L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

“A safe prediction,” snorts Terek. “The times always change. Tell me something useful.”

The man in the white tunic and trousers stands and bows to the older white-clad man. “There are strangers approaching from the skies.”

“There are always strangers approaching. How do you know they are from the skies?”

“The glass shows a man and a woman. The man has hair colored silver like the stars, and the woman has flaming red hair, like a fire. They are seated in a tent of iron.”

“An old man and a redheaded weakling?”

“The man is young, and the woman is a warrior, and they bring other women warriors.”

“How many?” Terek walks to the unglazed window of the lower magicians’ tower, where the shutters tremble against the leather thongs that hold them open. His eyes look out upon the barely green hilly fields above the river.

“A score.”

“I should tremble at a score of women warriors? This is the message of such a great disturbance?”

Hissl bows again. “You have asked what I have seen, and you mock what I tell you.”

“Bah! I will wait until Jissek wakes.”

“As you wish. I have warned you of the danger.”

Terek shakes his head and turns toward the plank door thatsqueaks on its rough hinges with each gust of the spring wind. He does not shut it as he leaves.

Hissl waits until he can no longer hear the sound of boots on the tower stairs. Then he smiles, recalling the lances of winter that the strangers bear, and the breadth of the women’s shoulders.

NYLAN WENT THROUGH the manual controls a third time, as well as through the checklist once more. Then he studied the rough maps and the readouts again. He had one of the two landing beacons, and his was the one that the other three landers would hone in on-assuming he managed to set down where he planned, assuming that he could find the correct high plateau in the middle of the right high mountain range without getting spitted on the surrounding needle-knife peaks.

The second beacon would go down with Ryba-in case he ran into trouble.

“Black two, this is black one. Comm check.” Nylan watched his breath steam as he waited for a reply.

“One, this is two. Clear and solid.”

“Good. You’re cleared to break orbit.”

The engineer took a deep breath. “I’m not quite through the checks. About four units, I’d guess.”

“Let us know.”

“Will do.”

In the couches behind him were the eight marines assigned to his lander. The craft wasn’t really a lander, but a space cargo/personnel shuttle that could be and had been hastily modified into a lifting body with stub wings for a single atmospheric entry in emergency situations. Only one of the four landers carried by the Winterlance was actually designedfor normal atmospheric transits, and it had far less capacity. That was the one Ryba was bringing down with the high-priority cargo items.

Although Nylan had more experience in atmospheric flight than Saryn or even Ryba, he wasn’t keen about being the lead pilot through an atmosphere he’d never seen, belonging to a planet he suspected shouldn’t exist. Because he was even less keen about dying of starvation or lack of oxygen in orbit, he continued with the checklist. Still, the business of trying to hit mountain plateaus bothered him, even if it were the only hope for most of the crew. “Harnesses strapped and tight?”

“We’re tight, ser,” responded Fierral from the couch beside him, the blue-eyed squad leader, who once had been a brunette, but who now had become a fiery redhead as a result of the Winterlance ’s strange underjump. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to be floating around here anyway, would it now?”

“No,” admitted the engineer. He took another deep breath before flicking through the remainder of the checklist.

He scanned the screens, then thumbed the comm stud. “Black one, this is two. Breaking orbit this time.”

“We’ll be tracking you.”

“Thanks.” Nylan pulsed the jets, amused as always that it took energy to leave orbit, then watched the three limited screens as the lander slowly rose, then dropped, although neither sensation was more than a hint with the gentle movements. He knew those movements would be far less gentle at the end of the flight.

The first brush with the solidity of the upper atmosphere was a dragging skid and enough of a warming in the lander that Nylan’s breath no longer steamed.

The second brush was longer, harder, like a bareback ride across a fall-frozen stubbled field just before the snows of a Sybran winter began. And the lander warmed more.

Nylan studied the screens, not liking either the temperature readouts or the closures.

“Make sure those harnesses are tight! This is going to be rough.”

“Yes, ser.”

With the third and last atmospheric contact, the lander bucked, stiffly, and then again, even more roughly, as the thin whisper of the upper atmosphere slowly built into a screaming shriek.

Whhheeeeeee …

The lander was coming in fast … too fast.

Nylan flared the nose, bleeding off speed, but increasing the heat buildup. Then he dropped it fractionally.

Whheeeeeeeee …

The lander bounced, as though it had skidded on something solid in the upper atmosphere, then dropped as if through a vacuum. Nylan’s guts pushed up through his throat, and he could taste bile and smell his own sweatedout fear.

“Friggin’ pilot … not made of durall steel …”

“Does … best he can … wants … to live, too …”

“Don’t apologize for an engineer, Desinada …”

Nylan tried to match geographic landmarks with the screens, but the lander vibrated too much for him to really see.

The sweat beaded up on his forehead, the result of nonexistent ventilation, nerves, and the heat bleeding through the barely adequate ablative heat shields, and burned into the corners of his eyes, as his hands and mind worked to keep the lander level.

The buffeting began to subside, enough that he could see ocean far below and what looked like the tail of the fish continent ahead.

He checked the distance readouts and the altitude. He’d lost too much height. After studying the fuel reserves, little enough, he thumbed on the jets and flattened his descent angle.

At the lower speed, though, the effect of the high winds became more pronounced, and the edges of the stub wings began to flex, almost to chatter. With little enough power,the engineer could do nothing except hold the lander level, and wish … He tried to imagine smoothing the airflow around the lifting body, easing the turbulence, soothing the laminar flow, and it almost seemed as though he were outside the ship, in a neuronet, a different neuronet, almost like smoothing the Winterlance ’s fusactor power flows.

The chattering diminished, and Nylan slowly exhaled.

Another hundred kays passed underneath, and he thumbed off the jets, hoping to be able to save some of the meager fuel for landing adjustments.

Far beneath him, the screens showed what seemed to be a rocky desert, a boulder-strewn expanse baked in the sun. Ahead rose the ice-knife peaks that circled the high plateau that was his planned destination.

He thumbed the jets once more, again imagining smoothing the airflow around the lander. Surprisingly, the lander climbed slightly, and Nylan permitted himself a slight grin.

The DRI pointed to the right, and the engineer eased the lander rightward, wincing as the lifting body lost altitude in the maneuver.

All too soon, the high alpine meadows appeared in the screens as green dots-small green dots, but the southernmost one grew rapidly into a long dash of green set amid gray rock.