By G.R. Nanda
The Eagle soared through the air for close to twenty minutes. As soon as Nickel was informed on his control screen that the Eagle was facing omnidirectional wind resistance and he heard quickening winds billowing and grazing the hull of the hovercraft, Nickel initiated the landing part of phase hop.
“De-activate the thrusters!” shouted Nickel. “We’re gonna land!”
“Allright, Farrul!” shouted Steve. “Push down on the shaft!” Steve and Farrul grunted behind Nickel, no doubt from the effort of pushing down as hard as they could.
Outside the window, Nickel could see craggly rock formations and dark metal spindles jutting out of the fog. There was a loud beeping and a warning sign flashed on the main screen:
WARNING! SENSORS DETECT OBTRUSIVE OBJECT!
The analytics readout flashed the receding length between the Eagle and the obtrusive object. 6 feet 7.65 inches. 4 feet 8.998 inches. 3 feet 4.571 inches. The Eagle crashed onto a metal framework sticking out of the ground which was receding in clarity as the winds and the fog thickened. The sound of the Eagle’s bottom slamming into the solid was deafening.
“Couldn’t you have picked a better place to land?” screamed Steve.
“I didn’t really have a CHOICE!” said Nickel. “Hop is used only for EMERGENCIES!” There was a loud rumble and crash from outside. Nickel saw a long dark cylindrical object coated with rust emerge in front of the window. Spokes of narrow metal rods were behind it, splayed in many directions.
The Eagle began to free-fall; the solid surface that the Eagle had landed on seemingly gave away. The ship moved down away from the top of the large tower-like cylinder. A large and gaping square shaped opening appeared on the tower’s wall. Cracked shards of glass stuck out of the corners of the opening, connected by thin wires. The opening quickly receded from Nickel’s window view. A fat black apparatus suddenly loomed over the side of the Eagle’s window view. It looked to Nickel like a wall.
The Eagle struck against the black apparatus. The grating of the two surfaces sounded like a pained screaming. Farrul shrieked. The front of the Eagle slammed into something. Nickel felt the jolt of the front of the Eagle’s hull sear across the floor beneath his feet. There was a moment of slow wobbling as the Eagle rested on the object in the howling windstorm.
Suddenly, a long metal surface edged out from the bottom of Nickel’s window view. There was a slow vertigo felt throughout the hovercraft. Nickel felt gravity push up and against his body. The object below the Eagle was tilting and the Eagle was sliding down its surface.
“Fucking glibb,” whispered Nickel. He clutched the arm handles of the piloting module and pressed his legs against its bottom.
“NOOO!” screamed Farrul. “NO! Goddamn it, Nickel!” He “oomphed” and then he was quiet. It seemed that Farrul had fallen backwards into something. Nickel squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the arm handles harder.
The sliding got louder and shakier. The Eagle moved faster. When Nickel opened his eyes, the long metal surface was edging up the window view faster and faster like a mountain erupting from the earth.
He closed his eyes again.
The frame of the Eagle shook violently, shaking Nickel’s butt. It would move away and slam against his seat erratically. His back shuddered against his chair, sometimes moving inches away.
So this is happening again, huh? a voice rang in Nickel’s head. The insides of Nickel’s eyelids flashed bright red and became pitch black invariably. The Eagle is crashing down again. Just when things start to feel under my control. There was a sharp ring from the back of the hovercraft. The craft was slammed and released into freefall over and over again. Things just get glibbed up. Nickel’s head rocked back and forth, jerking involuntarily with the movement of the Eagle.
But then again………….Isn’t that just life? The Eagle banged onto something and wobbled, sliding slower. That’s what dad would say. The Eagle swayed to the right and slammed onto an object large enough to still the hovercraft’s movement.
This time, you’re not alone. The Eagle fell backwards and crashed loudly. The craft was now completely still. Nickel opened his eyes to see a control desk whose screens were blacked out except for the ones directly in front of him in the piloting module. At least I have people to share the pain with. Nickel chuckled.
He put his hands to his forehead, pressed, massaged and then rubbed his eyes. He breathed deeply. He put away his hands and stared wide-eyed at the window in front of him. The metal object protruding from under the Eagle was now mostly obscured by orange. All that remained were dark aspects of a metal frame only visible from time to time. Spokes of a spindly framework stuck out in the far distance.
“We all okay?” said Nickel. The Eagle groaned with tension. Nickel looked around the edge of his piloting module. If he got up from his chair, he would be facing a downward slope behind the control desk. If he tried moving to the back of the control room, he would most likely fall, roll or tumble down unless he grabbed hold of the secondary desk or something else behind him. “Are you guys okay?”
“No, we’re not okay!” said Farrul. “Gee man! We roll with you for a while and this shit happens?”
