Aloft (Petronaut Tales) (11 page)

And once again, the Flicker jumped.

Flames! 
Ensie gritted her teeth against the force of the launch.  Each new jump seemed to be building on the previous one, if the increasingly intense downforce was any indication.  She was far away from the measuring pylon now, battling with the handlebars to ensure she stayed inside their testing area.  She reached the peak of her jump and began to fall, the propellers slowing her imperceptibly and giving this ride an illusion of control.  Ensie knew better now.  Something was seriously wrong.

She took a half-second to look at the dial for continuous travel mode. 
I swear to the Spheres I double-checked this before I started
, she thought, dropping one hand from the handlebars.  It hadn’t budged at all from the ‘off’ position.  The ground was getting close again.  Her knees tucked together tightly as she braced herself.  Desperate, she twisted the dial to ‘on’ instead.

The dial spun effortlessly.  Ensie gaped at it and turned it back to ‘off.’  It flipped back and forth breezily, like a play knob on a child’s toy. 
It’s not connected to anything!

The Flicker plowed into the ground and leapt again, like a rubber ball spiked onto a clay court.  Ensie pitched forward against her harness at the moment of impact, and was thrust back into the seat just as hard upon going airborne.  Her eyes were tearing up inside her goggles, but there was no time to wipe them clear.  These new jumps were so forceful they set the Flicker wobbling off-kilter, each of the three skis below her feet shuddering within the suspension at different rates.  It was all she could do to level it out by the time the machine reached its zenith, alarmingly close to the
7 m
on the pylon.

I thought we were smarter than this
, Ensie thought, a spike of black panic driving down her back. 
We projected what continuous travel mode would be like!  We were so careful!  We stuck to the tolerances!  We accounted for wind, mud, topography… there’s no reason this thing should feel like it’s falling apart after a few continuous jumps.  The box shouldn’t be powerful enough to do this to—

Ensie cried out as the Flicker hit the dirt again.

“Bail, Ensie, for fire’s sake—!”

Iggy’s voice was momentarily clear as she was at ground level, but then, just as quickly, she was hopping again.  A clatter and a tinny snap came from somewhere below her, and the Flicker pitched to the side.  The chassis was under stress from these too-powerful jumps.  Ensie swung the propellers and her body as hard as she could to right the machine.  It was barely enough to keep her from capsizing.  The urge to vomit flared up in her throat, but she choked it down through sheer force of will. 
Later.  Now, I need my mouth clear so I can scream.

The sky was beautiful; defiantly picturesque in the middle of her terrifying flight, orange-blue and woven through with gray clouds.  A magnificent sunset was in the works, and it would continue on its inexorably magnificent way even as this machine shook itself—and her—apart.  The world didn’t care one bit if she lived or died tonight.

Another bone-bruising impact left stars in her eyes.  She closed them briefly, righting the machine through instinct and the gyrations she felt inside her head and stomach.  With the outside world shut out, she felt like she caught her mental footing for a brief instant, just long enough to try to form a plan.

The safety clutch for continuous travel mode must be jammed in place. 
One of those innocent-sounding snaps she’d heard must have been when it happened. 
There’s no way to get in and troubleshoot it now, but as long as this machine is running, every landing is just going to lead directly into the next jump—

Her next jump knocked the wind out of her, but the death grip she had on the handlebars kept the Flicker almost vertical.  After the wild, twisting leaps she’d been taking, the straight up-and-down hop was a welcome relief for her stomach.  It also made measuring herself against the pylon that much easier, though, and the bland
 8 m 500
looking back at her set her body quivering with fear.  She squeezed her eyes shut again, breathing through her mouth.

Ensie’s eyes flashed open immediately as a thought struck her. 
As long as this machine is running…
  She thought through the words again, her heart starting to pound with something other than terror. 
If I just shut off the engine, the ranine box will lose pressure and the jumps will stop! 
And if she could time it near the end of a jump, she wouldn’t have that far to fall.  She could trust in the suspension and her flight suit to keep her safe.
  Turning off my flying machine in mid-air... I can’t believe that’s sounding like my best option
, Ensie thought, moistening her lips.

