crewmembers would never have decayed. With that, Mick stops even his slow shuffle-step. Because, goddamn it, enough is enough. This may be a mighty unusual airplane — but it’s still just an airplane. Maybe it’s been up here a long time. There are, without doubt, many dead people in it somewhere. But there are real live people with real guns trying to get to him right now. Also, he himself very likely has less than half an hour to live if he can’t find what he’s looking for. At a time like this, a childish fear of the dark could indeed be fatal. All it has to do is slow him down. Leaning on the cool metal he listens to the relatively calming mechanical sounds that echo in the invisible hall around him. The symphony he hears is far from the simple engine-hum that he can still remember from the long-gone days of commercial flight. Of course, this vessel hasn’t seen a maintenance crew in something like eighty thousand hours of continuous flight, much of which has been through the squall lines and thunder clouds that have become a year-round fact of life since the Wars. The years unattended have naturally taken their toll. From some recess of the labyrinth he can hear the flapping of what might be a large piece of cloth somewhere, a distant banging of something that might be a small cargo door occasionally opening and then slamming shut again. Something that might be a slender chain striking sinuously against a metal wall somewhere adds an almost musical note once in a while. These and many less identifiable noises all weave together into the endless creak and groan of the great ship’s passage. Taking control of himself, he begins forward again — this time walking normally except for the caution that the absolute darkness demands. He tries to remember how many doors he has passed, and how many Johnny said he should pass. Then he hears footsteps behind him. If one were to think about it rationally one would be forced to admit that, with so many noises echoing off metal walls, with so much raw sound filling the air, and with consideration of his mental state thrown in — it is quite possible that this minor sequence of sounds, almost lost in the grand cacophony, is simply hallucinatory: a pattern created entirely by the mind and attributed to a perfectly nonexistent source. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the parts of his mind that can think such logical thoughts are not really very old, nor are they especially wise, nor, when it comes down to brass tacks, are they all that important. They are recent additions to a design that has taken a very long time to perfect. Of course if you were to talk to Mick, you would be talking precisely to those overweening parts of his mind. They’re in charge of things like talking, and what people (when they are talking to you) call (wrongly) reason. The bigger, older parts of his mind normally tolerate this behavior in the same way a parent might tolerate the vagaries of children — not because the child is right, but because it is promising. That’s all very well, until things really do come down to brass tacks. Then the adult takes over, picks up the child, and runs. This is why Mick hardly knows what’s happening. He has a vague impression that there was a noise, but all he really knows is that he is suddenly running for his life. He trips over something and falls to the metal floor. It may very well be that the object he tripped over was exactly the sort of thing he had been imagining with horror only a few moments before. But that doesn’t matter now, either. Those were childish fears. The reason why he scrambles to his feet again is that the greater and older being — the one that doesn’t call itself Mick — is running for its life. Some breathless time later he finds himself turning at last out of the black halls and into one doorway — squeezing into it through a barely passable aperture. He doesn’t fully come to his senses again until he has somehow clawed and scraped the ancient fully closed. Only then does he turn, panting, to survey the room that he has found — his terror of only moments before forgotten as quickly as it came. The same subterranean consciousness that made him run from a little noise now, inexplicably, feels safe. At least the darkness in the room is not quite so absolute. Somehow the faintest hint of silver light has found its way into this place. After the blackness of the maze of halls, it feels almost homey. He can just make out that the room was well appointed once. It’s certainly not as large as the communications room, but it obviously wasn’t intended for any such utilitarian purpose. It was comfortable once. Now — a little the worse for wear. Cold night air is moving in the room. Looking up, Mick finds the source of the wind and the faint flapping noise he heard earlier. A strip of the fuselage skin two yards long and a couple of feet high has been torn loose, possibly in the moment that began this endless flight. Through the ragged opening a pair of the great ship’s metal ribs show black against the more luminous sky. The stuff that’s doing the flapping is probably some sort of insulation, pulled out into the slipstream when the section of metal skin fell away, now slapping eternally against the outside of the aircraft. Or, if not eternally, then at least until even more of the skin panels have fallen away and large areas of the ship have become skeletal, so that sometimes a man on the ground will hear a sound and look up to see the great craft passing, and the moonlight showing through its sides. Or perhaps that gentle flapping will sound until the angry heart of the power plant finally cools and the craft falls, at last, to earth. But even as he imagines that final landing, he knows that it can’t be. This ship will never fall to earth. It cannot. No matter how the ghosts aboard this vessel yearn to come to rest at last and scatter their remains across the forgiving earth — they will never be allowed that peace. Long ago, in life, they made their choice. They took their cold metal, their great weapons, and their vast power. The choices that they made cast billions of lives into the furnace of their pride and error. Now they reap the whirlwind, wandering the skies of the world they betrayed. Forever. Through the emptiness in the room’s wall, he can see silver clouds glowing beneath white stars. The moon has risen. It will be full tonight. This ship is not such a high place, he realizes, seeing those clouds. As thin as this air may seem in his lungs, as free as this craft may seem, flying forever through the night skies — there is still an air far thinner, and a sky far more free. It lies up there, high above this little ocean. Up there in the moonlight, beyond the shooting stars. He stands for a long time staring at it, as the torn fabric flaps and the wind eddies in the room around him — then looks away at last, and sees a man sitting in one of the rooms chairs, barely visible in the silver light. Again he tries to flee, but without daring to turn his back on the man. He collides with a low table and half falls onto it, scrambling up again only to finally strike the room’s wall with his back. From the large, plush chair the man sits watching him, unconcerned by his display of fear. There is no way that he can reach the room’s door and drag it open again in time to get away, so he stands trapped, eyes wide, arms spread out against the wall. But after a long minute, the man simply continues to stare. Unmoving. Mick also stands motionless, watching the seated man, his eyes slowly adapting to the deeper darkness of the room’s interior. After another long minute without motion, Mick slowly lowers his arms and takes one tentative step away from the wall. His host remains impassive. He approaches cautiously, ready at any moment to hurl himself backward again at the slightest sign of awareness. But after more long minutes of inching forward, he stops at last. He is within arm’s length of the chair — and he can at last see that the man is long dead. He heard once that the hair continues to grow for some time after death. Not this guy. This man’s hair stopped growing in the very moment of his death. Every cell in his body died then, together with every bacterium that might have caused its decay. All in a tenth-second torrent of gamma rays. Two seconds after that torrent he was pressed into his seat, then thrown forward against his four-point seat belts as the great aircraft bucked in the shockwave of a nuclear detonation. Engines roaring and computers using all their knowledge of the workings of the air, playing the control surfaces as rapidly as their mechanisms would allow, the great craft fought and struggled — then righted itself at last and rode the wind. Climbing away from the burning earth it lost itself in the night sky. But every living being on board was already dead. Still moving a little cautiously, still looking too often at the mummified face, Mick stoops toward the man’s hands, resting in his lap. The features are still recognizable. The skin of the right hand feels like parchment stretched over bird’s bones. It’s tough, though. It doesn’t crackle or break as Mick feared it would. Carefully, he withdraws the plastic object, like a thick white credit card, that has rested there for ten years. At last he straightens again, and looks at the thing. The key fits just as easily into his still-living hand. Only the seal of the United States is on it: the eagle that clasps on one side the olive branches of the earth and on the other — the lightning bolts of heaven. He looks down again, toward the more peacefully resting corpse. "I’ll take this now, Mr. President," he tells it.
Copyright © 2000 Michael Goulish |