The Apollo Academy

by Kimberly P. Chase

  The only thing she had time to do was pitch the aircraft for a lower altitude. The darkness she was trying to fight off won, pulling her under until there was nothing but a deep black abyss.

  Distant panicked shouting and air far too warm swirled around her, causing her to startle awake.

  “Aurora, wake up!”

  “Aurora!”

  “Damn’t, Aurora! Answer me!” A final plea thick with emotion finally broke through the blackness that surrounded her.

  Aurora listened as someone kept screaming her name. She felt like she was going to be sick, her stomach practically in her throat. And then she became aware of the horrible tick tick tick tick that repeated over and over. The overspeed warning! Flashing lights and buffeting wings alerted her to the horrible fact that she was still in the airplane and not safely on the ground.

  At first, she didn’t understand the gauges on the instrument panel because there was no way they were functioning properly. But they would make sense if she’d entered into the mach tuck she’d desperately tried to avoid. The knot in her stomach coiled tighter as her nausea began to make sense. She was falling in a steep uncontrolled descent, and if she didn’t regain control, her only option would be death or deployment. Either way she would destroy a multi-million dollar aircraft.

  Sky frantically screaming her name wasn’t helping her think straight, so she ignored him for the time being. Why hadn’t he taken over the aircraft from the ground?

  Oh, right. It would be her luck that she would somehow find herself in a highly unrecoverable mach tuck while her UAV link was down.

  Ignoring her pounding headache and the unlikelihood of a full recovery, she yanked the throttles back and deployed the spoilers, hoping to slow her rapid descent. If only she had pulled them back before passing out the first time. A sick shrieking of metal tearing apart warned her that the spoilers had ripped off the wings. She cringed. She didn’t have time to think about what that meant for her landing and she couldn’t just flick a switch to pull her out of the flight.

  This was really happening.

  Aurora gently pulled the nose of the aircraft up, trying to slow her descent, without tearing the wings off the airplane. She was going way too fast to just yank the nose up. Even with her light pitch-up attitude, the G’s continued to increase on her body, pushing her down in the seat. If she didn’t recover soon she was going to have to deploy, and she had a feeling that was going to hurt, especially the ocean landing.

  Slowly the XT-101 began to recover altitude, and Aurora finally pushed the throttles forward to regain some of her lost altitude. She knew when she was given the fifty-five thousand foot altitude that the aircraft was bumping up against Coffin Corner, but now she had a completely new understanding of the term. Fully recovered, she glanced at the altimeter. Two thousand feet. That was nothing. But she was stable again.

  The only reason she was even awake right now was because the aircraft had plummeted to such a low altitude, where there was enough oxygen to breathe. Thankfully her descent happened over the ocean. If she had been over land, she wouldn’t have recovered in time. There were buildings over two thousand feet tall.

  “Aurora!” Sky’s deep voice was still booming over the aircraft’s communication unit and was now being broadcast throughout the small cockpit since she’d removed her head gear. Now his constant yelling was beginning to vibrate the air around her. She could no longer ignore the voice that literally shook the aircraft with his tremendous emotion.

  “Aurora!”

  Aurora wanted to laugh. Sky had abandoned proper protocol. He was no longer referring to her as N559TC. The calm, cool, I-know-everything Sky was nowhere around. She’d finally managed a way to shake him. She just wished it hadn’t taken a near-death experience.

  “Aurora, damn it, answer me!”

  She decided to end his frantic screaming. She put her head set back over her head, left the mouth portion open so she could breathe, and activated the mic.

  “Mayday, mayday. N559TC requesting immediate clearance to land on runway 7L.”

  Her hands began to shake uncontrollably, and her breathing sounded labored. She tried to slow her breathing rate down, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Despite how much she wanted to have a complete breakdown, she would not do so over the radio. Besides, she was pretty sure that if she gave in to asking Sky what the hell had just happened, all of her tightly-wound emotions would spring free as assuredly as a bullet from a loaded gun.

