Breaking Through Read online

  “Command, I just lost targeting.”

  “Bravo-One-One, we’ve just lost connection with your flight computer, attempting reconnect now. Flight Control advised the interference is localized. Do you have visual on anything out there?”

  John let up on throttle, bringing the Falcon to a crawl. He twisted inside the cramped cockpit and scanned around him, unsure of exactly what he was looking for. “Negative. Nothing out here but water and air.”

  “Roger that, One-One, we have a Keyhole Sat-Link coming on-line now.”

  His optics flickered again and the green lines vanished. For a second John thought the interference had abated, only to have the entire display vanish without warning.

  “Bravo-One-One, Bravo-One-Three, I just lost my Optics and Navigation.” Scott McKenna’s frantic voice came through John’s com with a disturbing amount of static.

  John cursed as he tried to reset the system. “Scott, get the hell out of here!”

  “Bravo-One-One, Keyhole is registering some—.” Static filled his com.

  “Command, say again. There is what?”

  John felt the stick in his right hand go slack. “Shit.” He jerked it side to side, the aircraft did not respond. A brilliant flash of light brought his attention to the airspace in from of him and he sucked in a deep breath of air. “What in the hell?”

  A master alarm sounded and status warnings on the remaining active displays, on the console in front of him, began to flash urgently. The Falcon’s backup RADAR flashed a contact warning at five miles, and then the entire system failed.

  John’s hands flew across his controls, but his eyes were transfixed on the most spectacular event he’d ever seen. He barely had enough time to register the warning before the clear blue sky of the North Atlantic ripped apart before him.

  A deafening crack rolled over him as orange, red and purple lines lashed out across the sky. An enormous black hole, encircled by brilliant pulsing colors, opened up before him. Yellow bands of energy cascaded out from the horrific sight in ever expanding bands of lightning.

  Master alarms, which had been screaming their insistent warnings, went silent and the rest of the Falcon’s onboard systems began to fail one after another. Green status lights on the avionics panel winked out and sparks shot out of the artificial horizon and altimeter displays. John heard the whine of the turbo-engines cycle down as they lost power.

  “Son of a bitch!” Fingers flew over the controls, trying to get the Falcon’s systems back online. As he struggled with the controls, an eerie quiet fell over the cockpit. Had he not been gliding toward a terrible pulsing black hole, it might almost have been peaceful. After several seconds of working the controls there wasn’t anything else he could do.

  The North Atlantic Union Pilot Training Manual—which is actually several manuals—has almost two entire volumes dedicated to emergency fight procedures. The majority of student pilots, including John, started Flight School with the assumption that actually learning how to fly is going to be the hard part. After hours of sitting in his dorm room, head in the books, John—along with the rest of his classmates—knew that the hardest part about flying was remembering how to fix everything that could go wrong during flight.

  On the first day of Emergency Operations, his flight instructor had said, “A system failure in a fighter isn’t like having a flat tire while driving on the highway; you can’t just stop and pull over. The smallest failure during flight can get you killed if you don’t know what you’re doing. So pay attention! What I’m going to teach you over the next few weeks will quite possibly save your life someday.”

  Three weeks of studying emergency checklists had almost been enough for John to throw in the towel but by the time he’d taking the written and practical exams he knew them all by heart. After the seventh or eighth hundred-step-checklists, that were obviously written by people who’d never flown a plane before in their life, they all basically said the same thing anyway: figure out what’s wrong and fix it.

  Oddly enough, the procedure for a catastrophic system failure during flight was the most simple:

  Step 1: Grasp Emergency Ejection Seat Release Handle.

  Step 2: Pull Emergency Ejection Seat Release Handle.

  Step 3: Hold on tight.

  John reached between his legs, found the handle and pulled, wishing he’d had the chicken after all.

  Several tiny explosive charges went off at once and the canopy blasted away. Cold air rushed against John and a half-second later two small rockets, underneath his seat, ignited and launched him into the air. Intense pain shot through his body as he jerked upwards. He had a fleeting thought of his spine snapping in half and all of his internal organs compressing into a single mass of goo and told himself not to pass out.

  The roar of the seats rocket boosters faded and the sensation of weightless came over him as a series of audible pops behind him signaled the seat’s automatic parachute deployment. He felt a strange calm wash over him as the blue and white-striped canvass billowed out above him. Below him, his Falcon twisted and rolled over itself as it dropped away from him toward the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. He wondered how long he would survive in those icy waters.

  Becoming a member of the Martin-Baker Fan Club wasn’t exactly something you received praise for, but its members wore their badges of membership proudly. Those that lived through the initiation, that is. There was no NAU Official ribbon or award, and the only official documentation you received for your efforts was a ten-page survey from the ejection seat manufacturer asking how well their seat performed. John made a mental note to add life raft to the list of improvements on the next model.

