The Omnicron Imperative (Part X)

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The roar of their rocket engine suddenly cut out and silence reigned aboard the suborbital capsule of Captain Awesome and Lilly Appleton.  After seventy seconds of crushing acceleration  the sudden weightlessness was a welcome change, albeit a slightly disconcerting one.  The curvature of the Earth and its paper thin atmosphere lolled slowly below as the ship coasted upward.

Although neither one of the passengers had ever been into space before a casual observer would not be able to tell the difference between them and any pair of seasoned astronauts they could care to name.  They unbuckled their safety harnesses and prepared their equipment with an elegance of purpose as if they had been born in a zero-g environment.

Lilly had never met Captain Awesome before today but knew him by reputation.  She was not as intimidated as she thought she would be meeting someone who had single-handedly saved America more times than she had birthdays.  He had a confident, ego-free manner that immediately put her at ease.  She wondered why he would bother risking his life over and over when, the rumorists said, he was more than capable of paying for a tropical island to be built from scratch and then retire there.

And he is so handsome, her id reminded her.  Embarrassed at herself, she darkened the visor on her space helmet to hide the fact that she was blushing.

They worked together checking their miniaturized front-mounted oxygen tanks and securing their leather satchels to their lower backs.  A squarish, second pack that looked like a bookbag was firmly strapped to their shoulders and cinched around their waists.  Sixty seconds after engine shutdown, they were satisfied that all their gear was in order and drifted to opposite ends of the passenger cabin.

Captain Awesome and Lilly each grabbed a red and white striped handle on the bulkhead and inserted their feet into pairs of reinforced carbon fiber loops integrated into the floor.

The capsule continued its silent arc toward apogee.  As their upward momentum slowed to zero, the gentle thump of guidance thrusters permeated the cabin and the craft began the rollover for re-entry.

"Now!" shouted Captain Awesome and they simultaneously turned their handles.  Dozens of custom explosive bolts fired one after another in rapid succession and the internal pressure of the ship suddenly blew its upper half down and away towards the Earth.

They climbed out of the lower half of the ship and pushed themselves away from the craft and toward the spinning planet below.  The two halves of the spacecraft tumbled magestically behind them as their flightsuits' internal temperature controls kicked on full.  The batteries that powered them wouldn't last long - just long enough.

Ten seconds after blowing the bolts they were dropping back toward the planet through the rarefied atmosphere 100 kilometers above the state of California.  Newton's Laws kept the passengers and craft arcing gently westward toward the Pacific ocean but only the spaceship remnants would crash there today.

The low friction coupled with the intrinsic aerodynamic design of their flightsuits meant they were gaining speed fast as they pointed themselves toward the ground head first and fists out.  The HUD built into their helmets informed them they had just passed local Mach 1.0.

Lilly and Captain Awesome each pulled a release handle on the front of their suits and two skinny tubes of black and silver fabric deployed and was dragged behind them as the atmospheric density slowly increased. Suddenly, the memory shape weave of carbon-fiber and Nitinol snapped into a two pairs of rigid forty-foot wide bat wings in the frozen air.

"Successfully initiated glide phase," said Awesome.  "Beginning braking maneuvers."  He glanced at the tumbling former spacecraft out of his peripheral vision.  What a waste, he thought.  At least the other teams have accessible landing strips near their targets...

"Roger that, team leader.  I have a GPS lock on your positions, and I can see , based on the rate of your deceleration my space wings appear to be doing their job," Twitchy commented smugly.  "You can congratulate me later.  Proceed to the target location highlighted in your HUD".

A red augmented reality bullseye appeared in their fields of vision, staying fixed as they moved their heads around.  They gently began tilting themselves into the thickening air to both steer and slow themselves gradually arcing themselves into a tighter and tighter spiral.  After zipping past 30,000 feet their downward velocity had been reduced to about 250 miles an hour and by the time they had glided under 10,000 feet their former spacecraft was scattering its shattered remnants on the sea floor off of Baja California.

The air, while still frigid, had warmed to a point where their flightsuit heaters were no longer critical but their helmets informed them of the depleted batteries just the same.  The shape-memory wings began returning to their previous, silky form and made a sound like a flag fluttering in a stiff breeze.  The former wings each completed their transformation into two dark parachutes just as the pair reached an altitude of one thousand feet.

They slowly and silently drifted toward the target indicated on their visors.  It didn't seem possible that the isolated run-down biker bar nestled incongruously amongst the towering saguaro cacti could be a hotbed of Omnicron activity.

But the dirt and sand parking lot off the main highway was filled with roughly sixty motorcycles.  At 7:30 AM, that would be unusual in itself even if, Awesome noted as he and Lilly touched down 100 yards away, the license plates were all local.

(To be continued...)