“Are you ready to chute-glide?” Ellen Chandrasekhar shouted the question over the roar of the C-130 transport plane’s engines. Without waiting for an answer, she jumped into the driver’s side of Rocinante, their 1971 Land Rover Series II off-road vehicle and trailer that took up much of the cargo bay.  Since they were flying in the middle of the night over a forest in the Himalayan foothills, seventeen-year-old Ariadne wasn’t sure how to answer her mother’s question.   Instead, she just clambered into the passenger seat, strapped herself into the five-point restraints, and put on the communication headset.

In the backseat, their companions, Sergeant Lissette “Architect” Teahound and Corporal Geo “Synchronous” Brummer were already seated and strapped in. They fiddled with an array of electronic equipment. 

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Ariadne finally asked.

“There aren’t any landing strips anywhere near this outpost,” Ellen replied, as she finished checking their buckles, her voice clear and soothing through the headset. “We’re behind schedule, over budget, and this is the only time and only plane they would grant us.”

“All systems nominal,” said Teahound, her voice crisp and authoritative.

“We’re nearing optimal drop position,” reported Brummer. “If we’re going to do this, we should leave in the next couple of minutes.” Brummer’s terse tones belied his nervousness. He wasn’t a fan of heights.

“You guys do this a lot?” Ariadne asked.

“No,” said Brummer.

“Yes,” said Ellen.

“Define ‘a lot,’” said Teahound.

 Whatever adventure lay ahead, Ariadne felt reassured that her mother wasn’t putting her into unnecessary danger. At least, probably not unnecessary. She took a deep breath. Keep an open mind.

“I guess I’m ready,” she told her mother. 

Ellen smiled and signaled the deck officer, who saluted in return. Ellen nodded and turned her intense gaze upon Ariadne. “Don’t worry, Makklai[i],piece of cake.”

Crimson lights started twirling, and a great shudder ran through the plane. The back door slowly opened like a mouth coming casually agape. Wind surged and swirled around them, rocking the vehicle violently. Ellen cranked the ignition and the willing engine responded with a roar. Headlights shot luminous beams out the back of the plane that disappeared into the night. Below boiled a sea of clouds, pale and swirly, illuminated in the expected grays and whites, along with surprising pinks and blues and hints of orange and green. The nearly full moon cast reflected sunrays upon the tableau below.

The deck officer signaled all clear! Ellen shifted into gear as she lifted the clutch, and dropped the pedal, and the four of them rolled toward the back of the plane.

Ariadne’s ability to form coherent thought vanished as her mom punched it, the acceleration pressing her back into the seat. As such, the realization of what waited below the end of the very short “street” did not hit her. The blinking lights, the shadowy deck officer with his hand raised in salute—did he say, “Hail Hydra?”—and the lurching in her stomach as they sailed over the edge all assaulted her senses. She took a deep breath as the horizon slid past the roofline.

The plane retreated at warp speed as they fell away from it.  Three sudden puffs exploded from the trailer as three backpack shaped objects shot out and burst into three flaming parachutes! She began screaming before she realized they were only flame embossed parachutes.

Ellen whooped as the drag from the three small chutes slowed them just a bit. A violent jerk wracked the vehicle. The special articulated hitch worked as designed and the Land Roverswung forward and up, leveling out. Storage bins on the roof burst opened in controlled reverse origami fashion as a giant wing sprouted from the car, replete with winglets. A vertical stabilizer completed the package.

The stabilizer did its job, and they didn’t spin when they jolted back to horizontal again. True to their function, the chutes kept the rear of the trailer level. Powerful magnetic gyroscopes in the trailer prevented additional rotation and then they were chute-gliding.

They soared above the clouds. Ahead, the peaks of the mountains loomed ominously. Ellen pulled a lever that re-directed the engine’s power to the ailerons and elevators of their erstwhile airplane. She steered using the floor mounted stick-shift, now flight stick. They leveled off in a gentle glide. Turning the steering wheel like a rudder, she yawed the improbable rig slowly around and they watched the plane above turn around and fly away.

