The Eagle
Has Landed The Eagle
Has Landed Deceptively tranquil and serene, the region of space that Moonbase Alpha currently crossed harbored seemingly undetectable ‘threads’ of an unknown type of energy. Rare, beautiful and deadly, they could endanger a traveler who was in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alan Carter caught up with Commander John Koenig on the way into Command Center. “John, do you have any objections to me starting a training program for Alphans interested in learning how to fly?”
Giving Alan a funny look, Koenig motioned Alan to join him in his small office outside of Command Center. “It’s odd you should bring that up just now. Helena and I have been talking about starting an extensive cross training program. She feels it will be good for morale, and Alpha needs that depth of knowledge. Irreplaceable skills and practical know-how can be lost so damn easily out here.”
Alan merely nodded in agreement. He hadn’t realized that Helena had planned to bring their discussions to John’s attention quite so quickly.
“Who do you have in mind for your first ‘guinea pig’?” Koenig inquired.
“Sandra. She volunteered.”
“Sandra?” John was surprised, “Do you think that she…” John stopped and reframed his question. “”Do you think that she’s physically capable to fly an Eagle?”
A quirk of Alan’s eyebrow was the only indication that he had caught the change in questions. “Yes. I had some of the lads rig Eagle 15’s copilot seat to be more adjustable. It’ll fit any Alphan now, as long as they don’t have the dimensions of George Crato,” Alan said with a snort. The portly Crato was a standing mystery to the medical staff and a joke to everyone else. Given the limited resources available to the dietary section, how an otherwise healthy man could stay that rotund on Alpha was unfathomable.
Koenig considered the plan, giving Alan a long look. It was no secret that Alan and Sandra had made a pairing of it, but he didn’t believe that that would cloud Alan’s exceptionally good judgment of a person’s flight capability. “Alright, it’s your call. Have a report ready after the first few ‘lessons’.”
Alan nodded his acceptance of the terms and both men headed into Command Center to see where Alpha stood on this new day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alan headed back to the Reconnaissance Section. John’s unasked question did not surprise him. Not really. During the first year after Breakaway, Sandra had been easily overwhelmed by events, but things were different now. Sandra’s return from the depths of depression had resulted in the maturation of an iron will. There was a very tough streak underneath that gentle exterior.
In his office, Alan scrounged around trying to find the old hardcopy Eagle flight manuals he knew he had, somewhere. By the time he found them several hours later, under a rather dusty probe from the planet Ariel, it looked like a typhoon had hit the place. Alan looked around and shrugged. He’d deal with it later.
That evening, Alan toted the stack of binders over to Sandra’s quarters. As the door opened, he jokingly said “Honey, I’m home,” in a passable Midwest American accent that would have made Chicago-born Helena proud and which was the legacy of watching way too many reruns of old American sitcoms. Putting her book aside, Sandra looked up from her chair. Alan plopped the binders into her lap with the expression of a man who has succeeded at a job well done. “Homework, love. Once you work through these, I’ve got clearance to start you as Alpha’s newest pilot trainee.”
Sandra answered him with a beautiful smile.
Three days later, as much as Alan approved of Sandra’s new enthusiasm for flying, he thought that she was going a bit overboard. It wasn’t as if she would have any problems finding an instructor whenever she was ready. She didn’t have to read the manuals in all of her free time.
“Sandra, please come to bed, love. I’m lonely in here,” tried Alan in his most pathetic tone. From her spot on the sofa, Sandra merely turned the page. “Alright Carter, it’s time for the direct approach” muttered the frustrated pilot. He stealthily crept out of bed, snuck up behind the sofa, and scooped the distracted Sandra up in his arms. She made a very tiny armful.
“Alan!’ she protested, laughing. “The sooner I memorize this, the sooner we can start…..”
“No, no more tonight. Alpha’s flight school is hereby temporarily closed by order of the Chief Pilot.” He pivoted around, took the required few steps and dropped Sandra into the middle of the bed. Rubbing his hands together in imitation of a very poor B-grade movie villain, he leered, “she’s mine, all mine!” Alan turned the lights off, and literally hopped into bed.
Three weeks more passed, and despite Alan’s concerted effort to distract her, Sandra passed the standard text exam required of all flight trainees. She had memorized a massive amount of information in a very brief time and Alan was duly impressed. Her first flight was scheduled for her next day off duty.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Morning Alan, Eagle 15 is ready on Pad 2. She’s waiting for you there,” said a tall, thin woman of middle years who was Alan’s chief of Eagle maintenance.