  An earsplitting thunderclap shook him and he twisted in the seat. Behind him, the black hole had expanded to well over a kilometer in diameter. John took hold of the steering cables for his chute and maneuvered himself around to face the thing. It was an awesome sight, whatever it was radiated an impressive amount of power. Strands of purple and orange lightning continued to lash out from the outer edge, popping and cracking in the cold air. John could feel the static electricity building and realized that he was drifting toward it.

  He pulled hard on the chute’s chords to turn away from the rift, only to realize that he was still being pulled back toward it, as if gravity had shifted. He cursed and worked the chords again so he was facing it again. He studied the sky around him, looking for any sign of his fellow pilots and saw none.

  There was a quick flash of light in the center and another ribbon of energy pulsated out, expanding as it went. As the ribbon grew it left behind hundreds of little specs of light that flashed and blinked yellow and amber against the black. The ribbon twisted and flexed as it passed over the rim of the rift, then broke into thousands of individual strands, which began to dissolve as they drifted aimlessly through the air.

  Another thunderclap reverberated across the sky, the entire mass of energy seemed to flex as something shot out from the center. It was small, comparatively speaking, a thin trail of smoke billowed out behind it. Several yellow and amber ripples cascaded out from where it had come through, as if it had plunged through a pool of still water. It spun and twirled through the air and began to fall away in a long arc. Another crack echoed out from the rift and what came through next made John’s blood run cold.

  He recognized the cockpit almost immediately and as the aircraft emerged he could identify the other major parts, but it wasn’t like any other aircraft he’d ever seen before.

  At the front, a rounded cockpit was attached by a thick collar to the main fuselage, an elongated curved body similar to that of a passenger jet, which stretched back forty feet and ended in a flat tail section. Two support struts jutted out from the front end of the fuselage, not quite wings, and John could see flames and smoke pouring out of the end of the one on the far side of the craft. The opposite strut held what looked like an engine, identical to what had preceded the craft through the rift just seconds before. Two smaller en
gines, near the back of the main body, twisted on their own struts, working desperately to keep the aircraft aloft.

  The craft started falling away from the rift as soon as it came through, listing badly to the far side. A second later the rear of the craft exploded in a brilliant fireball, flaming debris streaked out through the air. The force of the explosion threw back end up, bulkheads buckled and snapped. The two rear engines pulled away from their supports and rocketed away. The remaining engine screamed and the craft began to twist counterclockwise as it flipped over.

  It continued to twist, ever faster as it fell away from the rift and even without knowing anything about the mechanics about the craft, John knew it was fatal. He expected the cockpit canopy to blast off and see whoever was piloting the doomed craft to come shooting out, but it never happened. He watched as the craft spun and fell helplessly, to join his own Falcon in the depths.

  The rift pulsed again and another thunderclap reverberated out, the pressure wave that washed over John was enough to make his teeth rattle. Expanding bands of energy rippled out from the center in rapid succession then quickly dissipated when they broke the outer rim. John held his chute steady and waited for whatever was going to come through next.

  Another energy band rippled out, but instead of reaching the rim and dissipating, this one slowed and came to a stop about three-quarters of the way there. It pulsed and twitched there for a moment then slowly reversed direction and flowed back toward the center of the rift.

  The sensation that gravity was shifting intensified and John felt himself being pulled toward the pulsing terror.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” John pulled desperately on the cables, trying to change his trajectory but it was useless. He was no longer drifting toward the waters of the North Atlantic; he was being pulled into oblivion.

  The entire mass of the rift flexed outward briefly then shrank down in on itself. Bands of brilliant colorful energy began to cascade inward from the periphery and John felt air rushing passed him as the image of a toilet flushing flashed in his mind. As the pulses quickened he realized he too was being pulled ever faster. A roaring cacophony of wind and thunder blasted his senses as he approached the rift.

  Every hair on his body stood on end as radiant energy from the rift flowed through him. There was no way to tell how close he was. Even though it was shrinking, it was still the only thing he could see. Small white dots blinked in and out of existence on the surface, breaking up the darkness.

  “Oh my God.” He couldn’t hear himself over the rushing wind as he realized what he was falling into.

  His chute shot passed him in a tangled mass of fabric and wires. Electricity shot through his body, and he screamed as he was pulled out of his world and into another.

  Daylight was replaced by night as he passed through the rift. Every inch of his body buzzed with electricity and his stomach turned. As he slipped into darkness, the tingling and nausea vanished, replaced by weightlessness. He twisted in the seat and saw daylight shinning back at him, as if some giant flashlight hung in the night sky.

  Pulsing bands of energy rippled and cascaded over the surface, contrasting heavily with the darkness surrounding. Brilliant shafts of light shot out from the center and began to spin around as the rift closed in on itself. A loud cacophony of wind and thunder blasted John as he fell away, growing ever louder as the rift twisted closed. Light flashed briefly out from the center, and it whistled out of existence.

  John hung weightless in the night sky for what seemed like an eternity then felt himself begin to fall down away from where the rift had been. He twisted around and caught a glimpse of the bluish hue of a full moon, hanging on a backdrop of unfamiliar stars. A bright orange moon, partially hidden behind the first, shown brilliantly, almost over-shadowing its little brother.