“I’m sorry about this!” said Nickel. He lifted his head upwards and pushed his arms up on the back of his seat. It sort of felt like he was getting out of bed. “You know, this isn’t that different from when the Eagle landed before I met you guys.” Nickel coughed. “I really do not like flying in the Desolate Plains of the Atlantic.”
“Yup,” said Steve from afar. “That’s why us stragglers have been stuck here for so long. Flying out here is hard and expensive. People who try crash most of the time. So few even try to set foot here.” Nickel scooted his butt up the chair. As he moved his neck away from the chair, a cramp formed on its side, causing Nickel to wince.
“Aaah!” gasped Nickel. He inhaled loudly through gritted teeth.
“What’s wrong?” asked Steve.
“My neck,” whimpered Nickel. “Muscle twisted. Got a cramp.”
“Walk it off, boy,” said Steve.
“Yeah, I will,” said Nickel. He massaged the left side of his neck where it hurt. “I can’t really walk though. The craft is slanted. Aah. This is tricky. I’m going to have to slide down. How did we even get here?” Nickel kicked up his legs while pushing up with arms that he used to clutch the chair handle. He squatted in between the places where his butt and back rested in his chair. In the slanted hovercraft, he felt somewhat upright. “Of all the places I could have landed, this friggin……….”
This is probably a wreckage of an old energy plant, Nickel,” said Steve. “It’s hard to tell what’s where. All kinds of buildings and structures existed in these plains. Plant accident destroyed most of them, but of course a lot’s gonna still be here. I really think we need to time our flights and landings carefully between the windstorms because we don’t want to get pushed into places like these.”
Nickel was absorbing Steve’s words. Understanding them. However, he wasn’t paying attention. That’s because he was staring into the glinting red eyes of a dark figure perched on bent human-like limbs atop the metal surface outside the window.
“We gotta figure out a better system,” said Steve, “you come from an aerial base, Nickel. You must’ve had lessons in air navigation.” The red eyes glowed brighter. “We should be flying with some kind of knowledge about how we’re flying because we’re going to be flying without a lot of knowledge. We don’t know a whole lot about what’s on the ground.”
The red eyes brightened enough to illuminate the face of the figure. Below the eyes was a beak. A large beak. Triangular and curved slightly downwards. Nickel’s breath caught in his throat and his heart pounded ever faster.
“But I’m pretty sure -.” Steve grunted. There were thuds from the back of the control room. “- we’ve gotten closer to where we want to be.” The storm outside began to envelop the beaked figure, blurring its form in orange. The figure quickly poised, upturning his back and moving his head backwards, revealing the tight lips of a mouth that soon disappeared in the fog. Lips that looked human. The thudding suddenly became louder. “Nickel, we can’t plan from our seats. We gotta look around the Eagle. Get up!”
The figure slightly elongated its body and then stretched his shoulders and arms, revealing what appeared to be the large sleeves of a robe, but which were actually enormous wings. There was more thudding and a gasp from Steve. There was a banging from behind.
“Nickel, come on, up, up! Are you listening to me?”
There were thin gaps opening inwards from the edges of the wings. The gaps blurred in the orange, but Nickel had seen them long enough to see individual feathers fluttering in the wind. The figure was leaning to the side. His body was bending to Nickel’s left, enclosing his chest away from his view. When he tipped over and his head bucked, the wind took hold of his body and wings. He was lifted and with his wings outstretched, he was seen gliding upwards and over the metal surface, before curving down below it and disappearing from view.
Steve’s breathing became audible and the thudding could be felt below Nickel’s feet. However, Nickel did not turn around. He was transfixed to his window- disturbed and baffled by what he’d just seen. While the bird-man was gone from view, the memory haunted him and consumed his focus.
“Nickel!” Steve shouted. Out of the corner of his eye, Nickel could see Steve’s hairy hand reaching across the floor next to him. “Nickel, snap out of it! Don’t get caught up in the moment! You can’t freeze up when shit happens! Nickel -.”
Nickel shuddered and let out a soft whimper.
“Steve,” whispered Nickel. “Steve, – I saw someone.”
Steve edged along the floor and crouched next to Nickel, holding the edge of the control desk.
“What?” said Steve. “You saw what?” He coughed. “You saw a person?”
“I saw -,” Nickel started. His lips quivered. “It was a man with a beak and wings with feathers. He flew away. He – he looked like a hawk. I don’t know. But he looked like a bird.”
Steve was looking at Nickel, frowning and wide-eyed with concern.
“What?” he said. He looked out the window and laughed. “What the hell are you talking about?” He coughed again. “I mean – there are people out here. We just don’t know who.”
“Must’ve been under the acht-chi or somethin’ – some exercise in radiation dreamstate.” Steve coughed. “Bird? But with wings? That what you saw, Nickel?”
