James Swallow - Fallen Angel

“Splash one,” Faridah called out the words, defiant and challenging. “Who’s next?”

Networking with its cohort right until the moment it was destroyed, the second drone took a different tack. It described a wide barrel roll that took it up over the Osprey. The drone’s gun pod pivoted and strafed the VTOL as it passed. Faridah felt the punching recoil of heavy-gauge rounds as they punctured the wings and the fuselage. Warning lights pinged into life on the dashboard, but nothing was on fire and nothing was dead, so for now she ignored them.

Faridah gripped the controls grimly. She was a damn good pilot, that was never in doubt; but the Osprey had limits and so did she. The drones were going to get her, it was only a matter of time. To get out of this alive, she had to think fast and think smart. She had to find another way out.

In the meantime…

It was dangerous to alter the pitch of the rotors over a certain airspeed and Faridah was well past that red line, but she didn’t have the liberty of following the manual. Yanking the controls over hard to port, the pilot threw the Osprey down a blind corner, ripping through a web of power cables strung between two narrow housing towers.

The second drone blared past, pulling into a vertical Immelmann turn that would bring it back toward the fleeing VTOL; the third drone mimicked Faridah’s course and followed her around the blind corner.

The side street ended in a brick wall that climbed high off the ground, and floating there in front of it was the Osprey, the tilt-rotors pitched up to make the aircraft hover like a helicopter.

Faridah watched the drone pass over top of her cockpit, airbrakes deploying as it frantically tried to bleed off speed. She revved the engines and applied power, and in the throat of the blocked passage, the confined downdraft was like a sudden blast of wind. The surge disrupted the airflow over the third drone’s razor-thin winglets and spun it into the wall with a concussive burst of fire.

Still turning in place, spinning upwards, Faridah guided the Osprey past more gaping windows and the bright panels of holographic signs. There were more red lights on the control panel now, and she could feel the aircraft becoming sluggish. Hydraulic pressure was ebbing away, engine heat levels were rising too fast.

“One last thing, big guy,” she said to it, willing the machine to stay airborne for a few moments more. “Don’t let me down now.”

Below and to the starboard, light glittered off black metal and Faridah knew that the last of the drones was coming around, drawing a firing solution on her that would rip the Osprey apart. They were over a construction zone now, the skeletons of bank towers and office blocks on all sides. She saw figures in orange hazard vests scrambling away even as their robotic co-workers ignored the sight of the aircraft buzzing overhead.

Laser light from a rangefinder licked the front of the aircraft, flickering as it touched the bullet-shattered glass.

“You think you got me?” she asked. “You haven’t got me.”

Faridah pivoted the props and pushed the throttle forward, the Osprey dropping into a dive that took it straight toward the rising drone. She tried to imagine what the Belltower operator monitoring the machine’s nose camera was thinking in those last seconds, as the big VTOL came thundering in to fill the screen. Was that bastard Khan watching? Did he see her face through the canopy in the last seconds, the hard daring in her eyes, the refusal to surrender in the set of her jaw?

The drone tried to veer away, but the Osprey slammed into the unmanned vehicle, in a jousting pass that tore the smaller aircraft in two. The VTOL suffered for the act, the airframe ripping open and spurts of fire igniting along the ventral surface of its wings.

Black smoke pouring from holes in the fuselage, the Osprey howled as it twisted into a flat spin. Skidding through the air, its port rotors sliced the thick plastic sheath covering the scaffolding around the unfinished upper floors of a L.I.M.B. clinic, and the Osprey crashed tail-first into the skeletal concrete frame of the building, lodging there.

Fire bloomed around the point of impact, orange and black lighting up the surroundings, reflecting back off the underside of the pangu overhead.

The Osprey burned fast, never to rise again.

***

“Why won’t anyone tell me what is going on?” shouted Evelyn, her patience cracking. “Faridah gets us shot at, she spooks and runs… That’s not like her!” She glared at Cheng from across the ArcAir pilot’s lounge, her hands tightening into fists. “What did you make us do, Jai?” “Your job,” he shot back, matching her angry tone. “Didn’t I tell you a hundred times, just fly the damn helos

and let me worry about the rest. Is that so hard for you to understand?”

“You pay us to be pilots, not blind!”

His vu-phone sounded with a samisen ring-tone, and he cut it off within the first few notes, ignoring the

woman’s retort. “Go for Cheng,” he said. The man was silent for a moment, and Evelyn could hear the mutter of a deep, indolent voice on the other end of the line. Khan, she guessed, calling to check in.

Cheng looked at her coldly. “What about the other one?” There was another distant reply and his lips thinned. “You’re certain of that…? All right. I’ll take it from here.”

He hung up and studied Evelyn. Her anger cooled as the seriousness of her situation caught up with her. If all the stories about Cheng’s relationship with the Red Arrow were true, then Evelyn and Faridah could be in the worst kind of trouble…

“Malik took the Osprey downtown, did something foolish. She clipped a building.”

Evelyn backed away a step, feeling a sudden hollow open up inside her. “No…”

“Went up in flames,” Cheng continued, without an iota of pity. “Malik’s dead, and she’s cost me an aircraft and my reputation. You get that? Do you?”

“No,” Evelyn was shaking her head. She suddenly felt dizzy. “That’s not possible.”

He turned away. “People are gonna ask… And I’m going to tell them I caught her skimming from ArcAir’s finances.”

“That’s not true!” The denial burst from her in a snarl. “I won’t lie about her!” Evelyn aimed a finger at him. “This is because of you! She’s dead because of you!” Tears prickled her eyes. She could hardly believe it. Faridah, gone? Evelyn tried to hold on to the memory of that moment in the air after the skydive, her friend’s bright smile and sheer sense of life. It faded from her, guttering out like a doused candle.

Cheng advanced toward Evelyn, shaking his head. “Think very carefully about what you’re going to say next. The only reason you’re standing here right now is because Lee Hong has a thing for you, and his family have influence. The people I work for don’t want to piss them off, so be grateful…” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “So you say and do nothing. Be smart. Because if you do open your damn mouth, not even your well-connected new boyfriend will be able to help you.”

In that moment, Evelyn hated him more than she could express, and she turned away, fighting to hold her grief in check.

Out beyond the edges of the landing field, among the towers of Lower Hengsha, a pillar of black smoke was rising.

***

There was an axiom that all pilots shared, dating back to the days of the first propeller-driven flyers, when the skies were harsh and deadly to all those who reached for them. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

It didn’t matter if your aircraft came apart around you; if you made it down alive, you could consider yourself lucky.

Faridah Malik didn’t feel very damned lucky at all, despite the evidence to the contrary. As she sheltered on a high balcony, on a derelict building across from the construction site where the Osprey had made its final