Adam Baker - Impact

They sat her in the pilot seat, buckled her harness and lashed her arms to the rests with paracord. Too weak to resist. She lolled, doped, barely conscious.

She fought to raise her eyelids, raise her head. Dimly aware of movement around her. Shuffling feet. Click of harness buckles. Men wordlessly taking position on the cramped and crowded flight deck.

Someone climbing into the co-pilot seat beside her. She tried to focus. Hancock. He smelled faintly of shit. Bowels must have evacuated during the interval he spent dead. Smothered by sand then, minutes later his heart and lower cortex booted back to life as the virus colonised his inert body.

He leant forwards, tore duct tape and raised each blast screen. He folded the nylon blinds and pegged them above each window.

The swirling dust storm. Orange, Venusian light. Wind gusted through broken windows. Low, whistling moan. Dust immediately began to accumulate on the floor, control surfaces, Frost’s forearms and legs.

Hancock sat forwards, looked out the windows left and right with his blank dead eye. Took a moment before Frost recognised the familiar movement. A standard pre-flight check. The guy was establishing the power cart had been unhitched, the fuel truck had finished decanting JP8 and withdrawn, chocks had been pulled from the undercarriage bogies, engine intake/duct plugs had been removed.

He gave a thumbs-up to a non-existent crew chief, confirmed the plane was on internal power.

He sat back in his seat and fumbled the five-point harness, locked the straps one by one.

Interior inspection. He examined the thigh window-pocket of his flight suit like he was running through a tick-list. He checked avionic pre-sets. Adjusted dials and switch panels.

Rasp of dead, dirt-clogged vocal chords:

‘Battery start.’

The plane was already on internal power, draining dregs from the tail cell, but he reached for the switch anyway and made a perfunctory performance of turning to On.

He tripped the wing lamps. The nose and surrounding dunes suddenly illuminated harsh white. Sand swirled in the twin light-cones.

Trim check. Another thumbs-up for the phantom chief.

Frost turned in her seat and craned to see the crew positions behind her.

Pinback, head hooded by a nuclear blast helmet, slumped in front of dead banks of Electronic Warfare instrumentation.

Noble sat in the gunner’s seat, checked missile launch controls.

Hancock pulled on a helmet. He fixed the mask. The torn oxygen hose and frayed interphone cable hung loose.

‘Engine start.’

Thud. Jolt. Flash of flame outside.

Frost craned as best she could.

The plane’s remaining starboard engine pod attempting a cartridge start.

‘Hey,’ grunted Frost, fighting through the opiate fog. ‘Hey. Going to blow us to hell.’

Second thud. More flame from the engine exhaust. Black smoke. Turbofans trying to turn over.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Gruff motor roar. The turbofan caught and settled to a spluttering idle, sucking residual kerosene from starboard wing tanks. The engine out-take blasted a sand plume. The airframe shuddered like the fuselage was shaking itself apart.

Hancock:

‘Starting one, starting two…’

He adjusted throttles, checked dead rpm dials.

‘Clear to taxi.’

Flaps lowered. Brakes released.

Hancock eased the throttles forwards.

Another flame-crack from outside. The starboard engine sucked sand, jerked and torqued the wing.

‘That thing could blow any minute.’

She pictured catastrophic engine failure, whirling fragments, shards of turbine blade puncturing the hull of the plane, slicing through the flight deck like the lethal flechettes of an anti-personnel mine, transforming crew to meat-pulp in an instant.

‘Gonna get us all killed,’ she slurred. Empty warning. The men around her were already pretty much dead.

Pop and spark. She flinched as the mid-air refuel panel to her right shorted out. First wisps of smoke from overhead vents. Reignition of the electrical fire that brought the plane down.

Hancock stared forwards, rode the thrust levers, adjusted the stick.

Frost wondered what was going on in the dead man’s head. Was he drawing dim memories of previous flights? Did the cockpit appear intact? Were dead control panels responsive, blinking green? Did he see inert output needles twitch and rise?

He stared ahead at wind-lashed dunes like he was rolling the B-52 out the hangar onto a floodlit slip, heading for the runway, jinking to align the plane with the strip.

Did he see runway strobes receding to the distance?

Did he hear the ghost-voice of tower control talk him through final checks?

Frost turned in her seat.

‘Noble. Hey, Noble. Look at me.’

Noble turned in his seat. Grinning, bloody, skull mask.

‘This is your deal, right? You’re pulling the strings. Come on. What are you trying to achieve?’

No reply.

‘The missile is primed. You realise that, right? Moment you hit Weapon Release the barometric fuse will detonate the warhead.’

He turned back to the missile panel.

‘You’ll die. You’ll all die. Is that what you want?’

As if in response Hancock gripped the throttle levers and eased them further forwards. The airspeed indicator rested at zero but he fixed his attention like the plane was heading down the runway, approaching take-off speed.

He leant back in his seat, as if subject to acceleration only he could feel.

He shouted like he was fighting to be heard over escalating engine roar:

‘…Twenty knots. Thirty…’

‘Hancock. Hey. Jim. Look at me. Look at me, you fuck. You in there? Any of you left? Think. Think about what you’re doing. This is madness.’

Hancock looked straight ahead, as if gauging how much runway he had left.

‘…sixty, sixty five…’

Attention fixed on the dead airspeed clock like he was urging it to hit seventy.

‘Nose up.’

In the ruins of his mind, they took to the sky.

He leant back in his seat as if, somewhere with the collapsing architecture of his mind, he pictured Liberty Bell leaving the runway, engines at full thrust. They climbed and banked, eight black fume-trails tracing the massive bomber’s ascent.

‘Gear retract.’

Brief pause like he was receiving confirmation from base ATC.

‘Roger that. Ascend twenty thousand, maintain bearing two-two-zero.’

He gripped the flight controls and stared, unseeing, into the storm as he ascended to cruising altitude, mind’s eye showed him empty skies.

Thickening smoke from overhead vents. Electrical fires spreading through wall conduits.

The cockpit shook. The plane’s one remaining engine sending jolting tremors through the airframe. Frost craned and looked out the window. The jetwash from the bedded engine was kicking up a hurricane of sand. The twin turbofans shook on their pylon and spat flame.

Hancock checked cabin pressure and released his oxygen mask.

Frost turned in her seat. She fought the dope, fought to be present and alert.

‘Hey. Jim,’ she shouted. ‘Why are you doing this? You’re dying. But why does everyone have to die with you? Why destroy everyone and everything.’

Noble turned to look at her. He answered through Hancock.

‘The bomb is a doorway. A route out of this world. At the moment of detonation a quantum singularity will exist for a millionth of a second. A tear in the fabric of the real. And we will pass through to the other side.’

‘You want to fly this plane to an alternate universe? You’re out of your fucking mind.’

She used the moment of conversation to check for weapons. Pinback’s holster was empty. Hancock and Noble were packing 9mm Berettas. Both weapons were caked with dirt. Doubtful they would fire.