Nanotroopers Episode 3: Deeno and Mighty Mite

clanking aft in the slipstream.

  "That was a flap--I think!" yelled Sumida, over the roar of the air.

  But the spin force had dropped off, noticeably lessened.

  "Hold on--" Lalande gritted. "She's coming around--!"

  A series of pounding, teeth-jarring shudders hammered the ship as it torqued and bucked against the force of the airstream.

  Lalande slammed his stick in the opposite direction.

  There was a loud groan, and then, as if a giant hand had seized them, Archimede shimmied like a dog shaking off water, rolled slightly back to port and dropped nose first, free of her spin, dropping like a fat needle deeper and deeper into the denser layers of air.

  "Ahh-ahhhhhh--!" yelled Lalande, seizing and centering his controls. "We did it…Mon Dieu! We did it! I've got something--I've got control here--"

  Slowly, reluctantly, Archimede swung back to a level position, waggling a bit unsteadily but out of the spin. Out the windscreen, a brilliant shimmering orange radiance was pulsating in a halo around the ship's nose. There was no distinct boundary to the glow, more a hazy, diffuse aura with throbs of amber and gold brilliance like a living, breathing organism. Torch blasts of deeper red and ocher flashed by the windows as solid particles flamed into incandescence.

  From kilometers below, on the cool shadowy dawnlit wave tops of a coral lagoon in the Marshall Islands, a meteor burst into brilliance in the southeastern sky, outshining for a few seconds every star in the morning heavens.

  Lalande called up the revised descent profile on the monitor in front of him and began gingerly executing a series of steep rolls to get onto their best track to Hickam Field. Ground control had uplinked the profile a few minutes before, hoping Archimede would be able to pull out of her uncontrolled descent. Now, Lalande banked the ship hard left, and the G-meter edged up past 4.0, pressing everyone into their seats with force equal to four times their own weight. Lalande glanced hurriedly over at Sumida; they both knew Archimede would have to exceed her planned reentry g-loads by a sizeable margin, if they were to have any chance of making Hawaii.

  The alternative was a rough, high-speed ditching into the ocean or an even dicier bailout at low altitude.

  Neither choice seemed particularly promising.

  The neon-pink glow of thousands of molecules being heated to incandescence bathed the flight deck in a surreal glow. Lalande cycled the cabin intercom, so he could talk to the crew in the aft compartment.

  "Loss of signal now. We're in radio blackout. Prepare for landing. And hang on…this may be a rough one."

  Sumida glanced briefly out the forward windscreen as Archimede rolled smoothly out of her steep banking turn. Nothing could be seen through the windscreen but a pink-white aura streaked with bursts of gold and deeper rose, radiating from the ship's nose like a starburst.

  "Through twenty-two and Mach seventeen," Sumida called out. "Alpha steady at sixty degrees. Descent path to Hickam is nominal."

  "We still have almost thirty-three hundred kilometers cross range to make up," Lalande replied. "Next roll in thirty seconds. This one's a doozy."

  Archimede banked steeply to port, biting deep into the atmosphere, standing on her wingtips in a ninety-degree roll. The ship was blazing down into the earth's atmosphere in a corkscrewing trajectory, balancing speed and altitude to stay on the curve Kourou ground control had plotted for them. Lalande had elected to take control of the ship from the computers; the trajectory they were flying now was not one for which the guidance and navigation system had been prepared.

  Now descending through 70,000 meters over the west central Pacific, Archimede had only once chance to reach the airstrip at Hickam Field. If Lalande deviated at all from the path the computers at Kourou had generated, the ship would miss Hawaii altogether.

  Nobody relished the thought of what might happen then.

  Several minutes later, the throbbing pink fog in which Archimede had been flying began to subside, and the air glowed by turns amber, rose, and gold before the plasma sheath surrounding the ship abated. Brilliant sunlight flooded the flight deck and radio signals once again flowed into the ship's multiband antenna.

  "Archimede, Kourou. Archimede, Kourou--"

  Lalande responded. "Archimede, copy. We're configured for acquisition of signal."

  "Archimede, Kourou. We have you at one eighty and Mach four point one. Distance thirteen fifty kilometers. Nominal descent, Claude. Looking good at this point."

  "I understand. We have the coastline of the big island in view now." Lalande glanced over where Sumida was pointing; they both grinned with relief.

