Exotic Contraband: Lost Among The Stars

By M.A. Harris

The Aliens are real and they're here. Unfortunately they aren't here for intellectual stimulation, they're here to make cold hard cash. And they aren't interested in letting the authorities, theirs or ours, in on their racket.

This is the story of survivors lost in a universe that they hadn't imagined, and of their survival and return.

Their adventures take them across the stars, into the heart of a far flung civilization teetering on the edge of a war it is unlikely to survive. The story of people, human and other working together to find a way home, to rescue the innocent and unravel a secret older than human civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.A. Harris
• Release date: Jun 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476141640

M.A. Harris

Born in England in the mid years of the socialist experiment I moved to the US with my parents (economic refugees of a sort with three boys in a country where 1+ was more the norm) I have lived in the US ever since. I am a third generation engineer, a mechanical engineer who has worked for the government, myself, a tech start up and a foreign owned defense middle weight. I have experience in manufacturing, detail design, concept design, product development, and research in both government and corporate environments (in other words I've lived in Dilbert’s world). I usually love my job, (when its not driving me nuts) and have had the luck to work on a broad range of programs, developing concepts and proposals for systems from electromagnetic guns to nuclear electric space probes and remote monitoring systems for long term hospitalized children.Reading came late for a child who had some issues with a form of Dyslexia, but when I got the hang of it I went from having a hard time with Dick and Jane to reading Zane Grey, G.Heyer, Heinlein and Clark with the book hidden in my desk during class in less than six months. As soon as I learnt the wonders of reading and the wonders of the inner mind I wanted to write.In high school and college Arthur C. Clark was my muse (I still re read Rendezvous with Rama every few years) along with L.L’amour, J.Pournelle and L.Niven plus dozens of authors writing on the history of weapons and warfare like Ian Hogg and Keegan. Favorite contemporary authors are, Clancy, Weber, Francis, Ringo, Flint, Correia, etc.I started writing in high school, I was one of the few guys to take typing, convinced that it was a skill I would need for both computers and writing (though my early computer projects were on punch cards or tape.) In several advanced English courses in High School I wrote short stories that got me through on pure bravado if not technical skill.Then life and a career got in the way, I continued to see computers as the wave of the future for writing, and was almost always tinkering with something but time passed and all I did was tinker. Then a bit more than a decade ago I decided that I wanted to write professionally and took the advice of J.Pournelle and S.King on writing, both advising that in the end its about work and some luck, but mostly its about writing lots of words getting lots of critiques and doing more edits. But timing has never been my best skill and I got to the point of actually trying to sell my work just as the old publishing model began to implode.After more than five years of frustration (and having several full length novels at the point of at least being ready for a professional scrub) I discovered Smashwords. I bought my wife a Nook and then we began to acquire and read free and low cost eBooks, many of which were published by this strangely named company, Smashwords.And that’s how we come to meet....I hope you like the stuff I write, I actually enjoy writing it though like all jobs it has its down side (edits and critques) and it bad days (I really need to grow up and stop dreaming.) As I get into this I hope to be able to get to know more of you and get your opinions on the job I’m doing.

Book preview

Exotic Contraband –

Lost among the stars

By M.A. Harris

Copyright 2012 M.A. Harris

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords, License Notes

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Acknowledgments

This book was started more than ten years ago, my wife, parents, brother and sister in law have all read and commented on versions, especially my father who is also my editor, critic and booster. We all hope you enjoy this story as much as we did working on it.

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Chapter 1

The EC-38’s fanjets whistled contentedly as it bumped and swayed along the taxiway. Major Sandra Sebastianii discreetly wriggled to get a bit more comfortable as her copilot, Captain John Davis, steered the big jet towards the still distant end of the runway. She was cursed with being a petite woman, and modern aircraft were designed for modern men, even with the seat at its maximum height and the pedals motored out, she always felt a bit like a little girl playing grownup. She got the cushion she was sitting on settled and went back to running down the automated checklist. She saw the Mission CO’s go button was lit, nothing wrong with the mission package then.

