Aurora - Blood Moon Tribute Pt. 10

"I mean, shouldn't we make sure to turn them off?"

"Good point." Ally said searching the console with her torch. She shone some light on the overhead, then flicked the exterior lights- navigation lights and anti-collision beacons- to 'off'. "What else?" she asked rhetorically. "Once I get the engines up, give me the autopilots. This panel here. If you can program the computer that would be cool, otherwise we'll just have to wing it. We're out in the gulf. Ab Aldafra has got to be south."

"Are we really gonna do this?"

"Unless you've got a better idea, little Gold Riding Hood."

Beck shrugged under the straps of her harness. "Guess not."

"It's just a chopper, Flea. It can't be that hard."

"Famous last words."

"Let's hope not. Well? Any questions?"

Beck looked at her. "Any fucking questions?"

"I mean ones that I can answer."

Beck shook her head.

"Good. Then I guess we might as well get this over and done with."

*********************************************************************

King Rashiid stood on the low wooden dais, head up, arms out, resplendent in his ceremonial robes, waiting while his stewards made the final adjustments. He heard a commotion outside, swearing and shouting, and looked around to see a 6-man squad drag his father through the door. Bruised and bleeding, sweating like a pig, he was still wearing the same torn and filthy knee-length undershirt, and a pair of pilfered pink rubber flip-flops, several sizes too small. Hauling the old man's mass to the centre of the chambers, they threw him down at the foot of the dais. "By all that is holy," he growled, rising to his knees, "I'll see you burn! The fires of hell await you!"

"You sooner than me, old man, but before you go. Where is my woman?"

The ex-king looked at the usurper, blinking.

"SPEAK!" Rashiid barked. "What have you done with my wife?"

His father looked around, clearly nonplussed. "Done with her?"

"She was meant to be in her chambers! Where has she gone?"

"Gone?" the old monarch echoed, arching his eyebrows. "Don't tell me she has slipped through your fingers again."

"What have you done?" Rashiid glared, nostrils flaring. "How did you have her spirited away? By all that is holy, old man, tell me!"

"Really?" the old king said. "You really think I did it? You flatter me."

"You think you can toy with me you addled old fool? WHERE IS SHE?"

"Perhaps you should check with your seers." the ex-king chuckled. "It is they who should advise on matters divine."

"WHERE IS SHE?"

"You really don't know." the old king shook his head. "Incredible."

Rashiid shook his fist. "I'll give you incredible. Wrapped in a bullet. Now where is she?"

The king studied his nails, shaking. "You know, I do believe that heaven is trying to tell you something, and if I were you I would listen. I'm telling you, this young woman is not of mortal means. I've seen it. I have FELT it. Verily, you are dealing with something beyond your experience. Something divine. The very reincarnation of Lady Niqiya."

"Lady Niqiya?" Rashiid grimaced. "You blithering old idiot. Flesh and blood, that's all she is. Tits, cunt and an attitude. Like every other whore I've ever fucked."

"Yet she has the power to drive you insane." the old king smirked. "Trust me, boy, she will be the death of you."

"Boy? You would call me boy? I am your KING! You, old man, will address me as 'Your Majesty'."

The old king scoured his throat then spat on the tiles. "Dog! I would sooner suck farts out of a pig's asshole than call you king."

Rashiid gestured with a jerk of the head and a black-clad officer stepped up, then sent the old man sprawling with a stinging back-hand. The officer strolled away, massaging his hand, as the old king struggled upright onto his knees. "Oh, how I will enjoy watching you hang. All of you. Except you!" he nodded at Rashiid. "I will castrate you in the square of remembrance. With the entire population cheering me on. I will hang you from the flagpole and watch you bleed out. I'll make it a public holiday. I will live-stream the crows consuming your flesh. Day by day, week by week."

Rashiid heaved a sigh of great tedium. "Have you quite finished?" he asked, then twirled a finger at his temple. "What do you say, lads? Live stream? The silly old prick has finally lost his marbles."

The soldiers in the chambers dutifully laughed, though none too loud.

"You know," Rashiid said, stepping off the dais, "I was going to send you out on a boat. Fishing for shark. You were the bait by the way. But do you know what? I might just spare you, just for now. You say this creature was sent down from heaven? Then she'll have no trouble flying when I throw her off the screaming wall. And you can watch. Then you can follow, and keep her company in Hell."

"You always were a nasty little swine." the king grunted. "And craven coward, unable to look a man in the eye as you took his life. A dog and a traitor. Your whore mother would be proud."

