Through Silent Skies

Chapter Two

Shocked into action I unclip my bunk's safety belt and leap out of it. Gloria, dressed in her sleep suit, is already opening the flight deck door. As she pulls it back I catch sight of the instrument panels; all of the readouts have scarlet warning icons blinking furiously and numerous alert tones are clamouring for attention. Bryan is pulling back on the control yoke with one hand, while busily tapping the touch screen with his free fingers and issuing curt vocal commands; none of his actions appear to be having any effect. Romas Maartens is slumped back in his seat, head lolling; he appears to be unconcious.

I need to get into his seat and fast.

Gloria has had the same idea; she reaches for his harness buckle and releases it, pulling him forward and out with a strength I didn't know she had. I grab him as well, rip off his hairnet, and together we pull him back through to the crew compartment.

"LOOK AFTER HIM!" I shout to Gloria over the cacophony of the alarms. Not waiting for her to acknowledge I leap into his vacated seat and strap in.

My first action is to thump the Master Alarm button which silences the shrilling. The sudden quiet after so much noise seems even more startling. "What happened!" I shout to Bryan over the rushing of the wind outside; our dive is continuing.

"It appears to be a widespread systemic failure!" He says, confirming what I already suspected. "One minute everything was normal; the next everything crashed! We've lost wing coherrency!" Glancing at the monitor I can see he's right; the wing is discoordinated; billowing and fluttering in the slipstream. Though it's incredibly strong it was never designed to be stressed like this; there's only so much it can take before it fails catastrophically. I'm sure I can hear the tethers creaking with the strain; something they should never do. "I've initiated an emergency reboot of the entire system. It seems to be restarting but it's slow! And for some reason the emergency purge activated; we lost 78% of our gas before I could stop it. I've started refilling from the reserve but we're still losing height!" I look at the altimeter and the buoyancy gauge. If both are accurate we've descended 6000 metres and are heavier than air.

"If we can't recover before reaching 2000 metres I'll jettison the wing and deploy the emergency parasail!" I decide. It's a desperate measure to be used only in the direst of straits, but I think our situation would justify it; it's better to become a giant paraglider and rely on soaring on thermals to get us over dry land, rather than splash into the Atlantic at 400 kph. My hand hovers over the transparent safety shield covering the manual cutaway controls; its telltale lights are some of the few still green lit.

"Wait... I think we're getting something back!" says Bryan. Some icons and lines of script on the priority system screens are indeed turning from red to amber, and the wing appears to have reverted to a preprogrammed standard aerofoil profile as well as slowly refilling with gas: You don't rush anything with liquid hydrogen; even under these circumstances. Yes, our rate of descent appears to be decreasing but we're by no means out of danger yet.

Glancing around the panels which are still working it appears Albatross is at present relying on its hardwired 'dumb' emergency protocols to keep running. The virch core is still shut down and looks as if it will stay that way for the time being. "From now until further notice we're operating in manual reversion. The virch is staying offline until we land." Bryan nods his agreement.

"Buoyancy still negative point three but rising." That's a good sign, we're beginning to stabilise; our fall is down to 200 metres per minute. We're buying ourselves precious time to get on top of things.

"Buoyancy negative point two five and rising!" announces Bryan. Yes, we might just get ourselves out of this mess yet, or at least give ourselves some room for manoeuvre.