“Thanks, Miriam,” Alan smiled as he checked the ready board for the day’s missions and duty pilots. “I’ll take Sahn and head over to the old NDA 1 site to do the routine checks. We’ll be out of the way and she can have a chance to log some flight time.”
As he grabbed his orange space suit and helmet and headed off to Pad 2, Alan recalled how surprised, no, be honest he thought, flabbergasted he was when Sandra asked to learn to fly an Eagle. He was looking forward to introducing his true love to his first love. If Sandra could learn what it really meant to fly, their relationship would be that much stronger. He arrived early, but Sandra had arrived earlier, suited up and was reviewing a flight manual.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Thank you, Alan. That was… exhilarating!” Sandra looked as delighted as she sounded. Alan enjoyed watching her peel herself out of her almost child-sized space suit. “I understand why pilots keep flying despite the danger.”
Alan gave himself a mental shake and forced his attention to focus on what Sandra was saying. “Yeah… you’re doing real well for only, what is it, about 10 flights?”
Sandra chuckled, “You were not listening to me, were you?”
“Not a bit.” Alan laughed, picking her up and twirling her around. His heart was very full.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Okay now, take your time, line up both visually and with the comp guide, set her down easy……………easy………………easy. Great! Power down. Excellent! A few more landings like that and we’ll have you certified!”
“I must already be certifiable to have asked you to marry me.”
“har, har. You know darn well what I mean.”
“I know.” Sandra released her restraining belts, climbed out of her seat and bent over to kiss Alan’s indignant face.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alan hastily pulled his feet off the Commander’s desk when the door opened. He picked the PDA off the table and handed it to John Koenig. “Here is the report you requested, John, a little late. She’s within a few flights of earning the basic certificate. Then it’s just more practice and flight time, as you well know.”
Koenig scanned the PDA file. “How good of a pilot is she?” he asked curiously. By the numbers in front of him, he knew Sandra was capable, but pilot to pilot, Koenig was asking his Chief of Reconnaissance for his level assessment.
“She’s not quite a natural,” Alan answered with a shrug, “but she’s enthusiastic and as meticulous as Sandra always is. She’ll do.”
“Good.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Alright, Sahn, this is it. Here is your first mission: you are to fulfill Ben’s fondest wish to see the original Eagle’s landing site.” Alan turned in his seat with a grin to acknowledge the arriving Ben Vincent. “You get us there and back, and you’re officially a member of Reconnaissance. We’ll just swing by NDA 1 first to get the weekly check done and save someone else the trip.”
The young medico Ben Vincent stashed his space gear in an available cubby. He didn’t expect to need it, but it was S.O.P. “I’m in, Sandra” he called up to the flight deck and activated the transport pod’s doors.
Sandra ran all the systems checks flawlessly under Alan’s watchful eye. As operational pilot, she opened the channel. It still felt strange to be on this side of the communications exchange. “Eagle 15 to Alpha, we are ready for launch.”
“Alpha to Eagle 15, affirmative,” cleared Bill Fraser. “Have a nice flight, Sahn.”
The launch was clean and unremarkable to any observer, except that it thrilled Sandra to know that she had mastered the skill. The Eagle smoothly lifted and turned on its assigned heading to the old ‘dark side of the moon’. That term had been ludicrous and inaccurate before Breakaway, and more so now, but traditions die hard in the space corps, and ‘the dark side’ it remained in common lexicon. The flight out was as smooth as even Alan could wish.
Sandra hovered the Eagle over Nuclear Disposal Area 1. The readings found little new, except for one small piece of exceedingly dense metallic space debris that had caught up against the base of the security fence. Too small to be clearly defined by scans, but in an unacceptable location to remain where it was, it would just have to checked out manually.
“Eagle 15 to Alpha.”
“We read you Alan, how’s it going?” asked Fraser.
“Just fine, except we seem to have a bit of garbage cluttering up NDA 1, permission to suit up and check.”
“What does it appear to be?” asked a curious Maya.
“Sending visuals now,” replied Sandra. There was a long pause. “Are you receiving Alpha?’ she asked.
“Negative, Sandra. We seem to have developed a glitch at our end. Some of our power readings are showing static and unexplained fluctuations,” reported Alibe, sitting in for Data Analysis.
