CHAPTER 11 - PLANE

After getting his datapad back from the repair shop, Lai spent much of the day catching up hungrily, during any breaks from the group’s taking in of sights around the city, from the First Explorers’ Monument to the local museum to the municipal airport. The last particularly left an impression in Kayden’s memory. Thanks to the planet’s low gravity, flight was very easy and efficient, and thus in addition to planes larger than any Kayden had ever seen, there were flitters: small, fast, low-altitude VTOL aircraft that had swiveling propellers inside their broad wings that seemed to blend into their fuselages. They took off from and landed on the black asphalt airstrips like sparrows in a bird feeder.

"Hmm, they’re offering flyover tours of the jungle for relatively cheap, and there’s thirty percent off for new arrivals," Kayden said, looking at the website, "How do you all feel about taking a ride, looking at some of those hills beyond the forest? They’re no Green Mountain, but they look pretty cool. And, uh," he scrolled a bit, "the canyons. They offer an aerial tour."

His friends agreed.

The airport building was sleek both inside and outside, shaped like half of a hemisphere, with lots of windows that made the inside bright as day. It wasn’t very crowded, but Kayden didn’t pay much attention to the main hall anyways. He took a detour to a small automated reception room where he signed up for a tour. Lai and Tiik paid for themselves out of courtesy. After fifteen minutes of waiting due to unprecedented maintenance issues, they were allowed to board the craft.

As they walked across the oddly empty walkways leading to the nearly-full, parked flitter they booked for a quick flyover of the nearby natural areas, Nheka looked around, watching other aircraft take off. While approaching their flight, Kayden heard a voice he recognized from the ship. On a planet of more than ten million, that seemed unlikely, but he didn’t think much of it.

They boarded the red-painted flitter through a ramp in its back. It was shaped like a wedge with an elevated ridge, with large windows on its top and bottom. The inside was quite cramped, with two rows of seven blue seats each on either side of a narrow, dark aisle, and brown walls. Just like on the bus, Nheka had to take an uncomfortable position, and the seat only avoided a terrible fate by virtue of the planet’s low gravity. Kayden just stared at his datapad while waiting for the flitter to take off. It took about half an hour.

And take off it did. It accelerated so quickly that Kayden could feel himself being pressed into the seat. Soon the city, with its shining towers, was receding, supplanted by the shag carpet of the lush alien jungle. The flitter proceeded to slow down a bit, allowing the passengers to get good views of the trees below. They were taller than any trees on New Arizona, with some being taller than the shorter towers. In the distance, three majestic, forested hills were visible.

Kayden sighed, this time in bliss, as he leaned against the wall and gazed out of the window intently. Even in the aircraft, the air was fresher than anything at home. His thoughts were clear and his emotions were as bright as the slightly orangish sun, which only now showed a hint of even starting to set. He wished he could spend a week or more on this planet, but alas the ship would be departing tomorrow night. The flitter approached the hills and flew between them, slowing down in the meantime.

Suddenly, the ramp in the back swung open with a metallic clank, and everyone could glimpse some figure in baggy clothing and a balaclava jumping out of it with a parachute.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Kayden shouted as he tracked the jumper with his eyes. Thanks to the low gravity, the parachute slowed him to a safe speed nearly immediately after opening, and he quickly disappeared in the trees. Gasps of surprise followed from the other passengers. The wind was now strong inside, and he could see someone’s hat get blown off into the wilderness.

And then, an explosion on the right wing of the flitter rocked the cabin. Screaming filled the air as the plane spun around its horizontal axis. Kayden felt like he was about to have a heart attack or a stroke from all the spinning, and was just shouting obscenities as everything blurred in a horrible kaleidoscope of terror. Was this the end?

But the pilot managed to regain control and slow down the flitter’s descent into the treeline, enough for the passengers to get a good look at the huge, spike-shaped tree in front of them, the top of which was rapidly approaching…

Kayden’s life flashed before his eyes. From his childhood on Earth, to moving to New Arizona with his parents, to going to school, to the BCI incident, to the incident that rendered his father a xenophobe, to his turbulent teenage years, to his nascent career as a game developer… he wondered if he really had to die so young. To die alongside his friends. And whether it would all be his fault.

