Orbital Maneuvers (43 page)

“Just making sure I know where to look, Squadron Leader.  Can’t see ’em if I’m looking in the wrong direction,” Jazzy replied, as she continued scanning the blackness ahead of them.

Out of the periphery of her eye, she caught a small flash of light in a little opening among the clouds.  The light seemed more intense than the occasional cloud-to-cloud lightening bolts that were wreaking havoc with her night vision.  “I think I’ve got them!”

“Where?” Andrew asked.

“About eleven o’clock.” She pointed toward the open patch in the clouds where they could see stars shining through.  As they scanned the area, a sudden flash just off their port wing startled them both.

“Jesus!  That was close!” Andrew shouted, as he put the Hercules into a steep bank to the left.

“They’re moving like a bloody meteor!” Jazzy shouted.  “Bird’s Eye…Bird’s Eye…we have a visual on the CRV and are in pursuit!”

The CRV and its captive crew were never aware of the C130 as it flashed by.  Even if the little ship had windows, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it.  They were too involved in slowing down the CRV, or more properly—too involved in hoping that the CRV would slow itself down—to note much of anything else.  Nicholas stared at the message flashing ominously as the altimeter continued to count down.  “The chute did not deploy!  It says that the CRV’s speed was too high!  I wonder at what speed it has to be to deploy?”

“Don’t ask me!  You know more about this than me,” Paul said, shaking his head.

“What about Ivan? Does he know—wait!” Nicholas shouted, his excitement seeming to grow with each new message. “It says now that the chute is to deploy…we have a countdown…in… five… four… three… two…one!” At the final second they all heard a thud, or more like a pop, as the drogue chute was released to start the initial braking of the CRV.  In the darkness, a large red and white parachute, about eighty feet in diameter, unfolded and blossomed in the thin air.  Inside the CRV they felt a jolt as the chute snapped open, slowing the little ship.

“CRV…CRV, this is Bird’s Eye, AWACS with the Royal Australian Air Force.  Do you copy?”

“Saints be praised,” Paul said, and shouted back at the speaker.  “Just get us down!”

Nicholas smiled and addressed the intercom.  “Bird’s Eye, this is the CRV.  We copy you loud and clear.  It is good to hear you.”

“CRV, good to hear you, too.  Be advised that you are on a direct intercept path with a major storm cell.  Recommend that you alter course.”

Nicholas looked at the speaker, somewhat bewildered, then at the control stick by his arm.  “Bird’s Eye, we have no steering capabilities at this time.  We have just deployed the drogue chute.”

“Copy that, CRV.  Please advise when you have deployed your parafoil.  Over.”

“Bird’s Eye…will do,” Nicholas answered, wondering just what that storm cell had in store for them.

Paul did not like the advisory they just heard and felt even more uneasy with the tone of Nicholas’ reply.  “Just what does that mean?  Direct intercept with a storm…or something like that.”

“Paul, it may mean that we are going to have a rough ride in a few minutes, if we enter this storm cell as they are warning us,” Nicholas answered.

“Alright, why is it going to be rough?”

Alexander jumped in.  “My friend, have you ever gone on a roller coaster ride at an amusement park?”

“Yes, many years ago.  Are you saying that we are going to get tossed about?” Paul wasn’t playing dumb, he was only hoping that what he thought was going to happen, wasn’t.

“Well, take your worst roller coaster ride and multiply it by, say one hundred—”

“No, I would say two or three hundred,” Nicholas interjected.

Alexander sighed. “When you get over a hundred it does not much matter any more.” He said.

Nicholas continued, “You see, Paul, the CRV is being slowed by a parachute.  If we enter a thunderstorm, with its huge updrafts and downdrafts, with the parachute open we will be pulled up and dropped—”

Paul could feel his stomach turning with just the thought of it.  “Okay, I get the idea,” he said.  “So we get jerked around, the CRV should be able to handle that.  Right?  I mean, they must have designed it for that, right?”