As they came to the end of the taxiway the control tower called to clear them onto the runway. John swung the modified airliner onto the runway and braked to a stop on the stripes. They were far enough forward for the singing rush of the fanjets to be a familiar, background white noise, no more.

He glanced at her, she put her hand on her yoke, I have the aircraft captain.

The pilot has the aircraft. he responded.

Sandy pressed the throttles forward, her eyes swept the instruments one last time, fixed on the engine tapes, she judged the thrust and temperature of the big engines and then tapped the brakes off. John’s hands were next to hers, ready to take over on manual throttle control if she needed to take hers off for some reason. His big brown hands were huge in comparison to hers; he was a bear of a man who’d played football in college, though for a minor college team, and for fun, not blood, at least that’s what he always said.

The Boeing thumped over a pavement expansion joint, another, another, faster and faster. V-1 passed, the V-R for this load and flap setting, ten knots faster and Sandy pulled the column gently back and the big electronic intelligence, ELINT snooper, lifted off the runway. John hit the retract button and the wheels thumped up. More speed and the flaps retracted with their insistent growling whine. As John talked to air traffic control they passed over the island’s coastline, Sandy lined up for the climb out to mission altitude. They passed through a shower cell and Sandy rolled them starboard to miss a denser patch with what the radar showed as wind sheer.

Thirty minutes later they were high above an unbroken cloud deck and settled on course, running south and west across the Indian Ocean, making for the coast of Africa and a long - and hopefully boring - flight down that coast ostensibly part of the anti pirate task force, but mainly to make sure no one was doing things they shouldn’t be out of sight of the predictable satellite snoops.

Major Sebastianii, you available? Colonel Paul Bird’s lightly southern accent came through the earpiece.

Sandy glanced around, Captain Felipe Rosales was at the flight engineer/navigator’s station, she waved him over as she tapped the speak button, Be there in a minute, Colonel.

Roger that, flight deck. The line went dead.

Felipe was at her shoulder; she glanced up, Felipe, take over for me for a little while, the Colonel wants to see me. The captain nodded as Sandy undid her belts and unhooked her oxygen mask. He slipped into the seat and got linked in. Sandy patted John and Felipe on the shoulders, John you have command of the aircraft. He nodded and Sandy made her way aft.

The EC-38 had started life as a fairly conventional Boeing 767ER freighter and was still able to act as a cargo aircraft in a pinch, theoretically. The power packs, signal amplifiers, signal processors, analytical computer and vast memory arrays that turned radio frequency signal whispers into precious intelligence data were mounted on a series of ‘mission modules’ that could be pulled out like freight containers. Fuel bladders could be installed along with a reel and hose air-to-air refueling system or freight containers could fill the cavernous interior. Like many multifunction designs the EC-38’s backup capabilities made more sense in studies than they did in real life. Taking out the modules still left behind a series of large and very expensive antennas on the skin and six optically perfect windows in the hull, which were worth more than most of the electronics in the modules. Consequently none of the six ‘full boat’ 38’s had ever had the mission modules removed, except to have them updated.

The mission module directly behind the cockpit was the crew rest area, a bathroom, with a shower even Sandy found tight, a galley and food pantry, a three high stack of bunks, a table for four and chairs that looked like escapees from an airliner’s first class cabin. The relief flight crew was here, Captain Don Wind in the bunk, First Lieutenant Frank Freeman reading in one of the chairs. Two relief console operators were playing gin rummy on the table. All those awake looked up and smiled at her as she passed, she smiled back.

The EC-38 crew were a close-knit bunch, like the other large crewed ‘platforms,’ you had to get along well when missions could sometimes last for days, and deployments for months with almost no one else but the rest of the crew to talk to. More than one ELINT platform crewman had had a nervous breakdown over the decades, but most of the time the people were well chosen for the mission, well trained and provided with all the support they could stand.

Behind the crew rest area were the core of the EC-38’s purpose, banks of receivers, signal processors and data recorders. Most of them were in big blue cabinets in which cooling fans howled incessantly. A couple of workstations were nestled among the towers for airmen monitoring the health of the equipment itself.

