CRASHED
Eric S Brown
www.severedpress.com
Copyright 2018 by Eric S Brown
CRASHED
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules flew low over the seemingly endless sea of ice and snow. The large, transport plane was headed for the recently established Zulu Base, a new training center for arctic warfare. Lieutenant Stanley Sharps had flown the route numerous times as Zulu Base was being constructed, and today the weather was clear. The sun was bright in the sky and everything seemed right with the world. The snow was beautiful. The endless sea of white never got old to Sharps. He felt blessed to have the job that he did. Flying was what he had been born to do and there was no place better to do it in his opinion than Antarctica. The weather could be just as lethal as going up against an enemy fighter when a storm was rolling in. The giant plane could carry up to 92 passengers, 72 fully geared-up combat troops, or 64 paratroopers. Today, it was hauling two of the new arctic tanks called “Snow Beasts,” two full squads of troopers, and Colonel Dyvang. The colonel was along for the ride because he had taken direct command of the shakedown run for the two tanks and the exercise that they and the troops were about to undergo.
Sharps stole a glance at Hawkins, his co-pilot. Hawkins looked nervous. The man always freaked out when anyone important was onboard and Colonel Dyvang certainly qualified as that. Once he arrived, he would be the ranking officer at Zulu Base, which was currently under the command of Major Dixon. Sharps liked Dixon a great deal. She had done a superb job of getting the base completed on track in his opinion. He had mixed feelings about the colonel taking over. The first time Sharps had met the colonel was the moment the man had stepped onto his plane. Dyvang struck him as a by-the-book sort of jerk, the kind that was often too typical for anyone of his level of rank. The man came across as gruff and unfriendly. Sharps understood the need for protocol, but Dyvang went beyond that to a whole other level of rude and cold. He told himself that he wouldn’t be forced to deal with the man much longer. They were only a few hours out from Zulu and once there, they would be dropping off the colonel and his men to head back to the U.S.S. Kennedy where she was waiting for them off the coast.
“Hey, Stan,” Hawkins said, pulling him out of his thoughts. “I’m getting some weird readings from engine four.”
Sighing, Sharps turned to look at Hawkins with a frown. “Define weird.”
Running into trouble with one or more of the engines during a flight was a pretty common occurrence these days. Things were beginning to get better from all the cutbacks now that there was funding again, but they still hadn’t gotten fully back to where they should be yet. The lack of proper maintenance and substandard parts used in some of the C-130s caused a lot of issues. Sharps wouldn’t have been too worried at what Hawkins told him. Normally, he would have written it off to Hawkins’ nerves from the colonel being onboard, but the stark look of fear in Hawkins’ eyes told him that it was more than that.
“Something is wrong with it, but I am having a hard time figuring out what,” Hawkins said. “It’s trying to shut down.”
“Oil pressure?” Sharps asked.
Hawkins shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Start a full diagnostic program check,” Sharps ordered.
“On it!” Hawkins barked and went to work.
The large plane suddenly lurched in the air, dropping at least fifty feet in altitude. Sharps struggled to regain control of her and keep her airborne. Power surged into her controls again and the C-130 leveled out.
“What the frag was that?” Sharps snapped.
“Still trying to figure it out,” Hawkins yelled back at him. “Engine two is barely holding on.”
Colonel Dyvang appeared in the doorway from the plane’s rear behind them. His cheeks were flushed with anger.
“What is going on up here?” the colonel shouted.
“We’re having some engine trouble, sir,” Sharps told him, forcing his voice to sound calm. “I suggest you and your men get strapped in. It may get worse before it gets better.”
The colonel looked like he wanted to tear into them but didn’t. Instead, he gave them a final scowl and retreated back the way he had come, leaving them to do their jobs. Sharps was thankful for it. He didn’t have any time to waste at the moment. They had to figure out what was wrong and get it fixed before they lost engine two entirely.
