Kelvin turned it to the right again and pulled it down. A Klaxon sounded a strident warning, very loud on the bridge. He sat back in his command chair and reached across for the emergency-suit helmet. Pushing it open, he fixed it over his head before connecting the external air supply. Then very deliberately he fastened his harness, double-checking every connection and point of attachment.
A yellow mist fell around him as he called up the weather radar, one small segment of the massive swirling storm of the Roar completely dominating the whole display. He looked at the airspeeds, rotating and moving the model across and up and down, his mind instinctively gauging how he would approach it, use it to lift him up, and when he was high enough, come slingshoting out of it and fire off the booster that would take the ship into orbit.
Eighteen minutes.
Kelvin’s fingers twitched. The lifting fans howled. There was a horrible creaking, sucking sound as the ship lurched backward and upward. The crash screen over the forward viewports slid back as the nose came out of the swamp, but Kelvin hardly bothered to look. He was feeling every motion of the ship, every small vibration, watching the telltales for the power plant, the fans, the control surfaces.
He fed more power to the fans. The ship rose higher. Several audio alerts sounded, squawking about ground proximity and the open air lock and a dozen other things. Kelvin ignored them. One fan was running ragged, drawing too much power and providing little lift. He shut it down and flew on the remaining three, now tilting them forward a little, the ship climbing up in a corkscrew. But he couldn’t keep it up all the way in the eye; there wasn’t enough room, and the fans couldn’t provide vertical lift for more than a thousand meters.
He had to go into the Roar. At exactly the right angle of attack.
The time was forgotten now, the closing cruiser on its attack run, his clone sister and friends trying to escape below. Kelvin’s whole being was with the ship and the great storm, his mind and body remembering lessons learned from the terrible ascents out of the battlefield on Mars, climbing through the raging dust storms that spun as fast as the Roar, with enemy ordnance exploding all around, in ships worse damaged than this one, crowded with the dead and dying, the bridge itself packed so close he could barely move his elbows out and knowing that even if they made it, he’d have to go back down again …
The ship shuddered violently and pitched up, Kelvin correcting, tweaking, using all his skill to ease into the windstream. Clouds whisked past the viewports, so fast they were like flickers of shadow. There were more audible warnings, more amber- and red-bordered holographs glaring near his face.
The control stick shuddered under his hand and the ship rocked violently. The fans were tilted right back now for horizontal flight, but the number three fan wouldn’t stay in that position. Kelvin shut it down, hesitated for a moment, hit two more switches, and pulled the short lever that emerged from the panel. A few seconds later, there was a deafening crack from somewhere aft and the ship jerked sideways. Kelvin’s left hand flew across holographic controls and manual switches, as he flew with his right hand tight on the stick. The ship would not come level, but it still answered, was still climbing with the storm.
A schematic flashed red in Kelvin’s peripheral vision. He glanced at it, seeing a hole where the number three fan used to be. He’d ejected it perhaps a second before it exploded, only just in time to save the wing, while still sustaining some damage.
The Jumping Jehosophat on two of four fans was only marginally controllable in the storm. Sweat poured down Kelvin’s face under his helmet, no matter how high he dialed up the air circulating through the suit. Though he was only handling a tiny control stick, flicking holographs and turning smooth manual switches, his arms felt like he’d been carrying heavy cargo under high gravity for hours.
In a moment, he would have to slingshot out, but if he did it even slightly at the wrong angle or the wrong speed, the ship would be torn apart, the mangled pieces being strewn widely over the Venusian swampscape.
And without him to alert Venus to their presence, the Rotarua would undoubtedly fire on the last known position of their errant telepathic communicators, and that would very likely take out Vinnie, Jat, Theodore, and the poor girl under the blanket of blue mold.
The moment came. Kelvin took it, without any preparatory calculations or consultation of the ship’s systems. He instinctively absorbed all the data on the screens in front of him, he felt the vibration, he sensed the speed, direction, and possibility.
The Jumping Jehosophat came catapulting out of the endlessly circling storm forty thousand meters high, pointing almost straight up. The fans began to lose their purchase in the thin air. For a moment the ship hung suspended, either to fall like a stone or rise to even greater heights.
Kelvin goosed the fans, made the slightest adjustment, and lined the ship up absolutely vertical for a straight ride to the stars. Then he hit the one-shot orbitmaker.
There was a second where he thought that the rocket booster wasn’t going to activate, where he felt his stomach rise up before the fall.
Then there was a roar greater and closer than the storm. Kelvin was savagely thrust back into his chair and he blacked out.
He came to feeling intensely aggrieved. How could he have blacked out? He never blacked out. He’d been designed from birth to be a pilot! But the emotion only lasted the merest instant. Already, he was automatically taking stock of his situation. There was no massive pressure holding him back. The orbitmaker was off and … he wriggled in place … they were in zero G. In some sort of orbit, at least for the time being.
His eyes raced over the displays, his full senses returning. With them came a sudden shock. How long had he been out? Kelvin’s arm jerked but his watch wasn’t there, it had fallen off his suit and was floating somewhere. The ship’s time was meaningless, the display set to Venus Above.
His fingers sped across controls, bringing up comms. Radio, laser-link, maser, every damn thing the ship possessed. At the same time, he activated scans, looking for his own position, the picket ships, Venus Above, and, most important, the Rotarua.
There she was, a massive blip coming around the curve of the planet, heading in fast and almost … almost but not quite … in attack range, either to take out him or launch on the crash site.
Automatic queries were coming in, answering the hails he had set in motion. Venusport Traffic Control, the familiar hoarse lungy voice of the expert system, emotionlessly asking where he had come from, what he was doing, why his transponder was off.
Kelvin used the manual board to flick on the backup emergency transponder and plugged his suit into the comm system, to broadcast by all means across many channels.
“Anyone receiving, anyone receiving, this is Kelvin Kelvin 21, pilot in charge of the salvaged vessel Jumping Jehosophat. We have damage, comms issues, request relay from any receiving party to Venusport Traffic, Venus Above Orbit Control. Please relay position as per data blip, and relay following to Terran Navy NOIC Aphrodite. Vessel located planetside, no survivors. Lieutenant Mazith killed by fungal hostile. Despite damage, ship is maneuverable, I intend docking Venus Above Hazard Area, please be advised need high-level de con.”
As his words went out, Kelvin settled back in his seat. On the scan, he saw the Rotarua change course and slow, as if it were never intending any kind of attack run anyway. A Martian picket ship was coming in over the pole, closely followed by a Mercury Corp patrol vessel and some small civilian craft that might well be a newshound.
Vinnie and the others would be safe, at least from an attack from space, and he figured they were good for anything else.