Towards the back of the aircraft system operators were hard at work already, leaning intently over their workstations, staring into their massive flat panel displays, hands on keyboards and roller balls. Passing between the consoles Sandy walked into the domain of the EC-38’s commander, a rear projector screen at the back of this section provided a wall sized image of this part of the world in striking detail and with a huge number of emitters, radios and radars, civilian, military and unknown displayed on it.

At one side of the command space sat Colonel Paul Bird in what some wags called the barber chair, it had a small flat panel display and keyboard built into a swing arm. In front of him were two command workstations and extra seating. Right now the complete command team of two majors, two captains and four first lieutenants were in residence. Normally half of them would be in the rear rest cabin, almost a mirror image of the one forward.

The colonel was a slim, black haired man, always meticulously neat, Sandy thought of him as dapper. The image fitted his small-featured face with small, piercing black eyes. Even now, in his sky blue coveralls, he had a white silk cravat-like construct at his throat and the fatigues were pressed to razor sharpness. His cover was folded and tucked under his white belt. He had the emergency mask pack clipped to his left shoulder.

The black eyes viewed Sandy and he nodded sharply, approvingly. Sandy had gone through the academy like the colonel and was almost as meticulous about her appearance as he was, particularly around him. Where they differed was in their attitudes towards the rest of the universe. Sandy laughed at her own fussiness and didn’t expect it or even particularly desire it in those around her. The colonel had been known to snap at civilian contractors about their slovenly appearance, and the restricted multiple piercing now allowed in the service elicited near apoplexy.

Sandy smiled sunnily at the other officers and they all replied in a more restrained way. They all seemed to think that serious and important officers didn’t smile openly. Sandy sighed internally and folded herself neatly into one of the briefing chairs. She was just a glorified bus driver in these people’s opinions. In an Air Force where most officers weren’t pilots she was becoming a bit of an anomaly and she knew that her career was going to be strictly limited if she didn’t change her attitude about assignments soon. But she loved to fly and couldn’t bring herself to sacrifice that joy for mere career advancement.

The colonel ran through a reprise of the briefing they had gone through before flight and then reviewed the standing orders and the standard operations procedures for the EC-38 squadron - and most particularly his own which were just typically fussy adjustments of the SO and SOP.

At the end he looked at Sandy, Anything to add from the flight deck’s perspective Major Sebastianii?

Sandy shrugged, We have a storm coming onshore about halfway down the coast. We will refuel just before the storm on the way down and just after it on the way back. Make sure you have whatever motion sickness remedies you prefer when we go through. On past experience I will not be able to stay near mission track and avoid some buffeting. We’re up here for twenty six hours so don’t eat all your treats early and don’t break anything; it’s a long way home.

Birds beady black eyes viewed her a little icily, but he couldn’t fault her for more than minor levity, Right then, let’s get into cruise routine shall we? Sandy climbed to her feet, Sandy, stay for a moment will you? She nodded calmly.

The others headed for the bunks or the workstations and the Colonel beckoned her over. She walked over, as he frequently did he looked like he had been sucking lemons, Major you got the intel briefing on this patrol? His voice was soft.

Sandy nodded, The worry shack called me in for a quick one. Some weird high power spikes off some islands along the coast a few times over the last day or two, repeats of tickles we’ve seen before. Not sure if it’s natural, an equipment anomaly, some kind of terrorist training camp or what, so they said to keep my eyes open and duck if something comes our way. I modified the patrol track to put a little more air space between us and the area just in case, we’ll pick up anything of interest from that range and it gives me more maneuvering room.

His nostrils flared, he even did that precisely she noted, So I saw Major; I want you to put the patrol track back to where it usually is. I don’t believe in this anomaly but I’m damned if I will let us be pushed off course by something we should be investigating as closely as possible, if it exists.

She hesitated, technically she could make him order her, but she had better be sure of her ground, and she had nothing other than the intelligence unit’s vague warning to go on, Are you sure sir? We’ll only be fifty miles further offshore, if there’s anything there we’ll pick it up and the reconnaissance office can schedule a surprise visit by a satellite or a drone.

He shook his head sharply, I don’t expect there’s anything there, for crying out loud who’d be doing anything out there? But if something is going on I want to have a look. I may ask you to swing around for a closer look Major.

