Aurora - Blood Moon Tribute Pt. 10

Another round of perplexed glances, and Aisha raked her hair back. "Come where?"

"As far as we go. To the world if we can make it."

"World? What world?"

"The one where you can be all you can be. Where you can be a pilot."

A look of anguished longing crossed Aisha's face. "How can this be possible? I am Ab Aldafran. A simple prison guard. And I am just a woman."

Ally shook her head. "Oh no you're not. You're much, much more than all of those combined." She could sense the others nodding. "Where I come from you could have a wonderful life. And all the opportunity and respect you deserve. Come with us, Aisha, and if we're caught on the way, you can say I just took you hostage."

"Ho... ho..."

"Hostage. Prisoner. Come on, what do you say? Risk you neck coming with us, or hang around here and get beaten for using your beautiful brain?"

Aisha weighed up her options, then a distant burst of automatic gunfire, somewhere in the prison, threw the switch. She nodded. "I will come. As far as you can take me. And if it's not all the way, then so be it."

Bolstered by their former jailer's courage, they set off two abreast into the moonlight, picking their way across the garbage strewn sand, heading for the tanks. In the lead, Ally scoured the hill for the first sign of the aircraft, but with one hundred meters to run she'd still seen nothing. Two of the girls, Thip and Sophany, were whispering behind her back, and Ally's shoulders slumped under a downburst of doubt. Who could have stolen a 6-ton flying machine? Did it go back by itself, under command of some autonomous program? Did she really escape from the island in the thing? Had she ever really been there in the first place? She smeared her eyes with the balls of her palms, while Aisha looked over her shoulder, wondering if there was still time to sneak back to the jail, go back to her post and act like nothing had happened.

"No helicopter." Yan said, matter-of-factly.

"Well!" Ally snapped, "It was there half an hour ago. Come on. Let's head for the tanks. If somebody took it there might be a car. They had to get here somehow."

They set off again, stumbling into a low, rocky bowl, clambering out again up the steep scree-slope formed in the hill's decapitation. With meters to go, the tips of the helicopter's uppermost tailrotor blades peeked into view and Ally almost swooned with relief. The doubters behind her began whispering excitedly, as more and more of the tail became visible, while the rest of the aircraft remained hidden behind a water tank- the very reason Ally had put it there in the first place.

First onto the pad, Ally stopped to catch her breath while the others scrambled up behind her, and they set off in a huddle to the side of the big machine. Aisha slung the rifle over her back and stood peering up at the rotors, shaking her head. "C-L, half rho, V-squared S."

"The magic spell, eh?" Ally said. "Let's see if it works. Yan?"

"Boss?"

Ally pulled the handle up and slid the rear door open. "You look after the girls in the back. Make sure they put their seat belts on. When you shut the door, make sure you pull it in firmly, then push down on the handle till it locks."

Thip and Sophany bounded aboard like kids about to go on a joyride, while Penny followed, patently stunned.

"Just so you know," Ally went on, issuing a disclaimer, as Yan climbed on board and closed the door, "I have no fuckin' idea what I'm doing. I don't have a license so I'm just making shit up."

Left behind, Aisha stood peering at Ally in the dark. "You still wish me to come?"

"Yeah." Ally frowned. "Why not?"

"Then... where should I sit?"

Ally opened the left cockpit door. "Where do you think the pilot sits?" she asked, looking deadpan. "Up front."

Aisha almost did herself an injury climbing on board, and sat staring wide-eyed at this Aladdin's cave of technology. With one last lap of the aircraft, pure habit, Ally opened the right door and climbed onboard. "Here..." Ally said, nodding at Aisha's rifle, "put that bloody thing away behind the seat. There. With a bit of luck we won't be needing it. Now, see the straps?"

For the next couple of minutes, Ally put Aisha through the finer points of seatbelts, then snapped her fingers at Yan for a rear-seat headset. "You'll need these once we get started." she told Aisha, "these things are kinda loud. You guys in the back, there should be plenty of headsets to go around, put the mikes close to your lips but keep your mouths shut when I'm busy." She pulled the helmet from its mount and slipped it on. "Any second thoughts, kids? Cos' when I hit this starter we're committed."

She reached for the overhead panel just as Yan leant into the cockpit. "Ally!" she exclaimed. "I see lights!"

Ally looked up. There in the distance, several sets of headlights were speeding through the night, dipping and swerving on the access-road like a formation of fireflies. Ally stifled a cry, her hand blundering impotently over the centre console, as the lead vehicle announced its intentions by unleashing a long burst of tracer in their direction.