Nicholas shook his head while he stared at the display.  “It is not the CRV I am worried about,” he said, “it is the parachute.  It may have not been designed for such loading.  As I understand it, the CRV was designed for emergency deorbit, with ground support and the choice of several landing sites.  In addition, they could stay in orbit for six hours or more if needed, to wait for the weather to clear.  It was not intended to pass through severe weather.”

“Well, gee, I feel better already!” Paul said.  “Do you have anything more to say that is going to put me at ease?”

Nicholas blushed.  “I am sorry, Paul, I was only trying to help,” he said.

“No, that’s okay.  I know you were.  What if the parafoil opens before we enter the storm?  Will we be any better off?” Paul asked.

“Only if we can steer away from the storm,” Nicholas said.  “I do not think the parafoil is going to be any better.  In fact, it will probably be worse, because it is much larger than the drogue chute, so the shear forces could do more damage.  I do not know how this little ship is going to handle under the parafoil.  Maybe, we will have enough time to miss it.”

Alpha Rescue Two, alerted that the CRV was on course and would be passing by them, had all available hands looking out of the portholes to get a visual on the ship.  By the time the CRV had caught up with them, it was actually below the flight path of the Hercules, which made seeing the strobe more difficult.  All they could see was the light reflecting off the cloud tops below the ship.  The big transport rocked as the turbulence rippled out from the super cell, which was dead ahead of them, cloaked in the darkness.  A fortuitous flash of lightening at the right moment gave the crew of Alpha Rescue Two a clear snapshot of a large red and white parachute canopy being absorbed into the cloud layer below them, part of the trailing edge of the monster storm that was about to receive a toy to play with.

“Bird’s Eye…Bird’s Eye…we have a visual on a chute.  They are at about twenty thousand feet and heading into the cell.  We are diverting around the storm.”

“We copy you,” the AWACS’ controller replied.  “Alpha Rescue Two, turn on heading one…eight…zero and descend to angels eight thousand.  Resume patrol pattern once there.  Copy?”

“Bird’s Eye, we copy.  Course one…eight…zero, angels eight thousand.”

“Alpha Rescue One…Alpha Rescue One…take heading zero…two…five…angels seven thousand and resume search pattern…copy?”

Jazzy keyed the mic.  “Bird’s Eye, we copy.  Turning on heading zero…two…five…angels seven thousand and resuming search pattern.  Over.” Turning off the mic she looked over to Andrew.  “Those poor blokes are in for a rough ride!  I don’t envy them at this moment,” she said.  “So, we patrol downwind of the storm and wait for them to fall out of it, right?”

“That’s about all we can do at this time,” said Andrew.  “Hopefully, they will exit with their chute intact and in one piece.  If they go into the water under this storm it is going to be very difficult for the rescue teams to get to them.”

The CRV entered the storm’s clutches by a sudden updraft, which quickly pushed its altitude up a thousand feet higher.  Paul groaned as the sudden acceleration pressed him into his seat. 

“Here we go!” Alexander shouted above the seemingly continuous explosions of thunder.

Nicholas could see the lightning flashes on the front display, but Paul and Alexander could only make out a muted flash in the compartment as the display responded to the overloaded digital camera. The video system took several seconds to recover from the onslaught of the lightning, just about as long as it took for the thunderclap to die away. 

The ship began swinging and rotating as the winds played with the large drogue chute, pulling and pushing it one way while the CRV itself was buffeted from a different direction.  It was as if the winds were playing tug-of-war with the ship, and no one was winning. 

Paul closed his eyes tight and grabbed the side of his seat for security.  He listened to the heavy rain and occasional hail stones that bounced off the CRV’s heat tiles, eroding and chipping away at them like some mad sculptor trying to reveal the true identity of the ship that lay underneath the fragile layer of ceramic. 