Very well sir. She almost asked him if there was anything else but that would prove to him he had pissed her off, and do no one any good.

Dismissed Major, it was said in an almost friendly manner.

That courtly southern accent really helped when you were an asshole Sandy decided, as she strolled back towards the flight deck. She stopped and talked with Sergeant Ken Stapleton, responsible for keeping tabs on airframe systems. As usual things appeared to be going fine. The EC-38 airframes were all relatively old, but low time and low cycle, the Air Force didn’t use aircraft like the ‘lines did. The Boeing airframes were big, tough and meticulously maintained, so they rarely caused their flight crews any trouble.

When she was buckled back in John glanced over at her, she was staring out towards the horizon, The old man piss you off again?

Sandy arched a depreciative eyebrow at the younger man, I think you mean to ask if the Colonel asked me to modify my flight plan after mission initiation, didn’t you Captain?

He grinned at her, his face friendly, full of verve, Yeah, yeah Sandy that’s what I meant fur sure. The mock valley girl accent made Sandy choke back a laugh and threaten to hit him, he just grinned back.

-o-

Seven hours later Sandy watched as John pushed the nose down to dive them away from the KC10 tanker they had just fueled from. He was a good pilot, with firm but gentle hands and an intuitive feel for the aircraft.

The air was getting bumpy as the KC turned away for the long flight back to Diego Garcia, their common starting point. John watched it turn away, You know Major, it gets awfully lonely down on the bottom of the patrol line.

She shrugged with a faint smile, Lonely is better than exciting in this line of business Captain. Exciting in one of these aluminum clouds with tons of JP is really, really stressful. They had descended a bit for the refuel, now they were climbing back to patrol altitude. This was where her new course deviated from the one she had originally put in her flight plans. Instead of jogging out to sea a little they were continuing straight. A hundred nautical miles off to the starboard of the nose was the little cluster of islands that appeared to be the home of the ‘anomaly.’

John, keep your eyes open would you? Now why had she said that, she wondered? It was a bit pointless really, but she had a slightly queasy feeling about this. She grinned faintly to herself, that, of course, could be her period kicking in, woman’s intuition at its most basic. At least that was Sandy’s mother’s explanation; Clarice Sebastianii PhD, molecular biologist, was one of the most brutally practical women Sandy knew, particularly where it came to female human biology, Stupid evolutionary engineering if I ever did see it. was about the most polite thing she had to say about it.

Time passed and they began to penetrate the storm system. Passing between outliers with plenty of room, only occasional turbulence warned them of the storm god’s proximity. Then they were approaching the core, the storm system enveloped them, thunderheads were all around, towering above them and the aircraft began to yaw and roll as turbulence became almost constant. Sandy hoped her queasiness wasn’t going to get worse.

She looked at the weather monitor screen, they were in complete emcon, emission control, and even the weather radar was off. But the infrared scanner under the nose and the lighting bolt sensors were almost as good, in some ways better. She frowned at the lightning detector; it was showing some kind of activity astern, quite far astern. It would have to be intense to show like that.

The aircraft shivered and she pulled her attention back to what was in front of them, a line of storm cells running across the nose and around to port. They were immense, punching above their maximum altitude. They couldn’t climb over so she had to swing west. At least what she though of as ‘the anomaly islands’ were safely astern, the EC-38’s nose swung towards the coast a hundred nautical miles away, she also put the nose up, she might as well get as much altitude as possible.

The warning light from the mission center lit up, she stabbed the intercom key, What is it Colonel?

An anomaly Major, astern but not on the ground, it’s airborne and climbing fast, doesn’t look like a threat, it’s going away from us and is already higher than we are. It’s acting like a booster in ascent phase. There was astonishment and worry in the faintly lilting voice.

This was one of the times Sandy wished she had some kind of tactical link to the mission systems, but to keep the modification and maintenance cost down the flight deck had been kept almost completely standard, Please keep me informed, sir!

Roger that Sandy, roger that. The worry in his voice was less distressing than his calling her by her given name.

