- 1 -
"Okay, Lieutenant, we can't fly the profile we briefed, our area is closed, so let's fly over to delta."
I sighed as I pulled the nose up and raised the gear. I wondered if he knew that I knew he was lying? My last two check flights had been mysteriously cut short, due to an airliner transiting my area. Even though I couldn't see any airliners; trust me, those things are hard to miss. I'd even called the FAA who not only confirmed that there were no airliners in the area, but that there were no airliners that flew through our training areas. Ever.
The Major's attitude towards me this morning would at best be described as hostile. This was my last check ride, if I failed this; I was out of the program and out of the Air Force. And I didn't need a crystal ball to know that I had already failed this one. Sometime about two weeks ago I must have had offended someone, and the decision had been made to wash me out. I had no idea what I had done, but at least they couldn't do it on my academics or my flying. Oh, I wasn't the best stick in the group, which had been Ken. But Ken had gotten up and walked out of class last month, quitting the entire program and not telling anyone why, other than whispering something about 'bullshit'.
As Ken had been a commercial airline pilot with over ten thousand hours logged before coming here, and could out-fly all of the instructors, that had not gone over well with any of the students and morale had taken a serious hit.
Now I wasn't the best pilot left, but I was pretty damn good, and I was the best instrument pilot in the flight. But again, two weeks ago I lost my instructor and I'd had a different one every day since then. They'd been pretty tough too, hitting me with all sorts of stuff, but so far I'd been holding up. Then four days ago I failed my first check ride, because I'd been forced to call it quits in the middle of the profile because of the mysterious airliner.
Two days ago it had been the same thing.
It didn't matter that it wasn't my fault, didn't matter that I only had two things left to do in each case. It was a failure. They wouldn't even let me vector over to another area to finish there. Nope, can't do that, you failed.
But the biggest hint that this was the end was when a major I knew, because I'd worked for him in the past, pulled me aside and told me to get out, and get out while I still could, because they were gunning for me. He wouldn't say who, and he didn't know why, but he made it clear: my career was over.
"Roger that, Sir," I said and pulled the throttles out of afterburner as we passed one thousand feet.
"Let's do a touch and go first, Lieutenant," he ordered from the back seat.
"Yessir," I sighed and got on the radio, requesting the radar pattern. Not only would this cut into my time to do the assigned maneuvers, because doing touch and go's while heavy were fuel hog maneuvers, but it was difficult and dangerous. We weren't allowed to land with full fuel loads, ever, we weren't even supposed to do touch and go's, and now I was just ordered to do something I'd never done before.
I could see all my damns were trying to fly out the window then, but I did my job. Yeah, it was a set up, but it wasn't the first time I'd ever been set up in my career. The fact that I'd manage to survive those other times by outperforming everyone else, and actually accomplished what no one thought I could do, had saved my ass. So I'd give it my best shot and see what would happen.
Things were quiet as we flew the pattern, and I got us set up and coming down the glide path. The plane was being a real pig, it was too heavy to be landing after all, and I was working my ass off to keep us from setting up a sink rate. I'd never done this before, because we weren't allowed to, but I thought I had it well in hand when suddenly the Major said 'My airplane!', and lit the burners and called us as a go around.
"What the hell were you trying to do? Kill us, Lieutenant? If we'd touched down, you'd have driven the landing gear up through the wings!"
'Yeah,' I thought to myself 'which is why we're not supposed to do this'.
"Yes, Sir," I said and didn't give voice to any of my real feelings. We hadn't even set up a sink rate yet, I had been keeping us a little hot, so I knew he was full of it.
"Take us to Delta, and let's see if you know how to fly this airplane!" he said to me, "Your airplane."
"My airplane, Sir," I said, and watched this time as all my damns really did fly out the window and I no longer had any left to give. The second he took control, I'd failed. Now he just wanted to rub it in. And he did too, criticizing every single thing I was doing. I actually started to wonder if punching out would destroy his career? Oh I'd probably go to jail for it, but the abuse was getting to be so intense that it just might be worth it.
"Sir!" I said suddenly as something started to come at us from our ten o'clock.