“Oh frag me,” Sharps heard Hawkins mutter to himself.
“What?” Sharps growled. “What is it?”
“Whatever the frag is going on with engine two just hit engine one. She’s trying to lock up too,” Hawkins told him.
“We’re going to have to set her down if we can’t figure this out,” Sharps warned. “That will really tick the colonel off.”
“Tell me about it!” Hawkins raged. “I’m trying, man!”
“Well try harder, for frag’s sake!” Sharps urged.
Without warning, both of the C-130’s engines failed and the plane lurched into a dive.
“Brace for impact!” Sharps yelled over the plane’s internal comm. as a warning to those in its rear. “We’re going down!”
Sharps’ eyes scanned the horizon for the softest place to crash. In the vast sea of white, one never truly knew what was snow and what was ice. He hoped the spot he’d picked in his moment of desperation was going to be somewhere that the plane wouldn’t completely tear apart upon hitting. Fighting with the nearly dead controls, Sharps steered the plummeting transport toward it. He heard the grinding and squealing of the plane’s hull as she made contact with the snow and ice. The last thing Sharps saw before his world went black was an explosion of spraying white coming up onto and in front of the C-130’s forward window.
****
Major Dixon fiddled with the tiny, metal replica of the Battlestar Galactica on her desk. The ship had tilted on its display stand and her fingers gently righted it. There were stacks of paperwork lying all around the ship that she had been in the process of trying to catch up on before Colonel Dyvang arrived. Her progress on it had come to a grinding halt after the call from home came in. She had known exactly what the call was about before Lieutenant Anderson even patched it through to her office. Major Dixon had been dreading it for the last several days. Back in the States, the rest of her family was there to handle things at least since she couldn’t be. Her position of command at Zulu Base prevented even the smallest hope that the powers that be would have heart enough to allow her to leave. As thus, Major Dixon’s father had passed on into the great beyond without her at his side. She honestly didn’t know which was worse, the sting of losing her father to cancer or her inability to be there with him at the end. Harold Dixon had been a military man himself so she knew he understood, perhaps better than anyone, why she couldn’t be there. That knowledge did little to comfort her though. Her father had been the center of her life outside of her career. Major Dixon promised herself that she wasn’t going to cry, not until the colonel had arrived and been dealt with, in any case.
Her father had been so proud of her posting here. He thought being in command of an arctic outpost was awesome. Harold Dixon didn’t love many things in his life. She wasn’t even sure that the man had truly even loved her mother. But the things he did love, he loved with a depth that reached into the very core of his soul. His three great loves in life were her, his career in the military, and science fiction. After he retired from the service, her father had dabbled in science fiction writing and even gotten a few stories published in the larger SF magazines. He’d often joked since she had taken her current post that she needed to be on guard for monsters. Aliens and arctic outposts went hand in hand he claimed. She enjoyed his teasing because underneath the words he said, she could feel the love and pride for her that was in them.
The movie they had watched together with him in his hospital bed and her sitting beside it, in uniform and waiting to ship out, had been John Carpenter’s The Thing. It was a fitting send-off. After the movie was over, she had hugged him tightly with tears in her eyes before leaving him that final time. Major Dixon had felt that since then she had left a piece of her heart in that hospital room.
As her eyes scanned over the piles of paperwork on her desk, she spotted a drawing of the exterior of Zulu Base. It was hard to believe that the base was completed. She had pushed both herself and her team to their limits to get it done by the deadline the powers that be had imposed upon her. Zulu Base wasn’t massive but neither was it small. It consisted of four buildings: The central command hub, the garage where its vehicles were stored, the power generator building, and the main building that contained both the base’s labs and personnel quarters, as well as the base’s storage rooms for supplies. Zulu Base was to be the first of its kind, a full-out arctic training facility for special ops. troopers. Colonel Dyvang’s men were slated to be the first group to make use of it. The colonel’s men were supposed to be the best of the best of the newest recruits to America’s special ops. forces. From what she had heard about the colonel, Major Dixon didn’t doubt it either. His reputation as a perfectionist and slave driver rivaled her own. She wasn’t looking forward to meeting him in person. For all of her professional hardness, Major Dixon liked to think that she was just the girl that her father had raised. Colonel Dyvang on the other hand … Well, if the man had any kind of life outside of the military, she had never heard anything about it.
