The Vandenberg airfield was in a panic the likes of which Jack had never seen before. Preflight personnel were rushing everywhere, assembling equipment at a break-neck pace and prepping the massive tranzat carriers at all five gantries. Each spear-like tranzat was flanked by ten of the orange leviathan helicopters, lined up in rows with their blades folded, and waiting to be loaded. The helicopters looked like nothing so much as oversized Easter eggs painted by a strangely unimaginative kid.
The Priority One alert had gone out to everyone: primary squads, secondaries and reserves alike. That added up to about five thousand drop-ready corpsmen lined-up in rows on the tarmac, waiting to be briefed, loaded and launched.
Vandenberg was California’s primary launch site. More volunteers would be arriving at secondary sites by the thousands, and the same would be happening at ERC launch facilities all over the globe. The amount of manpower in motion was staggering to consider.
Jack found the SJ Bravos among the sea of orange jumpsuits without too much effort, and he fell into formation. “Hey Albright, any idea what’s up?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
He scanned the group and took a mental picture. He’d never seen five thousand completely dumbfounded faces before, and he doubted he ever would again.
The regional director came out a few minutes later and cleared his throat over the PA. “Settle down, corpsmen,” he said, and the chatter died. “I know you’re all wondering what the hell’s going on, and you’re not alone. There seems to be a perfect shit storm coming down right now, and we’re working double time just to put the big picture together.
“First off, as you no doubt noticed, communication networks are down right now. All of them. This is due to some sort of broad spectrum interference that’s wreaking havoc with anything wireless. We haven’t identified the source yet, but we believe the effect to be global.
“It’s a small miracle that we managed to get the alert out at all. Of course, I know all you dedicated boys and girls would’ve followed regs and reported in during a communications black-out, anyway.”
There was stifled laughter in the crowd.
“But that’s not Priority One.” The director took a moment to clear his throat. “Shortly before communications were interrupted, two impacts were reported on the Asian subcontinent, one in India and the other in China. The events registered on our seismic equipment, and we’ve estimated the power of each to be in the five gigaton range.”
Jack and five thousand other corpsman cursed.
“We initially believed the impacts to be asteroids. However, the evidence we’ve pieced together points to the Helios and Hyperion solar arrays being the culprits. We have no idea why they fell out of orbit, but we can assume the destruction is… simply unimaginable.
“Both impacts occurred in high density population centers, in fact, the most densely populated regions in the world. Considering the coincident failure of communications networks, we must assume that this constitutes some form of attack. Terrorism cannot be ruled out, although it’s hard to imagine a terrorist organization with the resources and coordination necessary for this type of operation.
“Our job, as always, is to provide humanitarian aid. We’ll be double and triple loading laviathans, and cluster dropping at full speed from LEO in order to get as many feet on the ground as possible. Your primary jobs will be to collect refugees and organize temporary camps, then hold tight until we can begin airlifting them to wherever the hell we can. Expect to see local military, as well as Blade and Carbon forces in the area.”
The director took a moment to think back through the speech, making sure he didn’t leave anything out. Then he said, “You know the rest. Let’s get in the air.”
From there, it was a normal launch but with more bodies and none of the banter. The Bravos loaded into their leviathan accompanied by a reserve squad and two full pallets loaded with medical supplies, rations and light-weight collapsible shelters. Everything and everyone was locked down, and then the leviathan and nine identical replicas were lifted into the tranzat’s cradles and locked into place.
With the windows covered, the rest of the launch process always happened blind. There was the feeling of being moved in one direction and then another, the ratcheting of the launch gantry as the plane was angled upwards, and then a roar and immense pressure as the tranzat thrust itself into the sky. The roar subsided, and for the rest of the trip, they swayed and bobbed like an inflatable dolphin in a pool.
This time, Leonid Nikitin was wide awake and Lisa Albright’s earphones were nowhere to be found. Each of the passengers was wearing the same blank expression found in hospital waiting rooms, with eyes cast down and brows drawn together. Most were lipping something, and Jack assumed they were prayers. When he noticed his own lips were doing the same, he couldn’t recall what they’d been reciting.
The tranzat blasted through the upper atmosphere for an hour, and the corpsmen sat in silence waiting for the drop. Then they heard a strange howl and the cabin rocked hard to the side.
“Tell me that’s just turbulence, Jack,” Skip shouted across the isle.
Several more howls rushed past the hull, and another one struck. The cabin rattled and shook. Jack could only think of one possible answer: they were under attack. “Masks!” He cried out, and everyone reacted instantly, grabbing their oxygen masks from the packs above and pulling them over their heads.