  “Oh, thank the stars.” Sky’s professional demeanor had all but vanished, but he attempted to regain composure as he continued. “You have clearance to land. No one is anywhere near you anymore. We’ll talk once on the ground.”

  She nodded even though no one could see it and managed to squeak out, “Roger. I’ll be landing on runway Seven Left.” She focused on landing the airplane, all the while trying to calm her racing heart and the tears that threatened to spill down her face at any second. Pure bravado was the only thing keeping the tears at bay. Afraid her voice would crack, she didn’t make any more radio calls on her landing progress. It didn’t matter, though, because the airspace had been cleared for her emergency, and she already saw the emergency teams gathering on the airfield below.

  The task of landing the airplane kept her from completely losing her cool. She knew what caused a mach tuck, but she was having trouble making sense why it had happened.

  Airspeed . . . set Vref plus twenty. She was still coming in fast. She couldn’t afford to pull the throttles back because of all the parasitic drag the damaged spoilers were causing. She was going to be landing hot and fast.

  Gear down.

  GPS localizer captured.

  Altitude call outs guided Aurora down. Five hundred feet, one hundred, fifty, thirty, twenty.

  Her landing, while a little too fast, was perfectly smooth. She was back in control of the aircraft. People were already running out to meet her, a tall blond male in the lead. The hands that had been steady for her landing now shook full force as she forced herself to release the death grip on the joystick.

  The trembling hands were only the first symptom to reappear because soon her breathing rate had skyrocketed, and the nausea was back with a vengeance. She only had a chance to see Sky’s worried face peering down at her before she passed out, still sitting in the cockpit clutching the release hatch.

  It was the second time she’d lost consciousness in the past thirty minutes, but this time waking up wasn’t so bad.

  The feeling of someone cradling her head and pushing her wild tangled hair out of her eyes felt nice, and the pure oxygen being forced into her lungs cleared away the fogginess. She tried to see who was holding her, but as soon as she opened her eyes she was blinded by bright sunlight. She closed them again.

  Everything was eerily silent while she breathed in the stale air. It was too quiet, and Aurora knew it wasn’t right. It was the type of silence that happened right before a storm. She knew chaos would soon break free because she felt its electrical charge building, just waiting for the right moment to release. She took comfort in the warm arms that encircled her, and she curled up even tighter, trying to surround herself in its comforting heat.

  The safe haven and oxygen began to take effect, and as soon as she felt better, her mind snapped free, and all of the noises that had been held at bay broke free. Sirens wailed and people yelled, but it was the whisper in her ear that she heard the loudest.

  “Aurora, can you hear me?”

  Again, she slowly peeped her eyes open. Sky’s face was an inch above hers, and he was holding her in his arms so she wouldn’t have to lie on the hot black tarmac.

  “Aurora, can you hear me?”

  She turned her head away from Sky and watched Lieutenant Colonel Jackson barking orders beside a few of her fellow cadets.

  A large warm hand gently moved her head back. She braced herself to look into Sky’s accusing eyes, but his usual iciness had melted into a soft blue sky. There was nothi
ng accusatory in them. Aurora didn’t know what this new look meant, but either way it probably wouldn’t be good.

  “Does anything hurt?” he asked.

  She tried to answer, but the only sound that came out of her was more of a grunt than anything else. The oxygen was starting to burn as it made its way down into her lungs. With clumsy hands she tried to move the mask away from her face, but Sky’s hands brushed hers away as he gently removed the mask for her.

  “Better?”

  She nodded.

  He bent down and whispered, “I was so worried. I didn’t think you were going to recover.”

  Aurora vaguely realized that she was being held very carefully by someone who had shown her no kindness in the past. In fact, Sky was totally out of character. She tried to sit up and push herself away from him.

