The Children of Eternity (33 page)

“You’ll be there for me, won’t you?” asked Leona.

“Not right away,” said Jerry. “I’ve got to go back. But I’ll return as soon as I can. I may be there when you wake up.”

“I hope so,” said Leona, whose steps seemed to be getting a bit more certain. “Where is your ship?”

“Straight ahead,” said Jerry. “We’re nearly a third of the way there. You can’t see it, but it’s there.”

They continued on through the heat. Jerry checked the scanner frequently. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. “The demons just vanished from my screen. I think we got it made.”

Half a minute later they stood just beyond the cloaking field. Leona looked on in wonder.

“I can see the outline of your ship,” she gasped. “It’s like a ghost ship.”

Jerry laughed. “No, it’s not a ghost ship. It’s surrounded by a field that makes it nearly invisible. I warn you: it will feel real weird as we pass through the field. Are you ready, Mom?”

“Yes, I’m ready,” said Leona.

They stepped through the field. A second later they could both see the ship clearly. Jerry helped his mother climb up the back ladder to the rear seat of the ship. He strapped her in and got ready to go.

“I’ll be sitting right in front of you,” he said. “We have about a two-hour flight to our rendezvous point. From there you’ll be taken to Refuge by people who will be taking care of you until you get well.”

“OK, son,” said Leona.

Jerry was on his way back down the ladder when the sensor started beeping wildly. A second later there was a loud explosion. Jerry turned to see three demons only about 100 feet away. One had directed a fireball toward the ship. It had barely missed.

“Jerry!” cried Leona.

“Mom, stay in the cockpit!” yelled Jerry.

Jerry jumped to the ground and engaged his rifle. He fired at the demons. His first shot was a clean miss. He took aim again.

By this time the demons were scattering for cover. He hit the one on the left. The demon exploded in a cloud of vaporized blood. The weapon was set at 100 percent—way too high. He dialed back to 50. Jerry targeted another, but he didn’t have a clear shot. The demon had taken cover behind a sarcophagus. Should he blow it away to get at the demon? There may be a human being in there. He took the shot, directing his fire at the stone base. There was an explosion and a ballistic scattering of debris. The sarcophagus itself was sent flying, landing about five feet away.

The demon stumbled back, then directed its sword in Jerry’s direction. A fireball erupted from its tip. The shot was wide, missing Jerry, but it did hit the ship near the tail.

The other demon stepped from behind another sarcophagus and took a shot. Again it missed Jerry but hit the hull of the ship. There was a flash and a bang. The ship fully materialized. The cloaking device had been put out of commission.

Jerry took a shot at the demon that had fired the first fireball. The demon exploded on the spot. He turned his weapon on the second, but it was too late. It had vanished into a sort of purple vortex.

“Great,” said Jerry shouldering his weapon and sprinting up the ladder. He stowed his gear and jumped into the cockpit. The fact that the display panel was dark filled him with trepidation. One thought weighed on his mind more than any other:
Would the ship still fly?

He hit the main power—nothing. His mind searched for ideas. He hit the breaker reset switch. Then he hit the main power again. The heads-up display came on, but with half a dozen red caution and warning lights. It didn’t look good.

“What happened, Jerry?” asked Leona.

“We took two hits, Mom,” he replied. “I’m not sure how bad. I’ve got power, but I’m not certain if I have engines. The cloaking device is gone. Normally I wouldn’t take off with so many warning lights, but this isn’t a normal situation.”

Jerry closed and locked the canopy. He scanned the display again. He put power to the port engine and prayed. The growing whine of the engine was music to his ears. He engaged the starboard engine. All he got was an alarm and a set of flashing red lights. He shut it down. He did a quick diagnostic. He shook his head.

“The heat from that fireball fried the ignition circuits,” he said.

“Can you still fly?” asked Leona.

The hesitation was not encouraging. Jerry searched his mind for a solution. That demon would be back, and it would be bringing friends, lots of friends. Jerry entered some commands into the floating display. “If I can just get that engine to work for half a minute we could take off. We could limp to the rendezvous point on one engine. I’m going to try to crosswire the circuits, to start the starboard engine using the port ignition system.”

“Have you ever done that before?” asked Leona.

“No, I haven’t,” replied Jerry. “I’m just trying to be creative.”

It took about 30 seconds to command the ship to redirect a portion of the port ignition system power to starboard. All the while, Jerry awaited the coming attack. The computer displayed a confirmation of the reroute along with a warning that it was not recommended. They were ready.

“Hold on, Mom. This is likely to be a rough take off,” warned Jerry.

A second later, the starboard engine roared to life. Immediately, Jerry went to full vertical thrust. The dagger leapt off of the dusty plane in a cloud of dust. They had climbed to about 100 feet when two fireballs passed directly underneath them. Jerry engaged forward thrust and banked hard over the sea as three more fireballs lit up the sky around him.

The horizon seemed to turn on its side as the dagger lurched forward and to the right. For a second, the fiery sea dominated their horizon. Jerry yanked the stick left. His mother gasped, but she didn’t scream. They could both feel the acceleration as the nose of the ship came up. A few seconds later they were flying straight and level, a mere 30 feet above the heaving waves. Jerry eased back on the yoke, bringing the nose up still farther. The dagger climbed.

Then what he had been expecting happened: the starboard engine cut out. Jerry corrected for the loss as best he could. They continued to climb at a considerably reduced rate. He brought up the landing gear to reduce the drag, and their rate of speed and climb increased. Several more fireballs hurtled past them, but they were very wide of their target. Jerry and his mother had escaped—at least for the moment.