Another thought stopped her before she could move her left hand from the handlebar to the keypin. 
Wait... if the safety clutch is this far gone, any residual pressure in the ranine box is going to transfer to the coils even after the engine stops. It takes about five seconds for the box to shed its energy—

The Flicker touched earth again and she had to wrestle it under control.  She hadn’t been lucky enough to keep it vertical that time.  Ensie caught a quick glance of Iggy and a few other figures on the ground below, waving their arms.  There was no time to pay attention to them now, even if they were trying to help her.  If she was going to live through this, she was going to have to save herself.

If I turn off the motor close to the ground, odds are there will still be enough pressure to launch me one last time.  And I won’t have the propellers running to give me lift or help me steer. 
The only reason she’d been able to survive this many jumps was because the propellers on their long stalks behind her were helping her hover just enough to ride this tiger.  It was proof-of-concept, at least, for all the cold comfort it gave her now.

Okay.  So say I turn off the engine as I’m rising, just before the apex
.  Then the ranine box would likely be depressurized enough to avoid a disastrous further hop by the time she touched down.  However, she’d be making that touchdown at whatever speed and in whatever orientation gravity had in mind for her.  The suspension wasn’t rated to handle falling from these heights, even with the propellers putting the brakes on her descent. 
So if I risk a drop without them, I might be crushed to pieces even if I’m lucky enough to land skis-down.

She was dimly aware of her own sobbing as the Flicker plowed into the test field and, again, launched her back into the air.  White-hot sparks of pain were flaring up all through her seat and back.  The Flicker wasn’t built to handle this punishment, and neither was her body. 

Her odds of survival were bad if she turned the Flicker off, no matter when in the jump she turned the keypin.  But she was running out of time to plan anything else.  If she didn’t take action, the endless series of jumps would eventually make her black out and capsize, which would embed her in the flat dirt field so thoroughly the Aerial squad wouldn’t need to dig her a grave.  Even worse, if she lost control, she might crash the Flicker into the people below, or one of the buildings all too close to the testing grounds. 

One of the buildings…

As her eyes drifted over the squat fuel refinery, they fell on the steeple-roofed meeting house, where squads would congregate for briefings or drinking contests.   The center of the building rose up more than three stories, peaking in a sharp triangle. But the southern wing, a later addition, was just shy of two stories at the intersection of its roofing planes.  In fact, as another agonizing impact sent her back into the sky, she found herself looking down at that sharp, even ridge of textured brown shingles.

Ensie glanced over her shoulder.  The long stalks of the Flicker extended behind her, sturdy metal curves tipped with the cylindrical housings for the propellers.  There was more than half a meter of daylight between the fuselage and each metal arm. 
Not much space, but just maybe…

There was no time to think it through more than that.  At this point, any plan at all was better than waiting for the Flicker to explode under her or roll on top of her. 
Don’t be timid, junior tech
, she thought, gritting her teeth.

Ensie banked starboard with all her might.

She saw Iggy and the other Aerials on the ground back away, startled, as the Flicker made its abrupt course change.  Metal twisted and splintered beneath her with a tortured sound as she skipped off the ground again.  Her head flung forward and she cried out.  Ensie tasted blood in her mouth as her teeth dug into her lower lip. 
Neither the Flicker or I can take much more of this. 
The meeting house was looming up in front of her.  She pitched the Flicker forward, making the jump long and shallow.  The wind rushing past her felt like it was going to pull her back through the seat.

It was no time at all before the Flicker was nearing the ground again, only a few meters away from the wall of the meeting house.  Ensie pulled back on the handlebars, tilting the Flicker’s nose to the sky. 
This is going to be bad
.

The rear skis clattered against the ground first, followed seconds later by the solitary ski beneath the nose.  The Flicker galloped like a bucking bull and launched nearly straight up.  The edges of Ensie’s vision went black as gravity compressed her head down into her neck.  But she kept her eyes fixed on the peaked roof of the meeting house as it receded beneath the skis.  She had to be ten meters in the air at this point.  She banked the Flicker as carefully as she could just before the zenith, drifting over top of the sharp-sloped roof.  The Flicker reached its peak and she felt like she was floating, time frozen in the midst of this ordeal, with sunbeams bathing her goggles and heating the sweat on her open throat.