A dozen streaks of red zapped harmlessly over the aircraft. The left door opened and Aisha bailed out, taking her rifle with her, then rounded the nose and went down on one knee. Ally threw the switches, waiting in vain for the whir of the cooling fans, first indication of power reaching the bus. The sound of Aisha's weapon, a rapid three-round burst, startled her off her seat, leaving the image of a kneeling young woman seared into her retinas by the muzzle flash.

Ally took a breath. They had one chance and one chance only. Looking up, she saw the circuit breakers she'd popped, white collars plainly visible in the dark. She mashed them in, all of them, even the ones she hadn't pulled, then went for the switches again. The fans spooled up, and the warning lights did their dance again. Fuel switches on, Ally sat bouncing up and down while the aircraft initialised, then turned the first engine switch to 'Idle' and waited for the magic to happen.

Aisha sent burst after burst downrange. Two vehicles swerved off the road, one a side, into the sand, the troops on board replying with long volleys of tracer. Another vehicle was hit head-on by Aisha's answering fire, while a fourth SUV turned tail and sped back the way it had come. But two more vehicles pressed on and, now, either visual or aiming at Aisha's muzzle flash, began to zero in.

The first engine finished its start sequence and Ally turned the knob to, 'Flight', then cranked number two before RPM had even stabilised. Dirt was kicking up all around from the impact of rounds and Ally heard a rapid 'ti-ti-tick' as one burst hit the tailboom, entering the nearside and passing out the other without so much as nicking anything vital. Aisha changed magazines, then sent a long, convincing burst on full automatic, taking out the headlights and dampening the attacker's zeal. The vehicles pulled up one hundred meters away, frightened young rookies with badly wounded squad-mates arguing... finish the chopper off or turn round and call it a day.

The second engine came up to operating RPM and Ally punched the autopilot awake. She lowered her goggles, looking directly into the muzzle flash of a rifle pointing straight at her. Rounds flashed by the windscreen, a bare few inches wide, and Ally looked over her shoulder, screaming at Yan. "GET AISHA!"

Aisha dropped the empty mag and felt for another, as the rear door opened and a tall, slender female jumped out. Slamming the mag home Aisha worked the action, then poured a deadly stream of red-hot lead into the nearest SUV. The one behind had already taken the hint, backing away as fast as reverse-gear would drive it. Yan grabbed Aisha by the scruff of the neck and dragged her, still firing, backwards onto the helicopter. The door hadn't even shut and Ally was airborne, using the two previous attempts to finesse the third. A long, parting squirt of tracer raced after them, all the rounds passing harmlessly over the aircraft.

All except one.

Ally's leg was jumping again, and she was hyperventilating. Down the back the girls were screaming, either celebrating the escape or contemplating their impending annihilation. Ally hooked the gear up and the aircraft accelerated to 140 knots, settling down in the cruise at a few hundred feet. She craned her neck, watching the prison recede in the distance, a bright oasis of toxic light in the middle of a pastel desert. She plugged in the autopilot- airspeed, altitude, and a rough heading, due north for the airport. "Aisha, Honey? Are you on the air?"

There was no reply so Ally tried again. "Yannie? Can someone give Aisha a headset?"

A moment later Aisha came up. "Miss Ally?"

"I saved you a seat. Come on up, just watch where you put your feet." She pointed at the centre console. "Not on here."

A long, slim leg appeared, wearing an army boot, and Aisha insinuated herself into the cockpit, carefully avoiding contact with the myriad buttons and switches. She settled into copilot seat, then did her straps up as Ally had shown her. Ally leant over and plugged in her lead while Aisha looked around, beaming. Ally gestured with her chin. "Lock your door, Toots. That's right. Just push the handle down.

Aisha did as she was told, then sat, her shapely chest heaving with the exertion. She looked at Ally, wide eyed. "Miss Ally. I am flying."

"No, Miss Aisha. You are fucking incredible."

While she didn't understand the words, she gathered the meaning, and her face lit up with a big, white grin. "Did you see me, Miss Ally? 'Pew-pew-pew... pew-pew. Am I good enough to be a pilot?"

"No." Ally shook her head. "You're good enough to be a flippin' astronaut, girl."

Aisha's face suddenly clouded. "I hope I didn't hurt anyone."

"You mean those guys who were trying to fill us full of holes? Nahh... they'll be fine." Pausing, Ally wrinkled her nose at an oddly familiar smell. Hot engine oil. She scanned the malfunction display but there was nothing to see.