KRRRRCHRRZRRCCHCRCRCRRCHHHRHRHRRRHRHHCHCHCRRRHCHH!

Was the sound that the tree made upon impacting the bottom of the hull…

…

…

Silence. The screaming stopped. The tip of the eastern spiketree had plowed through the polymer-and-aluminum floor in the middle of the aisle between the seats like a can opener and went through the roof, miraculously missing the rows of seats and not impaling anyone. Once the adrenaline rush cleared, Kayden realized that the craft now hung at about a 45-degree angle from the now-bent tree. Some people had fallen out of their seats upon impact.

He looked around. "Nheka! Are you alive? Fuck…"

"...yess…"

He was about to step out of his seat, but then realized he would slide down the aisle and into the gaping chasm that now dominated it, and reconsidered that action. The pilot’s announcement confirmed it.

"This is the pilot speaking. Please do not move from your positions until rescuers come, or the flitter may lose its precarious balance," his voice was oddly calm.

"What the bhak just happened?" Lai said, shaking his head. He was notably free of his usual sunglasses, and his fur stood on end. He glanced at Tiik’s seat across the aisle and breathed a sigh of relief.

Noise once again filled the cabin. From people groaning, to making calls to their family, to a baby crying.

"Ray?" Kayden called out.

No response followed.

"Are you alive? Ray?" He was distraught.

"They're not moving," Lai said.

"Shit. I just… Goddamn it."

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Kayden just stared out of the window. Below was the green blanket of the jungle, now static and unmoving. There were no birds or other animals below, as they were spooked by the impact. It was more than a little eerie. "We’re gonna hang up here for a while, huh?" He thought, trying to push away the thought of possibly just having lost Ray. "This pilot is a fucking badass, without such precision we’d all be dead. I do wonder who that guy was, the parachute man. He probably planted the bomb or whatever it was but why… wait…"

He remembered that three of them were complicit in nearly outing what seemed to be a powerful conspiracy. The realization dawned on him: they were being targeted. And this assassination attempt nearly succeeded in taking their lives, alongside twelve other people.

Kayden just hoped the situation with Ray would turn out for the best, pulled out his datapad, and started idly browsing the web to try and cope. He didn’t really pay attention to much of what he read, that being random wiki-articles. It was merely a way to get the thoughts out of his mind.

Nheka, meanwhile, was still in a sort of shock, not that it was obvious from her very stoic expression. Completely static and just looking down into the wilderness that reminded her of home. She did not pay much attention to what was going on in the cabin. Everything happened too fast for her cold-blooded brain, and she could not process it all.

Lai and Tiik were quietly talking to each other in Liamuju, seemingly trying to calm themselves down. This was after Lai tried and failed to find his sunglasses– only to realize they had likely fallen into the wide gash torn by the tree. He seemed more than a little distraught by this.

***

Ten minutes later, Ray’s voice was heard.

"I am sorry, very important security firmware update became available, thus I entered maintenance mode five minutes three seconds into flight, as I prioritize my safety. Why is the flitter unmoving?"

Kayden was relieved. "Oh I was so worried! I’m so glad you’re okay. Um. It crashed."

"Very negative situation," Ray said, rotating their head to observe the jungle, which was indeed much closer than it was over the duration of the flight. They then noticed the ravine that the aisle turned into after the tree’s impact, and slowly inched to the far end of their seat.

Slowly, mosquito-like insects began to enter the cabin of the craft, now that the fuel fumes had wafted away in the soft wind. They were slightly larger than Earth mosquitoes and had just four legs, but thicker proboscises. One landed on Kayden’s arm, drew blood, flew away before he could swat it, then dropped dead in mid-air. This did not stop many more from doing the same, and before long the quiet, high-pitched buzzing permeated the air.

"For how long will we be stuck here?" He complained, talking to nobody in particular.

"At least an hour," a man’s voice was heard from the seat behind him, "We’re not that far but as nobody seems to be heavily injured it’s probably a low priority."

"Right."

By then, the terror and trauma had fully turned into boredom and annoyance. It was merely an awkward situation now, rather than a life-threatening one. Kayden waited. And waited. And waited.

