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and then the seat released itself
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from her and the inertial dampening was no longer available. For a brief
instant she felt as if she would be torn asunder but the atmosphere quickly
dampened her motion to critical velocity which was much more tolerable. Just
as she began to gain her wits a brilliant flash filled the sky about thirty
kilometers to her north.
The mushroom cloud rose to a perfect round peak with a bright red and yellow
fireball filling it. Rings of dust and smoke encircled the stem of the
mushroom cloud and rose upward until they collided with the head of it at the
forming and rising fireball. Nancy could see the shock wave spread out
surrounding the blast area. She continued to fall toward the surface and
stabilized her skydiving position.
Focus
, she thought.
Nancy, shock wave in three, two, one!
Allison warned.
The shock wave hit with high velocity but with low pressure at that altitude.
Low pressure or not, it was plenty of force to send Nancy tumbling in a wild
chaotic fall. She fought the g-forces of the spin by spreading her body out as
flat as she could to slow the neck-jarring tumble. With a few adjustments of
leg and arm positions and the arch of her back, she managed to right herself
into a flat spin and then into a skydiver's prone falling position.
Engage the gliderchute!
Nancy thought to her AIC.
Gliderchute engaged, Allison replied, and the harness around her waist and
shoulders yanked her tight and Nancy's diving descent rapidly averted from a
downward plunge to a slow sauntering enjoyable glide. Nancy shook her head and
squinted her eyes until she regained her senses.
IR and QM, she thought to the suit's sensor array. The night vision system
kicked in with a big white saturated bright spot over the target zone. The
nuclear blast over the outpost was still too hot to view directly.
Allison, adjust the contrast nonlinearly on the hot spot, please, she thought.
Right away. Tree detection system is active and will be marked in the view
, the AIC replied.
Good. Overlay latest map on the view, also.
Roger that
.
Any pedestrian or vehicle motion?
Nancy asked. The AIC ran motion detection and change detection algorithms,
searching for any flickers of motion within the view of their sensors that
might be something other than random. There were no telltale signs of motion
with a purpose.
None.
Nancy guided the gliderchute through the now chaotic winds of the aftermath of
the explosion. There were occasional whirlwinds and updrafts that would alter
her course and cause problems with the gliderchute harness chords, but she
managed to stay on course and avoid the chute being ripped away.
As the gliderchute fell through the Martian night and closer to the now
devastated mountain basal city, Nancy caught a glimpse of Phobos to her south
and just above the faded and scattering mushroom-
shaped dust cloud. She surmised from the southward-stretching misshapen
mushroom cloud that there must have been a high-altitude jet stream moving in
that direction. She spiraled her flight path southward around the edge of the
total destruction zone and closed in on her landing target zone.
Radiation dose is growing rapidly but still within the parameters of the
injection, Nancy, Allison informed her.
Mm hm, Nancy thought as she checked the altimeter readout on her visor. She
was at five kilometers above the westernmost part of the total destruct zone,
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flying southward and counterclockwise around the
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periphery of the aftermath of the nuclear explosion. The sight was anything
but tranquil or serene. Fires raged across the outpost city, and secondary
explosions triggered every few seconds from gas mains or escaping oxygen. To
the north in the distance Nancy could see occasional AA fire and missile
contrails.
The fighting was getting closer. Time was getting short.
Her plan was to bleed off altitude and drop into the eastern edge of the
moderate destruct zone at the three-o'clock position. She put the gliderchute
in a slip and checked her tree detection system. The Martian conifer trees
could reach as high as three hundred meters tall, so they could cause problems
when gliderchuting at night. But her detection system was functioning
perfectly. There were just no trees or buildings of much concern. The blast
had taken care of that. It had taken care of other things too.
There was very little activity beneath her. The AA fire that had tracked the
Ares fighter Jack Boland brought her in had stopped once the nuke detonated,
and she could see nothing in the local vicinity flying. The electromagnetic
pulse and general mayhem due to the devastating tactical nuclear device had
done their job and disabled the local perimeter sensors of the Reservation
periphery mountain city defenses. This allowed Nancy to slip in undetected the
plan had been carefully calculated for years. It was all working well, so far.
Detonating a small nuke just to infiltrate the Reservation might have seemed
like overkill, but all the recent intelligence suggested that bad things were
on the horizon from within the Seppy homeland and the CIA needed to know just
what those bad things were. After all, the president had approved the plan,
including the tactical nuke.
Nancy kept a close eye on the altimeter reading one thousand meters and
dropping. The moderate destruct region of the city surrounding the Separatist
missile base looked anything but moderate. The shock wave from the blast had
strewn debris to and fro and fires raged in almost every direction. She looked
for a dark spot with no fires but they were few and far between. Altimeter
reading six hundred meters and dropping.
There!
she thought as she spotted a dark spot in the flames.
Allison, zoom in there.
She pointed.
Got it.
The AIC zoomed in on the dark region and increased the sensitivity levels of
the QM sensor suite of her e-suit helmet. Then the spike detector went off.
"What the . . ." Nancy muttered to herself.
Trees.
Allison responded matter-of-factly.
Why aren't they burning then?
Who knows? Blast dynamics are weird that way, Allison explained.
Well, whatever. It looks like a park. Those buildings there to the west must
have shielded them. Trees around the periphery and a flat field in the middle,
looks like a jumperball field, I think. This should do nicely.
Nancy brought the gliderchute into a tight spiral over the field, careful of
the trees as her altitude was now dropping. She spiraled inside the
circumference of the circular field and increased the illumination of the IR
and QM sensors, her night vision visor at full intensity. The ground was
coming up fast. Altimeter reading was at one hundred meters . . . fifty . . .
twenty . . .
Nancy hit her IR diode helmet lights and the ground lit up beneath her just in
time for her to flare the gliderchute and stop her descent about one meter
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from the surface. The gliderchute caught some last-
minute ground-effect turbulence and jostled her around, causing her to lose
balance. The left wing of the chute dipped and then jerked upward again. Nancy
was tossed forward and slammed into the Martian
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ground, very very hard.
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