Some Fine Day (38 page)

“We’re not dying here,” I say firmly, even though my knees are trembling. “We’re not.”

He doesn’t respond. I think he’s gone somewhere else. Maybe a sloop on the Novatlantic seas a decade ago.

“Please don’t check out on me,” I beg, almost crying now. “I need you.”

I touch his face, make him look at me, and he takes a deep breath.

“We are going to get to that plane,” I say.

“There’s too many of them.”

Steel screams as the door inches inward. I wedge the muzzle of the gun through and fire, and there’s a wordless shriek on the other side. We shove it closed again.

“That’s why we need another way out,” I say.

“Hold on.” Will starts heaping equipment in front of the door. He grabs anything he can get his hands on – broken furniture, boxes of spare parts, stacks of solar panels.

The elevator has to be on its way up by now. We only have a few minutes left.

The big problem is that there’s no other door.

“Jansin!” Will calls.

He’s climbed to the top of a pile of crates against the wall. Behind the last one is a narrow heating duct. We didn’t see it before because it was covered by junk.

“Come on!” he yells.

Telling me to go first.

“Just get in, I’m right behind you,” I say, stepping away from the door. Will pries the cover off and starts crawling as it buckles inward. Metal shrieks as the pile shifts, but the door jams on something and stops about six inches wide. Webbed fingers curl around the edge and test it, then withdraw. I can see that the next hit will smash it wide.

I scramble up the crates and dive into the duct, following Will’s boots ahead of me. There’s a loud noise, then silence. We crawl as fast as we can, twisting and turning, and I’m breathing so hard I can’t tell for sure if there’s anything behind. I think I hear soft sounds though, the scraping of fingernails on steel maybe.

I scoot along on my elbows, the pistol a reassuring weight in my right hand. But the duct is too tight to turn around and look. Too tight to turn around and shoot. Now I’m sure I hear something. A wheezing hiss. Like air slowly escaping from a tire. My ankles tingle in anticipation of webbed hands closing around my boots and dragging me backwards into the darkness. I may not be able to turn around, but I still can use the gun on myself. I will, if I have to.

Now that I’ve seen the toads, I understand why Will froze in front of those cages. He was right to be terrified.

Then daylight fills the duct. We crawl another three yards and Will is tumbling out and hauling me to the catwalk. We’ve come out next to the elevators. We must have taken a tour through the whole station to end up thirty feet from where we started. The moment my feet hit the ground I turn and fire into the duct. Silence. Was it my imagination?

The walkway between us and the hangar looks clear. I check the elevator. It’s halfway to the top, about four minutes away. We run to the door and I key it open, my hands shaking so badly it takes me three tries to get it right.

A thin scream cuts through the wind.

Jake.

I peer through the curtains of rain to the railing where he held Will hostage. Jake is lying on the ground, his right leg bent at an odd angle. Three toads are crouched in a circle around him. He’s lost his weapon.

The image takes me back to the beach that night, when the raiders hit us. The people who started out as my enemies and became my friends. If I hadn’t gone to help Jake then, I would never have encountered Banerjee, or Bob, who in his inimitable Bob way started the whole thing by grabbing me.  I would never have met Will.

I’d be just like Jake now. One of them.

I could lie to myself and believe that I would have woken up on my own, but deep inside, I know better. It’s not that I liked the way things were. I just didn’t know there was any other way.

Jake and I are on opposite sides now. If we ever see each other again, it will be as bitter enemies. He’ll never change, he’s not capable of it. But I can’t let him die here. Not like this. If I did, I’d be just like them.

“I’ll meet you in the cockpit,” I tell Will. “One minute.”

“Where the hell are you going now?” He looks upset, and has every right to be.

“We trained at the Academy together,” I say. “I just want to give him a chance. He won’t try to stop us again. Trust me.”

Will looks extremely dubious.

“You’re joking, right? He tried to shoot me, in case you’ve forgotten. Twice.”

“I haven’t forgotten. I just can’t. . .” I point at the toads, closing the circle. “I can’t let those things have him.”

If anyone hates toads more than I do, it’s Will. He sighs heavily.

“Do it fast,” he says. “I’ll cover you.”

“I will,” I say.