Another howling thing struck the ship, and their leviathan lurched free of its cradle, dropping into the thin air at the upper edge of the atmosphere. No warning light this time, just the sickly feeling of plummeting like a stone, tumbling end over end.
The portholes on either side of the cabin revealed the Earth, the dark sky, and the Earth again, chasing one after the other in rapid succession. The burning tranzat shrank into the distance, and the air was thick with strange shapes that Jack couldn’t make out.
Another series of howling rounds screamed past the hull, and one struck with a deafening crack. In response, the safety windows exploded in a rain of small pellets, and the air pressure inside the leviathan disappeared.
They were falling, unguided, uncontrolled. Jack had a hunch and he had to act quickly or it’d all be over. He tugged the climbing hook out from his harness, latched it to the U-shaped restraint, and slammed the seat’s emergency release. The metal bar jerked up and away from him, but before he could fly loose in the spinning cabin, he tensed and pushed himself hard toward the cockpit door.
He flew through the air while the cabin twisted around him, only to crash into his target a thump. His bones rattled and his body ached from head to toe, but he grappled at the guidebars and managed to grab hold. With a tap at his harness, the hook released and he retrieved the spring loaded arrestor cable, then latched up at his new position.
His gloved hands fumbled at the door handle then pried it open with a twist, revealing the shattered cockpit beyond. He clambered through and found precisely what he feared: a destroyed windshield and two dead pilots strapped into the seats.
The next few moments were a blur of motion. He released the pilot’s belt, pulled the limp body free and climbed in to replace him. It took him a second to focus, to blot out the spinning Earth and make sense of the instrument panel in front of him. Jack was rated a Class C leviathan pilot, and this was hardly second nature to him, but he wanted to live. He would focus and he would remember.
He closed his eyes, imagined the diagrams and tried to hear his flight instructor’s commands. Reaching out, unsure if he was grabbing the right lever, he pushed one all the way forward and the leviathan’s air-baffles extended. They increased drag at the top of the craft and righted it as it fell.
The helicopter wasn’t tumbling anymore, but the altimeter was still spinning like a buzzsaw blade, and the air speed had too many digits for Jack’s taste. The speed was dropping, but not fast enough. , The rotors would shear off if he tried to extend them, destroying any chance of a controlled landing. He needed to drop a lot of weight and fast.
He flipped the cargo panel open and punched the door release, then looked back over his shoulder and watched the ramp lurch down. At half-way open, he activated the cargo ejectors and watched the two heavy pallets tumble out into the sky, where their parachutes popped and gently lowered them to the Earth.
“At least they’ll make it,” he mumbled into his mask.
With the pallets gone, the Leviathan’s descent slowed down to something reasonable, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He leaned forward and slapped the EXTEND button, but nothing happened. He slapped it again without response. A blinking light higher up the console caught his eye, and it didn’t take an expert to realize what “JAM” meant. It meant he was screwed.
Why would it be jammed? He burned through options. The cover could be damaged, or the rotor destroyed completely. There was no hope in either line of thought. No possibility of recovery, so he abandoned them. Power cables could’ve been severed, but that would have a warning light. He was missing something. Then he remembered: the rotors wouldn’t extend without the engines running.
Jack moved the throttle and listened for an engine response, but it was impossible to hear anything over the thousand kilometer-per-hour winds whipping through the craft. There should be a STALL light somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where, and there was no time to look for it.
With the furious Earth rushing up at him, the only thing Jack could think of was the auto-rotate procedure, and it would have to do. His hands flew across the controls, flipping switches that disengaged the transmission and overrode safety protocols. Paying no mind to the hundreds of lights blinking across the console, he once again reached forward and mashed the EXTEND button. The blades unfolded and began to spin.
The leviathan wouldn’t travel far without power, but the rotating blades would make an effective parachute, and even offer minimal steering. The only thing left to do was bring his bird down to the ground.
Jack finally looked around and got his bearings, and it didn’t look good. There was no trace of the other leviathans or the tranzat, and God only knew how far he’d traveled before getting things under control. The air above was thick with those strange vehicles, now too distant to see clearly, while below there was only a thick dust cloud that stretched to the far horizon.
The barely stable leviathan dipped down into the dust cloud, and once inside, vicious winds tore at it from every direction. Jack held onto the controls tightly, and as he dropped into the darkness, he prayed that he’d seen the worst of this day.