Major Dixon looked up as Lieutenant Anderson appeared in the doorway of her office. She could tell instantly that whatever news he was bringing her was far from the good news she needed so desperately to hear right now.
“Ma’am,” the lieutenant said with a nod as she stared at him. “I hope I’m not intruding, but you’re overdue in the command center and it seems we have a problem.”
With a sigh, Major Dixon glanced at her watch. It read 14:00 hours. Seeing the time was like something kicking her in the gut. She leaped up from the chair behind her desk and hurried around it. Somehow, given her emotional state, she had let the time slip away from her. Colonel Dyvang was slated to have arrived half an hour earlier. She managed not to curse as she rounded the desk and approached her second-in-command.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to the lieutenant. “I guess I’ve had a lot on my mind today.”
Lieutenant Anderson knew about the passing of her father. He had taken a chance by not coming to fetch her sooner than he had and part of her was grateful for it. She had needed the time to get herself together and ready to face the colonel upon his arrival. But she also knew exactly how hard the colonel would come down on her if things weren’t entirely in proper order when he stepped off the C-130 Hercules.
“Shouldn’t the colonel have arrived half an hour ago?” Major Dixon asked Lieutenant Anderson.
“And that would be the problem I mentioned, ma’am,” the lieutenant answered carefully. “We lost contact with his plane just a few minutes ago and it’s disappeared from the grid.”
Major Dixon stared at the lieutenant. “What?”
“The transport just disappeared, ma’am,” Lieutenant Anderson answered. “As best we can tell, she just went down in route.”
“Frag.” Major Dixon’s eyes went wide. “Scramble whoever is on the search-and-rescue detail! I want a copter in the air and looking for that plane as soon as possible!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Lieutenant Anderson snapped and sprinted out of the office.
Major Dixon had been having a bad day before; now, it was a total disaster. She headed for the command center running along the corridor between it and her office.
The command center was in a state of chaos when she arrived. Clay sat at the comm. station, frantically trying to reestablish connection with the apparently downed C-130. Dustin was busy going over the map on his sensor console with Alex, Zulu Base’s head of security and quick response teams. They looked to be attempting to figure out exactly where the transport had crashed. None of them noticed her as she came storming into the command center until she barked, “Sit-rep!”
“Major!” Dustin nearly shouted, standing up straight as he was about to salute her. Alex stood
beside the specialist with a worried expression.
“Colonel Dyvang’s transport appears to have gone down in Grid Eight, ma’am,” Alex informed her.
“Don’t we have cameras out there?” Major Dixon growled.
“We did, ma’am,” Alex replied, frowning. “We lost their feed yesterday. They were on the scheduled repair list for today after the colonel’s arrival.”
“Grid Eight is at the very edge of the perimeter of the area assigned to us, Major,” Dustin explained. “There’s nothing out there but ice and snow. The job was considered a low priority one in comparison to the cameras we lost in Grid Four.”
“Just how many cameras do we have out?” Major Dixon fought to control her anger.
“Three grids since yesterday, ma’am,” Dustin told her and then swallowed hard. “We’re still trying to figure out what’s going on with them. All we know for sure is that it isn’t a complete systems failure, as we’re still getting feeds from the other five grids.”
Major Dixon resisted the urge to put her hands around Dustin’s neck and violently choke the life out of the man. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”
“Lieutenant Anderson’s orders, ma’am.” Dustin had gone utterly pale. “He said not to disturb you unless there was an Alpha-level emergency.”