Things were suddenly relatively quiet, except for the roaring of the wind, creaking of the car, the groaning of the wing above them. Strange musical metal sounds emanated from the articulated hitch. The parachutes flapped in the distance with a barely perceptible delay between the visuals and the sound.

Ariadne turned back to her mother, who stared intently down at the clouds below, a pair of stylish dark glasses on her face. Sensing Ariadne’s eyes, Ellen beckoned Ariadne to open the glove box, where Ariadne found a set of AR glasses—an early model with clear lenses and a small screen on the top left. She put them on and as they powered up, she scanned below, wondering what her mother was looking for. All Ariadne could see were clouds, clouds and, yes, more freaking clouds. They didn’t look as friendly as they had earlier. In fact, they were starting to look downright malicious.

The screen on the upper left of her left eye sprang to life and Ariadne saw, in a strangely soothing, false-color relief, a panoramic view of the jungle below and the mountains ahead. None were particularly looming, in the sense that they were all equally looming. She glanced over at Ellen’s dark sunglass looking rig. She must have crazy optics in there!

As if reading her mind, Ellen said, “So, we’re looking down with IR and enhanced ambient light cameras, radar, and a few other things.”

“Seems awfully high tech,” said Ariadne.

“We do have connections,” Ellen replied. 

“In very high places,” Teahound said from the backseat.

“Not that high,” said Ellen. “We couldn’t even get them to fly us in during the day.”

“Whatever you say, Doc,” Brummer added. “None of this stuff comes cheap.” 

“And besides,” said Teahound, “Wasn’t this night jump your idea? Something about testing new operational boundaries?” Ellen simply shrugged.

“So, anyway,” continued Ellen, “help me look for a road that should be winding up that mountain at two-thirty-six relative.”

“What’s at the end of the road?”

“Home.”

“Why can’t we just land directly there?”

Ellen turned to her with a grin. “What’s the fun in that?” she asked cheerily. “Besides, there’s not much open space up there.”

“Not much open space up there? There’s not much open space anywhere!” Ariadne tried to distract herself by scanning for the road. It was difficult to find the right mountain, much less a road. The picture on the screen above her eyes was small but sharp and displayed a bunch of statistics.

“Down there is the most room we’re going to get.’”

“Okay, then, I’ll keep looking!” Ariadne tried to reconcile the projected map with the mass of floating clouds outside, while trying to ignore the fact there was a mass of floating clouds outside.

“Hey, Professor,” came Teahound’s smooth voice from the back. “You going to land this thing better than you did last time?”

“What happened last time?” asked Ariadne.

“No need to worry about that,” said Ellen.

“True,” said Brummer. “It was mostly equipment failure. Should be sorted out now.”

“Oh. Very reassuring,” Ariadne said dryly.

“Doc,” Teahound called again. “I’m getting some sort of interference. I can’t seem to resolve the target region.”

“Confirmed,” said Brummer. “That’s just great.”

“I see it,” Ellen replied. Ariadne followed her mother’s gaze. Her screen showed an area of indistinct haziness near the top of one of the mountains ahead.

“Are you talking about the fuzzy mountain?” she asked.

“That’s our mountain,” said Teahound, “But the instruments are having trouble resolving the road near the house. We need to reconsider landing vectors.”

“Are the readings consistent with the anomaly?” asked Ellen.

“Unclear, but it appears to be localized.” Teahound sounded puzzled. “There are several layers of harmonics that I’ve never seen before.”

“What anomaly?” Ariadne interjected.

Ellen patted Ariadne’s arm. “I’ll tell you later, Makklai. Promise.” Ellen raised her voice to Brummer. “Geo, I need the turbines to fire up so we can sustain our glide longer while we recalculate.”

           “On it,” Brummer called.

           “Turbines?” asked Ariadne.

           “We have some small prototype engines attached to the roof to give us some extra boost. We can’t really fly like an airplane, but they can give us extra speed and hangtime.”

           “Cool!” said Ariadne, who loved new technology.

           “Doc, bad news.” Brummer reported. “No response from the turbines.”

           “That can’t be right,” exclaimed Teahound. “Diagnostics were completely normal before we disembarked.”

“True,” said Ellen. “But we couldn’t really test fire them onboard the airplane, could we?” She clucked her lips thoughtfully. “Okay, so I just need to find somewhere closer to land, then we can head our way up to the mountain.”