She looked at John who glanced back at her, his face strained all of a sudden. He was a good pilot and he knew this was the recipe for disaster, too many bad and unknown things happening at the same time, too fast. Sandy glanced at the weather screen, seeing the anomaly again; realizing it almost had to be tied to what the colonel was seeing. She saw something else back there. She pressed the rudder swinging her tail towards the island, the weather suddenly worried her a lot less than whatever it was back there, she wanted away from the coast. She wondered if altitude was what she needed, whatever was behind them was high and fast, did she want to be low and slow?

The mission package talk like strobed, What Colonel? she almost screamed.

Another anomaly Captain this one lower and astern, catching up fast, looks like it’s doing something over mach four. I am arming the self defense systems and breaking radio silence to send an alert. His voice was no longer softly lilting, there was harshness in it now, fear.

Then there was a world-ending roar in her earphones and Sandy screamed as the pain drilled into her brain before she could pull them off and throw them down. Her ears were ringing and she had a splitting headache, her hands were pressing on her ears, trying to keep her skull from splitting open. She was feeling more than a little queasy now and her vision was a little gray at the edges, a tiny part of her mind knew she was near to passing out.

As the world became clearer again Sandy realized with a lurch that she couldn’t hear anything above the shrieking bells in her head. She turned and saw that John was slumped to the side; hands at his ears, eyes clenched shut with tears trickling down his face.

In another second Sandy realized in horror that her instrument panel was essentially dead, the fallback instruments that operated off air and battery power were working but the four big flat panel displays of the main flight instrumentation system were dark. There weren’t even any lights on the auxiliary panels. She pulled on the yoke and strained against its rubbery resistance, but she felt the aircraft respond sluggishly, the system had reverted to secondary mode, the primary electronic flight controls were out.

She flicked her eyes around, everything electronic was gone…had they been hit by lightning? It happened sometimes, but that would have knocked some things out, not everything. She glanced up and back; there, attached above the backup engineering station, an oddly old fashioned box sat, with an evilly glowing red LED. That box was old, originally designed to detect nuclear detonations, or more exactly the EMP, electromagnetic pulse, that a nuclear blast emitted. An EMP could, would, knock out all unprotected electronics within the ‘kill radius’, in the old days military electronics were all hardened. But with the fall of the old Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War that sort of thing had fallen to the cost cutters. In the past few years a whole slew of new weapons designed to use EMP for ‘soft kills’ had been developed, by the US first, but now by almost everyone who built weapons. And these days new military systems were again required to be EMP hardened - but the EC-38 had been designed in the interregnum between the cold war and the rise of pulse weapons.

For an aircraft with all electronics systems like the EC-38 the term ‘soft kill’ only meant that she and her crew were going to see the end coming. The backup engine instruments showed both of the big fanjets windmilling, the electromagnetic pulse had knocked out the engines’ electronic brains. With the main hydraulics gone the emergency ram air turbine had been triggered in its failsafe mode, she could see that it was providing hydraulic pressure and electrical power, but little of the electronics had come back up. Right now her command was a very, very poorly performing glider about to punch into one of the worst storms she had ever seen. They were all as good as dead if she couldn’t get control authority and at least one engine back.

Most of this passed through her mind as she was hitting breakers and resets. A second later she saw John was moving again, he was crying from the pain in his head but was hitting the breakers he could reach. A wiry brown arm reached up past her head and hit overhead switches, Felipe coming forward to help.

The battery system came back and the hydraulic pumps started up, the emergency windmill now reverted to generating electricity alone. It took less than twenty seconds for Sandy to decide that their main flight computer was history; they were going to have to depend on the vacuum, hydraulic and electromechanical backup systems. She prayed that the triply redundant electronics of the engine control systems hadn’t been destroyed or all this was going to be wasted effort.

Sandy realized that it was a tribute to the aircraft’s designers that they weren’t already tumbling out of the sky. Still, they would all be dead soon enough if she couldn’t get an engine restarted, the movies showed ditching at sea as being some kind of extra rough landing, but in reality, with a modern passenger jet like this, the chances of landing safely on the sea were as close to nil as one would ever care to see.

