Conflagration

Sergeant Scalps

For a half a minute, the plane was silent. The only sounds were the gentle hiss of the life support system, the creaking of the wooden dock against the plane's nose, and the lapping of the water against the outer skin. Neither woman said much. Mainly, they just took in the moment as two people who had just faced great danger and were still alive to appreciate the fact.

The silence didn't last.

Quite all at once, the noise of several smaller planes filled their ears. Through the cockpit windows, Erin saw several fighter planes circling above. She even saw what looked like a small gunship, about twice the size of the little fighters. It had no wings and instead relied solely upon vertical thrusters for its lift. From either side of the gunship protruded a gunner's turret and what looked like some kind of heavy particle weapon. And then, she saw the troopship. The troopship was too large to land on the little service platform which floated next to the hardpointer, but the pilots of that troopship didn't let that discourage them. The troopship hovered barely a meter above the platform and lowered it's ramp. Before the ramp even met the surface of the platform dozens of men poured out with the practiced efficiency of military veterans.

But these were clearly no military. The men (and a few women) wore no common uniform and displayed no flag. They wore bits and pieces of uniforms from various nations all over the Darklands. They made a motley assortment and no two looked alike. Pirates, Erin thought. They want to take this plane. The thought of this made Erin burn with rage. This was her plane. She was the pilot in command and she was the one who had signed the plane out. No way in heck was she going to let these dirtbags have it. But what could she do? She couldn't fight them with her one, empty gun.

She knew that she had a crazy look on her face by the way that Lyssa looked at her. "Erin, what are you gonna do?" Lyssa asked, sounding more afraid of her than the army of pirates just outside the plane.

Erin heard some more big engines roaring above and behind her. They were outside of her view through the cockpit windows. Now, she heard boot steps trundling across the roof of the fuselage. She understood what was happening. A second troopship was dropping even more troops on top of the plane. If she didn't think of something quick, they were going to take the plane.

Then, something did occur to her. She reached up to the life support system controls on the overhead panel and equalized the pressure with the outside air pressure. She didn't have time to do it gently, so she did it as quickly as she could without blowing out hers or Lyssa's ears. The sudden reduction in pressure hurt and they both cried out in pain.

"What the bends are you tryna do? Blow out my ears?" Lyssa complained.

But Erin didn't have time. Once the pressure equalized, she pulled the lever on her pilot's side window and slid the window back into its frame. From the galley, she heard the emergency hatch in the roof open. A second later she heard the first set of boots drop down into the plane through the now-open emergency hatch. She had only seconds to act. They weren't going to get the plane if she had anything to say about it.

Outside, on the service platform, someone noticed that she'd opened the side window. "You in the cockpit! Surrender now!" a man shouted at her.

She ignored him. She grabbed the control card from its slot next to the main computer. The moment she pulled the control card, the central computer went dark. The flight instrument panel went dark. The hydraulics system that ran the flight controls went silent. Without the control card, the main computer wouldn't function, and without the main computer almost no other system would function. Only the lights and life support remained.

"What the⁠—?" Lyssa started to ask, but before Lyssa could react or even figure out what she was doing, Erin managed to throw the control card out the open window. She barely heard it splash into the water below. The control card, without which the plane was useless, began its long journey to the lake bottom more than a kilometer below.