Teahound had been consulting a small tablet PDA. “I hate to break it to you, but there aren’t any real roads nearby. If we can wave lift off that ridge over at two-seven-five absolute, we can probably get high enough to reach our mountain and find a place to land.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan,” Ellen said.

“What?” Ariadne squeaked. “Can I get a translation, please?”

“See those flying saucer-like clouds over there?” said Brummer, pointing somewhere out to the left.

Ariadne nodded.

“Those mean that a wave of rising air coming off the backs of the taller mountains. There should be enough for us to catch to get us where we need to go and probably a lot farther.”

“We’ll need to reel in the chutes for the dive then deploy just one to catch the wave,” Ellen said. Teahound and Brummer replied with acknowledgements. “On my mark, bring in the chutes. Get ready, Ariadne.”

“Ready for what?” asked Ariadne nervously.

“For the exciting part!” replied Ellen.

“This is the boring part?” squeaked Ariadne. She glanced at her mother’s exuberant grin. “Oh no, this is the boring part—”

“Here we go,” announced Ellen. She turned the wheel and slowly eased the stick forward. The strange craft turned and dove. “Three, two, one. Mark! Retract the chutes!”

The vehicle dove steeply as the parachutes retracted and gravity, irritated at being rebuffed, took a firmer grip. They gained speed, leaving Ariadne’s stomach somewhere above and behind her.

Brummer called out their altitude, in numbers that steadily grew distressingly smaller. The whole vehicle vibrated, shook, and juddered. The mechanical notes of the articulating hitch soon resembled a frenzied jig. Below them, the sea of clouds became an ocean. A roiling, boiling ocean. Ariadne’s teeth rattled.

“Five, four, three, two, Pull!”

Ellen pulled back hard on the stick and there was another distant explosion as a single chute deployed at the back. With a bile-inducing heave, the flying Land Rover’s nose pitched up as the chute’s drag pulled the trailer even.

“Cut the chute!” Ellen called.

“Away!” replied Teahound.

And then they were rising on an invisible lift, smoothly arcing up and over like a roller coaster. The nose pointed up towards the threatening mountains in front of them.

Something flashed in Ariadne’s vision. “I see the road!” she cried. “Fifteen degrees, uh, uh.”

“I got it,” said Ellen. “Good work. Fifteen degrees relative, 30 degrees absolute.”

“That’s our road, alright,” confirmed Teahound. “Our angle is off a bit, but I think we can make it.”

“We might give some trees a haircut,” mused Brummer.

“Hold on to your idlis,” shouted Ellen. “We’re goin’ in!”

Ariadne whooped as Ellen deftly skated them through the waves of air that dashed upon the mountain.

“About to lose visibility, IFR in effect,” Ellen warned as the moonlit clouds rose to meet them.

Then they were in it. Outside, the windshield was a dim gray and deep violets rubbed against the glass like an opaque, gaseous cat. The screen on Ariadne’s glasses didn’t change—the false-color relief of the trees and landscape below flowed past reassuringly. Ariadne tried to focus on the tiny screen and ignore the panic-inducing wall of cloud all around her. The glider shook and rumbled.

“The road is two clicks dead ahead,” said Teahound.

“Altitude fifteen-hundred meters, airspeed is forty-two knots, sink rate is one-point-nine knots,” said Brummer. “We’ll be over there in about a minute. Need to increase the sink rate, Doc.”

“Got it, Geo,” replied Ellen. She pushed forward on the stick a bit. The buffeting increased as the vehicle accelerated.

“Doc, you’re gliding too well, we’re going to overshoot the road,” warned Brummer.

“I hear ya,” Ellen called. “Don’t forget to compensate for elevation change.”

“Duh, sorry, stand by,” Brummer replied.

Ariadne heard him muttering under his breath.

“Update: we’re right on. Do NOT increase the sink rate—the mountain will come up to meet us.”

Ariadne struggled to remember her physics. Velocity equals acceleration times time? What is the conversion from knots to kilometers per hour again? What the heck is sink rate?

As if reading her mind, Ellen explained.

