Origin of the 11th

Chapter 5: The Greatest Pilot

"How? There wasn't supposed to be anything on the forecast." Julia breathed as we drew closer.

"When we get back, we've got to request a new weatherman." I said in an attempt to lighten the mood. It was true; there was no way that any meteorologist should be able to miss this. The storm loomed ahead of us, cyclones and tornados dancing within the embodiment of bad weather. "Is there a way around it?" I called into the communications device, hoping that it hadn't cut the connection between the two planes.

"No there isn't." James' voice sounded through the channel. "I can't see an end to the left or right. Neither can the radar of the planes. This storm must be close to the largest one ever. How could the old man have missed this one?"

"We have to go through it." Julia said suddenly. I turned to stare at her as if she were insane, but she held her composure.

"Are you mad?" I commented pointlessly, knowing that we were going to have to go through the storm to get to the Himalayas. The scope of the storm was truly a marvel of meteorological creation, but something seemed off. The storm wasn't moving, simply standing floating in the area ahead of us.

"There is no other way. Don't you see that this storm shrouds that entire part of the ocean?" Julia said, taking to the pilot seat and putting on the helmet. I nodded and went to the back to manage the Raven's maintenance. There was nothing to be said anymore. I was just going to have to keep the plane intact and hope that Julia could navigate through this thing.

"We can do it." Tiffany's voice echoed through the plane in a tone that clearly betrayed her. Realizing that the communications had been turned to the speakers, I decided that it was a good idea to keep open communication between the two aircraft, but it would come at the cost of forcing us to be within a kilometer of each other. Choosing not to mention that particular detail, I began looking around at the systems of the plane. All intact. Sighing in relief, I opened up a vision window so I could see the situations of our two planes.

"Let's go!" Julia shouted, and I could feel the Raven accelerating as the four of us entered the storm. Immediately, the entire plane began rumbling as more than half of our systems immediately shut down. I looked through the vision window to see that the storm had seemingly tripled in intensity the moment we entered it. Huge lightning bolts rained down along with torrents of rain. By the way the other Raven was flying, I could tell that Tiffany was the pilot and James was the maintenance man. Both planes had nearly slowed down to a crawling speed as roughly a quarter of our engines froze over.

"Oh my god. What madness is this storm?" Tiffany gasped as every thinkable form of precipitation slammed into the Raven from every direction. I looked and saw their Raven, which was coated with snow, headed towards a cyclone.

"Tiffany! Look out!" I yelled, shocked that the communications were still functioning. She seemed to have heard me because their Raven slowly turned fifteen degrees to the east and narrowly avoided the whirlwind. "You're fine." I said, relieved but not actually believing what I was saying. The storm continued to lash at us as if intentionally trying to destroy us. 300 pound blocks of hail were storming our aircraft now; smashing our every attempt to deploy various forms of protective equipment. But we could manage for a while, as long as we were lucky enough to avoid lightning.

We continued to travel through the storm, bearing the brunt of the worst of nature's fury. James and I were yelling advice to each other across the communications channel, which miraculously hadn't been destroyed. Tiffany would occasionally ask for help with navigating the behemoth, which I would help her with using my vision window. The two of them were doing surprisingly well considering that they were the bottom two in our graduating class and had never really shown proficiency at piloting or maintenance. Julia was silent the entire time though, which bothered me a little, but I quickly shoved aside my worries. Julia had excelled at every one of the academy's subjects through hard work and practice, so she should be able to theoretically get us through eventually. But hard work only got one so far in this world.