I walk toward Jake and start firing as the first one springs. The bullet rips through its chest, and the others spin around but I drop them with two clean shots to the head. It feels more like killing people than animals and my stomach turns. Jake looks up at me, blue eyes wide. He’s soaked to the bone and looks about a decade older than he did a few minutes ago.

“Your guys will be here any second,” I say.

We both glance down the adjacent walkway as a group of shadows detaches from the wall and starts moving in our direction.

“There’s eight rounds left in this gun. Make them count.” I hand him the pistol, butt first, thinking I must be insane. But I know Jake. At least, I used to. He’s not evil. Just a good soldier.

Jake takes it. “Why are you doing this?”

I hesitate for a moment. He wouldn’t understand, and frankly, I’m not sure I do myself. So I say something that will make sense to him.

“Because we never leave a man behind.” I start to walk away. Turn back. “One last thing. Just tell me the truth. Were you there when they took me down? In the woods?”

Jake grimaces, left hand loosely cupping his shattered knee, right hand gripping the gun. He shakes his head and I’m filled with relief.

I consider saying take care or something inane like that, but it seems ridiculous under the circumstances. And there’s no time to do anything but run.

I’m halfway back to the hangar when I hear a hammer cock behind me. I stop. Turn around.

Jake is aiming the gun in my direction. Our eyes meet, and he fires.

I dive to the side as something drops from the roof above. It thrashes and lies still. Red blood gushes from the bullet wound in the toad’s throat.
Go
, Jake mouths silently.

I sprint flat-out then, tearing into the hangar as more gunfire erupts behind me. The plane is waiting and Will is leaning out the cabin door, beckoning me inside.

“Open bay doors,” I tell the computer as we seal the cabin and buckle into our harnesses. “Prepare for takeoff.”

Like its Harrier jet ancestors, the Raptor uses a two-way toggle to transition between vertical and forward flight. The computer sets ten degrees of flap and I slowly open the throttle. The plane lifts up and soars out of the hangar. We circle around for a pass and I see jumpsuited figures pouring out of the elevator. It looks like they brought some serious artillery. Then we’re flying into the storm, steadily gaining altitude until we reach a cruising height of 35,000 feet.

“We’ll reach the outer edge of Tisiphone in six minutes,” I say.

“So what happens when we hit the eyewall?” Will asks.

“I’m not sure. But that’s where the highest wind speeds are. About four hundred miles per hour.”

Will’s face is composed but his hands are gripping the armrest. “I’ve spent my whole life running from the storms,” he says. “I can’t believe I’m about to fly straight into one.”

I hesitate. “Listen, about Jake and what happened back there. . .”

“It’s OK.” He stares straight ahead. “I understand.”

“I only wanted to say that next time I’ll definitely shoot him.”

Will doesn’t look over but I think his mouth quirks the tiniest bit.

“We could go anywhere in the world, couldn’t we?” he says.

“Pretty much.” I glance at him. “Having doubts about Iceland?”

So far, the ride has been very smooth. Beautiful, in fact. We’re starting to see the hypercane’s outer bands of cumulus and cumulonimbus, capped by thin, wispy cirrus. A break in the clouds reveals roiling seas below, with troughs deep enough to hold the entire substation.

It’s hard for me to believe thousands of people used to jet across the planet this way every day without a second thought. So much has been lost to us now.

“No, it’s not that,” Will says, echoing my thoughts. “I’ve just never flown before, you know? I never in a million years imagined that I ever would. It’s like a dream. Ocean crossings by boat are very dangerous. Not just because of the canes, but there’s rogue waves out there hundreds of feet high. I guess it’s a weird feeling to think that we could cross Novatlantis in a matter of hours.”

“I know,” I say, checking our location. “And I think the window of opportunity to change our minds just closed.”

We enter the storm. Heavy rain streaks across the windshield and visibility drops to zero, but the radar shows red lines of squalls spiraling toward a darker hole at the center.

I point it out to Will. “Tisiphone’s heart,” I say, when the plane bounces, hard.

“What was that?” Will asks, gripping the armrest.

“I don’t know.”

I scan the instruments. Everything looks normal, but I’m not exactly a qualified pilot.

“I think we’re here,” I say.

A second later, the nose pitches down and we’re diving into a churning mass of grey cloud.

“You’re sure there’s land down there?” Will asks.

