Now all they had was a marginal farm on the edge of cultivation, a big rambling wood and stone house hiding amid stands of realspruce and fir, a truck which ran more often than not and the flitter. And me. We have me out here, at the edge of human space, sitting in a cargo pod with nothing but some hexacarbon around me and an ultralight that's spent too many hours in the air already…uuh!
Gretchen felt the world lurch, the restraining harness biting into her shoulder. Her stomach dropped away and a thundering roar began to penetrate the heavy walls of the cargo pallet. Here we go, she gulped, feeling the Midge rock against the cargo rails. The air-landing pod groaned, the joints of the four walls squeaking in darkness. Fighting against rising nausea, she grabbed hold of the control stick and flipped a series of "dumb" switches to life. The fuel cells woke up with a whine. Power trickled through the Gagarin's main systems and faint lights began to gleam on the control panels.
Comm woke up, tumbled across a dozen channels and then locked onto the sound of Parker's voice – gone icy cold and even, as if he were reading from a script. "Rate six hundred, rate five hundred seventy, rate…"
The scream of air across metal and ceramic drowned him out and Gretchen felt sweat spring out all over her body. She tried to reach the main wing controllers and failed, gloved fingertips failing to answer her mind's command. Cursing, she clenched her hand, mastered control of her arm and then – aiming carefully – mashed down a pair of control switches. A bleat of warning – lost in the shriek of reentry – answered her, but the locked-down wings began to stiffen. She'd need every second she could cheat from time and physics once the pallet blew out of the back of the shuttle.
"Five hundred," Parker's voice cut through the steadily rising howl. "Brace!"
Gretchen ground herself back into the shockfoam, legs stiff against the fire-wall beside the foot pedals. Her eyes screwed shut, though her forebrain knew it wouldn't make any difference…
The Komodo slammed into the upper atmosphere, a sheet of flame licking at the edge of the triangular wings, bounced and then skittered across the sky, slewing from side to side. Inside her dark box, Anderssen was slammed into the shockfoam once, then twice, then she lost count. After an endless series of jarring motions, the comm channel bleated a warning and light flooded into the bay as the rear cargo door clamshelled open.
A heavy hand pressed on Gretchen's chest and her fingers cramped on the control stick. The pressure spiked, crushing breath from her lungs and then lifted as quickly as it had come. There were two sharp flashes outside the canopy and the walls of the cargo pod flew away into a suddenly bright abyss. Gretchen felt her gut clench and the curving horizon swung past.
An enormous expanse of ruddy desert filled her field of view, then the horizon swung up like a hammer and she saw the stars glittering in velvet. The roof of the pod blew away, then the remaining walls. Rushing air shrieked through the web of netting holding the Midge to the floor of the pallet. Gretchen choked, slammed by another massive jerk. The parafoil deployed above her, snapping out in a four hundred-k wind. A giant unseen claw snatched the pallet and the Midge skyward.
She grayed out, head smashed back into the shockfoam. The horizon jerked from side to side, then stabilized. The parafoil – hundred-meter wingspan barely dragging in the nearly nonexistent atmosphere – and the pod dropped precipitously toward the distant surface of the planet. Panting, Gretchen came around, groping for the stick. In about five seconds she knew…
BANG!
The last set of bolts blew out, flinging the metal floor of the pod away. Now Gretchen had her hands on the stick, both feet on the pedals and the Gagarin's onboard comp was awake. The aircraft plunged toward the vast desert below, but the parafoil was keening, catching a little air. Gagarin's sensors tested the air rushing past and saw the retaining harness had gone the way of the walls and floor. Accordingly, the wings stiffened and began to extend. By design, they unfolded from the core of the Midge outwards, each new section conforming to a rough lifting body. The Gagarin's plummeting descent slowed, air thickening under the parafoil with each passing kilometer.
Gretchen watched the control panel with wide eyes. The structural integrity indicators were going wild. Wind howled through the frame of the ultralight and she could see black, jagged mountains looming up below. Only moments before they had seemed so far away, now she could pick out peaks, ravines, tumbled fields of splintered boulders.
Caught in some unseen current of the upper air, the Midge swept across the mountains, wings deploying centimeter by centimeter. For a moment, with everything seemingly under control, Gretchen checked her navigation panel. The chipped, yellowed glassite showed her a swiftly moving terrain map. Two glowing green diamonds sped across stylized mountains and plains. The comp on Hummingbird's Midge was still responding to broadcast position requests. Good, she thought, I haven't lost him. Not yet.
Her own comp beeped imperiously, dragging Gretchen's attention back to the ultralight. Both wings were fully extended to catch the steadily thickening air and the comp-controlled lifting surfaces were desperately trying to account for the drag generated by the cables connecting the Gagarin to the parafoil.
"Time to fly," Gretchen said, flipping a switch beside her left hand. There was another, barely noticeable jerk as the support braces for the parafoil separated. Without the drag of the Midge's weight, the curving wing sailed off into the blue-black heavens. The ultralight plunged, yawing from side to side before the control surfaces had time to adjust. Both wing engines ignited and Gretchen felt the stick shiver alive in her hand.
Whooo…The Midge arced away across the mountaintops. Anderssen's eyes gravitated to the tracking display. Hummingbird was spiraling down toward the surface eighty, ninety k away to the northeast. A moment later Gagarin banked onto a new course, a tiny pale fleck poised between the dark immensity of the Ephesian sky and the splintered wasteland below.
The Cornuelle
A jerky, timelagged image flowed across Hadeishi's panel. He could make out the top of an ultralight – seen from orbit at long range, interpolated first by the sensor suite on the Palenque and then by the military-grade system aboard the Cornuelle – flying under its own power. The captain allowed himself to be impressed with the Anderssen woman's audacity. He was entirely familiar with Hummingbird's skill as a pilot, but he hadn't expected the archaeologist to hurl herself into such vigorous pursuit.
"Deftly done," the captain mused. His earbug was filled with outraged chatter from the Marines on the Komodo-class shuttle. Fitzsimmons, in particular, was expressing himself at great length and without professional restraint. Hadeishi dialed down the channel before he overheard something which would require overt action on his part. The momentary delight he'd felt at Gretchen's survival was fading, replaced by a nagging sensation of looming trouble.
Not trouble today – both ultralights were under power, on course and far beyond his power by any measure – but trouble in the future. He frowned, eyes narrowing in thought, quick mind leaping ahead to the presumed reactions of higher authorities. How to report this? And why is she following him?
The scientist had a perfect right to use Company equipment, so there was neither theft nor malfeasance in her use of the shuttle or the ultralight. There were no local traffic control restrictions, so her near-orbital insertion and flight were entirely allowable. Unfortunately, Hadeishi was sure the nauallis had logged a directive to place the planet off-limits as well as ordering the civilians to depart. The captain doubted the nauallis would fail to notice another ultralight following him – his panel made Anderssen's course perfectly clear – and the old Nбhuatl was bound to react explosively to her disrespect.