"What the hell is it, Lieutenant?" He growled.
"Ten o'clock, sir!" I said and turned the nose away from whatever the hell was coming at us.
"What are you... shit! My aircraft!" he yelled and yanking the stick hard he put it into full afterburner and pushed us over towards the ground.
I turned and looked at, well, whatever it was. It looked like a plasma bolt, like the Romulans fired on Star Trek from those war birds of theirs. Only the border of this one was black and had wisps around it, like a storm cloud from hell, and we weren't pulling away from it. In fact it was closing at an incredibly speed. Everything got a lot quieter then and I looked at the airspeed, we'd just crossed mach one, and we were about to pass through fifteen thousand feet in a shallow dive. There were going to be a lot of complaints when we got back to base.
I wondered briefly if the bastard would try to pin that on me too?
Looking back up the ring was in front of us now, and then, just like that it stopped. Not in relation to us, in relation to the ground, and we flew into it at well over six hundred knots. I didn't even have time to care, not that I think at that point I did.
It was black, pitch black. I could see the glow of my gauges, so I pushed my tinted visor up and turned up the cockpit lighting a little, and everything in the cockpit looked just fine. I did a quick instrument check, everything was frozen. I grabbed the throttles and pulled them back, fighting some resistance.
"My aircraft!" I called, and the resistance suddenly faded as the Major took his hands off the throttles. I looked up into my mirrors, he'd pulled his visor off and stowed it, he had a much fancier single visor helmet. I could see the expression on his face, and it wasn't a very comforting sight. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
I noticed he was looking up, so I looked up as well.
"Holy..." I started to swear, but couldn't even finish.
There was a woman; she was floating outside the cockpit of our jet. She was dressed in what I could only describe as some sort of American Indian outfit, but not one I'd ever seen before, it seemed to be flowing in a breeze, and not the supersonic wind she should have been in. She had long black hair, and pattern American Indian features, though I don't think I could have placed them at all.
She looked at me briefly, I thought I saw a passing look of annoyance, or disdain, but I couldn't tell. She looked at the Major in the back seat then and smiled.
"Major John Riggs," She said, and I could hear it as clear as day, even though I was wearing earplugs, a helmet, and the canopy was closed.
"Who, who are you?" I head him reply.
"I am Estanatlehi, I am a goddess, and I have been sent to find you," She said with a pleasant voice.
"Find me? For what?" He asked.
I blinked and looked in the mirror; he'd dropped his facemask and was looking at her, curiously. He didn't look the slightest bit scared, worried, or upset. Me? My butt was so puckered at this point I'd probably sucked the entire seat cushion up inside!
"Your people have need of you, they are facing a great threat, it is a time of danger and war. You are needed to save them from what is coming." She said to him.
"My people?"
"Your mother's people," she said and nodded.
"Who the hell are your mother's people?" I asked looking up in the mirror.
"Quiet, Lieutenant," He growled.
"The Navajo," she said glancing at me, and then looking back at the Major.
"I don't understand," he said to her, "I haven't lived among the tribes, ever. I only visited as a child. I know little about their ways, I'm an officer in the air force! I'm a modern man! Not an Indian!"
"Precisely," Estanatlehi said to him, "you are a modern man, with modern knowledge and modern ways. The people who need you do not live here, in this place, in this time. Where they live, much has changed, and both the technology of the new, as well as the magic and gods of the old, live side by side. Sometimes in peace, sometimes in war, but there is always conflict.
"You straddle both of those worlds, with your heritage, and your training. With your childhood instruction on the reservation, and your adult learning in the colleges and the military. I have looked long and far for you, John."
"Well, go find someone else," the Major said, "I'm not interested."
Estanatlehi laughed, "I did not say you had a choice, John."
"But what of my home? My career? My family?"
"Sacrifices must be made by all of us," she said, and I noticed she glanced at me again. "But if you win, if you survive, I will bring you back here, to this time, and this place. It will be like you were never gone to the others."
"What about me?" I asked suddenly. How the hell would I explain a missing Major from the back of the airplane when I landed?
She glanced at me, and this time I could see that she definitely was just a little annoyed.