  “Wait, let me help.” Sky placed his hands under her arms and carefully propped her up against the XT-101’s nose wheel so she could sit up by herself.

  Before she was able to ask Sky what happened and why he hadn’t taken control of the aircraft, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson squatted down in front of her. “Are you all right? Dr. Stevenson is on his way.”

  The Lieutenant Colonel waved a medic team over in her direction but stopped his gesture when she managed to choke out, “Please don’t make me ride on a gurney.”

  “Do you think you can walk back inside?”

  Aurora contemplated standing up on her own and knew it wouldn’t be an easy task. She was surrounded by dominant males, and she would be damned if she were going to behave like a damsel in distress, even though she was clearly heading that way. With a strength she wasn’t sure she had, she stood up on two feet and waited to gain her balance. As she took her first step forward, a wave of dizziness washed over her. Before she toppled, Sky held his arm out to steady her.

  It would probably be better to accept his help instead of falling flat on her face, so she reluctantly allowed him to help her. Things would only get even more embarrassing for her once the media got a hold of this story and had pictures of her falling down face first.

  “I’m surprised there are no reporter’s here,” she whispered to Sky.

  Sky shook his head. “Not anymore. Security was increased after the TerraUnited attack.”

  “You mean the TerraRists attack?”

  Sky looked at her like she had lost her mind. He was probably right. She suspected she was going into shock, but she couldn’t seem to care. At least there wouldn’t be live video feed of her barely walking away from her airplane. Aurora slowly walked back inside the SpacePort, surrounded by a large group of worried-looking men.

  Once comfortably seated inside a private room, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson dismissed everyone except for her and Sky. Before closing the door, he barked out, “Send Dr. Stevenson in as soon as he gets here.”

  Sitting down was a relief. Silently, she watched the Lieutenant Colonel while a variety of feelings crossed his face, ranging from relief to anger and repeating.

  Though he was having trouble, Aurora could tell that he was trying to remain calm for her sake. She could barely keep her own emotions contained and wasn’t sure how she’d handle anyone else’s.

  She was sore all over, had a pounding headache, and felt as if she were back on that stupid emotional rollercoaster, desperate to get off. One minute she was scared, then angry, and then elated that she survived, only to continue through the same emotions as the unstopping rollercoaster went up and down. She wondered who was whimpering, then realized the high-pitched sound was coming from her. She had barely survived; two thousand feet was nothing. If she had been a second slower in regaining consciousness or recovering the aircraft, she wouldn’t be sitting there.

  The mach tuck she had inadvertently entered was the least of her problems. The only reason that had even happened was because she was too close to the aircraft’s performance limitations when her HUD and oxygen unit failed simultaneously. It was the combination of these two failures that ultimately caused the mach tuck. Because of her blackout, she had been unable to pull the throttle back after she pushed the nose of the aircraft down.

  The combined losses of her instrument display and oxygen unit were to blame for losing control of the aircraft, but she now remembered the UAV link had also been INOP. She was smart enough to know that something had gone horribly wrong. Were those series of failures at once plausible? A niggling feeling in the back of her head brought up the possibility of sabotage, but she wanted to discard the thought.

  The idea that someone would do this intentionally was frightening. Her earlier fear of the TerraRists came back, but again she dismissed the thought. The Academy wasn’t their target.

  She looked over at Sky, who was slumped in the chair next to hers and appeared to be thinking very intently about something. He turned his head and focused his eyes on hers, and this time she held his stare.

  Was his dislike of her enough to do something to prove she didn’t belong? Aurora touched her necklace as she thought this through. He would have had plenty of time and opportunity to harm her aircraft before her flight. Sky constantly told her that she didn’t belong and that the only reason she was even allowed to attend the school was because of who her father was. But would he try to kill her over it? As she looked into his eyes, she had a hard time believing he would want to harm her for those reasons alone.

  What did his slight changes in behavior mean? Was his shocked concern and worry for her welfare all a show? And why did she desperately wish it wasn’t?