“Yeah,” said Nickel, finding his voice again as he spoke louder. He was still shaken. “It was the weirdest thing – creature. I’ve literally never seen a creature like it before. No bird’s that big. But no! He wasn’t a bird. He was human – a man.”
“Nickel, are you sure it was human?” asked Steve. “These plains have been way too toxic for a ton of wildlife for a long time, but there’s still some. I would see some herds of animals from up in the explorer’s hovercraft when I was cooking. I learned some animals mutated. They get real weird because of the toxic gas. That’s what the explorers said. They kept comparing to something called Chernobyl. Some animals in Russia after some power plant accident. The same probably happened here. That must have been an an-.”
“NO!” shouted Nickel. He gripped the handles of the piloting module. “No!” he closed his eyes and tilted his face to his lap. “No! It was a man! A human. It was definitely some kind of bird-man!” he said, almost screaming his last word.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Nickel! Let’s calm down!” said Steve. He touched Nickel’s shoulder. Nickel immediately slapped Steve’s hand away.
“Don’t touch me!” snarled Nickel. An overwhelming fear and regret at taking up a mission with the ill stragglers Steve and Farrul welled up inside of Nickel, twisting the inside of his chest.
“What the glibb is going on?” shouted Farrul from afar.
“I don’t know what there is,” Nickel told Steve. “I can’t know for sure. It could have been -.” Nickel rubbed his face with his hands. “Aaargh!”
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” screamed Farrul. Steve turned around.
“Farrul!” he shouted. “We might be visiting some folks!”
“WHAT?” screamed Farrul. “Who – what? You’re not explaining shit!”
“CALM DOWN, FARRUL!” roared Steve. “We have to take this slow! We have to act before any explaining can happen!”
“You calm down first,” said Nickel, looking at Steve. “Jeez!”
There was a loud bang outside of the Eagle, heard coming from the roof to the right of Nickel and Steve. Vibrations trailed down the hull of the craft from the point of collision.
Nickel and Steve were silent and wide-eyed, staring up at the edge of the roof where the sound had come from.
“What was that?” shrieked Farrul.
There was another banging, but from the back of the Eagle. Nickel and Steve whirled around. Nickel crouched with his feet perched on his seat, staring over the edge of the piloting module. The secondary control desk in the middle of the room was shuddering.
Farrul was laid against the back of the room, on a wall in between the small staircases to the sides. The right half of his body was hidden behind the secondary control desk.
“Nickel, shoot!” shouted Farrul. “Don’t you have weapons systems in the Eagle?”
“No!” said Nickel. “I don’t!”
THOOF! There was another collision, but from the right side of the roof, echoing and vibrating across the metal.
“Plus, I wouldn’t know where to strike!” Nickel turned back to the window, squinting. To his growing feeling of demise, he saw nothing except for the faint framework of spindly metal and the flat extending surface, muddled by the foggy orange. “I don’t know where they’re coming from!”
THOOF! THOOF! Bangs came two at a time and in opposite sides of the Eagle’s walls. Many objects were shaking. The main control desk in front of Nickel quivered. A loud groaning emanated from the ceiling.
Suddenly, a feeling of vertigo caught Nickel, pushing him to the right. Steve yelped and tipped over behind Nickel.
“I think we’re going under!” said Steve. The feeling of vertigo became stronger, pummeling Nickel’s head to the side of the piloting module. He held onto the handles, extending his left arm as the rest of his body slid to the side of the module. Steve suddenly grabbed the right handle of the module and buried his face in Nickel’s arm.
The Eagle began to grate against the metal object underneath again. The end of the surface was no longer visible, having passed the top of the window. The length was receding faster than ever.
The grating became louder and louder, turning into a rumbling. The metal surface was becoming uneven, no longer appearing flat through the window. Bumps and elevated patches were seen along the side of the object closest to the Eagle’s front window.
Faint sounds of yelling voices appeared coming from outside, but were blotted by the grating and crashing. Nonetheless, the yelling was louder each time it could be heard.
The vertigo became stronger and there was a moment of weightlessness when Nickel felt as if his body was ascending from the floor of the control room. However, he quickly slammed into his module chair. The impact hurt and had him gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut. The grating screeched loudly to a halt, rocking Nickel in his chair.
The sound of the Eagle’s descent ceased in a miniscule instant and Nickel became acutely aware of his pounding heart. He found himself catching up to a pre-existing breathlessness by panting.
“We’re captured!” heaved Steve into Nickel’s arm. He let go and moved back, inhaling deeply.
“There’s more -” began Nickel before falling into heavy breaths again. Steve exhaled. “- There’s more bird-people?”
G.R. Nanda 