Acid Sky (18 page)

‘Just do one circuit, make it like that last one, and bring it back into the hangar.’ Shaffer stood up, and he indicated for her to put on her facemask. ‘Keep the engines running. Cabin should be repressurised in a couple of minutes after I’ve closed the door. Do a good one.’ He clapped her on the shoulder in an uncharacteristically friendly gesture and made his way aft, pulling his facemask on. Clare heard the cabin hatch open, and slam shut behind him.

She was on her own, on her first solo in a Frigate on Venus. If she did this right, her basic carrier qualifications on the type would be complete, and she could progress to gaining experience, and more advanced exercises.

‘Do a good one,’ she muttered to herself as she reset the controls for takeoff. She caught sight of Shaffer as he walked to the edge of the elevator. He turned and gave her a brief wave, then stepped off and walked back towards the hangar. Clare wondered if she had been wrong about him; although he’d never varied from his terse, professional manner, the pat on the shoulder had been heartfelt, and it filled her with confidence. She was determined to get this circuit right. She cleared her throat, and pressed the transmit:

‘Tower, Houseboat Zero Four, engines running, request elevator raise.’

‘Zero Four, raising elevator, report when ready for takeoff.’

‘Zero Four.’

As the elevator lifted her up again to the level of the flight deck, Clare readied the aircraft for launch, her hands and eyes moving automatically now.

‘Zero Four, ready for takeoff.’

‘Houseboat Zero Four, clear takeoff. Straight ahead after takeoff heading two six five, climb to six one five and left turn into circuit, you are number one for landing, report downwind.’

‘Zero Four.’ At least there were no other aircraft waiting to land in front of her. That made it easier. She brought the engines up to full power, waited until they stabilised, then flicked the landing lights on.

Here we go.

She was flung back in her seat as the clamps let go and the Frigate soared upwards, climbing away from the carrier. She raised the gear and banked into the left turn, round into the downwind leg of the circuit, the carrier sliding past on her left.

‘Zero Four, downwind.’

‘Zero Four, you are number one for landing. Report visual and fuel state.’

‘Zero Four—’ Clare said, but got no further. There was an almighty
bang
from the left engine, and the aircraft lurched hard to the left, wrenching her neck. The insistent sound of the master alarm erupted in the cockpit. The EICAS display was a mass of red warnings.

Engine failure, she thought, and her well-trained mind flicked to the emergency checklist that she had rehearsed so many times in the simulator. The asymmetric thrust from the remaining engine was sending her off course, and she countered it instinctively with right rudder and stick as she stepped through the checklist items in her head. She knew she had to act quickly – if there was an oxygen-fed fire anywhere in the engine structure, it could burn through the wing spars in seconds. But there was no fire alert showing, just a list of warnings about loss of readings from the left engine. The engine was clearly not developing any thrust, and she couldn’t make sense of the warnings, so she pulled the thrust lever back to idle, shut off the fuel, and focused on retrimming the aircraft.

She risked a glance out of the left window, and for a moment she couldn’t take in what she saw.
The left engine was gone
– the engine pylon was all that remained. Severed cables waved about in the slipstream, and a stream of vapour trailed into the air.

She raced through the next items on the checklist. She still had power and hydraulic pressure from the right engine, she still had fuel, and she still had …

Radio. She realised that the tower were trying to call her.

‘Zero Four, Tower, come in.’

‘Zero Four. I’ve lost my left engine, it’s come off completely. No fire. I need to land immediately.’

‘Roger Four. Confirm you have lost an engine, we saw it separate. You are losing something from the left wing, could be fuel or hydraulic fluid. You are twenty kilometres behind us, repeat, twenty kilometres behind, and low. Can you gain altitude?’

Clare glanced at the altimeter. She was losing height, but she wasn’t alarmed yet; the right engine was still on cruise thrust. She pushed the thrust lever forward and retrimmed the controls, and the aircraft started to climb, though slowly. She was a long way behind the ship now, and she needed to turn round and get set up for landing.

‘Zero Four, I’m gaining height now, turning onto localiser. I’m going to climb until I hit the glideslope, then come in for as normal as landing as I can. I still have full control.’