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson cleared his throat, and Sky looked away from her. Aurora had forgotten the Lieutenant Colonel was still in the room. She pulled her gaze from Sky to see him curiously staring at both of them, and she wondered what he made of their exchange.

  “Anyone want to explain what happened?” he asked.

  When she finally spoke, her voice surprised her. It sounded confident and cold. “That’s exactly what I want to know. The flight was going smoothly. I was maintaining fifty-five thousand feet when I received a warning that the UAV link went down. Soon after that, my instruments blinked out and the oxygen unit stopped working. I only had time to push the nose of the aircraft down before I lost consciousness. I must have entered a mach tuck because I didn’t get to pull the throttles back after pitching the nose down. I was too close to Coffin Corner to pull that move without slowing down.”

  All was quiet when she finished speaking. She looked at both the Lieutenant Colonel, who wore a blank face, and Sky to see their reactions.

  Sky stared ahead as he relived his side of the events. “I received the same warning about the ground program going offline. As I was trying to troubleshoot the problem, I heard Aurora issue a mayday. I watched on the radar screen as she descended thousands of feet per minute with no directional control, and I was unable to hail her. The UAV link was still down. I continued to call her over the radio, but I was unable to do anything other than watch. Fortunately, once she reached a lower altitude, there was enough oxygen for her to regain consciousness.” His deep voice shook with emotion.

  He was either a really great actor or was truly alarmed by the event. But it still didn’t make sense, and she voiced her concern, hoping someone would be able to explain. “Why would the UAV, instruments, and O2 unit all fail at the same time?”

  Sky shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it was just an electrical failure that affected those three systems.” He said it like he was having a hard time believing it himself.

  Aurora glanced at the Lieutenant Colonel, and he just shook his head. “We won’t know until we do a complete maintenance inspection.”

  There very well could be a completely reasonable explanation, but she wanted to make sure. “What are the odds of all those failures happening at once? Do you think maybe something else caused it?”

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson’s eyebrows almost shot up off of his forehead as if the idea had never even crossed his mind, but Sky didn’t seem as if the insinuation su
rprised him.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson sighed. “Aurora, I know you are in shock, but there’s absolutely no evidence to think someone else caused this. We’ll find the cause of the malfunctions when we have the maintenance inspection completed. I’m sure of it.”

  “What about the TerraRists?”

  “The who?” The Lieutenant Colonel asked in confusion.

  “TerraUnited. Do you think they could have done this?”

  “Aurora, the only people allowed near your aircraft are Apollo Alliance and Academy personnel. Aircraft malfunctions are rare, but they do happen.”

  His words were a relief. Was she so self-absorbed that she had to turn everything into some plot against her? Obviously she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was going completely crazy; all of the attention on her was going to her head. Her shoulders slumped, and she no longer held back her tears. They streamed down her face, cooling her overheated skin. She felt so sick. She hurt all over, and she just wanted to lie down. Even her hair hurt. She could see it sticking out in odd directions all around, her braid having come undone. She was a complete mess.

  She wiped away her tears, hoping the men wouldn’t say anything about them. Thankfully, they didn’t, but Lieutenant Colonel Jackson did look a little uncomfortable. She caught him looking at Sky as if asking him what they should do.

  Evidently, Sky decided he could handle her because he motioned to the Lieutenant Colonel that he wanted to speak to her alone.

  After the Lieutenant Colonel left, he looked at her and lifted her hand in his. The caring human touch reminded her that she was still very much alive, but she found herself wishing gray eyes were looking at her instead of blue.

  “Your recovery today was phenomenal. That was some of the best quick maneuvering and decision making I’ve ever seen.” He stopped and looked as though he was sucking on a lemon while he squeezed out the rest, “I apologize for saying you don’t belong here, because clearly you do.”

  With that, he stood and marched out of the room, leaving Aurora alone and feeling completely over her head.