D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

“Couple of seconds…” he said, concentrating on the RPM reading on the controls.

I heard a scream. We had less time than I thought. The dados from inside the Taj Mahal had regrouped and descended on the two guys outside the helicopter. Mark’s friends both jumped away from the chopper, flailing their weapons at the dados.

“Get in!” I shouted to them.

“They won’t,” Mark said, with a calm that I’d never heard from him. Especially given the circumstances.

The helicopter shuddered, the rotor whined. I felt a lurch. We were starting to lift off. I turned to call the others again. It was too late. They fought valiantly, but were quickly overwhelmed. I saw one hit by a silver wand and turned to ash. The other went down seconds later. They had sacrificed themselves so Mark could get away. That is, if Mark could get away.

The swarm of dados arrived from both sides. They jumped at the landing skids of the helicopter. A few caught on and were lifted into the sky along with us.

“We’ve got hitchhikers,” I announced.

“Not for long.”

Mark lifted the chopper straight up, then quickly shifted the joystick. The helicopter made a sudden counterclockwise turn, flinging off the dangling guards. They fell to the ground, landing on their pals.

“Outta here,” Mark said, and accelerated our ascent.

My stomach hit the seat, not only because of the sudden acceleration, but because of something I saw. Standing on the first level of the Taj Mahal, watching us, was Nevva Winter. Standing next to her was Saint Dane. He was already back, no worse for wear. It didn’t surprise me, though it made me wonder again where he was drawing his own power from.

What really made me sick was something else I saw on the ground.

The rotor of the second helicopter was starting to turn. We weren’t going to be the only chopper in the sky.

We accelerated quickly and flew high over Saint Dane’s mini-kingdom. Seeing it from the sky gave me an even better idea of how huge the place was. It was a sprawling green oasis surrounded by that gigantic wall… in the middle of a dead, gray city.

”They’re coming after us,” I said to Mark.

“I hope they do. Maybe we’ll snag another one of these babies,” he answered while staying focused on flying.

Unbelievable. It was Mark, but it wasn’t. I was thrilled to see him, though totally thrown by how much he had changed. Up until that moment, Mark and I had been aging at the same rate. It didn’t matter that we were on different territories. For whatever reason, our time lines had been the same. Not anymore. Did that mean I had spent five years on Solara? Or floating in space? Or was that the wrong way to look at it? Maybe when I left for Third Earth, the spirits of Solara put me here, five years past the time when Patrick was killed. If that was the case, did that mean that the turning point of Third Earth had shifted? I was always sent where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. Thinking this way actually gave me hope. Third Earth was definitely still in play.

All my confused questioning ended abruptly when our helicopter was rocked by an explosion.

“Whoa,” I exclaimed. “What was that?”

“They’re shooting from the ground,” Mark said calmly. “It won’t last. As soon as we get past the wall, we’ll be out of range.”

I looked down out of the window to see that we were about to cross out of the green and into the gray. Two more explosions rocked us. The helicopter shuddered but we weren’t hit. A moment later I looked down to see the wall passing underneath us. We were back over the dead city of New York.

Whoosh! Something flew by to my right, barely missing us. It left a smoke trail in its wake.

“I thought you said we’d be out of range?”

“Yeah, of their ground guns,” Mark replied. “That came from the chopper that’s chasing us.”

Oh. Swell.

“I saw what those rockets can do,” I said nervously. “I was at the zoo when you helped those people out.” Mark gave me a quick glance. “Where have you been for five years?” he asked. “That is a very long story.”

Whoosh. Whoosh. Two more rockets passed by, one on each side.

“I gotta concentrate,” Mark said, and pushed the joystick forward. We immediately went nose down, headed for the ground. I put my foot out to brace myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Mark’s flying, it was just that, well, okay, I didn’t trust Mark’s flying. But then again, I trusted the guys behind us even less, so whatever Mark did was okay with me.

“We’ll lose them in the haze,” Mark announced.

The air was once again filled with the same brown, dusty clouds that swirled through the zoo, which meant that the visibility quickly dropped back to near zero. Mark pushed the helicopter down toward the river. After a nauseating plunge, he leveled us out and sped southward. We couldn’t have been more than ten feet above the water, skimming the surface.

“This is, uh, dangerous,” I said, trying not to show how terrified I was. At the speed we were going, we wouldn’t see anything solid in front of us until a second before the crunch.

“Yeah, it is,” he said with no trace of fear. Or stutter. That was good. If Mark didn’t stutter, it meant he wasn’t nervous. That made one of us.

“You, uh, you’ve done this before?” I asked, hoping that my skepticism didn’t bleed through.

“Couple times,” he answered. “The bad visibility will make us tough to hit.”

He seemed confident at the controls. I mean, he wasn’t like a fighter-jock or anything, but on the other hand, he wasn’t looking around with a “What’s this button do?” attitude. I figured that as long as we didn’t hit anything, we’d have a chance at getting away. The helicopter behind us stopped shooting. I guessed it couldn’t see us anymore. Mark knew what he was doing. I watched him for a few seconds, amazed at the transformation that had happened over the past five years. It kind of made me sad, because the time had been rough on him. You don’t become toughened like that by hanging around reading books and eating carrots. Mark had definitely been through some stuff.

A huge shadow passed overhead. Or should I say, we passed under something huge. I ducked. I know, dumb. It was an involuntary reaction. I saw through the bubble roof that it was one of the wrecked bridges that had connected Manhattan to the rest of the world.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Home” was his answer. “But not until we shake this guy. We don’t need to show him the way.”

Another shadow flew overhead. I ducked again. This time it wasn’t a bridge. It was the other helicopter.

“Did he see us?” I asked.

“Let’s find out.”

Mark pulled back the joystick. We immediately shot skyward. I was pressed back into my seat, fighting nausea all the way. It was like being on a ride at Play land. A really sickening ride that could end in certain death at any second. Knowing that didn’t help the nausea. It was a reminder that as much as I was a spirit from Solara, I was still very much a human being. At the moment I was kind of wishing that I was a little less human. The wrecked tower of another bridge appeared out of the haze. Mark veered us to the left. We would pass by safely, but too close for my taste.

“So? Did we lose-”

Two rockets hit the top of the bridge’s tower. It exploded, sending off a cloud of smoke and a shower of metal shrapnel. Mark banked hard to the left and flew down. Chunks of metal hit the chopper, pinging the surface, rocking us.

“No,” Mark said.

“‘No’ what?”

“No, we didn’t lose him.”

Mark dropped us down to the river again. We leveled off and flew over the choppy, dark water.