‘Roger Four. We have you on the radar, continue your left turn to intercept localiser. Do you need radar vectors?’

‘Negative, I can see the localiser now.’

‘What’s your fuel state?’

‘Two decimal – correction,
zero decimal eight
tonnes.’ Clare stared in horror at the fuel gauges. She was losing fuel fast, most likely from the ruptured lines in the engine pylon. She changed the fuel flow to tank-to-engine, and hoped that there was enough in the right tank to get her to the carrier.

She checked her altitude and position relative to the carrier, and glanced back at the fuel gauges again. Now that she had isolated the tanks, she could see that the left tank was draining away to zero, while the right tank was holding steady at four hundred kilos. She felt a rush of relief, but cursed herself for not checking sooner.

‘Tower, I have a fuel leak and I’ve isolated it, but I have just zero decimal four to get on board.’

‘Roger Four. Keep it coming. You are on the localiser. Keep climbing to intercept glideslope.’
The calm voice, talking as if it was just another landing, reassured her.

The crabbed attitude of the aircraft, slewed to the right to counter the asymmetric thrust from just one engine, increased drag and fuel consumption, just when she least needed it. The altitude crawled upwards. She looked down at the fuel gauges.

Three hundred kilos!

She had to reduce fuel consumption somehow.

‘Zero Four, I’m going to reduce my climb rate to save fuel.’

There was a noticeable pause, then the voice from the tower spoke urgently:
‘Negative Four, maintain climb at expense of fuel, or you won’t have enough height to make a normal approach. Do not reduce rate of climb, please read back.’

‘Maintain rate of climb, roger.’ Damn. She should have realised that. With a reduced climb rate, she might intercept the glide slope with more fuel, but she would be dangerously low and close by the time she did so. Far better to be in the right position further out, and be able to get sorted out for landing. There was nothing she could do to reduce fuel consumption as she slowly gained altitude.

At last, the glideslope capture icon showed in her head-up display, and she could reduce the thrust.

‘Zero Four, you are on glideslope, five kilometres to run. What is your fuel state?’

‘Zero Four, I am passing zero decimal two on fuel.’

‘Four, you have enough fuel to land at your present consumption. You are on speed, keep it coming.’

‘Four, roger.’

Just four kilometres behind the carrier, and she could see it now, a grey arrowhead against the bright clouds, its deck lighting blazing.

One hundred and fifty kilos. She must be getting close to the point where the fuel pump inlets in the tanks would start to be uncovered, and then there would just be the fuel in the pipes, and then—

‘Four, landing checklist.’

She was losing it, she realised. She should be working, preparing for the landing. She moved the gear selector to
DOWN
and lowered the hook, and ran through the other items in her head, checking the positions of the controls.

Two kilometres to go, and just a hundred kilos left. If she made it, it would be by the thinnest of margins, and she absolutely had to land; there was not enough fuel for another try. If she missed the wire, the aircraft would fly off and away from the carrier, maybe start a turn to the left. Then at some point in the turn, long before she could make it back to the carrier and try again, the engine would die, the cockpit panels would flicker and go dark, and that would be it; game over.

‘Zero Four, landing system lock. Clear to land, release hook and move straight onto elevator when down.’

The familiar routine was all she had to cling onto. She could see the flight deck clearly, and the lines of deck lighting, beckoning her home.

‘Zero Four, I have the ball, fuel state zero decimal one, established for landing.’

‘Zero Four, land.’

Just one kilometre to go now, and Clare’s eyes were locked on the flight deck as she took control from the autopilot. She could feel the Frigate around her, it felt like an extension of her own body, and she reacted instinctively to the slightest gust, holding the wings level, flying down the beam to that tiny patch of deck where she
had
to land, or face the long fall to the surface below.

She was nearly there – the carrier expanded to fill the sky ahead, the deck rushing up towards her, but her whole life, her very being, was focused on that spot on the deck. She didn’t see the crowd of figures on the Engineering deck, watching her come in, willing her to make it, or all the binoculars trained on her from the tower.