Rashiid stood looking down at his father, a man he'd loathed for as long as he'd lived. Loathed and envied in equal measure, and also revered. For the effortless brutality he'd always displayed. For his casual cruelty, for the mundane bloodletting he regularly performed with no more arousal than if he were crushing a fly. Now the time had come to make the old man proud. Even if he had to kill him to do it. "You!" Rashiid pointed, then snapped his fingers at a young trooper. A splendid young man, still in his teens, the flower of Ab Aldafran youth. Broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, a manly bulge in the front of his black fatigues.

The soldier pointed at himself. "Me, Sire?"

Rashiid beckoned. "Come, come." Turning, he held a hand out to an officer nearby. "Grenade."

The officer bowed, took two long strides, and came to attention at the new king's side. "Sire?"

Rashiid snapped his fingers and the officer plopped dull-green, oversized egg onto his hand. The young trooper, meanwhile, marched stiffly across the room, then went down on one knee at Rashiid's feet. "Sire." He said, head hung low.

"Up, Lad, up."

The trooper stood, legs shaking, sweat beading his face. As a prince, Rashiid had always been a great fan of summary execution, when it came to those who displeased him. There was no reason to think that things would be different now he was king."

"What's your name, Lad?"

The trooper licked the sweat from his lip. "M... M... Mumtaz, My Liege."

"Mumtaz," Rashiid intoned, "excellent. Here." Reaching out he took the troopers hand... skin-on-skin, a mighty blessing, then lay the grenade on the trooper's palm. "Take the western staircase." he said. "Go to the roof. Go to the helicopter. Open the door and drop this inside."

The old monarch tried once more to struggle to his feet. "NO! Not my helicopter. That was a gift from the Swedish king!"

Of all his father's regal accessories, Rashiid hated the helicopter most. For all the times he'd been dragged on board the thing, then flown to the palace like some errant child, to be brow-beaten, berated, chastised and humiliated, at his father's pleasure before the court. Rashiid waved the protestation away. "I'm sure he'll see the funny side. From one doddering old has-been to the other."

"If you're so determined to steal the crown, so be it. But senseless destruction of the country's valuable assets. These things belong to the people. Not to you. I will not hear of it!"

Rashiid turned his back. "Go, Mumtaz, go and kill the thing, the old man's cherished flying machine. And you men..." he gestured at the gathered soldiery, "turn this island upside down. Find my wife and bring her to me. In the Great Hall. Bring her to the celebrations. A year's leave on full pay for the squad that finds her."

*********************************************************************

Ally peered into Beck's frightened eyes. "You ready for this?"

Beck nodded, slowly and ponderously. "No."

"Once we hit these switches we're committed."

Beck nodded once more.

"One last rehearsal. I start the engines. You give me the autopilots. Goggles down, then we hit the sky."

"Would you mind using a different term?"

"Do you copy?"

Beck heaved a sigh. "Copy."

Ally looked down, then unlatched the privacy barrier between cockpit and cab, to find several pairs of big frightened eyes peering back at her. "You guys all strapped in?"

"As best we can." Watson nodded. "What's happening?"

"We're about to make some noise and beat the atmosphere into submission. You guys ready?"

Reaching up, Ally flicked a row of overhead switches. Lights flashed and after a few tense moments, the instrument-panel flat-screen displays lit up. Ally tried her intercom. "Hello hello?"

"Loud and clear." Beck replied.

Three pips jumped out of the headsets followed by a strident female voice. 'Rotor low! Rotor low!'

"No fuckin' shit, Betty?" Ally huffed, mashing buttons on the control sticks, one between her legs, the other to her side on the left.

"Jesus Christ." Beck breathed, nodding at her MFD. "Look at all those failures."

"They'll fuck off once she's up and running." Ally intoned. "Focus, Flea."

Ally pushed a button on the lever to her left and shut the audio down. "Found the cancel button."

"You should get them to sign-off your type rating." Beck muttered.

"For both of us." Ally nodded. "Fuel switches."

"Which engine?"

"Do 'em all. Now's not the time to be fussy."

Down the back, directly behind Ally, in a plush, aft-facing, cream leather chair, Watson sat wringing his hands, waiting for fate to reveal itself. Never in his life had he faced such prolonged exposure to sudden, violent lethality. Now, strapped into a big, complex machine they had no place being, listening through his headset to two smart, wilful young females, who had no clue what they were doing, trying to animate this monster and get it airborne. The fiasco seemed building up to some sort of crescendo.