Inside the CRV the rain created a fluctuating, low-pitched hiss that varied in intensity as the ship passed through bands of precipitation inside the cell.  The hail sounded more like gunshots as it pounded the ship.  Sometimes there were only single shots and other times it sounded as if there was a war going on outside the CRV.  The chorus of hisses and pops was frequently accented by the tremendously loud claps of thunder that seemed to be trying to dominate the performance. 

Nicholas kept watching the display and contemplated what the computer was thinking at this time.  He wondered if the engineers who wrote the software to control the ship ever considered if the CRV would be in such a situation.  Nicholas watched the altimeter climb with the CRV’s ascent, wondering just how high they were going to climb this time.  But, his curiosity turned to fear as he noticed that the altimeter readout was no longer changing.  In fact, nothing was changing on the display! 

He could feel the CRV rising and falling, and he could also feel a knot tightening in his stomach; he knew it made no sense that they would maintain a constant altitude in this storm.  The reality that nothing was changing on the display drove him to conclude that there was a major computer failure.

“Uh oh,” slipped from Nicholas’ lips before he realized it, and Paul’s ears picked it up immediately.

“What’s the matter?” Paul asked, as he strained to raise his head high enough to see Nicholas.

“I am not sure…but the display is frozen.  It looks like maybe the computer crashed.”

Alexander stirred at Nicholas’ last comment.  “That does not sound good.  What do you see on the display?” he asked.

“Nothing…well, no, there is something there, but it is not changing.  The display is locked up.”

“This thing should have redundant computers!  Everything NASA does is with redundant systems…right?” Paul asked, not sure of anything at the moment except his rising nausea.

“Yes, I would think they would have a backup system to take over.  Maybe it is not the hardware, but the new software.”

“You may be right, Captain Zuyev,” Alexander said.  “We have no idea what changes were made and how well they were tested when the new program was uploaded into the CRV.”

“Great,” Paul cut in, “we come all this way to get wiped out by a bug in some piece of computer code!  I—” Paul’s tirade was interrupted by a direct lightning strike on the CRV!  The entire electrical system shut down with the overload and the deafening thunderclap left them all stunned in the dark for the moment.  “Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?” Paul finally mustered.

The men lay in their seats in total darkness with their ears ringing, accompanied with the hiss of rain, rumbles of thunder and continuous jostling of the CRV by the wind for company.  A small moan escaped from Ivan as he reacted to the thunderclap, but it was not enough to pull him out of his unconscious state.  The lightning bolt had vaporized the port side support anchor for the cables to the drogue chute, causing the CRV to suddenly list to port.  Nicholas felt the ship leaning to the left, but before he could mention it to Paul and Alexander a series of mechanical clicks echoed from deep inside the control panel and the cabin lights flickered on.

“We have lights!” Nicholas shouted.

“What about the computer?” Alexander asked.  “Lights, we can do without.  The computer is a little bit more important.”

“The display is blank—wait…No, it is showing something…it looks like it is rebooting,” said Nicholas.

“That sounds like some good news,” Paul said, wiping the sweat from his eyes on his sleeve.

“Yes, it is rebooting.  Let us hope it knows what it should be doing now.”

Nicholas held his breath as he watched the display flash words and numbers that were meaningless to him.  He was not sure whether the computer was rebooting at all or just randomly writing characters to the display.  He let his breath out when the altimeter readout appeared and indicated numbers that seemed to make sense to what his body was telling him.  As Nicholas was about to pass the good news on to Paul and Alexander, they were all startled by a loud bang that seemed to come from the left side of the CRV.  It was more mechanical and less explosive, than the blast of noise they had heard with the lightening strike.

“What the hell was that?” Paul shouted.  He was beginning to think that they would never make it down in one piece, and his hopes of seeing Celia began to fade.

“It sounded like it was on the port side,” Alexander offered.

BANG!  The sound came again jarring them once more.

“I know it came from the port side, but what is it?  Are we coming apart?” Paul asked, his voice growing more frantic.

Nicholas answered, “I don’t think we are breaking up, but I wonder if the drogue chute is coming apart.  Can you feel the ship tilting to port?”