The rope tethered to the clip on his chest armor tightened as he took another step down. He nearly lost his balance when a voice hissed from the speaker built inside his helmet.
“Raptor One, Captain Jordan. Report.”
Michael didn’t respond right away as he struggled to keep his grip on the rusty, rain-slick metal.
“Raptor One, do you copy?” Jordan repeated, his voice taking on an anxious edge.
“We’re working on a way down, Captain. Stand by.”
Layla fed Michael slack, and he grabbed one of the carabiners from his pocket. He was about to clip the hanger just as the hair on his neck prickled. The lightning hit the surface of the ship an instant later. He braced himself as sparks blew past him. The hull, like their layered suits, had been designed to resist conductivity, and by the time the current reached the three divers, it had almost dissipated.
That didn’t make it any less terrifying to see the white-hot electrical arc so close.
A jolt rocked the ship as they dropped into a wind shear. Michael gripped the ladder rail, but the carabiner slipped from his fingers, clanked off the side of the ship, and fell away into the darkness.
“Damn it!” he whispered. With only one biner left, he would have to choose the placement carefully.
He continued down the rungs until he was above the rightmost rudder. The pitted metal surface had more scars than a veteran Hell Diver. With utmost care, he reached with his left hand between the rudder and stern. The gap was a foot wide. Maybe a bit more, but not nearly enough to squeeze through.
He bumped the chin pad twice to open a line to the bridge.
“Captain, I’ve… we’ve reached the rudder,” Michael said, correcting himself to avoid a dressing-down from Jordan for not following orders and giving Magnolia point. “Still searching for a way past them into access tunnel ninety-four.”
From this position, he couldn’t get through to the tunnel. The only way in was down. They would have to climb underneath the rudders and then back up and through one of the vertical gaps.
A new sound emerged over the crackle of static and the rush of wind. The whine of the turbofans reminded Michael of another threat. They were getting closer to the turbines under the ship. If he got sucked inside, the eight-foot blades would turn him to mist.
Four more rungs down got him below the rudders, providing a view up through the gaps. There appeared to be enough room to squeeze through—if he could scale his way up there.
He reached out and grabbed the pocked edge of the first rudder with his left hand while holding on to the rung above him with his right.
“Be careful, Michael,” Layla said over the comm.
“Just checking to see if I can move them manually.”
As he pushed, a gust of wind slammed into his side, throwing him off balance as he pushed. Numbness rushed through his body as his left boot slipped off the rung. For a moment, he felt the same pure rush of adrenaline that prickled through him before a dive.
“Hold on!” Layla yelled.
Her upward tug on the rope helped center his mass, and he stepped back onto the ladder, grabbing the rail and the rung above him.
Drawing in a deep breath, Michael gave himself a few seconds to regain his composure. Sweat dripped down his forehead, stinging his eyes. He blinked it away and kept his visor pointed at the rudders. If he couldn’t move them manually, he would have to step off the ladder, climb the side of the ship, and wedge himself between the first and second rudders to reach the access tunnel.
“A little slack!” he yelled into his mike. “I have an idea.” He clipped the last biner to a hanger between the ladder and the right rudder.
“What are you doing?” Layla asked.
“Just keep me tight!”
The slack tightened around the clips above his navel, and he stepped off the rung, planting his left boot sole against the sheer wall of the stern. It slid several inches down the wet surface before the rope snugged. Next, he took his other foot off the ladder and pressed it against the stern. With his hands still on the rung, his waist was bent at ninety degrees. He bent his knees as if on rappel, while still holding on to the rung with both hands.
“Oh, hell no!” Magnolia shouted when she realized what he was doing.
“Tin!” Layla cried out a second later.
He let go of the rung with his left hand, then his right, so that he was now dangling entirely from the rope.
His boots slid another few inches, and he let the wind take him. The momentary sensation of weightlessness made his stomach flutter the way it always did during the first moment of a dive, when the launch tube opened and he plummeted earthward. This wasn’t much different, he told himself. Heck, it was safer. Nothing but air separated his boots from the surface twenty thousand feet below, but at least he had a rope. He could do this.
“Hold tight!” he yelled.
Swinging from right to left, he studied the three rudders directly above him.
The countdown on his visor broke fifteen minutes.
How the hell was he supposed to get these things up and running in so little time?
Both X and Michael’s dad had been in worse situations than this. They would have found a way. There was always a way.
He was stretching upward for the rudder when another blast of wind hit him, swinging him left. His fingers slipped across the wet surface of the first rudder. He tried a second grab and then a third as he swung back and forth. Each time, his gloves slid across without finding a grip, and the lump in his stomach grew heavier.
Lightning slashed through the sky behind him, firing the side of the ship with a brilliant blue glow. Water slid down the hull as if the ship were sweating.
The clap of thunder shook him so hard, he could feel it in his bones. Reaching down, he fingered through his tool belt for the clamp-locking pliers he kept there. Again he swung like a pendulum, this time dragging his feet on the hull to slow his growing momentum.
Bending his knees, he reached up with the pliers and clamped them onto the first right rudder. He repeated the process with a second pair on the middle rudder.
Ten feet above him, Layla and Magnolia clung to the ladder, looking down. Sporadic flashes of lightning glinted off their armor.
“When I give the order, send me some slack,” he said calmly.
Layla’s voice hissed in his ear. “I hope you know what you’re doing, cowboy.”
Michael wasn’t sure what “cowboy” meant. Where did she come up with these words? No matter—he, too, hoped this would work. Kicking off from the side of the ship, he let the wind take him. He swung toward the rudders, walking his feet across the vertical hull, and grabbed the near pliers.
“Slack!” he yelled.
As soon as Layla fed out a foot or two of rope, he used the pliers to pull himself up and grab the second pair. Soon his head and chest were above the tools. His boots slipped on the slick surface, but he got enough traction to push his shoulders between the first and second rudders.
Boots pressed against the hull, and torso wedged between the two rudders, he held himself there like one of the muscular gymnasts that he had seen in the picture books.
Water sluiced down his visor, obstructing his view, but only a few feet remained between him and the access tunnel above the rudders. He just needed a little boost to get there.
He shoved off with his boots and swung his legs back. The wind pushed his lower body, and clenching his abs, he kicked forward, then back, then forward again. The pliers on the first rudder wobbled as he gathered the needed momentum to launch himself toward the tunnel entrance. Just as the pliers snapped free, his gloved fingertips grabbed the bottom edge of the access tunnel. His feet hit the hull, and he felt the force of gravity pulling him down.