Head down, she called up the flight plan page and put Ab Aldafra International as the destination. A quick 'Direct-to' and the course needle swung round, pointing directly at the airport. 50 miles to run, about 20 minutes. She looked at Aisha to find her gazing around the cockpit in rapture. All the dreams she had since she was a little girl, running around the playground, arms outstretched like wings, swooping and soaring. Now here she was, actually airborne. Not how she'd imagined it, granted, the noise and vibration, the screech of the engines, the buffet of the airflow and whine of the gearbox. But she was flying, and all of those dreams had just come true.

A big red light lit up over the primary flight display. It said, 'WARNING'. And just in case Ally was under any illusions, Bitching Betty, the onboard nag, said, 'Warning. Warning.' Ally cancelled the warning light and looked at the malfunction display. There, in neat red text, the cause of the problem. 'MGB TEMP'.

Ally knitted her brows. 'MGB...? MGB...?' Her ears picked up the tiniest new thread in an ear-bashing tapestry of sound. A sort of buzz. Aisha looked at her. "Miss Ally? Is everything alright?"

Hot engine oil. A high temperature warning and some kind of vibration. The bottom fell out of her heart. One night, over a capital city, as the guest of a police department chief-pilot, Ally had teased him on the nature of the beast. "What's the definition of a helicopter?" she'd asked, and before he could answer, replied, "Ten million nuts and bolts flying in formation. Around an oil leak." That oil leak, of course, being the main-rotor gearbox. 'Face it,' she'd teased, 'you're just a flying gearbox.'

'Safe as houses.' her cop friend replied. 'These things have got a thirty-minute dry-running time.'

Thirty minutes? Then what? Ally hunkered down. The main transmission was the throbbing heart of the helicopter, dozens of gears taking the output from the engines and turning it into flight. In her mind's eye she saw the fleeting image of a disembodied rotor, pinwheeling out of the sky, after separating from a helicopter, leaving the rest of the machine with 13 souls on board to plummet at terminal velocity to Earth. She glanced at the 'Time To Go'. 18 minutes.

Yan leant into the cockpit. "Ally? Boss? We can smell something."

Ally smacked her dry lips. "What's it smell like?"

"Hot cooking oil."

Ally waved her back. "It's just the engines," she said hollowly, "they always do that. Though we may have to land in a hurry. Make sure your seatbelts are nice and tight."

The Master Warning flashed again, another red caption. 'MGB PRESS'. Ally cancelled the segment, muttering, 'I know, I know...' and for a long time there was silence over the intercom. Only Ally knew for sure, but everyone had the feeling something was not quite right. For the girls in the back it was fearfully noisy, and pitch darkness lay beyond the big square windows.

Then Ally spoke up. "Yan?" she said, "What are you gonna do when you get back home?"

"Go to noodle king." Yan promptly replied over the intercom. "Order banquet for 6 and eat all by myself." Everyone laughed. "Then I start a business."

"Oh yeah? What sort of business?"

Yan thought for a moment. "I call it Madam Ally spa and beauty fac-tory."

The helicopter was fleetingly full of heartfelt laughter and even Ally slapped her knee. "Awesome. Let me know, right? I wanna be your first customer. Thip?"

"Boss?"

"What will you do?"

"Me? I go to market. Buy water buffalo, two sheeps and one hundred fish. Make big barbeque." Another round of slightly delirious hilarity. If they were gonna die, they were gonna die laughing.

"No business?"

"After eat that? Maybe not for long time."

Sophany, the sweet little Cambodian was next. "I buy gun." she said darkly. "Go to nice big house, own by boss of labour hire. Sorry, Yan, he Chinese." Yan gave her a conciliatory pat. "First I shoot him cock. Then I shoot him balls. Then I shoot both him knees, one bullet for every year I stay in prison." The mood sobered, and Ally checked the Time To Go. 15 minutes, and the first lights of Ab Aldafra flared in the night vision goggles.

Sophany went on. "Then I go across the border. Go to Thip's barbeque."

The last-minute save was met with giggles and applause, then Ally cleared her throat. "Penny?"

"Uh huh?"

"What are you gonna do when you get back home?"

"IF I get back home." Penny said bleakly. "I'm a convicted killer, remember. And a murderer. And this is Ab Aldafra. They're not gonna let me go. Someone will stop me, you'll see, right at the border. Then they'll fuckin' hang me, you just wait."

"Jesus Christ!" Ally huffed, "Come on Penny, play the game. Listen. What would you rather? Get the fuck out of here or swing by the neck? I mean, really."

There was a moment's strained silence then Penny spoke up. "Wanna know the truth? I am gonna get so fucking munted. We're gonna hit the pub and we'll drink the joint dry."