  A new, deeper voice crackled over their headsets. It was the voice of Hawaii. "Archimede, Hickam Approach Control. Welcome to the Aloha State, fellas. Here's the met report: scattered clouds at eight and eleven thousand. Winds on approach are ten knots, west-southwest. Crosswinds at the runway are under two knots. Visibility is six to eight kilometers. And the beaches are great too."

  "We understand." Lalande checked his altitude/velocity display. "Estimating Archimede at the heading alignment circle in three minutes."

  Sumida pointed out the forward windscreen. "I see Diamond Head, Claude. And that's the Koolau Range. God, isn't it beautiful?" Ahead of Archimede, the misty green slopes of Oahu's eastern mountains made dimples in the white gauze of the late morning cloud cover.

  "Terminal area energy management," Lalande commanded. Sumida punched up a series of buttons on the data entry keypad, calling up the program for Archimede's approach to the runway. "Autoland acquisition?"

  "Confirmed."

  "Waypoint one. Here we go." Lalande eased his control stick to the left, bringing Archimede onto the outer edge of an imaginary 6,000-meter diameter cylinder. By following the perimeter of this cylinder, the ship would be properly aligned for its final, and only, approach to the runway.

  With her engines disabled from the laser hit, there would be no second chance.

  "Seven hundred meters," Sumida called out. "Your glide slope is at twenty-two degrees. On the HAC. Preflare in twenty seconds."

  Archimede streaked into the clouds for a few seconds, dropping toward the ground seven times faster than a commercial spaceliner.

  "TACAN data looks good. Speed brakes to eighty percent. Coming up on the runway entry point…now."

  Lalande smartly rolled Archimede out of the bank just as she dropped clear of the clouds. The green carpet of Oahu's mountains lay below them. Ahead on the horizon was the deep cobalt blue of the Pacific, and the tan ribbon of Runway Two-Fifteen.

  "Preflare." Lalande brought the ship's nose up sharply, reducing their glideslope to just over one degree. The deceleration drove them deeper into their seats. "Arm landing gear."

  Sumida lifted the switch cover and depressed LANDING GEAR ARM. "Landing gear armed. And we're at one twenty. On glide slope. On centerline."

  The unmistakable shapes of buildings and vehicles rolling along the airfield perimeter began rushing by the windows.

  "Forty meters. Gear down."

  "Gear down is confirmed. Over the threshold."

  "Thirty meters."

  Archimede settled gracefully over the black skid marks of Runway Two-Fifteen and the skyline of downtown Honolulu disappeared behind the mountains.

  "Twenty meters."

  "Ten meters."

  "Touchdown, Claude."

  "Speed brakes full. Elevons one hundred percent."

  They both flinched as the tires bit into the concrete. Sumida lurched forward against his shoulder straps when Lalande applied maximum braking.

  Back in the aft passenger compartment, the jolt seemed to awaken Johnny Winger. His eyes fluttered open and he looked around, finally daring to take a breath. His arms gripped the armrests tightly as he sagged under the full effect of earth gravity and the ship's braking. The landing rollout brought Archimede nearly five thousand meters down Runway Two-Fifteen, to a full stop twenty-f
ive seconds later.

  Winger looked around. There was Gibby. Deeno D’Nunzio. Mighty Mite Barnes. Souvranamh and Holweg and their Space Raider guards. Nobody seemed to be seriously injured. But the Thai cartel boss had a slight smile pasted on his face. What the hell was that all about?

  Outside, a crowd had already gathered, piling out of trucks and cars and was pointing and gesturing at the ship and her graceful wings. Archimede had sustained severe aerodynamic and heating damage, both from the steep unplanned reentry and from the laser hit, leaving skin panels scorched and unzipped along half the length of her starboard fuselage.

  Winger breathed a sigh of relief and sank back into his seat. They had been lucky. Pharmex was finally down, off-line, and two of Red Hammer’s key suspects were in Quantum Corps custody.

  Then Winger shuddered slightly, realizing at that moment just why Souvranamh was still smiling.

  “Oh, it was a laser strike all right,” Kraft told Winger. The whole Detachment was in Kraft’s office in the Ops center at Table Top. “UNISPACE triangulated the hit…it came from somewhere in the Himalayas, maybe even from inside China. Not that anyone’s surprised at that. We’ll know more once we get Souvranamh hooked up.”

  “Interrogation, sir?” Barnes asked.

  Kraft wore a faint smile. “Better than that…something brand new. Memory trace matching. When Q2 gets through with our unwilling guest, we’ll know every scrap of memory in that feverish brain of his. It’s barely legal, ethically dubious and it works like a