She was over the ramp, and time slowed to a crawl. She felt the main gear hit, then the hook, and as her hand slammed the thrust lever forwards, a terrible, yawning gap, that seemed to stretch forever—

She was thrown forward and sideways in her seat as the arresting gear hauled the aircraft to a stop. She managed to release the wire and roll forward onto the waiting elevator, and as the clamps went in, anchoring her to the deck and to safety, she collapsed in sobs in her seat.

Barely ten seconds later, as the deck elevator started lowering her into the hangar, the engine ran out of fuel and began to spool down.

Shaffer was the first to the cockpit once the elevator was down. He saw Clare, her facemask on now that the hatch was open, desperately trying to hold it together, and waved everyone else back.

‘It’s okay. You made it.’ He put his arm round her shoulder, and unfastened her seat straps. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

‘I’m okay,’ she said, trying to smile through her tears. ‘I’m just glad to be down.’ She reached over to the engine controls, to begin the shutdown procedure, but Shaffer blocked her hand.

‘No, don’t touch anything; we need to record it all.’ He saw the shocked expression on her face, and explained gently: ‘Don’t worry, it’s normal procedure for any incident. We have to do these things. Come on.’ He started helping her to her feet. ‘That was a brilliant piece of flying, lieutenant. There’s a whole bunch of people in the ready room wanting to shake your hand and share some of their contraband with you.’ As she walked unsteadily to the hatch and stepped down to the deck, supported by Shaffer, deck handlers came up and patted her on the back, and the tears, which she had been trying to hold back, started again.

‘Hey, leave that alone!’ Shaffer shouted at a deck handler who was inspecting the left engine pylon. Hydraulic fluid dripped from the severed pipes and tattered bunches of cables that were all that remained of the missing engine. ‘Come on guys, let her through. Look, Foster, you go ahead of me, I’ll see you in the ready room – I’ll be along as soon as I’ve got the evidence secured.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sixty kilometres below the
Langley
, deep down on the hidden surface of Venus, events were unfolding that would affect the fate of everyone on board the carrier.

Five hundred million years had passed since the huge, planet-wide eruptions that had buried most of the surface features of the planet. The surface of Venus had lain almost dormant since then, the slow fires of its interior biding their time until they could burst forth once more and cover the planet in molten ruin.

Small eruptions, mere pinpricks on the planet, were commonplace, but these were nothing compared to the cataclysmic event that was building up below the surface. A huge dome of magma, nearly two hundred kilometres across, some last remnant of the titanic eruptions of the past, had lain imprisoned beneath an ancient caldera. Over tens of millions of years, the magma chamber had swelled, fed by upwelling lava plumes from the mantle, and the planet’s crust had slowly weakened as it flexed under the slow tides induced by the Sun. Now, the rocks had weakened and cracked to the point where the slightest trigger would precipitate a catastrophic failure.

For days, small tremors and venting had shaken the mountains, sending broken rocks and boulders tumbling into the slab-strewn foothills. In the eerie stillness that presaged the cataclysm, poisonous vapours coiled into Venus’s overcast skies from a hundred small vents in the blasted, sterile landscape. Then, from far below, a distant rumble reached the surface. The ground started to quiver, as it had many times before, but this time it did not fade away, and the tremor became a violent shaking, the echo of rocks failing and tearing apart kilometres below the surface. Rocks fell in great landslides, bouncing into the air as they rolled down the mountainsides.

The shaking ground bulged upwards, and blew apart in a series of explosions that rocked the landscape, sending fountains of dust, smashed rocks and boulders up into the air. From the open fissures, white-hot lava spewed up out of the planet and gushed out in rivers onto the ground. Great pillars of thick, poisonous gases belched skywards from the newly opened volcanic vent.

The weakened crust could not hold it back, and in an enormous explosion and shock wave that reverberated round the planet, the entire mountain disintegrated, blown into fragments by the pressure of the rising, boiling magma. Released from its prison, thousands of cubic kilometres of lava erupted into the sky, seething with dissolved gases.

Lightning, blue-white against the dark orange sky, ripped the heavy air as the searing hot gases forced their way upwards, shifting huge electrical charges into the sky. A boiling, lightning-filled cauldron of hot gas and ash rose up through the thick lower atmosphere, turning and gaining energy as it ascended.