Sandra and Alan exchanged looks. A quick systems check of the Eagle showed all systems go. Alan shrugged. ‘All A-OK here. Request permission for EVA.”
“Alright, Alan, but be quick and careful.” cleared the Commander.
“Always am,” replied Alan. Tony just rolled his eyes in Maya’s direction and shook his head doubtfully at that last statement.
Alan popped loose his restraints and called down the hatchway to the back. “Ben, ol’ buddy, gear up. You could use the suit practice. We’re going to take a little walk and see exactly what that thing is. Don’t like leaving litter just lying around. Clutters up the scenery, you know. Sandra, stay with the Eagle and keep the line open to Alpha.”
“Yes, Alan,” replied Sandra as she set the Eagle down precisely in the middle of the landing pad.
Alan gave Sandra’s shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze on his way out.
Alan had always looked for excuses to go on walkabout outside. He loved the feeling of the lighter gravity and the sense of wide openness all around. The tight enclosed feeling of Alpha did on occasion get to be a bit much to a man who had grown up hiking and riding in the Australian bush. Ben did not look quite so enthusiastic, but dutifully suited up. They checked each other’s seals and depressurized. The walk to the fence boundary was not far at all.
As the two men approached the fence, the energy strand currently causing the communication difficulties on Alpha snaked its way around and through the moon to it’s the far side. Invoking laws of physics not known to Terran or Psychon science it caused the small, densely metallic piece of space debris to shatter and then fly up en masse towards the two suited men. Alan, who didn’t expect a chunk of anything to so blatantly disregard the rules of gravity, saw the movement a second before Ben. He turned to push the doctor out of the way.
“Oomph,” a surprised Ben had to grab at the suited body that sagged against him. Ben was about to ask what caused the rock to jump, when he realized that all he could hear over his suit radio was static. He touched his helmet to Alan’s to ask what was going on, but only heard the sounds of Alan’s ragged breathing. Alan’s eyes were glassy and his mouth moved without words. Ben put his arm around Alan and turned him to get back to the Eagle, when he realized that he fingers had entered a tear in Alan’s space suit right under Alan’s arm.
Ben’s training took over and he immediately lowered Alan to the ground and got out the supplies to seal the breach. Alan still did not look good, and more worrisome, was making no effort to help. With great effort, Ben pulled Alan back up to his feet and half carried, half dragged him back to the Eagle, which looked ever so far away.
Sandra knew she had a problem when she lost contact with Alpha in mid-sentence. She tried to reach Alan and Ben over their suit radios, but only heard static. No matter how she tried to tune the Eagle’s communications system, the result was no different. She realized with a sinking feeling that something was dreadfully wrong when one man had to help the other back. She feared she knew which was which.
Sandra closed her helmet, depressurized the flight deck, and then quickly exited to help Ben pull Alan the final few steps into the Eagle. Alan’s dead weight made lifting him into the Eagle difficult. His leg hit the side of the door frame hard which caused him to land face down on the floor. Sandra slammed down the emergency controls to close the pod doors and repressurize, which seemed to take forever They rolled him over and took off his helmet and verified, to Sandra’s intense relief, that while unconscious he was still alive, but barely. Ben’s only partially successful emergency patch on Alan’s suit showed a few bloody bubbles leaking through. Alan was incredibly pale and gasping for breath. Frothy blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Ben grabbed the Eagle’s emergency medical kit and ran the sensor over Alan. “His oxygen level is really low, pressure down, heart rate up. We’ve got to get him out of this suit.”
The two of them literally stripped the suit from Alan’s body. Once off, the problem was still not apparent. Ben pulled the shirt up out of the way. There, a small hole under the right armpit. A fragment of the metal object had pierced not only Alan’s suit, but had gone straight through to his chest cavity. Alan’s respirations were becoming more and more labored and increasingly shallow. His lips were turning blue. Ben ran the sensor over Alan again. Finally, a diagnosis. “Damn, he has a tension pneumothorax.”
Sandra looked frantically between the dying pilot and the doctor. Ben quickly rummaged through the med kit. “Ah HA!” Ben cried and without pausing for any niceties like sterilization, he jammed the needle into Alan’s right lung with an assertive thrust. The sight and sound of escaping air mixed with blood was reassuring to Ben, if not Sandra. Alan’s body took a deep, shuddering breath. Taking a deep breath himself, Ben looked Sandra squarely in the eye. “Sandra, we need to get back to Alpha immediately. I can stabilize him for a little while, but he needs surgery to survive.”
