zone.
“Listen up!” Wilson began, keeping his position at point in the triangular formation in which the SOLO members stood. “Remember, your SOLO suit doubles as a nuclear, biological, chemical protection suit, but we’ve never jumped into fresh fallout like this before. The NBC suits will increase our exposure time, but even they have their limits. The Kevlar woven into the material isn’t likely to be enough to stop the armor-piercing ammo the Chinese have, so if you take a bullet down there, don’t try to stay in the fight. Get your ass to the extraction point as soon as possible, because you don’t want to see what that radiation exposure would do to you. Is that clear?”
“Hooah!”
“Okay, we just got our orders. We’re sixty seconds to drop time,” Wilson relayed excitedly. A green timer began counting down on the OLED heads up displays on each of their visors. “It’s time to stop breathing, boys. Hold your breath and activate your respirocytes.”
Craig tried to resist the instinctive urge to take in a last gulp of air, but the SOLO suits only had a minimal air supply—just enough to make it possible for the team members to speak to one another. Instead, he closed his eyes meditatively and concentrated on not taking in another breath. Just as before, only hours earlier in the presence of the doctor with the beautiful smile, Craig found himself marveling that he could live without air.
The green timer display dropped below thirty seconds.
“You holdin’ up okay, Doc?” Wilson asked over his shoulder.
“Hell yeah,” Craig replied. He turned to Robbie. “Robbie, you stay on my six until we reach the surface, understand?”
“I understand, Captain Emilson,” Robbie replied.
Craig turned back and faced the same direction as the rest of the team. In only ten seconds, the bottom of the ship would open up in trap-door fashion, and they would begin their descent.
“Remember, Doc,” Wilson barked, “when the door opens, you won’t even feel like you’re falling for the first thirty seconds, but keep an eye on your time gauge. If you aren’t in the delta position by then, you’re a goner.”
The count reached zero.
“Away!” announced the crackling, radio voice of the pilot.
The doors swung open and the small pressure vacuum sucked the six figures out into space in their triangle formation. Craig was the far man on the left.
The silence was perfect—not even the familiar sound of his own breathing accompanied him. Wilson had been right: As the seconds ticked by on his HUD, Craig didn’t feel as though he were falling at all. The formation seemed to be a tableau, hanging in the blackness of space, the azure blue of the Earth mixed with the warm brown of the Asian continent below. The other members of the SOLO team expertly adjusted their trajectories, each man putting himself into the critical twenty-five-degree angle to control his speed and drag when they hit the atmosphere. Craig awkwardly performed the maneuvers needed to match their delta positions—movements much more difficult to perform in a supersonic spacesuit that felt like a sleeping bag with arms than they were in his familiar HALO suit.
The seconds continued to tick by as the telemetry, communications, and pressure readouts flashed on the OLED of his HUD. The thirty-second mark was reached, and the aneroids in his suit reacted to the atmospheric pressure as they began to hit the outer rim of the atmosphere, the psi remaining at 3.5 to keep him comfortable and conscious.
“Good work, Doc. You’re doing fine,” said the reassuring voice of Commander Wilson over the radio. Craig looked down at the commander, just a couple of meters below him, still the point of their formation. “Keep those arms tucked. The pressure won’t feel like much at first, but when we hit Mach 1, the turbulence will be powerful. Even a little twitch can send you into a fatal tailspin.”
“Noted,” Craig replied. He wanted to gulp a nervous breath of air but resisted the urge. The HUD read just over four minutes remaining on their descent. Their altitude was dropping dramatically as their speed approached Mach 1.
“Sonic boom is imminent, boys! Steady!” Wilson shouted.
The SOLO suits were equipped with sound dampeners in the helmets to dull the thunderous
The sonic boom percussion felt like the explosion of a nearby landmine. The members of the team were seemingly all able to ride it out, and Craig’s eyes flew back open when the turbulence seemed to settle. The position of the four others in the triangle formation remained perfect, but the green dot signifying Robbie’s position on Craig’s HUD was suddenly dropping away behind him, moving further and further from the team.
“Doc, did you just lose your robot friend?” Wilson shouted.
“Looks like it,” Craig confirmed. There was no way to turn his head to get a visual confirmation, but it appeared the boom had sent Robbie into a tailspin behind them. “It’s okay. If he recovers from the spin and lands all right, he’ll double-time it to our target and meet us.”
“All right,” Wilson replied.
A second later, Craig’s HUD suddenly went blank, before briefly turning back on and then going blank once again.
“Uh, my HUD just went down,” Weddell stated in controlled alarm.
“Mine too,” Craig replied.
“We’re all down,” Wilson quickly realized. “We’re gonna have to open high and do it manually!”
Then, just as suddenly as they had flashed off, the HUDs came back online.
“I’m back up!” Craig shouted.
“Is everyone back up?” Wilson shouted.
Each member of the team confirmed.
“Okay! Then we stick to the original plan. Adjust to thirty-five degrees!”
Craig watched the time to opening tick down on his HUD. They were now only a minute away from their computer-controlled low opening. Their speed was slowing, but something didn’t feel right.
“Commander, have the onboard SOLO systems ever glitched like this before?” Craig asked.
“No. This is a first,” Wilson replied.
“Then I recommend we do a high manual—”
“Cut the chatter, Doc!” Wilson shouted. “Concentrate!”
The yellow dust covering the ground was closing in below them, its surface gleaming in the sunlight as it crawled like a yellow, living fog. The impact crater into which they were supposed to be touching down wasn’t visible.
A horrifying possibility suddenly reached into Craig’s skull and drummed its frozen fingers over his brain. The time readout was now below twenty seconds. “Oh no,” he whispered. “I’m taking command!” Craig suddenly shouted, nearly screaming in desperation. “Open your chutes now! Override! Override!”
“Belay that order!” Commander Wilson shouted back.
“Override! Override!”
“Follow protocol, SOLO!” Wilson screamed.
“The telemetry’s wrong! Open! Open!” Craig bellowed furiously. He opened his chute, the wind catching it hard as it unfurled, tugging him into a dramatic deceleration. The other members of his team fell away into the yellow dust, disappearing as though they’d been figments of his imagination.
Craig continued to float downward for several seconds, the yellow dust reaching upward to envelop his boots. “SOLO team, do you copy? Commander Wilson? Do you copy?”
The silence continued for a few seconds more before, finally, Weddell’s voice crackled through the interference. “Doc! Commander Wilson is…he’s dead, sir.”
10
