She knew the most critical factor was the people. Some of them she knew quite well, but several were new. Mark Ingram was at her side and she felt comforted by his solid presence. They'd bandaged Mitch Hudson's legs and he was seated at a console, his face taut with pain despite the pills he'd been given. He was good with radios, one of the best, but outside of that she wasn’t sure about his capabilities.
The remaining four survivors were a mixed group: Mike Herrin was the senior geologist. In his mid-fifties he was a long-time Michelet employee but Ariana feared he would be the first to crack. He had been unusually quiet but he was constantly running his hands through his thinning gray hair. He was short and pudgy and in Ariana’s opinion he was too soft physically and emotionally to deal with the unexpected.
Daniel Daley was the junior geologist and new to the team. He was young, in his mid-twenties and a hulking presence standing behind the others. He had blond hair and looked fresh from the surf off LA, which indeed he was, having earned his PhD at UCLA. To Ariana, he appeared a little scared, but otherwise solid.
Lisa Carpenter was also new. She was the computer expert and electronic troubleshooter. A black woman in her early thirties, she had a bulky, athletic build, with hair cut tight against her skull. She was seated at her console just below Ariana's position, looking up, her face betraying nothing of what she felt, waiting on her next instructions.
The last member was Peter Mansor, the imaging specialist. He was the one who had bandaged Hudson's legs, using his experience from two tours of duty in the military where he had been a helicopter pilot. Mansor had been on several missions with Ariana and she knew he was steady if somewhat unimaginative.
“All right,” she said, feeling the focus of six sets of eyes on her. “What do we have in here other than the food, water and first aid kits?”
“A lot of computers, communications and imaging equipment,” Ingram said dryly.
“Which we can run only as long as we have power,” Lisa Carpenter added.
“What good does that do us?” Herrin asked irritably. “Computers aren't going to get us out of this.”
“Communications might,” Hudson said.
“Status of that?” Ariana asked him.
“I've got nothing right now,” Hudson said. “I've tried sending but we lost our HF antenna in the crash. It was on the roof of the cockpit. I can't access the SATCOM dish on the rotodome. Diagnostics tells me the cable from my radio to the dish has been cut.”
“Cut?” Ariana repeated.
“Probably severed in the crash.” Hudson looked up at the roof of the cabin. “Hell, the rotodome with the dish might not even be up there any more.”
“What else?” Ariana asked, not wanting to dwell on the external condition of the plane.
Hudson ran a hand over his wounded legs, grimacing. “FM is pretty worthless as it's limited by the horizon. If someone comes close, it might work. Our FM antenna still seems to be attached.”
“There are search teams looking for us,” Ariana said. “So keep the FM ready and broadcast every once in a while.”
Hudson nodded.
“Maybe we should leave here and look for the search parties,” Daley suggested.
Ariana looked at Mansor who had been trained for such situations in the military.
The former pilot firmly shook his head. “No. We stay with the plane. That's a basic law of survival training. You always stay with the plane. It’s the best way to get found. It’s a lot easier to find a downed plane than a small group of people wandering around in the jungle.”
Herrin laughed, a manic edge to it. “I'm not going out there.” He jerked his head toward the cockpit. “We'll end up like Craight.”
“What exactly did happen to Craight?” Hudson asked.
Ariana glanced at Ingram but for once he had nothing to offer. “We don't know any more than we told you earlier.” Ariana had not wanted the conversation to go in that direction but she knew it wasn't something she could avoid forever. “Right now we worry about what is inside here. We seem to be safe for the moment.”
Ariana had no desire to open the door leading to the cockpit again. They had the regular door in the left front and the emergency hatches over both wings and one on the roof, but she didn't want to open any of those until they absolutely had to.
“You don't have a clue do you?” Herrin demanded. “You don't know what's going on, do you?”
“Let's take this one step at a time,” Ariana said.
“One step at a time? We've goddamn crashed!” Herrin exclaimed. “Craight is dead, his hand cut off and according to you he was whisked away by some sort of strange beam. John died in the crash, his neck broken. The pilots and navigator are dead. We don't know where we are or how we got here. Something's out there! Something that wants us!”
“Shut up, Mike,” Peter Mansor said it in a low level, but in a tone that seemed to get through to the other man. “Running around screaming and yelling isn't going to do a thing for us right now.”
Herrin moaned and sat down, his head in his hands.
Ariana knew she had to get them on some sort of productive path, if only to take their mind off their predicament. “Anyone have any idea what happened to cause us to crash?” she asked.
“The pilots reported losing power and instruments,” Ingram said.
“Why?” Ariana asked.
Ingram shrugged. “Could be an on-board computer failure.”
Ariana looked at Carpenter. “Can you run through data on the main computer and check that?”
“The mainframe system went down just before we did,” Carpenter said. “I'm going to have to reboot Argus. We can't be sure that its hardware wasn't damaged in the crash and we also can't be sure that Argus will reboot.”
“Just try, Lisa,” Ariana said
Carpenter turned to her computer and began to work.
“How much power do we have in the plane's batteries?” Ariana asked.
“If we just use computers and lights,” Ingram said, “we ought to have about fifteen hours worth. If we turn lighting down to emergency levels, we can up that to about fifty or sixty hours.”
“Let's get lighting down to just the emergency setting,” Ariana ordered.
“I'll have to do a systems check to make sure nothing else is drawing power,” Ingram said.
“Do it.”
Ingram threw a switch on the console he was at and the interior went dark except for several red lamps every ten feet or so. In the dim glow, Ariana looked around. “I want you all to go to your stations. I want to know what caused the crash. And I want to get an idea of what’s going on outside of this plane without actually going out there. Clear?”
There were no verbal replies, just everyone heading back to their places, Mansor helping Hudson forward to the commo area. Ariana followed and after Mansor left, she took the other seat and spoke so only he heard her. “If we get a cable run to the satellite dish, can you make contact with the IIC?”
Hudson shrugged. “I don't know. I lost SATCOM before we crashed so even if we get a cable from my radio to the dish, if the dish is still there, it still might not work. And who is going out there,” he pointed to the roof of the plane, “to run the cable?”
“We might have to do that,” Ariana said, “but not yet. I just want to know what my options are. Keep monitoring FM. There are search parties out there.”