“As you remember, Ariadne,” she began, as if she were homeschooling in their kitchen, seated quietly at the table instead of a couple thousand feet in the air in a flying off-road vehicle above a remote mountain in India in the middle of the night. “Airspeed is how fast we’re traveling forward.”

“One click,” Teahound reported. “The road is dead ahead.”

“Sink rate is increasing.  Looks like the ground is coming up fast. Touchdown estimate is less than a minute and a half,” Brummer added.

“Gotcha,” Ellen said, gently moving the stick. She continued talking to Ariadne nonchalantly. “Sink rate is how fast we’re losing altitude. Problem is, it’s hard to calculate when the ground isn’t flat.”

Ariadne nodded, then realized her mother couldn’t see her. She didn’t have the heart to say she didn’t care, especially at that moment.

A bright flash of light burst around them and they all cried out in pain. Ariadne’s screen went dark. Her eyes burned. She pulled the glasses from her face. Blinking rapidly, she tried to erase the afterimages of the flash from her vision. 

“I’ve lost instruments! What the hell was that?” Ellen called, her voice muffled and distant sounding. Ariadne realized the headsets no longer worked.

“I’ve lost electronics, too,” Teahound shouted. “Last reading was about half a click ahead, but the road was curving around the mountain on switchbacks, so there’s no telling where we’ll actually hit it without instruments to help us.”

“I’m blind here, too,” Brummer yelled. “Last reading was six-hundred meters altitude, airspeed fifty knots, and I don’t have an updated sink rate. Estimated time we have left is less than one minute.”

“Okay, folks, this is going to be like Borneo.” Ellen smiled wolfishly.

“Only difference is we were in a proper airplane then,” retorted Brummer. “And it was daylight. And we could actually see.”

“Details, details. Okay, I’m going to get us out of the clouds.” She pushed the stick down.

Ariadne’s vision slowly faded, and her stomach informed her it would like to leave, preferably via her mouth. Her vision returned just in time to see the all-encompassing clouds suddenly disappear. In their place, a tableau of thick, dark trees spread before them, lit up as the aircraft-grade lights clicked on. The mountain was dead ahead, rising quickly and disappearing above. Ariadne could not see anything that even remotely resembled a road.

“That’s weird; electronics are out, but the car’s lights are working,” Ellen said, sounding bemused even through the din. “Look sharp everyone, we’ve got less than forty-five seconds, I think,” she said as they hurtled toward the mountainside.

Scanning, Ariadne squinted, looking for something that resembled a road. Suddenly, she saw it—winding like a snake up the mountainside, a thin cut in the trees, bounded by mountain on one side and cliff on the other.

“I see it! It’s up a bit, to the left—uh—” She struggled with the directions.

“Got it,” the others all said, nearly in unison.

“It’s at 10 o’clock, cutting almost directly across the mountain—” clarified Brummer.

Sure enough, the ribbon of road emerged from the jungle, continued along a small clearing, and appeared to switchback up toward the top of the mountain.

“There’s an open spot there,” pointed Brummer. “Not much room.”

“And it’s kind of high up,” Ariadne added, nervously.

“Watch this!” Ellen called. She turned the wheel and stick together, pointing the gliding caravan at the ground.

Ariadne’s guts tightened as they gained speed and lost altitude. We’ll make you pay for this, they promised. The trees and mountainside rose toward them at an alarming rate.

“Uh, Mom…” Ariadne began as they lost sight of the sky. The looming bulk of the mountain and jungle below took up all their sight. The rattling and shaking of the vehicle intensified, the rushing wind rose to a howl.

“Oh, shi—” exclaimed Teahound.

“Hold on!” yelled Ellen, pulling up hard.

Ariadne’s insides flip-flopped as the nose of the car pitched up quickly. The sky appeared again, and they started to lose speed. Ellen pushed down on the stick again, banking to port. The sky disappeared once more, and Ariadne saw the road appear directly in front of them, a narrow window between the forest and the precarious switchback climbing up the side of the mountain.

“Five seconds!” called Ellen.

The vehicle plunged forward toward the road. The trees rose at them. Branches splintered as the wheels and undercarriage of their weird flying contraption grazed the tops of the trees, and then they were through.