"As I said, sacrifices must be made, that is yours." She turned and looked at the Major again.
"I do not have much time, and there is much to tell you, John," she looked at me then, "and only you."
Suddenly I couldn't hear her voice anymore, only his. Mostly he just said 'yes', 'who', and 'okay'. Though I did hear him once say 'Camp Pendleton North?'
Then suddenly, just like that, the darkness went away, and we were flying again.
I swore and got control of the aircraft quickly, pulling us up into level flight and out of the dive we'd been in. The altimeter said five thousand feet, and the fuel tanks, well we had less than four hundred pounds of fuel left. So I pulled the throttles back to min power, and pulled the nose up to turn all of that airspeed into altitude.
"What are you doing, Lieutenant?" the Major growled at me from the back seat. I looked up in the mirrors and could see he had his mask back on and his visor down.
"We're low on fuel, Sir. I'm trading airspeed for altitude."
We went subsonic then, and I felt the slab suddenly regain the control authority it had lost when we'd been supersonic, and I released a little backpressure and re-trimmed the aircraft, as I looked out the window.
"Where the hell are we?" I asked, then added, "Sir."
He was quiet for a minute, and then I heard him swear, "I guess she wasn't lying!"
"No, apparently not, Sir," I said. "So, where do we land? Or do we bail out?"
"Look for any roads."
I nodded and rolled the aircraft on its side so we could look out across the ground below us. We were at thirty thousand and I had leveled out, I was just letting airspeed bleed off as we looked for a place to put down. I saw something that looked like a runway, possibly an airport, but there was a huge crater in the middle of it.
"My aircraft!" the Major called out and took control. He put us in a slow descending spiral and I saw the road he was aiming for. It looked like an interstate highway, and thankfully it looked clear.
When we got down to fifteen hundred feet, he lined us up next to the road and we flew along it for a couple miles.
"Looks okay from up here, Sir." I said.
"Landing Checklist," he called out and we ran though that as he pulled us into an overhead pattern.
I looked around as we came in to land. Things around here looked a lot different than when we'd taken off. There were a lot more trees here; we weren't in a fairly arid desert-like environment anymore. As we rolled out on short final, I could see the road a lot better now.
And the concrete in front of us was broken rather badly.
"Obstruction! My aircraft!" I called out and taking control, I goosed the throttles to make us land long. As soon as we touched down, I pulled the nose up and retracted the flaps to get us the most aero-braking as possible. I held the nose up as long as I could as we literally bounced down the runway, then as soon as I had to lower the nose down I slammed on the brakes, as hard as I dared and just hoped I didn't burn them out before we stopped. The aircraft continued bouncing along over the uneven pavement and I could see there were more obstructions up ahead.
I got us slowed down enough before we reached them that I was able to engage the nose wheel steering to steer us around the holes in the pavement, then, finally, we stopped.
I called out the after landing checklist, then the engine shutdown procedure. I opened my canopy, pinned my seat, pulled off my checklist, my kneeboard, undid the restraints, and undid my parachute. After all, we weren't anyplace that I knew of, so I wasn't going to walk around with fifty pounds of nylon on my back.
I stood up on the seat in the cockpit and looked around as I undid my speed jeans. There were a lot of trees to either side of the pavement here, and the concrete was broken up around us. I was amazed that we'd made it down in one piece and I doubted we'd ever be taking off again.
Dropping my g-suit on the floor with my helmet and my other flight gear, I reached down to fold out the 'steps' in the side of the jet. I'd never used them before this, and I carefully climbed down to the ground, grabbing the gear pins as I did. I pinned all three of the landing gear, then closed both canopies and turned off the batteries.
I don't know why I bothered, this airplane would never fly again, it needed a starter cart to start the engines, and I was pretty sure we didn't have any of those around. Training and habit I guess.
I looked over at the Major, who was looking around the area that we landed and mumbling something to himself as I took stock: I had no idea where we were, I had no food, and I was pretty sure that if everything I'd just heard and seen was true, I'd just been marked off as 'expendable'.
Oh, and I was stuck here with a first class asshole who out-ranked me.
Yea, go me.