The immediate crisis over, Jerry glanced at his radar. They were already better than two miles past the coastline and there was no immediate sign of pursuit. He glanced at his other instruments: 500 feet altitude and climbing, speed 280 miles per hour and increasing. This dagger flew pretty well on only one engine.

“We’re out of danger,” said Jerry.

“Thank You, Lord,” said Leona. “Thank You, Lord, for sending my son to rescue me.”

Jerry only nodded. It sounded good to hear his mother talking that way. He changed course to southwest, following the coastline. He also began a more detailed study of the damage. There’d be no safe way to restart the starboard engine, not in flight anyway. It didn’t look like the crosswiring job had done any damage to the port ignition system. That was a break. But the cloaking system was fried, and both the electromagnetic drive and the hyperdrive were questionable. In addition, he’d lost the inertial stabilizer.

Could he reach 75,000 feet on one engine? He wasn’t sure. He’d never tried it. Two things were certain: he didn’t dare engage the electromagnetic drive short of 75,000 feet, and he couldn’t engage hyperdrive within the atmosphere. It would take the electromagnetic drive to get him out of the atmosphere and into space. Added to that, flight through hyperspace without a fully functioning inertial stabilizer could be hazardous to his constitution—as in crushed beyond recognition. Not a pleasant thought. All in all, things were a mess, but he wasn’t about to tell his mother that. Right now she was too full of hope. He would need to weigh his options.

The flight became significantly smoother as the dagger crossed 10,000 feet. The clouds of the firestorm he had seen from space were now towering above them. He seriously doubted that he would be able to climb over that hellish maelstrom. Jerry turned a bit to the east; he’d have to go around it. He was evaluating one system after another as they climbed past 12,000. He extended the airfoils to their full extent in order to get maximum lift. From the feel of the ship, several options were already off the table. Getting this ship back into space without making some serious repairs first was out of the question. That also meant there would be no return trip, at least not immediately.

Landing would also be a tricky proposition. A vertical landing would require restarting the starboard engine, which would require another crosswire, jeopardizing his only remaining ignition cell. There would be only one landing in their immediate future, and hopefully that would be at the rendezvous point. But getting to the rendezvous point would be dicey.

They had climbed to 30,000 feet when Jerry brought the dagger into level flight. It seemed unlikely that he’d encounter any demons at this altitude. He glanced at the airspeed indicator—480 miles per hour. That wasn’t so good. He would be very late reaching the rendezvous point. That point was over 8,000 miles away, much of which would be flown over the Sea of Fire. That fact in itself caused him concern. Right now the port engine display read green, but he had no way of knowing if that engine had taken some damage that just wasn’t showing up yet. Suppose they lost it over the sea? Ditching in the Sea of Fire was not an option, and there were no large islands along their flight path.

He glanced back toward his mother. She had fallen asleep. He wasn’t quite sure whether that was good or bad. Bedillia had explained to him what happened when people in Hell were freed from their torments. For a while they were fine, but eventually a sort of strange withdrawal set in. After years of having their senses bombarded by continual and intense pain, their bodies became used to sensory extremes. Once those were removed, they slipped into a sort of sensory deprivation that was total agony for them.

The analogy that Bedillia had drawn about it being similar to withdrawal from drugs was a totally alien concept to Jerry. He simply understood that it was a bad thing. She said that it usually set in between 12 and 24 hours after a person’s rescue. His mother would need professional care during that period. He needed to get her to Refuge. At best it would take 17 hours to reach the rendezvous point. That was cutting it kind of close. There was no choice—he had to break telesphere silence. Perhaps he could set up an alternate rendezvous point, one a bit closer.

He tried to engage the telesphere link to Refuge. The telesphere didn’t activate. The fireball must have created a system-wide power surge. It was difficult to tell what other systems may have been affected. At least the navigation and radar systems still worked. He also had a handheld communicator not dissimilar to those used in Refuge. The problem was that it only had a range of about 80 miles. He glanced at his navigation system, then out at the towering clouds of the firestorm about six miles to the west. He would be around it in another ten minutes, and then he could resume course. He’d be following the coast for nearly another two hours before the long trek over the sea began. He’d try to sort things out in the meantime.

“H
OW LONG HAVE
I
BEEN
asleep? Where are we?” asked Leona, looking through the clear canopy into a crystal blue sky above the brown, dusty land below.

Jerry glanced back and smiled. “You’ve been asleep for about three hours. As to where we are, we’re currently at an altitude of thirty-three thousand feet on a heading of one hundred ninety-two degrees. We’re almost fifteen hundred miles from where you’ve spent the past twenty-three years.”

Leona looked about. There was not a cloud to be seen across the horizon. The sky up here was a deep blue that slowly transitioned to a hazy salmon color as she looked downward. The land below her was predominantly brown and overall very rough, dominated by jagged hills. There was not a trace of green anywhere. It could have been a scene from an earthly desert, perhaps the Sahara or the Gobi, but it wasn’t—this was Hell. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“Actually, yes, I do,” confirmed Jerry. “I finally came up with a plan, and I think that it’s a good one. I didn’t want to risk a long flight over the Sea of Fire on one engine—an engine that, even as it is, is running a bit hotter than I’d like. If we lost that engine…well, it would be like going from the frying pan into the fire. So we have a new destination. It is called the Valley of Noak. It lies another eleven hundred miles along this course.