Skylock (14 page)

Fending off his instincts with strict procedure, Drue cut his power back to maneuvering speed and rode herd on the controls. He held tight as the nuke whipcracked through one tooth-rattling blow after another.

Snapping back from the deepest trough yet, the cockpit lit to a sudden blaze of internal light. It was the main flight processor screen, miraculously shaken back from the dead. But like its crippled sister instruments, it offered little more than the idle comfort of its presence. The rolling data stream fluttered by as a pointless jabberwocky of drunken, jumbled graphics and erratic, haphazard numbers.

With the gauges' rekindling, however, Kosinski detected something more. An obscure, independent pulse was seeping back in the controls. And shortly he realized the plane was reassuming its own command.

Drue squinted through the whirlwind of swirling muck. Low left, flickering dimly through a muddy splatter, it seemed the CPU control light had reanimated. He swiped a clenched fist against the bulb for verification. Sure enough.

His actions alerted Trennt, who stretched over, offering a hopeful thumbs-up through the churning cockpit.

Instead, Kosinski shook his head.

"Either all this damn moisture has caused a short circuit across some live bit of logic, or a command fragment is fading in from somewhere. This son of a bitch wants to turn back and climb!"

Trennt split a glance between the spastic control panel and angrily twirling storm fringes just beyond.

"Is that bad?"

"Yes, if I can't control it. And it's getting stronger by the second."

The jet entered the tempest. Fuselage windows flamed with sheets of eerie pink lightning. Static charges slithered in lime and amber boas over its nose and wings. Swirling arms of hail swatted the crippled plane, ringing off the fuselage in the ominous, discordant chimes of snapping guitar strings. Structural bundles of graphite fiber were beginning to fray.

The pilot watched long thin fingers of a bogus frost start their advance across his windshield. The glass was clouding over from a high-altitude sandblasting. He knew the same damaging grit was also being ingested by his lone, struggling engine. But worst of all, real ice was beginning to glaze in quick, shiny tiers over the wing surfaces.

Kosinski worked the controls, quietly gauging the situation for a few minutes. Finishing some private calculations, he finally leaned over with somber, flat eyes.

"This is no good, Trennt. We're icing up. With the vector controls locked, I have no way to divert bypass air to either clear the wings or try a vertical landing. Pretty soon we'll start losing lift and that'll be it."

Trennt huffed. "What do we do?"

"These storms have eyes like hurricanes. One's got to be somewhere near. If we find it and dump a lot of weight, it might lighten the plane up enough for me to shoot up and out the stack. Then I could try to figure a way down."

Trennt disgustedly spun his head about the cockpit.

"So what happened to the wonderful bird that could take 'anything'?"

"In good health," Drue apologized, "it would. Even with substantial power and control reductions. But not half crippled, like this."

Trennt knew anger was pointless.

"Okay, dump—dump what? You mean throw stuff overboard?"

Keeping his eyes on the windshield, Drue shook his head.

"Better. The passenger compartment is containerized in a full cabin ejection pod. It's actually a small survival shelter with rations, and a solar emergency transmitter. If we blow it free, it might make the difference in all of us surviving. You by parachuting and me by landing this bird."

Trennt frowned. "Why bother? Ditch with us!"

"Remember on the way out? I said just once I'd like to really fly this plane. I got my wish, didn't I?"

"So what? We all say stuff we don't mean! You said it was crashproof. Let the damn thing go!"

"Yes, but not meltproof. The blown left engine probably let air pockets into the coolant system. With no computer regulation to sift them out, they could start bunching up like an embolism. Someone'd have to stay onboard to screen them out manually. Otherwise, air locks might form in the high-pressure plumbing loop. That would mean ten-thousand-degree hotspots and a good chance of a full core meltdown."

Trennt snorted, pointing ahead.

"Are you serious? Look outside! What's it matter?"

"Here, maybe nothing. But inside the storm, isotope could come down hundreds of miles away. On people; little kids, who've got it bad enough already. I couldn't bail out knowing I let Avium 364 drizzle down on God knows who—could you?"

"Look, Trennt," Drue reasoned, "I'm no martyr. There's some last chance crew chutes stashed behind these seats. Once I get this thing steered toward the ocean, if I can't set it down I'll hit the silk myself and let her go."