“Ditch the wings!” Ellen commanded. Brummer and Teahound each pulled a couple of levers attached to the inside of the vehicle’s ceiling and with a loud bang, the wings popped up. The left wing flew clear, but the right wing remained partially attached. The now lift-challenged four-wheeler and its trailer dropped hard, hitting the road, bouncing once, then skidding dramatically. The partially detached right wing caught against the side of the mountain as the road morphed into a narrow, cliff-hanging pathway. It sent out a shower of sparks as it dragged against the stone, before ripping off and tumbling away. The Land Rover careened left and right as Ellen fought to keep control. Pushed to their limits, hydraulics and the metallic framework screeched in protest. The engine stalled just as they came to a chest clenching stop. The sudden absence of noise was jarring. Ariadne found the strange, metronomic tick-tick-ticking of the cooling engine strangely calming.

“You all still with me?” Ellen asked.  Teahound and Brummer groaned their affirmative responses from the back seat.

 Ariadne realized she had her eyes closed and opened them hesitantly. Out the window in front of them, the headlights showed about a foot of dirt and then darkness. They had come to a stop at the edge of a hairpin switchback in the road. A couple of feet more and they would have gone flying again, this time with no wings.

“Well,” said Ellen with a smile. “That was fun.”

Ariadne heaved a long sigh.

“What the heck happened to our electronics?” asked Brummer.

“Some sort of EMP pulse?” mused Teahound.

“Localized? That makes no sense. Maybe a short in the systems?” Ellen wondered.

“That shouldn’t have affected our portable electronics,” replied Teahound. “Perhaps the anomaly?”

“Perhaps,” Ellen mused.

“Good thing we insisted on manual linkages and not pure fly-by-wire!” said Brummer.

“Fly-by-wire?” Ariadne asked. “What’s that?”

“That means using electronics for your controls, so if you lose your electronics, you lose all your controls,” explained Teahound. “At least with manual linkages, even if your electronics fail, you can still steer.”

“This whole episode is weird—what caused our electronics to fail, but allowed the car’s lights to still work? It doesn’t make any sense,” Brummer said, somewhat aggrieved.

“Well, we made it,” Ellen said. “That counts for something, right?” She unbuckled her harness. “Let’s do a quick walk around, then we can drive up the rest of the way.” She opened the door and slowly stepped out, then turned back to Ariadne. “Stay in the car.”

“Okay,” said Ariadne as Teahound and Brummer both stepped out carefully. Ariadne listened to them as they bustled around the vehicle, quietly talking. Occasionally, clanking accompanied by a gentle rocking of the Land Rover would disturb the night air. Staring out into the darkness past the pale headlights, Ariadne’s emotions suddenly boiled up all at once. Relief at their safe landing replaced the exhilaration of their flight, and then gave way to irritation and anger.

Ariadne couldn’t believe that her mother had put their lives at risk so carelessly. Not only that, this whole trip to India seemed just another excuse for her family to up and move to a new place, like they always did. Ariadne had gotten used to living in the little town of Woodinville, Washington. They had been there for a year, and it would have been nice to stay longer. Her parents assured her that this was just for the summer, but she had heard that before. Now, with this news about an ‘anomaly’, it seemed like they were hiding things from her, too. By the time the others returned, Ariadne was in a right huff.

Ellen strapped herself back into her seat.

“Okay, here’s hoping,” she said as she turned the ignition. Without hesitation, the engine roared to life. “Thank goodness for pre-digital technology!” Ellen exclaimed triumphantly. Her grin quickly faded as she saw Ariadne’s expression. “You alright?”

“Yes.” A lie, and Ariadne didn’t bother to hide it, instead challenging her mom to comment.

Choosing not to bite, Ellen’s expression softened. “Okay, hon. Let’s get going.” She put the vehicle into reverse and slowly backed up until they had enough room to proceed.  “Our new home awaits!”

“Fine,” came the terse response.

Ellen glanced back at Brummer and Teahound, who simply shrugged. “Alright, onward and upward.” She threw the Land Rover into gear, and they slowly moved on. The road rose steeply around to their right, hugging the cliff as it climbed. The little caravan bumped its way up the switchbacks. Ellen reversed here and there to get their unwieldy ride around the tight hairpin curves.