“I see.” Major Dixon bit her lip. She needed to have a few words with the lieutenant about overstepping his rank but that would have to wait until later. Right now, she had a colonel’s butt to save.
“Was there any last transmission from the Hercules before it went down?” Major Dixon asked, whirling on Clay.
“No, ma’am.” Clay flinched at the fury in her eyes. “Nothing at all. But …”
“But what?” Major Dixon demanded.
“Well, we’ve been experiencing some glitches with the comm. gear and sensors this morning,” Clay admitted.
Somebody’s head was going to roll for this mess, Major Dixon knew, but she didn’t know whose yet. “Fragging-A, does anything work around here?”
“The glitches just started a short while ago, ma’am,” Clay said defensively. “I was already in the process of running full diagnostics when—”
“Forget it!” Major Dixon snapped. “Do you know what’s causing them?”
Clay nodded. “I do now, ma’am. There seems to be a storm rolling in from the south.”
“That shouldn’t cause the sort of glitches you’re talking about,” Major Dixon pointed out.
“Normally, no, it wouldn’t, but the storm isn’t the only thing coming at us at the moment,” Clay said. “This whole region is being bombarded by some kind of geomagnetic interference unlike anything I’ve seen.”
“Geomagnetic?” Major Dixon frowned at the comm. officer. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s the only explanation that I or the computer can come up with as a cause for the interference, ma’am,” Clay told her.
It was feeling more and more like the universe itself was out to get her today as Major Dixon paused to think things through. Before she fully got the chance to, Alex spoke up.
“Whatever the interference is, ma’am, it’s going to play havoc with the comm. of the search-and-rescue team too,” the security man pointed out. “Maintaining contact with them will be an issue.”
“This electromagnetic interference …” Major Dixon looked from Clay to Dustin. “Is it going to be affecting anything else? I mean, do we need to start worrying about power failures here at Zulu and the like?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am,” Dustin answered. “Wherever it’s coming from, it’s pretty low-grade overall. Just enough to frag up t
he comms and not much else.”
Major Dixon nodded sharply. “That’s good at least. Any idea how long it’s going to last?”
“These things usually flare up and fade out pretty quickly, ma’am,” Clay assured her. “I can’t put an exact time on it though. Whatever it is, it’s just going to have to play out.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but there wasn’t a blasted thing Major Dixon could do about it.
****
Zulu Base was home to two Mi-8AMTSh-VA twin-engine helicopters that had been acquired in the better days of relations between the U.S. and Russia. Both of them were fueled up and ready to go. Lorie and Matt would be taking one up while Valerie and Hawkes took the other. Sergeant Daniel Hyde and several of his men stood out in the blowing snow of the afternoon near the copters. It was the warm season so in the sunlight, it was a warm 24 degrees outside. The sergeant and his men were bundled up, but it was the weapons they carried that caught Matt’s attention. As Zulu Base’s lead pilot, this op. was his command, at least on the tactical side of things while they would be in the field.
“What’s up with the guns?” Matt asked Hyde.
“Protocol,” Sergeant Hyde grunted.
“Uh huh,” Matt said. “You do understand this is a search-and-rescue mission, don’t you, Sergeant?”
“I do,” Hyde answered flatly.
Matt could see that the sergeant wasn’t going to back down from bringing the weapons he and his men carried along. There wasn’t any point in arguing with him. As he thought about it more, Matt was forced to admit that no one knew exactly what had brought down the Hercules transport and that having the weapons might come in handy. He didn’t really have an issue with the weapons anyway. Matt just didn’t care for the sergeant’s approach to the job ahead of them. Sergeant Hyde gave the impression of someone going hunting more than someone headed out to save lives.
“Right then.” Matt flashed the big man a smile. “Have it your way, Sergeant. Why don’t you grab a ride with Valerie and Hawkes? They’ll be covering the northern part of Grid Eight. That’s where the transport most likely went down.”
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