Sky Runner
Science fiction short
“8,000 feet and climbing.”
The control board was a sea of red and orange in front of Jackson. Temperature spikes in the port engines, pressure wavering on the fuel lines, a fistful of other issues screaming. The holographic pilot assistant was a nagging voice talking about hull breaches, overload stresses, and something about too much radar activity. The control stick in his hands shook and rattled, trying to free itself from his grasp.
Port Flint burned below them. Black smoke from the refineries, green clouds from the plasma fracking towers that had been hit first, yellow fog banks where the Xin vapour bombs had hit and started spreading. White contrails everywhere as the last of the aerospace defense jets tried to engage the descending horde.
“12,000 feet and climbing.”
Flight Lieutenant Harrigan sat next to Jackson, face white and eyes wide. His pressure suit was tight where the acceleration was ironing them down into the pilot chairs. He was working the controls on the starboard side of the cockpit, trying to get the auto-safety systems to activate and stop the chaos.
The control board stayed red.
The lifter they were in was not meant for passengers. The Icarus was barely even meant for cargo, and Jackson clung to the thought that the gods must have meant for them to survive if the lifter had gotten them this far. Everything around them was vibrating, control panels humming as the thrust stress shuddered through the craft. Behind them, from the rear of the Icarus, a plume of fire was lifting them into the winter sky and drawing a fat white contrail of its own.
“16,000 feet and climbing.”
Their cargo bay was packed full of refugees. There had been little warning before the Xin came, and when people started scrambling it was already too late. Everything that could reach orbit, did so - and what was left behind, was consigned to death.
Except for Jackson.
Jackson was not ready to die. Not when he could still pilot, and not when the old lifters from the industrial museum were still working. Not when he knew the Icarus could still lift.
Clarice, face pulled into a grimace from the acceleration, hauled herself into the rear of the cockpit. She already had her pressure helmet on, and her voice was strained when she yelled at them over the roar of the engines.
“Captain, the last hull patches are done. Pressure is settling in the cargo bay.”
Jackson dared a quick glimpse to the side, made eye contact, smiled. His hands stayed on the shuddering control stick.
“Good job. Start inflating the emergency rafts next. Pad the women and the children as much as you can.” Jackson kept his voice calm, and snapped his attention back to the windscreen ahead. The blue sky was starting to darken, the terminus line approaching. “Keep them safe, sergeant.”
“20,000 feet and climbing.”
Harrigan pointed at the radar screen just as the alert tones became more strident.
“Captain, I think we have…” was all he managed before the two Xin jets blurred past, shaking the lifter’s airframe with their backwash. A wall of sound followed, and Jackson gave a wordless yell in return when the superheated air hit them from the side. The Icarus tumbled, nose wobbling, and a crack appeared on the lower starboard corner of the windscreen.
“Stalling, stalling.”
A new constellation of warning lights lit up on the control panel, and Jackson felt his helmet visor slam down automatically. The motion was instantaneous, turning the cockpit interior a shade of brown before the automatic polarisation filters muted down again. The hiss of canned air started up moments later from inside his suit.
“Lieutenant, sergeant - talk to me. Is everyone okay?”
Two affirmations croaked back, and Jackson caught a thumbs-up from his co-pilot. The air pressure in the cockpit was dipping down, the dashboard meter tumbling and flashing red.
“Get out, both of you. Harrigan, make sure my suit lines are connected.” Jackson kept his voice clipped and calm, and his eyes on the sky above them. The blue around them was fading bit by bit. “Clarice, make sure the cockpit door seals properly behind you. Chem-bond it if you have to. Once you’re out, I can’t get up again to do it myself.”
“Captain, I’m staying as well.” Harrigan’s tone was defiant, but when Jackson turned and glared at him, the lieutenant dropped his eyes and began to unbuckle himself from his chair. Jackson felt a hand on his shoulder, and then Clarice was gone.
“24,000 feet and climbing.”