Trennt conceded with a growl.

"All right! But just the others go. I stay with you!"

"Why?"

"Never mind. How do we blow the cabin?"

"At the four ceiling corners, there are access doors. Open them and give the safety pins inside a quarter turn. There's an electrical detonator up here that I'll cycle when that's done and everyone is belted in."

He started out. "Okay."

"Wait!"

"What?"

"Twist all but one key. That'll help keep the detonator circuit open until I can find the storm's eye. The chutes might not handle all this gale."

"Okay. Signal when."

Trennt groped his way aft. There, the other passengers were struggling just to stay put. The doctor was perilously out of his seat belt altogether, nobly disregarding his own protection in an attempt to cushion the ragged breathing of his critical patient.

To the side and restrained by Baker's hasty binding, the young woman smoldered silently, hate-filled eyes following Trennt's every move.

"We're icing up," he relayed to Baker. "The pilot says this whole cabin is an escape pod that we can blow if he finds the storm's eye. I want you to ride it in and keep everybody together until help finds you."

The shooter squinted in the ripping wind. "You ain't comin'?"

"Splitting up'll better our chances for one of us getting something back. We'll divvy up the data and vials once we get this thing ready for drop."

Baker nodded reluctantly. "Okay, Pard. If you say so."

Trennt pointed to the ceiling corners.

"Get in the rear and turn those safety keys. When Kosinski finds a clear spot, I'll do the same up front."

Precious minutes ticked by. Bolt lightning slashed ragged blue-white forks about them. Punishing hail continued peening the craft and its wings grew ever thicker with ice. The nuke's lift was decaying, trading itself for an awkward, pancaking sink.

Kosinski's heart filled his mouth as he searched the churning sky. A few snatches of light did materialize. But they were fleeting, gone before he could pursue them. Time was short, the moment fast approaching when he'd have to dump the passpod, regardless of their position.

Lateral gusts rammed the wounded jet. Determined head winds shouldered it back. Yet the pilot forced it on, a hapless mechanical sparrow caught in hell's total fury.

Then, ahead. Two o'clock low. A sliver of blue. Daylight. Maybe a mile out. Drue kept locked on the moving target as it blinked and re-formed; waxed and waned.

From nowhere, glorious sunlight exploded inside the craft. In a blink the gale winds were lost to a deafening silence and the clouds traded for a brilliant, flaring sun.

Kosinski waved a frantic, slashing hand toward the cabin.

"NOW, TRENNT! NOW!"

His voice was hoarse and grating in the sudden quiet. It startled Trennt, in the midst of divvying up the catalyst samples. He momentarily dumped them all back inside their box and set it ahead on the cockpit floor. Reaching above for the final turnkey, he never got to finish the job.

The lone
blat
of a single explosive bolt came too soon. It jarred the cabin and bunched the forward bulkhead into an accordionlike coil. The passpod slumped as an instant anchor in the murderous slipstream. About it the entire plane yawed hard left then back right, rocking on its belly. Salvaged files burst from their pouches and sluiced freely around the cabin walls. Passengers were rattled perilously about in their seats.

The bulkhead skin continued to buckle and flex. It gyrated through a full minute of such exercise before finally parting to a garish moan of tearing composite. A low-running gash spread across the compartment's entire width. Drawn on, ream after ream of loose research files skittered forward, exploding their precious information out into the gobbling slipstream.

Trennt sprawled against the animated bulkhead. Flattened spread-eagle between the ravenous fracture mere inches beneath his feet and the safety of the cockpit floor, just out of reach above, each new whipcrack tried bucking him loose. But he held fast in the brace of a tenacious spider. Behind him, though, the doctor and patient weren't as fortunate.

Trennt glanced helplessly over a shoulder as Keener was peeled through the slack web of his reclined seat. He joined the untethered physician and both men followed the descending trail of evacuating flotsam.

Eyes wide in horror, Doc Ashton doggedly fought to restrain Keener. He impossibly tried bracing his feet and grabbing handholds for them both on seat frames along the way. But his grasp slid vainly from one to the next, unable to prevent the slow descent of their combined weight. Just feet from the opening, Ashton's silent, fear-glazed eyes flew pleadingly up.