Movement caught his eye. Watson looked out the window to his left as the door handle popped up and the right rear-door slid open. For one long, eloquent instant, he sat staring into the eyes of a handsome young man, with a black Kevlar pot on his head and a drip of sweat clinging to the tip of his nose. His chest was rising and falling, as if he had just run a long way hard and was still catching his breath. He looked at Watson. Watson looked at him, and just for that moment the two were connected. The young man extended his arm, fist clenched, as if offering the old man a fist-bump. Palm-down, he opened his hand.

A lever pinged into the cabin, and something resembling a fat, metal avocado fell to the floor. Shoulders hunched, the trooper turned and ran. In one deft move he would remember the rest of his days, Watson caught the grenade on the very first bounce and flung it out the door. A dazzling explosion lit up the night, as loud as it was bight. Everyone ducked, while the fleeing soldier was blown clean off the pad.

Ally looked over her shoulder. "WHAT THE FUCK?"

Watson slid the door shut and locked the handle. "If we're gonna do this, girls, I suggest we do it now."

"Was that a grenade?" Cassandra quavered. "Giddy... you saved us."

"Grenade?" Ally echoed.

"I'll tell you later." Watson huffed, flirting with a cardiac arrest, "But I'm telling you, if we don't go now we might as well not bother."

"Fuck this!" Ally cursed, "Flea! Time to stop fucking around." Reaching out, she turned a knob on the centre console from 'Off' to 'idle'. A relay clacked, followed by the sound of a turbine stirring overhead. The screens went dark with the huge suck of amps, then reappeared in all their brilliance.

Beck bounced up and down in her seat with excitement. "Look! The blades are turning. The tapes are rising, look! Start, ignition, idle! Ally! You've done it."

The engine wound up. The blades were spinning faster and faster, until the starter dropped out and the chopper settled at idle. Ally scanned the multi-function display, calling on scraps of memory, and native intelligence to decipher the hieroglyphs. She turned the knob from 'idle' to 'flight' and the engine spooled up.

"What's next?" Beck asked, wide-eyed.

Ally shrugged. "Get the other sucker going, I guess."

The start of the second engine was almost anticlimactic, and in two minutes flat, the turbines were wailing and the great big rotors spinning in a blur. Ally sat for a moment, lost for inspiration. Surely just starting the thing should be triumph enough. "Oh well," she said, "better drop these goggles."

Beck fought and fidgeted with her Night Vision Goggles. "How do I do this again?"

Ally lowered the tubes in front of her eyes. "This button here, see?"

Beck dropped the small, black binoculars and the world lit up. "At least we'll be able to see what we hit."

Ally wrapped her hand around the lever to her left. "Oh ye of little faith."

"Oh ye of little experience." Beck said, nodding at the lever. "Is that the hand-brake?"

"Oh ye of little brain." Ally snorted. "That's the collector. At least I think that's what they call it. Pull up to go up."

Beck licked her lips. "So we're really gonna do this?"

"Fuck it, Flea, we've already been through this."

"What about pre takeoff checks?"

"Knock yourself out. I'm getting out of here."

Muscles clenched, Ally pulled up on the lever at her side. It barely budged, until she squeezed a trigger and the aircraft bounced up on its landing gear. "Force trim." she said, her voice an octave higher than normal. The aircraft was already sitting light on the wheels, and Ally looked at Beck under her goggles. "Last chance, Flea. Do we or don't we?"

Beck tightened her lap-strap a notch. "Unless you've got a better idea."

Ally inched the lever upwards. The big machine shimmied on its landing gear and the nose reared off the ground. Beck gripped the instrument hood. "Keep her level!"

"I am!" Ally snapped, as the aircraft skidded forward, the brakes still locked. Ally checked back on the joystick and the nose reared higher and higher.

"Keep the nose down!" Beck cried, "We're gonna stall."

"It's a helicopter, dummy!"

"Put her down, Ally, I don't like this."

Too late. The back wheels came unstuck and the aircraft surged into the air, the nose slewing right as it barrelled backwards off the pad. Ally poled forward and the helipad filled the windscreen, at the same time slewing off to the left. "DO THE RUDDER!" Ally squealed, "KEEP THE NOSE STRAIGHT!"

Slumped low in her seat, beck arrested the turn with a slipper-full of left pedal. Ally hauled back and the nose pitched up, as the helicopter climbed vertically up the mountain. They watched the boulder-strewn peak descend through the windscreens, so close they could have reached out and touched it. A clutch of satellite dishes announced the summit, then the mountain dropped away and the sky opened up in all its glory before them. "Your power thingy says one hundred and seven percent." Beck panted.

Ally lowered the lever a touch, wings level, nose on the artificial horizon, and the aircraft settled into a sedate climb. Someone keyed their intercom. "Are we dead yet?" the old man asked.

