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Authors: Robert Buettner
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troposphere, then tumbled alongside me like a highly classified meteor shower. A four-inch gap opened between the drone’s fin and my fingers.
“Arrr!” I forced my hand back and death-gripped the fin.
This time, I held on. The speed differential between my slower fall and the drone’s fall yanked me into the wind shadow behind the ED.
Pop .
I yelped. I had separated my shoulder once before, falling off a hovertank fender onto a boulder. I got chewed out by a sergeant for clumsiness and had to route-march behind the tank for six miles so I would learn to be more careful next time. This time the separation felt more severe, but so were the consequences if I let go.
The drone, now with me flapping behind and screaming inside my armor, flashed into high clouds. Ice crystallized on the outside of my vomit-smeared visor.
“Dammit.” Blind again. I chinned the visor’s defroster. By the time my view cleared, the drone and I had popped out of the clouds into an overcast day.
Below me was supposed to be the Eastern Sea of Tressel, off the coast of the part of Tressen that had once been the Unified Duchies of Iridia. A boatload of Iridian partisans, of questionable friendliness, was supposed to fish me, Weddle, and the drone out of the sea after I landed.
The sea was blue. What I saw below, through a film of Turkey With Giblet Gravy Paste, was only half twinkling blue. That was the sea, muted sunlight reflecting off waves. Half my field of vision was scum green laced with barf brown. The drone’s trajectory was dropping it and me too far toward shore.
I clung to the drone’s fin. The thicker atmosphere down here was slowing the drone and me. The plan had been that in the thicker air I would “steer” myself toward the target landing zone in the sea, while the drone followed. Unfortunately, I had wound up behind the drone, so instead the drone and I remained a trailer following a runaway bus, bound wherever wind and gravity took us.
The landing, it became clearer with each yard of free fall, was not going to be in the twinkling blue sea, where a boatload of friendlies would rush to collect me. The drone and I were plummeting inland. I had to correct course.
Crack .
The altimeters on the drone and on my chute pack popped the small drogue chutes off my back and out the drone’s tapered tail.
“Crap!” I let go of the drone’s fin like it had caught fire and spun myself away. Either the drone’s drogue chute or the main chute that the drogue was tugging out would foul my own chute. If that happened, being off target or losing my equipment wouldn’t matter. The drone and I would hit like dropped rocks.
Whomp .
I screamed as the shock of my main chute’s deployment jerked my wrecked shoulder.
Happily, my chute’s opening separated me clean from the ED, which dangled beneath its own intact chute a hundred feet below and four hundred feet to my left.
A mere thousand feet below, too close for meaningful course alteration, Mother Tressel rushed up to greet me.
Unhappily, her kiss was going to be sloppy.
Twelve
I grimaced as I yanked the toggles that controlled my chute canopy, struggling to sideslip so that I would land in the sea’s open water. But a thousand feet disappear fast, and the wrist at the end of my dislocated shoulder refused to cooperate, so one toggle worked and the other didn’t, and I just corkscrewed down into the inland swamps.
My boots crackled sideways through leathery foliage sixty feet above mud. Then the first substantial branch caught beneath my shoulder and spun me. Pain seared my shoulder as the impact popped the joint back into place.
Then my canopy hung up in the treetops. I swayed as I dangled. Water the color and consistency of old gravy lapped at my boot toes. I twisted as I dangled. I was down in one piece, but where? Dragonflies as big as vultures zigged through mist patches adrift above the water.
Based on my briefing, I had landed in the Tressen Barrens, one hundred
“Arrr!” I forced my hand back and death-gripped the fin.
This time, I held on. The speed differential between my slower fall and the drone’s fall yanked me into the wind shadow behind the ED.
Pop .
I yelped. I had separated my shoulder once before, falling off a hovertank fender onto a boulder. I got chewed out by a sergeant for clumsiness and had to route-march behind the tank for six miles so I would learn to be more careful next time. This time the separation felt more severe, but so were the consequences if I let go.
The drone, now with me flapping behind and screaming inside my armor, flashed into high clouds. Ice crystallized on the outside of my vomit-smeared visor.
“Dammit.” Blind again. I chinned the visor’s defroster. By the time my view cleared, the drone and I had popped out of the clouds into an overcast day.
Below me was supposed to be the Eastern Sea of Tressel, off the coast of the part of Tressen that had once been the Unified Duchies of Iridia. A boatload of Iridian partisans, of questionable friendliness, was supposed to fish me, Weddle, and the drone out of the sea after I landed.
The sea was blue. What I saw below, through a film of Turkey With Giblet Gravy Paste, was only half twinkling blue. That was the sea, muted sunlight reflecting off waves. Half my field of vision was scum green laced with barf brown. The drone’s trajectory was dropping it and me too far toward shore.
I clung to the drone’s fin. The thicker atmosphere down here was slowing the drone and me. The plan had been that in the thicker air I would “steer” myself toward the target landing zone in the sea, while the drone followed. Unfortunately, I had wound up behind the drone, so instead the drone and I remained a trailer following a runaway bus, bound wherever wind and gravity took us.
The landing, it became clearer with each yard of free fall, was not going to be in the twinkling blue sea, where a boatload of friendlies would rush to collect me. The drone and I were plummeting inland. I had to correct course.
Crack .
The altimeters on the drone and on my chute pack popped the small drogue chutes off my back and out the drone’s tapered tail.
“Crap!” I let go of the drone’s fin like it had caught fire and spun myself away. Either the drone’s drogue chute or the main chute that the drogue was tugging out would foul my own chute. If that happened, being off target or losing my equipment wouldn’t matter. The drone and I would hit like dropped rocks.
Whomp .
I screamed as the shock of my main chute’s deployment jerked my wrecked shoulder.
Happily, my chute’s opening separated me clean from the ED, which dangled beneath its own intact chute a hundred feet below and four hundred feet to my left.
A mere thousand feet below, too close for meaningful course alteration, Mother Tressel rushed up to greet me.
Unhappily, her kiss was going to be sloppy.
Twelve
I grimaced as I yanked the toggles that controlled my chute canopy, struggling to sideslip so that I would land in the sea’s open water. But a thousand feet disappear fast, and the wrist at the end of my dislocated shoulder refused to cooperate, so one toggle worked and the other didn’t, and I just corkscrewed down into the inland swamps.
My boots crackled sideways through leathery foliage sixty feet above mud. Then the first substantial branch caught beneath my shoulder and spun me. Pain seared my shoulder as the impact popped the joint back into place.
Then my canopy hung up in the treetops. I swayed as I dangled. Water the color and consistency of old gravy lapped at my boot toes. I twisted as I dangled. I was down in one piece, but where? Dragonflies as big as vultures zigged through mist patches adrift above the water.
Based on my briefing, I had landed in the Tressen Barrens, one hundred
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