Ensie Thalanquin turned the Flicker off.

The engine sputtered and died.  The two propellers whined in protest and began to slow.  Ensie was already sinking, and it was a new kind of sinking; she could feel the pull of the earth more insistently than ever, without the counterbalancing force of the propellers to insulate her from it.  Panic swarmed through her gut like bees in a storm, but she kept her body still and straight as the descent picked up speed.  Leaning too far to either side would overbalance her.  But leaning just right, at just the right time, just might save her life.

Wind rushed past her ears.  She could tell the roof was close.  Ensie held her breath and glanced downwards.  The roof came to a sharp wedge directly below her falling seat.

She leaned.

If she’d continued her straight-down path, the hard shingles would have split the Flicker through the middle, between the two rear skates.  If she’d leaned too far, she would have capsized, plummeting head first into the ground with a concept craft on her back.  The middle ground between a hundred distant disaster scenarios was tiny, but Ensie was steering herself for a landing there regardless.

The Flicker’s left propeller was the first piece of the machine to touch the building.  It hooked against the sharp roof as Ensie’s chair began to tilt, dangerously close to perpendicular to the ground.  But before momentum took her fully sideways, the steel arm began to take the weight of the machine.  Metal groaned with the strain as the Flicker took its grip against the roof.

Ensie watched in mesmerized horror as the propeller arm, a ten-centimeter diameter pipe of hollow steel, began to bend like a sapling in the wind.  Then the skis touched the shingles, and Ensie screamed as the depressurizing ranine coils sent her launching skyward at a sixty-degree angle with the last of their juice.

The Flicker bucked, twisting backwards so its nose was pointing up, dead-on the sky.  Ensie could see the shadows of the two moons above the smoky clouds as the sun continued to set. 
This is the last thing I’ll ever see
, she thought, feeling suspended in time and space, oddly motionless as the Flicker made ready to topple her backwards onto her skull.

She blinked.  Ensie felt her heart pounding and began counting beats.  One.  Two.  Four.  Against all the odds, time actually seemed to be passing with her on her tail like a trained seal.  And just as unexpectedly, the Flicker did begin to tilt back to a level plane—but forward, landing back on the skis.

The jostling threw Ensie side to side as the Flicker slammed into the gabled roof.  The propeller arm screeched one more time in protest, bending further. But then the bending stopped and there she was, strapped into the seat so tightly her shoulders felt raw under the straps, safely suspended two stories in the air.

Ensie’s eyes felt dry, but she didn’t seem to be able to blink them.  Her body was frozen in place, hands glued to the handlebars, weight firmly planted in the seat.  She refused to move.  It was impossible enough that she wasn’t dead yet; she was terrified to her very core that moving a muscle now would cause the Flicker’s arm to give way and send her skating down the slope. 

As she hung there, she had a perfect view of the sunset, and a lazy formation of white storks winging over the city on their way to the Bay.  Orange light set their feathers aglow, warm and welcoming like a campfire.  They made flying look so easy.

“Junior tech!”

That was Iggy’s voice, hoarse and disbelieving from the ground below.  Ensie didn’t dare look down to meet her boss’ eyes.  Besides, she was just beginning to realize how stiff her neck was.

“Ensie!  Ensie, say something!”

“I’d like to come down, please,” she croaked. 

There was no moisture in her mouth aside from a bit of blood, and her throat felt tight.  At first, she wasn’t sure if they’d heard her voice at all.  But then something halfway between a cheer and a sigh rose up from a half-dozen mouths below, and she heard the scurrying of boots on dirt.  “I bet you would!  I bet you would,” Iggy shouted with a smile in her voice.  The senior tech’s words grew a little less distinct as she talked to someone at ground level.  “Get a flaming ladder on this roof right now.  Who knows how long she’ll stay stuck there?”