  Wind buffeted his parachute and it whipped around him, tangling around his arms and legs. He grabbed and pulled at the fabric, trying to free it but knew it was pointless; the chances of his chute opening again were slim to none. He reached down, feeling for the reserve chutes release handle. All he needed to do was pull and—

  John caught a glimpse of the platform and knew immediately there was nothing he could do to avoid it. A fifty-foot wide octagonal slab of white composite. His body torqued hard against the straps as the seat slammed down on the platform. He flipped over sideways as the chair slide across the platform, a blur of alternating red and yellow diagonal stripes raced passed.

  “Shit!”

  Pain shot through his body as the seat flipped and slammed him down again. John frantically grasped at the strap-releases as the seat flipped him back onto his back. Gloved fingers managed to find the left clasp, which clicked as he pulled.

  John looked up from the clasp and saw short railing coming up fast in front of him. There was barely enough time to register blinking the red and orange marker lights before he bounced over the railing and flew over the edge.

  He screamed as he flipped head first into the night air, arms and legs flailing helplessly. The platform disappeared and somewhere in the back of his mind, John registered the zzzzztttt of the parachute dragging across the edge of the rail. It caught and wrapped around the rail that ran along the edge of the platform.

  A loud twang echoed through the cool, still air as the parachute cords pulled taut, jerking John against the remaining three straps of the harness. His momentum carried him, and the seat, underneath the platform. Panic rushed through him as lines twisted, and he spun helplessly around. A latticework of support struts and rails appeared around him, connecting the platform above him to a main structure beyond.

  John felt his momentum reverse, and held his breath, waiting for the chute to rip or the cords to snap. They held, and after a few moments of swinging back and forth, the seat swayed to a stop, leaving John feeling like a baby in a $300,000 bouncy chair.

  He reached up, popped the clasp of his helmet and pulled it off. He clung to the helmet’s chinstrap and it bounced against his leg as he let out a long sigh of relief. To say that he was in good shape would have been a misnomer, but he was alive, and that was the only thing that mattered to John McNeal. A quick inspection of the cords showed some of them had frayed in the landing.

  A cool breeze whispered through the skeleton of crisscrossing supports and columns that descended from the underside of the platform. A small catwalk ran along the perimeter of the structure beneath him, disappearing into a maze of piping, tanks, and pressure vessels.

  John gazed at what looked like an old industrial complex. Most of the off-white paint, that appeared to have had once covered every square inch, was peeling off, and rust was beginning to eat away at the steel supports. In some places, makeshift patches covered connection joints, and even those were beginning to fall apart.

  Floodlights lit various sections of the complex, allowing John to see that the disrepair wasn’t just limited to the structure around him. Clusters of cables snaked around many of the support struts, disappearing below long gantries into the main complex beyond. Smaller cables spliced off the main lines, some ran up to the platform above, and some simply hung lose, swaying back and forth in the wind.

  The main complex consisted of several large processing stations, clustered in a central group surrounded by piping, cables, and more latticework of support structure. The main rectangular structures extended high above the platform John hung from, and another 200 feet below. The nausea returned as he traced down the edge of the main cluster of structures and saw there was nothing underneath.

  At first, he thought his eyes were playing a trick on him, and after several seconds of staring, he still couldn’t believe it. The factory was floating.

  The darkness made it hard to say exactly how high he was, but the orange glow of what looked like a city told him it was high, ten or fifteen thousand feet at least.

  “Get yourself together, John, can’t hang here forever.”

  Above him, a cluster of several power cables ran along
the length of the struts but none of them were in arm’s reach. The thought of climbing up his parachute terrified him, but short of making a jump for the catwalk below him, he didn’t have very many options. His other option was to unstrap and hope his reserve chute hadn’t been damaged, and that option didn’t appeal to him very much either. Slowly, he reached up and pulled on one of the cords, it held.

  “You need some help, Mister?” a voice called to him.

  If ejecting out of his fighter and being pulled through a terrifying rip in space hadn’t scared the piss out of him, the voice had. His body flashed warm, he lost his grip on his helmet, and it disappeared into the night. “What?”

  He jerked back around, searching for the voice, and spotted two figures looking up at him from the catwalk. His heart pounded against his ribcage. “Uh…”

  The two figures regarded him silently. One was noticeably taller than the other, though both looked to be in their early twenties. The taller one stood with one foot on the guardrail in front of him, black pants tucked into his boots. A dark green jacket, partially zipped up, covered a dark grey shirt. The shorter one wore black pants, similar to jeans, and a burgundy jacket. Blonde hair curled up in all directions from underneath a black knit hat rolled up above his ears.

  The shorter one leaned forward and whispered something in the other’s ear. The taller one laughed and shook his head, “No way. Never seen one come through that way before.” He motioned to John. “Besides, you think they’d be able to make a much more graceful entrance.”

  “You know how desperate they are getting,” the shorter man said, stepping back and crossing his arms.