His virtual hand manipulated the wing configuration again, molding it into a wider, longer planform among the red warning symbols thrown up by the onboard array. His speed increased, and he lowered the nose, hurtling down toward the torrent of white foam that soared through the air two kilometers above the canyon floor.
“Wilson?” he called above the cacophony.
Savage rivulets churned around the hyperglider fuselage to be sliced apart by the rapier blade wings. High above, the sun rose over the summit of Mount Herculaneum.
“I hear you.”
The sunlight broke apart on the water, scattering into a seething cloud of ephemeral rainbows. Oscar smiled in delight at the beauty of this world’s bizarre nature. Directly in front and below a dazzling white cruciform shape surfed along the top of the coruscating foam.
“My name is Gene Yaohui.” As he said it, he plunged into the glorious vortex of light and water, crashing straight into Anna’s hyperglider.
It had happened before, many times, back when he was flying with the Wild Fox squadron. It was such a tight institution that they willingly lived each other’s lives in the air and on the ground; they trained together, they partied together, went to the big game together, flew missions together, served overseas together. On base he knew the wives and kids of every other pilot, their money troubles, their fights, their grocery orders; while in the air he knew the performance and limit of each man flying. They were as close as brothers.
When they flew combat missions some didn’t come back. The radar showed them die, its neat little neon-green symbology on the HUD printing up CONTACT LOST codes where their plane had burst apart from a missile strike to fall like a meteor in flaming ruin. Each time, a part of himself had been wrenched away into the crash leaving a void that would never be filled in quite the same way again. But you carried on because that was what the guys wanted, you knew them well enough to be certain. It was that knowledge that gave you the strength to carry on.
And now, three and a half centuries after he thought he’d lost his last squadron buddy, Wilson Kime watched the radar symbols of his wife and best friend tumble out of the sky to smash apart on the implacable rock far below his hyperglider.
“Good-bye, Gene Yaohui,” he whispered.
Two kilometers ahead of him, the river that streaked through the air performed its magnificently paradoxical curve and charged up parallel to the immense cliff face. Orange positioning vectors printed themselves around his virtual vision, and he moved the joystick calmly, lining the craft up on the correct approach path. He withdrew the wings back into a short swept-back planform as the canyon walls rushed in on either side. The waterfall was directly ahead, a sheet of silver ripples ascending at over three hundred kilometers an hour. He held his breath for a long heartbeat.
The hyperglider was abruptly torn upward with a force that thrust him down into the seat. He grappled with the joystick, wrangling the wing surfaces to keep the craft perfectly level as it stood on its tail and blasted straight up for the pristine sapphire sky. Wilson breathed again, then he was suddenly laughing, only it sounded more like a defiant snarl that the Starflyer would hear and know.
Peaking out at five kilometers, the vertical waterfall began to break apart as the immense pressure that created it lessened, escaping from Stakeout Canyon’s brutal constriction. The water parted into two cataracts of looser spume, gushing away north and south onto the huge volcano’s lower slopes. Wilson rode the residual blast of air from the escaping storm, letting it carry him still higher, maintaining velocity. As he soared above the grasslands of the higher, temperate slopes, he watched the massive cloud bands below him tumbling away around the volcano where they would engender the planet’s revenge on the other side.
The radar started to pick out the twisters up ahead as they birthed out of the clear turbulence that marked the upper fringes of the storm. He watched them whipping around, translucent columns skating erratically across the ground that would suddenly be plunged full of dust and stone as they sucked up an exposed patch of soil. The onboard array started tracking them, winding in his options.
Three were in the right area, all of them large enough. One he dismissed, its oscillations too unstable. Out of the remaining two, he simply went for the nearest.
He eased the joystick forward, aiming the nose at the whirling base of the twister, matching the semirhythmic way it skewed from side to side as it snaked its way upslope. The hyperglider’s wings and tailplane were pulled in to simple shark-fin steering flaps as he dived in toward the target. Holding steady, intuitively aiming for where he knew it would go. If Gene Yaohui can aim straight, then I sure as hell can. Our purpose will go on, will succeed.
Wilson tugged the joystick back, pulling the hyperglider into a steep climb as it slid into the twister. The canopy was instantly bombarded with sand and gravel; larger chunks of stone made him cringe as they impacted. Fuselage stress levels peaked. Motors whined directly behind his seat, spinning the forward section of the hyperglider in counter to the twister rotation, adding stability to the climb. The wings had morphed again, becoming propeller blades to tap the tempestuous power of the twister.
Seconds later the hyperglider burst out of the top of the twister. Wilson began an urgent review of the flight vector. He’d gained enough velocity to fly the complete arc over the summit. Good, but not what he wanted. The wings altered their camber, pitching the nose up in a modest aerobrake maneuver. There wasn’t much time, the gases were thinning out rapidly as he left the stratosphere behind. He extended the wings farther still, and angled them to increase their drag on the tenuous gusts of molecules that were slipping past the fuselage. In his virtual vision, the projected parabola slowly sank back down into the one he’d plotted, giving him an impact point a kilometer and a half behind Aphrodite’s Seat.
The hyperglider sailed up out of the atmosphere. Space reverted to familiar welcome black outside, the stars as bright as he’d ever seen them. He watched beads of moisture smeared across the fuselage turn to ice. Beneath his starboard wing, Mount Titan’s crater bubbled with gloomy red light as the lava churned and effervesced, spitting out smoky gobbets of stone that chased parabolas of their own down into the atmosphere where they burst apart in crimson shock waves. In front of the nose, Mount Herculaneum’s flat summit tipped into view as the hyperglider reached the apex of its trajectory, presenting a dismal umber plain of cold lava dimpled by the twin caldera.
Wilson saw it but that was all; there was no interest, no marveling at the vista. He’d honored those taken from him, he’d flown the perfect flight for them. That alone was victory. There was nothing else left for him to do, no adjustments to make. Tiny cold gas reaction thrusters kept the hyperglider level up here in the vacuum. Gravity would bring him down where they’d chosen. That was his last memory of the three of them: gathered around the projected map back in the hangar, squabbling excitedly over the best patch of ground, ignoring the sullen armed Guardians as they glowered at the inappropriate jollity. Oscar and Anna, the two people he would have vouched for above anyone else. People who’d never really existed to begin with.
The hyperglider sank swiftly down toward the fissured surface of the summit. Too steep for comfort. Nothing I can do, this is all gravity now. Already the rest of the planet had vanished below the false horizon of Aphrodite’s Seat where the lava ended in sheer cliffs over eight kilometers high. Wilson was alone in space above a rugged circle of lava that was a lot more craggy than the images had hinted at. Shards of clinker littered the ground. He checked his helmet seals again, then made sure the suit’s environmental system was switched on. The wings were drawn back to a ten-meter span, their tips curled down in case they were needed for stability should the wheels be damaged on impact.