They were in a stable gliding descent, she had the control authority to ‘manage the energy’ and the engines were windmilling freely, apparently the mechanical parts were undamaged. The backup engine controls had come back alive at least, and were providing basic engine information, a hopeful sign. Sandy checked their altitude and ran through the in flight flameout checklist, there was one for a double engine flameout. It didn’t mention kissing your ass goodbye, but it came close. They had to be below ten thousand feet to initiate, she glanced at the instruments, about another minute. She took the time to check around, Felipe hand signaled to ask if she was all right, she grimaced but nodded. He pointed at his ear and her; she reached up and realized she was bleeding from the ear. She shrugged and nodded, he grimaced in return waving his fingers at his own head and rolling his eyes, she nodded and grimaced in return.

The turbulence was heavy though they were not being thrown around like they had been in the first few moments of the incident. Master Sergeant Stapleton staggered up to the hatch and braced himself in the doorway, eyes shocked and frightened but he was still mobile and in control. He yelled at them, stopped at their blank expressions. Felipe pointed at his ears. The sergeant must have understood, pointed at the lights on the panel, looked at Sandy. She yelled, still not able to hear herself, let alone anything else, Strap into the navigators position sergeant, I may need you, this is going to get worse before it gets better. He winced but struggled forward as the jet bucked through the growing turbulence as the air thickened.

Sandy checked the instruments and the engine readouts, they were almost ready, and she prepared for a manual restart. They were still a little over ten thousand feet when she followed the in-flight engine restart sequence. The big fans had been windmilling, their speed controlled by the glide speed, now the port engine began to spin faster. At the right speed fuel started to flow and she hit the ignition button, the tailpipe temperature dropped as the atomized fuel cooled the air stream. Repressing a sob Sandy flipped the fuel flow off then initiated again, praying harder this time, and something worked because the spindle speed and the tailpipe temperature began rising.

They were below ten thousand feet as she started on the starboard engine. With only one engine she figured they were going to crash anyway, even with two she might not be able to fly out of the weather considering the degraded response of the controls. She had the knack now or this engine was simply in a little better condition, it started almost as soon as asked. The port engine was already producing thrust. She advanced the throttle to the correct setting and glanced at the altimeter, six thousand feet.

They were deep in the storms belly now, with no guidance as to where the major cells were other than memory. As Sandy and John brought the big snooper level the storm threw a punch. The EC-38 almost went over on its back as it was caught in a savage twist of turbulence. Slammed up against her five-point harness, shaken and hammered back into her seat Sandy almost blacked out for a moment, when she was fully aware again the big jet was nose down and plunging through three thousand feet. She saw John shaking his head, reaching for the yoke, she slammed both throttles to full power and opened the flaps a bit to get some more lift, then bracing her feet on the pedals hauled back, praying she had control authority to get them out of the dive.

The aircraft responded, slowly at first and then with a rush, Sandy kept her eyes fixed on the artificial horizon, airspeed and altitude as she fought the aircraft back into a climb, the fall back instruments the only thread between the twenty-four man crew of the 38 and eternity. Finally they were back in control, clawing for altitude; they passed through five thousand feet in the right direction. The big jet shook and shivered, rolled and yawed in the turbulence, tossing Sandy and her crew about like dolls. Outside the cockpit it was as dark as night, rain sheeted across the windscreen, the only light the almost constant flicker of lightning.

Then the clouds around them were getting lighter, another sob caught in Sandy’s throat as they punched through the side of the storm cell and into the clear. They were still less than seven thousand feet, Sandy looked up, breathing deeply to try and regain some stability. She looked back down at the compass, altimeter and artificial horizon as she brought her charge around, she had an image of the world in her head, they had to get home as fast as possible. If the radios were dead they would not be able to call for a tanker, might not be able to even send out an emergency beacon. They might, just, have enough fuel to reach Diego Garcia from here otherwise they would have to land somewhere in east Africa or ditch, but that, thank God, was the Colonel’s decision, not hers.

She realized that through the loud ringing in her head she could hear the outside world again, that was a bit of a relief; she had thought she might have lost her hearing. A hand patted her shoulder and she turned to see Captain Don Findley’s white face behind her, the other pilot grimaced when he saw the blood in her ears but his eyes were alight and he held up his thumb in the universal signal of congratulations to another pilot.