Sandra nodded her head. Never before had so much rested in her hands. Studying Alan’s face, she took several calming breaths, wiping his blood off her hands and onto her space suit unthinkingly, trying to calculate the quickest way home. Just as she began to stand up, she thought she heard her name called. She lowered herself back down, carefully searching Alan’s face for any signs of recognition. He opened his eyes to meet hers and lifted a weak hand to her face. In a voice that was barely recognizable, he whispered, “I know you can do it, Sahn. Just get this bird back to Alpha and land her nice and pretty. I love you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The colorful arcs of energy were dancing between the buildings of Alpha, seeming to leap from one point to another.
“Maya, what the hell is causing all this? And how can we stop it?” fumed Koenig.
Maya was equally frustrated, “I have no idea how to stop the electrical buildup, Commander, because I have no idea where it came from or what is causing it! This should not be happening in the vacuum of space!”
“Another thing, John,” Tony threw in worriedly; “I hope Alan has the sense to keep Eagle 15 away from here until we re-establish communication. I’d hate to see what that stuff would do to the frame of an Eagle.”
A few minutes later, as the leaping arcs of energy caused a colorful haze obscuring much of the view on the Main Screen, Fraser looked at the Eagle Ops console in amazement. The long range communication black out had prevented them from reaching Eagle 15, but the old hardwired detection net alerted him to an incoming object. He squinted at the main screen, and then asked Alibe to adjust the reception. Yes……
“Commander, Eagle 15 is in visual range,” reported Bill Fraser. “And it is on an almost regimentally standardized approach. Alan should know to come in on a higher vector with all that going on out there!”
The Commander and Tony looked at each other: “Sandra?”
“Commander, all of Eagle 15’s lights are flashing synchronously,” reported Alibe, puzzled.
Maya looked up at the Main Screen. After a rather remarkable use of Morse code in Alpha’s past, Maya had thought it prudent to learn this means of primitive Terran communication. She knew that Sandra had learned it, too. Maya beat the Commander by seconds, “Tony, it’s flashing O……S……O……S in a repeating pattern.” She was equally puzzled.
“S.O.S.,” Tony looked at Koenig.
The Commander snapped out orders, “Bill, try to light up only Pad 7. We need to keep that Eagle as far as possible from Alpha.”
Simultaneously, Tony’s “Medical Center, potential medical emergency coming in hot on Pad 7” competed with Alibe’s “Crash teams to Pad 7.”
No one wanted to say it, but everyone realized the very real possibility of Eagle 15 crashing given all the unpredictable forces surging outside.
Then, what everyone feared came to past, spectacularly. A massive bolt of coruscating energy seeming to come from Alpha itself hit the Eagle. As Command Center went dim, all that could be heard was the sound of racing footsteps heading to Pad 7. The power flux transiently drained Alpha’s power to minimum life support.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bolt of energy which had hit the Eagle literally fried many of its systems. The Eagle lurched and twisted violently, but Sandra managed to stay on top of the motion. “Sahn, you have to get the nose up and land NOW!” whispered Alan, being held down to the floor by Ben Vincent, “the hull’s integrity is just about shot!” Ben knew Sandra hadn’t heard Alan; he worried that Alan’s integrity was just about shot also.
With an effort that she could later barely attribute to herself, Sandra landed the Eagle hard but centered on Pad 7.
The docking tube clamped onto the transporter pod with difficulty due to the extensive damage done to the Eagle’s exterior. The moment the doors opened enough to let passage, Ben called for the assistance he knew would be waiting … it was Alan’s only real hope. He was increasingly doubtful of the pilot’s survival. Helena forcibly pushed past Koenig and she and Ben rushed Alan to Medical Center without waiting to check on Sandra.
Koenig, Tony, and Maya cautiously entered the Eagle. The smell of ozone was strong from all the singed conduits and sparking panels and the air was hazy with smoke. Coughing, Tony immediately walked to the front, but was unable enter the flight deck. “John, the door’s frozen shut, probably that electrical bolt.”
Koenig unclipped his commlock. “Sandra, can you hear me? The door’s frozen shut. Sandra?”
He exchanged worried looks with Tony. The Eagle had obviously been landed under control, but who knew what the conditions up front were like now.