“We’re going to need you in orbit, Harrigan. The backup controls are at the rear terminal, you can run the Icarus from there once we hit zero-grav.” Jackson slapped at one of the engine fuel controllers, juggling feed rates against the pressure leaks that threatened to starve the engines of the fire they needed to keep lifting. “Talk to StarCav, and make sure you have the identity codes ready. They’ll come pick us up when you send the green code.”
“What about you, captain?” Harrigan braced himself between the seats, one hand on the rear of the cockpit. His legs were quivering under the launch stress gravities.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll hand it over once we get up there.” Jackson looked up at Harrigan one last time, and saw that the lieutenant understood. “Good luck, lieutenant.”
Harrigan’s mouth moved, but there was no sound on the radio. He turned, and was gone.
“29,000 feet and climbing.”
There was a clang behind Jackson as the cockpit door shut, and he was alone. The control board still strobed, and Jackson felt a trickle of relief when he saw the pressure lights for the bay interior had at least stabilized.
As long as the cargo bay could keep some atmosphere in, they had a chance.
They were almost a thousand souls, crammed in like fish from the great northern lakes. Women, children, workers, clerks - commoners, poor folk, no-one special. Colonists who had helped to settle this world, people who were nobodies in the grand scheme of things.
They had a chance to get out, though.
The Icarus just had to keep climbing.
“33,000 feet and climbing.”
Jackson watched the cockpit pressure gauge flatline. The crack in the windscreen was spreading, spider-webbing across and through the reinforced polymer as the Icarus shook. Half the sky ahead was cracks now.
The atmosphere up here was thinning, and a cold was starting to creep into the cockpit that not even his suit could keep out. Time was not on his side, and he worked the throttle controls to squeeze out another few points of lift. Tertiary hydraulics were starting to shut down, reds on the control board going from flashing to solid colours. Solid red was bad - solid red meant something was dead.
They were not dead yet.
“39,000 feet and climbing.”
Jackson was reaching for the trim dial when the windscreen gave a thin groan and shattered. Shards of polymer displaced backwards, filling the cockpit with an instant of blurring motion, and a slow, wet heat began to spread through the pilot’s limbs. He reached for the throttle one last time, slowly pushing it the rest of the way up, before fumbling for the auto-pilot toggle. His fingers were stiffening, and some appeared to be missing, and it took a long while before he found the toggle. It clicked, and the control stick’s vibration fell away a moment before his own hand fell from the stick.
The sky ahead was almost fully black now, and the darkness that encroached on the pilot’s vision slipped in slowly, one blink at a time.
After a while, the pilot stopped blinking.
The Icarus was still climbing.
In Port Flint, Benjamin looked up at the white contrail that marked the passage of the Icarus as it climbed. The winter sky was a cold blue above them, and the setting sunlight was repainting the contrail behind the Icarus in shades of pink and red, a soft pillar of colour lifting the dot that was the lifter ever higher into the sky. Two smaller contrails passed it at some point, drawing a momentary cross in the sky, but they were thin and wispy compared to the Icarus, and faded quickly.
His brother was up there. Jackson always talked about flying, from the day that he could talk. Something in his blood, their mother had said, and laughed. Dad told them stories about great pilots back on Earth, men who had conquered space, and Jackson had soaked it all in. Benjamin had preferred the stories about the men on the ground, the soldiers who fought with swords and rifles, but had always let Jackson pick the stories when their dad asked which ones to read at bedtime.
The last he heard from Jackson was the message after the first bombs hit, and when the Icarus lifted from the terminals shortly after, he knew where his brother was.
Port Flint was burning now, and Jackson had gotten the last of the colonists out. Benjamin’s own wife was up there, and for a moment he saw her again the way she had looked the day she received her sergeant stripes - but then the fires and smoke were back, and he was still on the ground.
At least she got out.
Benjamin checked the action on his rifle, looked up at the fading Icarus above for one last time, and headed towards the intersection where the sergeant was yelling.
Nicely done! The last gasp of life while trying to be a hero. Well done sir!
Wonderful stuff. This was poignant and beautifully written!