She spoke, loudly, Don I’m beginning to get my hearing back, what’s the situation back there? She jerked her thumb towards the back.

He got close and spoke loudly, Don’t know, the sergeant’s back there checking.

Sandy nodded, noticing the Master Sergeant was gone, Get strapped in Don, if we hit turbulence I don’t want you brained on the ceiling. He nodded and sat down in the jump seat behind John.

With a lurch Sandy realized they must be flying back towards the source of the anomalies, but she had no idea which way to turn to avoid the islands. She could as easily head closer rather than further away. She was shaking with fatigue and stress, the new worry made it even worse but she had to keep going.

Another tap on the shoulder; Stapleton, the sergeant’s eyes were wide, he shouted, Major, the Colonel’s dead, his necks broken! Several of the others are in a bad way, broken arms, and legs, a couple unconscious; we tried to get them strapped down as best we could.

Sandy wanted to scream at fate, she had to make all the decisions now, as that thought passed through Sandy’s mind she saw something ahead. Another aircraft, a silver triangle, climbing towards her, it had to be one of the anomalies she realized in horror. Was it coming back to finish the job? Or had what had happened been an accident?

The flight deck was full of light and Sandy was hurled sideways, there was thunder in the cockpit. The world went dark, almost, she was tossed around like a rag doll once more, but now wind slapped at her, and there was rain. That brought her to almost full consciousness, she was still in her seat but the attitude felt all wrong and the wind still pummeled her. She could hardly understand what she was seeing but then she comprehended the horror. The copilot’s side of the cabin had been chopped open by something. It had also amputated John’s upper body along with the upper part of his chair; the lap belt still held the horrid stump of her bright and funny copilot. Don Findley’s headless torso was being whipped about by the wind, his one remaining arm flailing horridly. The world was spinning and Sandy realized that they were tumbling, the cockpit must have been blown free of the fuselage and they were all dead, she was as dead as poor John and Don and the others; she just hadn’t realized it yet. The world spun then slammed into the side of her head, bringing blessed blackness.

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Chapter 2

Major Sandy Sebastianii was more than a little surprised when she realized that she had woken up. The world had ended for her, hadn’t it? Memory came back; her eyes snapped open to blank out her inner vision as her stomach recoiled. She jerked up, then stopped, just short of crashing into the bunk above. She found herself half sitting on the bottom bed of a bunk, a bit narrow and a bit short, but comfortable enough for her.

Hey, Major, careful, Master Sergeant Stapleton’s voice was soft, Didn’t see you coming around.

She drew in a deep breath, as she saw the Sergeant, she also saw Felipe Rosales.

The captain smiled in relief, You had us worried Major, we were wondering if there was something bad wrong with you.

Sandy swallowed, tried to moisten her incredibly dry mouth, I’m fine. At least that’s what she tried to say but all she got out was mumble.

"Drink this; you’ll need it worse than we did. He handed her a small clear bulb with a large nipple, it had what looked like water in it and she needed some kind of liquid badly. She took the bulb and sucked on it. The water was surprisingly cool and good, like the best of bottled water after a long hike in the desert. She took a long pull then a smaller one that she swilled around in her mouth before swallowing.

The water seemed to reactivate her body and she realized she was achy, hungry and needed to pee really badly.

She swallowed, Thanks Sarge, ah where’s the toilet?

Both the men flinched, the sergeant pointed. Uh there ma’am, it’s one of those French bidet things.

In the corner was a built in seat, no lid, no toilet paper dispenser. No door. She sighed; she’d had to do it in public before, but not with guys around. Fine, turn your backs, the lady’s gotta go.

She boosted herself off the bed and walked past the men, both of them blushing; at least she was fairly sure the swarthy Felipe was blushing. A grinning little martinet devil deep inside snapped that he damn well ought to be blushing.