Tony reached for his laser, but Koenig shook his head no. “Too many unknowns. Maya….” The metamorph stepped up front. It took her less than a minute to open the door. Past Maya’s shapeshifting form and the smoke rolling out of the now opened door, Koenig could see little. He nodded to Tony to evacuate with Maya. He could pull Sandra out himself if he had to. He pulled in a deep breath a dashed inside. He found a helmeted Sandra sitting unnaturally still, eyes open, and hands resting calmly on the controls. Koenig recognized reaction nerves for what they were and helped her up with rough gentleness. It had been less than three minutes since Alan had been rushed to surgery. For Sandra, an eternity had passed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Commander escorted Sandra to Medical Center and turned her over to the care of Dr. Ed Spencer. Alan was still in surgery for the foreseeable future.
As John Koenig headed back to Command Center to assess the damage done to Alpha, he considered the impossibility he had just seen. There was no logical way Sandra should have been able to land that Eagle under those conditions, and certainly not as well as she had. She simply didn’t have the experience. Alan’s candid assessment in his report suggested that Sandra had the potential to become a solid, mid-level pilot, and Alan was seldom wrong when it came to his section. The problem was, she had not had the flight time yet and Alpha had no simulators to prepare pilots for these conditions. There was an incongruity here, but this was not the time to resolve it. He entered Command Center.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sandra slipped back into Medical Center quietly, the nurse on duty looking up long enough to give her an encouraging smile. After being cleared medically, she had been unable to sleep or even rest in her empty quarters, her imagination spinning out complications that could still result in Alan’s death, even now after surgery. Alan did look better than when she had last seen him, although to be fair, that didn’t take much.
Alan rested quietly in the intensive care section of the darkened third shift Medical Center. It was still touch and go. Helena planned on watching him for a minimum of seventy-two hours to make sure that the chest cavity bleeding did not reoccur; although, amazingly, no vital organs had been irreparably damaged. The fiberglass cast on Alan’s broken leg was pristine, except where Dr. Vincent had signed it with a flourish.
Sandra pulled up one of the chairs. She gently held Alan’s hand and kept a sleepless vigil for the rest of that night, and the next.
Alan’s drug-induced slumber was lifted on the third day. All the tests seemed to indicate that a full recovery was probable. Sandra was actually looking the worse of the pair as she had refused to leave her bedside vigil. Alan’s hand twitched in hers, and then his eyelids fluttered. Helena Russell gently pushed Sandra aside for some quick checks, and then with a satisfied nod, let Sandra take back her place.
“Sandra, he won’t really be awake for another hour or two. Why don’t you take some time for yourself and come back then. HE will do better if you look okay. Trust me on this; I’ve been through it enough times. Now, go,” ordered Helena, with a small reassuring smile. Reluctantly, but seeing the wisdom in the suggestion, Sandra did.
She found herself without thinking in Alan’s quarters. A quick shower and change of uniform did indeed help Sandra to feel better, as did a snack that had been left, she suspected by Annette Fraser. Pilot families had to stick together, thought Sandra. It had been less than an hour, but she felt the call of Medical Center. As she turned toward the door, the framed newspaper caught her attention. She read again the article of how Alan had landed an Eagle in the middle of a university campus and, in his usual inimitable style, got away with it. A very small smile crossed her face. With that thought in mind, she returned to Medical Center.
Sandra walked to Alan’s bedside and immediately forgot that anyone else might be there. Alan’s face did indeed have more color. She watched him closely. She found it amazing that he had gone from being a good friend to being her dearest friend, and lover. The wedding that was to have been in two weeks could be pushed back as long as was needful. Sandra sighed. She had accepted that she might lose him in a crash, but she knew she would always treasure his friendship and love. That was, almost, enough. She traced his cheek lightly with her fingertips and gently placed a kiss on his lips. Remembering what Ben had said had been his last order, she whispered, “Our Eagle did indeed land.”
He opened his eyes and found hers looking down on him. “I’m so very proud of you,” he said in a soft, pain-laden voice. For the only time since Sandra had seen Alan hurt, a single tear, but this of joyful relief and happiness, slid down her face.
When he returned to duty a few hours later, Dr. Ben Vincent found Sandra sitting beside Alan’s bed, sleeping, maintaining her patient vigil.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Alan healed, the damage to Moonbase Alpha was repaired. The region of space containing the unseen threads silently slid behind them, unknown and undetected.
MGK