turning from black to an opaque green.
Breanna’s flight suit felt both sodden and stiff. She pushed her hands down, felt the ocean giving way beneath her — she was on a raft, a survival raft.
They were in the ocean. The storm was passing beyond them.
Were they alive?
Slowly, she reached to take off her helmet. Her fingers groped for several seconds before she realized she’d pulled it off earlier.
Breanna managed to sit up. The air felt like salt in her lungs, but she breathed deeply anyway.
Chris Ferris lay curled against the sides of the raft. She leaned toward him, felt something heavy fall against her back — Stoner was sprawled against her, legs trailing into the water.
She pulled at Stoner’s thigh, trying to haul them up over the side. She got one, but not the other, finally decided that would have to do.
A PRC-90 emergency radio lay beneath Stoner’s calf. As Breanna reached for it, she felt something spring in her back, a muscle tearing. Pain shot from her spine to her fingers, but she managed to pick up the radio. She stared at it, her eyes barely focusing. It took a moment to remember how to use voice — even though it was only a matter of turning a small, well-marked switch — then held it to her head.
“Captain Breanna Stockard of Dreamland Quicksilver looking for any aircraft,” she said. “Looking for any aircraft — any ship. We’re on the ocean.”
She let go of the talk button, listening for an answer. There wasn’t even static.
The earphone?
Long gone. Was there even one?
A Walkman she’d had as a child.
Breanna held the PRC-90 down in her hand, staring at the controls, trying to make the radio into a familiar thing. On the right side there was a small dial switch, with the setting marked by a very obvious white arrow. There were only four settings; the top, a voice channel, was clearly selected. The volume slider, at the opposite side of the face, was at the top.
Madonna was singing. She was twelve.
Snoop Doggy Dog. Her very first boyfriend liked that.
Breanna broadcast again. Nothing.
Switching to the bottom voice channel, she tried again. This time too she heard nothing.
Shouldn’t she hear static at least?
The spins — they’d listen for her at a specific time
The hour on the hour or five past or ten past or twelve and a half past?
She couldn’t remember when she was supposed to broadcast. She couldn’t think. The salt had gotten into her brain and screwed it up.
Just use the damn thing.
Breanna pushed the dial to beacon mode, then propped the radio against Stoner so that the antenna was pointing nearly straight up.
Was the radio dead? She shook it, still not completely comprehending. She picked it back up. Flipped to talk mode, transmitted, listened.
Nothing.
“Chris, Chris,” she said, turning back to her copilot. “Hey — you all right?”
“Mama,” he said.
She laughed. Her ribs hurt and her eyes stung and all the muscles in her back went spastic, but she laughed.
“Mama,” he repeated.
“I don’t think so,” Bree told him softly. She patted him gently. Chris moaned in reply.
“Sleep,” she said. “There’s no school today.”
The storm and his enemy’s ineptness, as much as his skill and the crew’s dedication, had saved them. sitting below the cold layer of water just below test depth, waiting forever, listening to the enemy vessels pass — Admiral Balin had known they would survive. They sat there silently, packing their breaths, so quiet the sea gods themselves would surely think they had disappeared. The admiral waited until they very last moment to surface, remaining in the deep until the batteries were almost completely gone. In the foul air he had begun to hallucinate, hearing voices; if they had not been congratulating him for his glory, he might have thought they were real.
A light rain fell; they were on the back end of the enormous storm. The waves pushed the low-sitting submarine violently, but the weather that hid them was welcome.
“Every man a turn topsides,” he told Captain Varja.
Varja nodded solemnly.
The crew nodded to thoroughly inspect the vessel, but to Admiral Balin’s mind, no matter what they found, the damage was minor. At worse, a few more vents on the tanks were out of order, he still had his engines, propeller, and diving planes.
And he still had two torpedoes.
There was another carrier, and at least one large ship, a cruiser, several escorts. He would pursue his enemies until all his weapons and energy were gone, even if it meant death. For what was death but a promise of another rebirth? The next life would strive even higher after this glorious triumph of the soul.
“We will continue east, with our best speed,” he told the captain.
Varja hesitated.
“Do you disagree the enemy lies there?” asked Balin mildly.
The question seemed to take the captain by surprise. He considered it for a second, then shook his head. within moments, the submarine began to come about.
She was there, somewhere there. Zen rolled his head around his neck, trying to loosen his muscles. Flying the UMB was easier than flying the Flighthawk. In truth, he wasn’t actually flying the aircraft. He was more like an overseer, making sure the computer did what it was programmed to do.
And it always did, precisely to the letter.
The computer had a detailed and rather complicated three-dimensional flight plan worked out for the search pattern. Starting at a peak of 180,000 feet — roughly thirty-four miles high — the UMB spiraled downward across the search grid to precisely sixty thousand feet above sea level. At that point, it ignited the rocket motor and began to climb again, once more spiraling upward. Zen’s primary concern was monitoring the speed, since as the UMB dropped it began to lose some of its stability; it was hampered by its inability to use the scramjets to maintain airspeed through the “low” supersonic flight regimes.
He was the only one with real-time direct access to the plane’s native sensors; Jennifer had spent the hours since their takeoff trying to work out the problems in the link, but still didn’t have a solution. Rubeo had to content himself with the slightly delayed KH feeds; he wasn’t particularly happy and shared his displeasure freely.
They had pinned down the point where the Megafortress went into the ocean, about 150 miles west of the Chinese task force. A close examination of the debris on the water, while confirming it was Quicksilver, failed to turn up any survivors.
Or bodies.
If they’d gone out somewhere before the plane hit the water — and as far as Zen was concerned, that was the only possibility — they should be somewhere between the impact point and their last transmission location. They had now carefully mapped the entire area, and even accounted for the effects of the wind and stormy sea, but there was nothing there.
According to the computer, there was enough fuel to continue the search for another six hours. As far as Zen was concerned, he could sit here for a week.
But what was the sense of going over and over the same territory? Obviously, they were looking in the wrong place, but Zen wasn’t sure where the right place was.