Ally looked at Aisha and decided not to ask- she was fleeing her home after all, not going back to it, but after a moment's silence, Sophany, an unsophisticated 20 year-old said, "Madam Aisha? What do you do?" Thip gave Sophany a silencing nudge in the ribs, but she'd already continued. "When you get home, what do you do?"

A loaded question, and stark reality the renegade prison guard been hoping to avoid. She looked at Ally, her eyes big and dark in the glow of the flatscreens. "I don't know. Miss Ally? If I go with you? I won't have a home."

Ally shifted uncomfortably under her harness. "Don't worry, Aisha. We'll get you a new one. A better one. I promise."

"How?"

A grim reality stood over Ally's blithe assurance- intransigent bureaucracies, years in detention. Bridging visas, monthly reviews, years or even decades of uncertainty. All for an intelligent young woman who'd saved their lives, who'd thrown her lot in with them. "I've got a plan." Ally replied. "He's about six feet tall and goes by the name of Roger Bragg."

Taking its cue, Fate the conductor struck up another theme in this airborne cacophony. A high-pitched squeal, metal under torture. Ally checked the readouts, finding no clue but no hint of comfort either, then inched the altitude down another hundred feet. The four-lane road from the prison to town slid underneath, well beyond the devastation of the checkpoint. The high-rise cityscape was already resolving, and Ally tried to plot the airfield by eye, searching for a big, dark swathe between the edge of suburbia and the glittering CBD.

11 minutes to go. Two hundred feet off the deck, and the air inside the helicopter smelt like a foundry. 26 miles to run, still over the desert, if they put down here they might as not bother. Get Aisha to put a bullet through them each, get it over with- as escaped prisoners in a stolen royal aircraft their capture wouldn't end well. Even if they could flag down a car, it was a 30-minute drive to the airport, even at the breakneck speeds the locals preferred, and dawn would soon be on the horizon. And she'd already told Beck. 1 hour. "Ally." Thip quavered, "It smell like burning."

"She's just a little overheated." Ally croaked. "They all do that. You girls strapped in nice and tight?"

Time slowed to a crawl. The edge of the city, where the desert ended and the suburbs began, crept down the windscreen. A new, palpable vibration set in, a sub-audible, buzz throbbing through the airframe. The aircraft was suffering, crying for help, begging to be set back down and just put to rest. Ally gave the instrument hood a pat. "Come on, Baby, just a few more minutes." She looked at Aisha. "Sorry, Sweetheart, this is a pretty shitty intro to flying. Trust me, this is not what it's all about."

"If you are here, I am here. I am not worried."

'Well you ought to be.' Ally thought. "Just don't let it put you off, okay? In fact, this should give you faith in the technology. This machine is giving her all."

With five miles to go, low over the slumbering suburbs, something let go with a 'BANG!' and everyone screamed. Everyone except Ally, who sat staring at the instrument display. Number 2 engine was going apeshit and, in an act that was equal parts good luck and reflex, she reached for the knob and turned it to 'Off'. Starved of oil, a driveshaft bearing had failed and that simple action restored the relative peace and quiet. At least the relative peace and quiet of a screeching gearbox about to self-destruct.

The airfield was in sight, the long, main runway oblique to their track. The machine settled down at 120 knots, hanging in the sky on one engine. Not knowing north from south, barely able to tell up from down, Ally ham-fisted the aircraft onto a low, flat base. The runways, taxiways and terminals were still unlit, same with the tower. With a pitched battle raging in town, the locals, the locals were using the excuse to take a night off. No locals meant no expat contractors, including fire and rescue, and for better or worse they were all on their own.

The runway swung lazily around onto the nose, and Ally pitched back, slowing the helicopter while holding her height. As before, she jinked left a little and lined up on the apron, outside the still distant hangars. Now an expert, she knew the trick was to avoid getting too slow and trying to hover, where the esoteric physics of rotary-wing flight transcended common sense. Another alarm sounded and a voice in her ear said, 'Landing gear, landing gear', the strident warning drowned out by her own shout. "EVERYONE BRACE!"

The helicopter touched down at forty knots, two hundred meters short of hangar six. Too late Ally realised she was a foot closer to the ground than she should have been, and the grinding and shrieking now came from underneath as well as above. The machine flatironed across the apron in a shower of sparks, shedding bits of hardware as it went. The cab filled with smoke, acrid and biting, where splashing oil met red-hot casing. Ally popped her door. "YAN! OPEN YOUR DOOR. THE SECOND WE STOP YOU ALL GET OUT!"