***

After about an hour and twenty minutes had passed, the chopping sound of rotors became heard. Kayden looked out of the upper window to see a massive helicopter painted in wide white and red stripes hovering over the crashed flitter. A rope ladder fell out to meet the open end of the cabin, hitting the surface of the ramp with a loud thud.

"Please leave the aircraft in an orderly manner while assisting those physically unable to ascend the ladder," a voice echoed over a loudspeaker.

"Oh thank god," Kayden mumbled and very carefully walked, no, climbed up the tilted aisle. He had to lean forward to avoid slipping, as well as hold the backs of seats to brace himself.

There was something of an uneasy queue in front of the ladder. He strained to even stand in such a position for long… this was interrupted by the sudden scraping sound behind him. Kayden quickly turned around to see Nheka sliding down the aisle in spite of trying her best, six of her taloned feet tearing up the short black carpet into many ragged tracks.

Kayden winced. There were gasps of shock from the other people in the cabin, and one, a small girl, dove out of the way in order to not follow her.

In an attempt to stop her fall, Nheka grabbed an empty seat, only to rip the back clean off, barely avoiding giving another passenger a concussion as she swung it around, and said man shouted and ducked behind an intact seat. She then tried to grab hold of a wooden cup holder, only to cause it to splinter into a dozen pieces, causing the lukewarm contents of the closed cup of coffee resting inside to explode all over everyone sitting nearby. But then she managed to keep hold on another seat…

"NO!!!" Kayden yelled and ran back down, making eye contact with her and reaching out to try and hold her hand. He almost reached Nheka and touched her talons with the tips of his fingers when her weight tore the seat in half and continued her slide.

She slid all the way down to the tree trunk, hit her tail on it in a painful-looking manner, and proceeded to fall right into the gash with a pained hiss that turned into a screech. All of this happened in about four seconds or so. Kayden cried as he looked into the hole.

Nheka looked absolutely terrified as she scraped all eight of her feet across the trunk of the spiketree with a horrible sound, sending dark wood chips flying. The damaged seats disappeared into the canopy with a brushing sound. She could not look down.

"Nheka! There’s a branch under you! Grab onto it!"

The chohjozra managed to turn around… and land sideways onto the thick branch. She quickly got up and held on to it, like a cat standing on a fence.

"Are you alive?!"

She nodded, looking like she could fall further into the forest at any moment..

"Uhm. Pilot! My friend fell down, she’s on a branch now, can you signal the rescuers to get her as soon as possible?"

"Acknowledged."

With nothing more he could do at that point, Kayden waited for his turn to go up the ladder to safety. It was very rickety and swung around in the wind despite the weights at the end, yet he knew the ropes used in such rescues were woven out of carbon nanotubes and thus had no risk of snapping.

The inside of the rescue helicopter was spacious and quite bright. There were many seats and stretcher beds, and the room was lit by a few small portholes in the walls. Some paramedics and their nurse-bot assistants inspected the survivors for any injuries. Kayden sat down beside Lai, Tiik, and Ray and sighed deeply. "I hope Nheka is okay."

"She’ll be bhine, I honestly doubt you can bhall fast enough to really die on this planet." Lai said.

"Yeah but what about the predators?"

Lai laughed. "I dunno about her personally, but chohjozra in general are stronger than any animal here. Because ya see, everything that evolved here has dhin brittle bones because of low gravity. She’d punch one and shatter half of its skeleton. And besides, they’re getting her out soon," he said as the helicopter moved forward and down to align its ladder with the branch Nheka was sitting on… or rather hanging onto, with just three of her arms, as Kayden noticed after looking down from the door.

She gradually crept towards the end of the branch, and it began to bend and crack. Right as it snapped, Nheka made a daring jump and barely latched onto the last rung, then gradually lifted herself upwards. The helicopter tilted slightly but noticeably as she did so, then immediately corrected itself. As soon as her beaked head poked out from the ledge, Kayden smiled and helped her up.

"Are you okay? Does your tail feel limp? You looked like you could have broken it," he said.

"No… I can sstill move it, but it hurts… It will pass, I have ssuffered worsse…"

"Well then, glad you’re not very hurt."

Lai and Tiik just smiled at her and waved.

Nheka, seeing how flimsy the plastic seats were, decided to just lay down on the floor of the passenger compartment, tucking her injured tail under her front limbs.