World In Turmoil

32: A Single Flight

An emerald striped Mk3 Dispatcher Fighter, dropped from the heavens. Its long flat wings streaking white smoke, as a purple paste smeared across its hull, a grey-orange smoke trailing from its engines.

The man inside howling wildly into his com-link. Panic burning his face scarlet red as his craft sank through the sky. Ablaze.

Emerald leader had only expected one more flight. But, this was barely half of what he had bargained with himself.

A Simple Fall.

Inevitable annihilation racing towards him in the form of a planet. No calculated combat, or tactical employ... This cloud had hit him at 2,500 kmph, how that was possible was beyond him, yet the reality of the event was unquestionable, stuck to his falling bird.

The horizon, blocked by clouds of purple substance, had turned into a hard force of impact the moment he made contact.

Like water at high speed...

There was no escape now.

The now cloudless sky whipping by him, the mountain ranges rising up past him as the land grew closer. Not even the comradery of the long since departed, Orange leader, was here in his last hour... At least he would join her soon.

This. Was a quiet. Lonely. Death.

Gripping the sticks of his jet control with white knuckled fingers. He leaned himself back into that synthetic seat, gritting his teeth, face scratched with a look of enraged abandonment.

Bracing himself for the last landing of his last flight. He was falling. His baby being consumed around him by this purple that clung to her. His mind so filled with terror yet still so alert.

A new weapon...
What life depraved maniac developed this?

He watched the rich, luminous substance as it clung to his cockpit. Strange intricate patterns of glowing light rippled across it as it eviscerated the very glass and metal around him.

It was akin to Grey Goo. As old as that concept was.
Nano-robots that consumed and assimilated anything they touched, in order to replicate. Or in most tested examples, annihilate.

But this was smarter than any grey goo talked about in any Archive. This had attention and awareness. It had seen him coming, regardless of his speed.

It had anticipated its next Target.

This was his end...

Even escape was impossible. The purple caked onto his ship, in such a way as to seal the cockpit tight. Ejection refused to function as the level he pulled, stuck and the lid held itself firmly in position.

Though through the writhing substance there was still space enough to see the land below. The gold of the morning light just beginning to catch the tip of... a megalithic spire of purple.

His mind still at work, queried;
"A control tower?"

A flash of white light drew his attention. An Electrical storm at it's base?

"A power source?..."

The white and blue flashes of light that flickered across the ashen landscape seemed to carve gashes out of the purple spire, the very clouds of purple that had covered the sky, now dropping towards it, surrounding it, seeming to converge on the centre of the storm only to be flung out. Falling and blanketing the city ruins like a dust. The luminous glow gone.

From the distant ground, just beginning to glow a golden shade in the mornings continued dawn, a single bolt of lightning shot out from the base of the megalithic tower of purple.
The storm of pure energy seemingly not satisfied with only engulfing the lands below.

This bolt of power...

It surged and writhed through the sky of golden rays, up and up, striking a connection sharply with his craft. The ear deafening crack of power jolting his jet, and throwing the entire world into a spin as the craft was forced off into an unidentifiable direction.

Blue sparks of energy gripped his jet, arcs leaping from console to console, his synthetic semi-rubber suit the only reason for his continued survival as the electricity rippled through the hull of the craft.

The purple silently screamed as the energy shocked that luminous life out of them. The chunks beginning to sheer off his craft in thick sheets of blackened substance. Plummeting with his craft down towards the empty husk of a city that awaited them below.

But he threw his arms downwards with all the might he could, pushing against the very power of the fall that called him. The lever below resistant, but not to his adrenaline.
The raw energy of his determination ripped the lever into an upright position.

Within seconds, the diamontant glass of the cockpit fired itself off into the rushing winds, his seat following suit in seconds. The pure pressure of the launch pushing his stomach into his intestines with a vicious force.

The cold fresh air greeting him, the winds wrapping around his body, rippling through the folds of his blue and white gear.

He was lucky that electrical storms were a risk calibrated for in fighter uniforms.
Though his entire body shivered with a strange tingling energy as some loose arcs of electricity still danced across his gear.

The parachute managed to deploy, a huge heptagonal sheet of dark grey fabric that gushed out into the sky, expanding to its full size, and jerking him back.

The MK3 hurtled off towards the land below.

In a gasped breath through ground teeth and a mask he said, 

"I can't Orange... Not this time..."