They rode in silence, each lost in their thoughts. Ariadne found her anger and confusion fading slowly into a mind-deadening fatigue. The gentle rumble of the Land Rover’s engine, and the soft bouncing on the road, lulled her into a semi-awake state. Her eyes wandered drowsily, looking at Ellen as she concentrated on the steep and winding road, watching the headlights disappear into the darkness. She leaned her head on her arm against the pillar of the passenger door and gazed out the side window, eyes drooping slowly. She could see vague shapes and shadows. Clouds? Trees? Bats? In the swirl of grays and shades of black, two red dots appeared, glowing in the darkness. Tiny beams of light emanated from the dots, like lasers in the night. Ariadne blinked, unsure of what she was seeing. The beams swept back and forth, not bright but thin and pencil-like. Squinting, she leaned forward, trying to see more clearly. Without warning, the red lights pointed right at her, dazzling her with a weird, kaleidoscopic glow, looking for all the world like great, feral eyes staring at her. Startled, she drew back with a gasp and the lights disappeared.

“What’s going on?” Ellen asked.

Blinking rapidly, trying to clear the green and red after image of the lights from her eyes, Ariadne leaned back in her seat. Not answering right away, she looked back out the window. Nothing was out there. Had it been a dream? But what about the afterimages on her retinas? Could a dream do that?

“Did you see something?” asked Teahound, looking out the passenger window.

“I—I don’t know,” replied Ariadne. “I thought I saw some red lights or something, but it might have been a dream.”

Teahound grabbed a set of FLIR binoculars and tried to peer out into the darkness but put them away disgustedly. “Damn, they’re still not working.” She leaned out the window. “I don’t see anything,” she said slowly.

“Must have been a dream,” Ariadne said. Yes, it must have been a dream. And still …the fading images on her retina told her it might be otherwise. She shook her head. “Yeah, I was asleep or almost asleep, I think.”

“Well, we’ll keep an eye out,” said Brummer. “We still don’t know why our electronics got fried.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Ellen. They rode some more in silence, Ellen focusing on the road and the other three peering out the windows into the darkness. The road wound its way up, wider in some spots and so narrow in others that Ellen gingerly crept the vehicle forward, with Teahound leaning out the window, providing feedback on how close to the edge they were. Ariadne didn’t look during those moments—she decided her anxiety was high enough. After an indeterminate time, the little group crested a ridge, and the road flattened out, turning away from the edge, and rising slowly, entering the forest again. Soon dark, lush, and shadowy trees surrounded them as they crawled slowly along the rutted path. The “road” soon opened into a clearing.

“We’re here!” Ellen said, at last.

“This is the place?” Ariadne asked incredulously.

“Yes, this is the place.”

In the Land Rover’s bouncing headlights, bathed in darting shadows, a smallish, two-story house lay hidden behind a stone fence, nestled in the small pasture of cleared trees. Pale and tall, it was at once comforting and mildly foreboding. They pulled to a halt in front of the fence, where a wooden gate hid most of the ground floor from Ariadne’s view.

Ellen killed the engine, turned to Ariadne, and gave her a gentle hug. She cradled Ariadne’s face in her hands and smiled. “I love you, Makklai,” she said.

For a moment, Ariadne’s hackles rose and just as quickly relaxed again. She really didn’t have the right to be angry at her mother, did she? Not just because her mother had put them through some crazy stunt that didn’t need to be done, right? Maybe she was truly being ungrateful—after all, her parents had given her amazing opportunities, traveling around the world on scientific adventures. On the other hand, didn’t she have a right to a stable childhood? To have normal best friends and a single address for more than a year? Well, there was Trinity (née Stephanie Alexandra Lei-Ming), but she hadn’t been in the same room as Trinity for three years. But it had to count for something, right? Right?

Reviewing her thoughts, Ariadne realized just how tired she was and sank happily into Ellen’s embrace. All that adrenaline had left her, and boy, had it left her exhausted.

“That was fun, I guess,” she admitted. “But next time, can we just take a taxi or something?”

[i] Tamil for “dear”