The room was about ten feet wide, twenty feet long, two sets of bunk beds built into the sidewalls. The walls were beige, the floor green and the ceiling glowed with a general light. The bunks were smoothly blended into the walls, no sharp edges. As far as she could tell there were no sheets, no covers. It was very prosaic and yet somehow odd, the proportions faintly wrong. She could see two people apparently asleep in the bunks furthest away, dressed, like them all, in light blue flight suits.

She coughed softly as she walked up behind the sergeant and Felipe, they both jumped but somehow she had lost any impulse to be funny. She glanced around, just the five of them, an aching void opened in her stomach, pictures flicked in her mind of horrors seated next to her where young men she had known had sat an instant before. She pushed the pictures away but staggered as she fought to regain control of herself and then felt hands helping her to the bed she had been asleep on a few minutes before.

Sandy buried her face in her hands, shaking, she could feel the others, one on each side, she pulled herself together, Who else?

Felipe spoke quietly, Lieutenant Conte and Captain Frankle.

Bernadette Conte would have been at one of the consoles in the back; Ibrahim Frankle had probably been in the command center. She nodded, How are they? She was a bit surprised that they hadn’t woken up.

The sergeant sighed, Not good Major, the lieutenant woke up and went into hysterics, she swears that the last thing she remembers was falling through the air strapped to her seat and that both her feet had been amputated by the explosion. He swallowed, She took her shoes off ma’am, and she says she had painted toenails and a tattoo on one ankle, no sign of either. She screamed, kicked and cried, then finally fell asleep a couple of hours ago. The Captain may be awake for all I know. He just lies there staring at the wall, mutters about being in limbo for eternity because he didn’t believe in God enough. I think he thinks we’re all dead.

Felipe whispered, Don’t know, my mother always said that you could give your organs away after you died because God would put you back together when he called us back to fight in Armageddon. But I checked, I had a nasty appendectomy scar, still there.

The sergeant sighed again, Yeah and one other thing, I checked my watch when I woke up. According to it I’d been asleep for the better part of a day, fair enough; yours, the luey’s and Captain Frankle’s say the same…. Lieutenant Conte’s watch says that it’s three days later, September 15th to be precise.

Sandy reached up to touch an ear. She had had her ears pierced the day she reached eighteen, much to her mother’s disgust, now she wore tiny studs on duty. They were still there. She spoke, What do you remember at the end Felipe?

Not a damn thing ma’am, last memory is us coming out into the light after the engine restart, I think I remember you swearing but that’s it.

Sandy wondered about that, she had no memory of swearing but she’d been twisted tight as a knot so it was possible.

The sergeant spoke, Last thing I remember is a lot of noise, I swear I saw sky through the cabin door and that’s it?

She closed her eyes, I saw something coming, probably whatever it was that knocked us down the first time, coming round to finish the job. There was a world ending crash and I blacked out. I came around and there was rain inside the cockpit…. I…I looked over and the side of the cabin had been sliced open by something, John and Don had been… She couldn’t continue, she wanted to retch but there was nothing in her stomach. She balled her fists against the side of her head and pressed the memories back, They were gone, I was being whipped around, the cabin was falling, flipping I think, I saw the back, the cockpit door, and there was nothing but sky beyond…

There was a long silence and warm hands on her shoulders as they tried to make peace with their own souls. A voice came from over in the other bunk, Bernadette, I never saw what happened. I was trying to get my console back after the lights came back on, one second I was at my console the next I was falling, I was flipping around but I think I saw the 38, or bits of it, all over the sky like confetti, some of it was burning but a lot was just fluttering, like me.

Sandy looked up; the pale, blue eyed blonde electrical engineer was sitting on the edge of her bed, drooping but awake and apparently coherent. She saw that Ibrahim was also sitting up, his eyes sunken but alive, he smiled wanly, I guess its unlikely we’d all end up in limbo together, and I never figured that you’d need to drink and go to the toilet there. I suppose one has to start looking at alternate theories.

Anything to add to the stories? Sandy asked quietly.

"Not really, I was asleep when the first alert went off, got strapped in just in time for the world to almost end the first time. Good work by the way Sandy, glad you were up front, I figured we were goners when I realized the engines had flamed out. Then the engines restarted and I was trying to help the people back there who had been hurt. You know the Colonel was killed right at the