I make sure the autopilot is engaged. No way I’m doing this part myself, no matter how many hours I’ve logged in the simulator. Now we’re losing airspeed and the Raptor is falling even faster. The airframe shudders ominously.

“She’s built to fly through canes,” I mutter. “She’ll hold together.”

But I’m not so sure.

The gusts at the eyewall buffet us like a leaf in a whirlwind, and I can only imagine the terrible forces being exerted just a few feet away. We sink to 20,000 feet, then 10,000. The plane starts yawing violently from side to side. Our harnesses creak under the strain. I think of the waves down there, like small mountains. The radar puts our position at the verge of Tisiphone’s eye, hugging the wall in a northwesterly direction.

“Hold tight,” I say. “We’re punching through.”

We hit a pocket of severe turbulence and I hear the cargo of food and water shifting in the back of the plane. Everything is vibrating, like a giant tuning fork. There’s a sharp cracking sound and the cabin door flies open. I turn my head and something strikes me just me above the ear. A burst of white, followed by blackness.

I float in the void for a while, quiet and serene. Then my ears pop painfully and a wall of noise comes rushing back in. The desperate whine of the engines, a cacophony of alarms, Will’s voice screaming next to me.

“. . .something!”

For several long moments, I am gripped by total confusion. I open my eyes, wait for the blurriness to clear. What I see is not good.

I’m dangling in my harness, nearly face-down. Blood is dripping onto the windshield. The plane is in a nosedive. I have no idea how long I was out, how long we have been plummeting toward the earth.

“Do something!” Will yells again.

Crates fill the tiny flight deck. One of them has shattered the autopilot. At that moment, I know we are going to crash. The whole thing was madness. 

“Do what?” I sob. “I can’t. . .”

“You can!” Will yells. He swipes at my hand, misses it, tries again and grabs me. Squeezes hard. “You can, Jansin! Try! Fly this plane!”

I squeeze back, stomach floating somewhere north of my ribcage. I can’t see a thing through the windshield, just dense clouds. I shove debris out of the way and scan the instruments.

“Terrain. Terrain,” the computer barks. “Ground proximity warning.”

Just like the simulator, I tell myself. You’ve nose-dived before. You’ve pulled out of it.

Violent g-forces batter the plane like a giant fist. I feel like I’m going to black out again, and I know we’re dead if that happens. For some reason, at that moment, I think of Fatima. Of how Will saved her life because he simply refused to indulge in fear and self-doubt. He just acted.

I seize the controls and pull back, leaning hard into my harness. They judder in my hand and I’m so scared the airframe will just crack apart like an egg, but then the nose starts creeping up, an inch at a time.

“That’s it!” Will screams. “You’ve got it!”

After endless seconds, the plane stabilizes and I let out a huge breath I didn’t even know I was holding, then suck in air like I’ve just emerged from the depths of the ocean. Will whoops and slaps his thigh. I raise a shaking hand to my head and touch the spot where I was beaned. A little harder and I might never have woken up at all.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Oh my God, that was close.”

We’re flying low, one thousand feet, at an airspeed of two hundred fifty knots. Will helps me review the landing checklist and make sure the tricycle landing gear is down and the nose is stabilized at a three-degree glide slope. When we hit three hundred feet I reduce the airspeed to fifty knots, drop the remaining flaps and get ready to engage auto-hover. I figure we’re better off coming in too high than too low, since VTOLs have no trouble dumping altitude.

I just wish I knew what we were landing
on
.

“Terrain, terrain, terrain. . .”

We’re slammed by one last gust, and then bright sunlight hits the windshield. The plane just clears a rocky peak and drops into a valley with a river twisting through the center. It’s treeless but covered in grass that creeps up the black slopes like a bright green carpet. Three waterfalls cascade down to the valley floor.

I choose a level area and bring us down to about a hundred feet, then initiate a stationary hover, hold full throttle and let her settle down to earth. The thrust vectoring nozzles rotate to zero degrees as we touch down and I cut the engines to idle before we go rocketing forward.

We’re both banged up from the passage through the wall; I’ll have purple bruises across my chest and a lump the size of a shotgun shell over my ear for the next few weeks. But I’m barely feeling them now as we open the cabin door and exit the plane.