It had started five hours prior on a flight he had been excited for. Only a few weeks ago he and the other test pilots were begging and complaining about the strict grounding of all the fun airplanes, and now that A&R had finally started swapping the unmanned scouts for high altitude reconnaissance planes, all the pilots were chomping at the bit to get their hours in.
The now crumpled SR-X1 had been the straw he drew that morning and as its experimental turbopumps spooled up, he was again excited to see the new landscape as he soared twelve miles above it.
Five minutes into the flight he was already going well over Mach 2, and he’d climbed far above where even a commercial jetliner would have stayed. Communications with ATC was non-existent, so he was extremely careful about watching his heading so as not to lose his way when making his return pass. On-board computers helped some, but most was left to old-fashion laminated grid-maps and dry-erase pens.
As he was nearing cruising altitude a glint caught his eye. Assuming it was the common floater, he ignored it, but it persisted. He radioed about it but the handful of other pilots in range didn’t provide much support beyond the casual ribbing.
That’s when things went wrong quickly. The glint which had grown larger in his vision over the period of about three or four minutes suddenly blocked his vision completely, sending shockwaves through the entire aircraft and igniting dozens of alarm signals on the planes control panel.
The engines seized soon after, nearly shaking the entire aircraft to bolts as the shock echoed through the airframes. It had all happened so quickly that the Pilot had no idea what had even happened, his airplane was falling from the sky and nothing he did could regain him control over the spinning top.
Even something as large as a plane can take quiet sometime to fall out of the sky, so he was forced to watch as the ground slowly grew closer. He was tempted to trigger his ejection seat but he knew at that altitude he wouldn’t survive for long.
He had no choice but to slowly watch the ground grow nearer. Fortunately, as the ground grew closer, so too did the drag build up in the seized turbines and on the outer control surfaces.
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Both at once overcame the forces acting against them and the plane roared back to life as its flat spin slowly reversed as his controls returned.
He still didn’t understand what had even caused him to lose control, but he had other trouble to deal with now. He’d lost his orientation completely, he radioed but got no response, not even static.
He attempted to look back on the previous imaging his plane had captured but it wasn’t remarkably helpful. After a couple minutes of wracking his brain, he decided he should turn around, he knew his heading, so if he could backtrack, he assumed he would be able to find the complex or at least regain visual on something familiar.
That’s when the glimmer appeared again.
This time, he avoided it, turning away the moment it caught his eye. It seemed to work but he grew paranoid, each time he attempted to maneuver the plane, the glimmer would force him a different direction. He wasn’t completely aware at that point that every maneuver he made sent him further and further off course.
By the time he pulled himself together and realized how big of a mistake he was making, it was too late and he’d already flown thousands of miles aimlessly.
That’s when another fear boiled up. If he really was lost, where could he land? This isn’t a plane you just touch down in a field when things don’t go well. It needs a smooth paved runway nearly a mile long to slow down completely.
So, he continued flying, praying maybe he’d find an abandoned parking lot somewhere, but alas that wasn’t his story. He found nothing but wilderness, dessert, swamp, and lake.
He eventually understood what he’d forced himself into. He had no choice but to continue flying until he’d used up enough fuel to safely bail-out. Over the next couple hours, he slowly lowered his altitude and scoured the landscape for a safe place to crash this hundred-million-dollar test flight.
“This place looked perfect,” The pilot explained with an exhausted shrug. “Thick forest to soften the crash, marshy soil to prevent fires, it seemed like an easy decision. I didn’t see your village in the darkness until I was right above it. Do you know if I was able to get far enough? Was anyone hurt?”
“We’ll know for sure in the morning.” Guilaq said with a shrug after arranging a location in his home for the Pilot.
Guilaq’s mind was in a daze as he considered everything the pilot had told them as they were carrying him back to the village. He was exhausted but he felt no desire to sleep. Instead settling down at his desk, he pulled a fresh quill from a drawer and slit a channel in the core with a small steel blade.
Dipping it carefully in the ink-well he hovers its nib above the tan sheet of parchment for a long moment before eventually scribing the first word of his new response.