Ally raised the landing gear. "I'm saving that for the landing. Everyone alright?"

"I'm gonna have to change my undies." Beck quavered. "And I'm not even wearing any."

"Piece of cake." Ally said. "What did I tell you?"

"You probably wanna bring her around to the south." Beck suggested. "Here, I found the flight director. Want me to plug in George?"

Ally flicked glance at the centre console. "Let's have altitude hold. And give me IAS. There you go." she raised her hands, announcing her surrender to the autopilot. The lever dropped and the aircraft settled down at one hundred and forty-odd knots, 1300 feet above the gulf.

Beck twiddled a few more knobs. "Here's the heading bug." she said, tapping a dial on the panel. "Put yours on south and I'll plug in heading hold."

Ally did as Beck suggested. The aircraft dropped a wing, turning left onto south.

"Nice going." Beck said. "I've heard of heavy landings, but never thought I'd see a heavy takeoff."

Ally gave Beck the finger. "Just shaking the dust off."

Head down, peering under her goggles, Beck delved into the flight computer, one of a pair either side of the centre console. "I'm pretty sure I can make this work." she said. "Scratch pad, see. I'll do a direct-to Ab Aldafra."

Between them, after a few minutes' exploration, they had the thumping great machine rumbling along at five hundred feet over the water. Tracking the GPS direct to Ab Aldafra International airport. "Ooo," Beck cried, "look! A mobile phone!"

Ally flicked it a glance. "It's probably locked."

"Ours never is." Beck said. "I mean, who's gonna steal a helicopter?"

High on endorphins and the flood of adrenaline, they snorted and cackled with hilarity for a moment, then Beck tapped up the display. "Holy shit!" she breathed, "It's the king's."

"Elvis?"

"Look at this. Every second contact's HRH."

Ally looked at her, nonplussed.

"His Royal fuckin' Highness. Hell's bells. Just how many are there?"

"When you've dipped your wick as many times as he has."

Beck looked at Ally's out-of-focus profile through her goggles. "Roger!"

Ally swivelled her head. "You mean, 'Roger', as in 'I concur'?"

"I mean Roger, as in Roger Bragg. Our actual owner."

Ally's jaw dropped. ET call home. "Give him a try. I can't wait to tell him what we've just done."

Beck punched in his number, and in after a few seconds a voice replied, "Hello."

Beck, Ally and Watson all began talking at once, then Beck bellowed, "QUIET!" The headsets fell silent, and Beck could hear heavy breathing over the line.

"If this is a prank call." a voice growled.

Beck smeared her eyes under the goggles. "Roger, it's me."

"Rebekah?"

"Yes, Rodge. And Alana's here too. Say something, Ally."

"I want a fuckin' raise, Boss! And a chopper licence."

From the sound of Bragg's voice he was crying. "Becky? Alana? How the FUCK? What... where are you?"

"Over the middle of the frikken gulf." Ally replied. "In a borrowed helicopter."

"A borrowed what?"

"You heard me."

"Who's flying?"

"We are." Ally said.

"You? You can't fly a helicopter."

"Well we can now, can't we Flea? And Rodge. Damon's here."

Bragg's tone changed. "Now this is just bullshit. Whoever's making you say this, you just tell 'em, I'm not buying it. And if it's under duress... go ahead and tell 'em it's an international incident!"

Beck looked over her shoulder. "Dommy?"

Watson cleared his throat. "Umm... Rodge... it's Damon. It's true. Ally just tried to fly us through a mountain. And I'm not looking forward to the landing to be perfectly honest. But we're off that fucking island and not a minute too soon. I think there's been some sort of coup."

There was a short, stunned silence. "Well fuck me. Alana. Is it really you?"

"Last time I looked."

"Is Sook with you? We've been trying to find her."

Beck and Ally looked at each other and Ally shook her head. "She's waiting for us."

"Seriously? And you've really stolen a chopper?"

"Borrowed, Mister Bragg. Borrowed. It was either steal... borrow... the helicopter, or hang around getting shot at by baddies."

"Which baddies?" Bragg asked.

"Rashiid's."

"Rashiid? You sure? As far as we know he's fighting down south."

"No." Watson said. "He's gone to the island. To depose the king. We got it from the horse's mouth. The old man's personal head-kickers."

"His who?"

"South African security. Look, it's a long story."

"Rashiid." Bragg intoned. "So that's what it's all about. Kev's been watching. There's fighting in the Sea Palace and most of Ab Aldafra's shut down. And a heap of dissidents being let out of jail. It's all happening."