Risking his own uncertain perch, Trennt dared to intervene. He freed one hand, swung it blindly backwards and down. Desperate fingers strained up and connected. Palms locked tentatively against the sweat and grime oiling their flesh. But the cabin's angle and scouring decompression were stronger than the unwieldy grip. And slowly that grip failed.

Palms tapered off to fingers, then just hooked knuckles. The dead weight was peeling Trennt away from his own flimsy sanctuary; bending him ever closer to the gaping hole, himself.

Doctor Ashton's eyes flared in a last terrified look about. He volleyed a resigned glance between Trennt above and the torn fuselage ahead, then heroically yanked his hand away. In a blink, Trennt sprang upright and both other men disappeared out into space. Behind, the woman screamed in a long deflating peel. She strained at her bindings and sank from view in a dead faint.

Reeling with the sight of Ashton's terror-filled eyes, Trennt struggled to pull himself above. He battled the nauseating tempo boiling deep inside him and clawed up the steeply angled bulkhead. His hands made the cockpit floor and he tensed a leg for his final push. Just inches were left to go.

A quick triple pop erupted behind him. It was the tardy explosive bolts, severing all remaining cabin links in unison. Again, Trennt felt himself being twisted away. His fingers clutched vainly at the valise of precious catalyst samples ahead, but gee force won out. Doused in a brutal, quick wash of scalding exhaust, he watched as a helpless, flattened witness to the quick parting of plane and cabin.

A frenzied jet whine swiftly carried pilot and cargo to higher regions while shoving the passenger pod rearward in its thrust. In another moment the double
chug
of additional pyrotechnics freed a trio of massive parachutes. A sudden decelerating yank signaled their safe deployment. Beneath, the passpod quivered and stabilized. Then, there was just the odd soft breeze of a gentle amusement park descent.

The two agents sat smothered in the misery of their ruined mission. Neither spoke and for a time, the only sound aboard the descending cabin was the peaceful moan of a plaintive wind.

Slowly, an odd noise disturbed Trennt's funk. Dead tired and frazzled, he dismissed what seemed a distant murmur to ravaged hearing and pure exhaustion. It persisted though; in fact, getting louder. He realized it was no fantasy when Baker's eyes met his from across the aisle.

"Jimbo? You hear that?"

A ragged look shot between the men.

"Sounds like the ocean."

President Warrington was fuming and angry enough to have traveled the many blocks from his residence alone and on foot. The day was nearly over and he had still not heard from Royce Corealis about either his USDA resignation or the clandestine research program. Only recently had the director even bothered sending word as to where he could be found.

Arriving at the compound's garden facility, Warrington strained to contain himself.

"Is Director Corealis on the grounds?"

"Yes, yes, sir," replied the startled evening guard, fumbling with his sign-in sheet. "He came in at—"

"Never mind," interrupted the president, uncharacteristically gruff. "Get him on the phone."

The guard awkwardly obliged. But long seconds later he looked over sheepishly.

"Not answering, sir. Shall I have someone find him?"

"No. I'll go myself. Which dome is he in?"

"Number five, sir. You can use my patrol cart."

Warrington arrived at the furthermost structure and parked beside Corealis' electric jitney. Entering the dome's sanitizing vestibule, he hurriedly donned the mandatory sterile paper coveralls and booties. He impatiently endured a flash of degerming light and spritz of sterilizing chemical mist. Each new second made the normally docile politician more agitated and reckless.

Properly decontaminated, the vestibule doors finally parted and the President of the United States entered the indoor garden plot, ready to do battle. Before Warrington, a hundred acres of lush terraced crops silently absorbed the frosty multispectrum light set high overhead. As if on cue, Corealis appeared, approaching through the ground level corn rows at a tourist's pace. A garden hoe was on his shoulder and filthy rubber boots covered his feet.

Warrington's rage grew hotter. Even now, the man could actually spare a moment's pause to study the forming corn ears, as unconcerned as though on a damned holiday stroll!

The president stepped into the musky atmosphere. He noticed the soil was oddly puddled in this prewatering hour, but walked through it, unconcerned that he was muddying his highly polished shoes.