Bubble Energy Taken by Force

Storm

 "They're making a beeline towards a thunderstorm, the same one that blocked us earlier. It's still pacing back and forth near the mountaintop."

"Apparently, they planning to use its extreme turbulence to shake you off the air intake. Their attempt will not be successful because our shield is attached to the intake lip."

"I don't care about the shaking. It's the lightning strikes that make me quake in fear. Hmmm. Are you sure the shield and intake lip are melded together? Are the two parts now one?"

"Yes."

Great! Shrink our shields."

"Yes sir. But what good would that do? You will only reduce our drag."

A fiery ring burst from the spinning blades' edge. The inlet surrounding the blades began glowing red hot.

"You're right, but we'll crush the engine in the process. The blades are so close to the walls that the inlet's minuscule deformation can cause them to do some serious scraping. You may stop shrinking our shields. Look at the engine burn."

The over-stressed wheel radiated white heat. Abruptly, it busted apart like glass. Shattered blades were sucked deep into the engine, smashing their way through multiple fans. Pieces of sharp metal poked through the engine cover. Smoke briefly obscured the destroyed turbine before the fire suppressant put out the burning fuel.

"Okay, try expanding our shields as much as you can safely do. Awesome! Between our horrible drag and their power reduced by half, we won't be going any place overseas. They'll be lucky if they could limp to the nearest airport."

Stephen waited for them to respond. After looking at his watch for the fifth time before realizing that it had stopped long ago, he screamed, "Turn away at once! With our low altitude, low thrust and lousy streamlining, a single downdraft could swat us to the ground. That's if lightning doesn't kill us first. You don't have to die. Just land and give up. Why do you need to be so fanatical? Darn it!"

Terrible fists of turbulent drafts hurled their unquenchable wrath against the crippled, insignificant jet, violently pounding it with hurricane-force wind. Instantly, tortured clouds, stained by gray claws, blotted out sky and ground. Fearsome wind and rain slowly howled in unison, "Death!" Through the force field and ruined chair, he felt creaking air frame shuttering from nature's primeval rage. All he could see was boiling cumulonimbus whipping pass them at unthinkable speed.

Stephen tried calling to the computer, but his tiny voice was lost among the discordant noises. He gave up and held on to his seat belt. Hail, larger and harder than baseballs, hurled through their path. They smashed through every window in the jet's cockpit and badly dented both wings. Several impacted against the shield and flashed into puffs of steam. With its pilot dead and controls wrecked, the jet began to stall.

"No! Not lightning!" He felt hair rise from intense buildup of electricity. A writhing and wrinkled hot-white line with jagged spines sticking out, stabbed against his force field. It viciously struck again and again in strobe-like fashion. An eerie metallic scream echoed across infinity. Ugly thunderstorm vanished, replaced by confused spinning of sun, blue sky and hard earth. Bone crunching G-force sat on Stephen's chest. Translucent ripples, undulating among fabrics of space, enveloped the jet. Rhythmic contractions of immaterial distorting fabrics of space wrapped around both wings and bent them upwards until the tips nearly touched. Amazingly, they remained attached to the fuselage.

"Computer, do something," Stephen weakly gasped while trying to force meager particles of air into his flattened lungs.

"Twinkle, twinkle little star," the computer tonelessly sang over the still echoing scream. Sky and sun spun ever faster. Ripples constricted against the force field. The shields flared while futilely resisting its crushing grip. He felt his chair buckled. A plasma tornado leaped to the ground, searing a long trail of bubbling lava. At impact, overwhelming noise and blue fire slammed into Stephen's shields with atomic force.

It took over a minute before Stephen could regain his senses enough to take in the scene. "I be..." He couldn't say anything more. Like raindrops, trees were still falling. Shattered boulders clattered as they fell to earth. Billowing clouds of dust hung in the air, obscuring the view. It would take many more minutes until it settled down. So powerful was the overdriven shield that it dug a perfectly straight trench roughly six meters deep. All obstacles, no matter how massive, in the path of the careening sphere were crushed, sliced and tossed aside without effecting the trajectory. They offered the same amount of resistance as dust bunnies in the tank's path. The trench's other end was lost from obscuring haze.

Then, he realized that with the jet engine disabled, he could've detached at any time before reaching the storm. "Rats! Too late to do anything now", he thought.

Noticing a wisp of white smoke, he looked underneath his seat. Smoke hissed from a pinhole-sized puncture in the cylinder. "This does not look good." It grew more ominous by the minute. He tugged at his seat belt, but couldn't get it to release. Already, dense clouds began to grow. "Computer! Are you awake? Computer! Help!" Neon-green sparks, large enough to stop a heart, arched from one swirling cloud bank to another. The intimidating noise rapidly increased in volume. "Dumb, dumb, dumb!" He exclaimed when realizing that he was strapped in by an ordinary airplane seat belt. It uses a simple hinged mechanism for opening, unlike the more complex button system common in cars. In a moment, the belt fell to the side and he leaped to the ground running.

"Help me! I'm trapped under the wreckage. Help!"

Stephen hid behind a rock. "Help yourself. I'll probably get shot if I show myself." As the ground vibrated with greater intensity, he looked at the horizon with considerable interest. For several seconds, he debated about the merits of resting so close to the Superjet. A fissure began tearing through the ground. From the jet, ever more desperate pleas turned into wordless shrieks. After seeing boulders rattling, he decided to head for the hills. Agonized howls chased him. He ran until he stumbled onto the ground gasping for breath, using his last reserves crawling, still hearing dying men behind.

The sun had long since set. Stephen hiked for hours over the moonlit desert before spying the dimly lit house. At last, after two kilometers of more dusty walking, he staggered into the warm atmosphere of the general store."

"May I borrow your phone please? My, ahh, transportation crashed." The puzzled store clerk handed him his phone, an old-fashioned corded type, bulky and black. "Thank you." He dialed his company's toll-free number. "Hi, this is Stephen. What a pleasant surprise, seeing that you so quickly fixed the line. I was expecting to get a 'phone out of service' message. It never hurt to try. I'm alive and well, thank goodness. I got the disk, or what's left of it. The pieces are inside a barf bag picked up among the wreckage. I hope you have backups. You do? Five sets? You're wonderful. You see, the Superjet malfunctioned and tore itself apart along with everything else within a half-kilometer radius. Robo-Mentor never picked up any transmissions from them? Great. Where are they now? Hopefully, reincarnated as turkeys being raised for Thanksgiving dinners. You won't need to worry about contacting the American Special Operations. Well, I have to go now. I wish to call a cab before they close for the night. OK, good point. Excuse me."

Stephen turned and asked the clerk, "This is rather embarrassing, but I don't know where I am. What town and state? Uh oh, that's going to be an expensive cab ride. I'm lucky that crazy space warp didn't ship me to France. Or worst, Africa." Turning to his phone, he said, "I'm afraid that it's going to take a while. I'm in Colorado, near Pikes Peak. Thank! I really appreciate the lift. This takes a big load off my back. I'll wait right here. The store manager can put me up in the bread and breakfast."

After giving the complete address, he hanged up and dialed another number. "Hello, Alpha Car Rental? It's Stephen. It's about my Benjamin I picked up earlier today. Yes. I had a bit of trouble with it. Please send someone to Arden Mountain Estate tomorrow morning to pick it up. Have him bring a dump truck and a backhoe with grappler. Can you slow down? I don't understand what you're saying." Stephen began wondering what Frank would tell his chief.