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Threading the Needle
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2019 by Walter Reimer
Prompt: curve
Based on the Spontoon Island universe.
As the words of the invocation echoed in his headphones, Barry sat in his cockpit and stewed. He didn’t understand Spontoonie and he had bigger fish to fry.
He and his crew and sponsors had been building up to this day, this moment, for two straight years. Now, all the planning, all the building, the test flights, the retooling and repairs, the long nights and grueling days, all culminated in the sleek red and aquamarine jet that he sat in as it bobbed on its floats in the atoll’s lagoon.
Of course, he had company; ten more planes sat to either side of him, representing companies and nations from around the world. The stands and probably all five of the atoll’s main islands were crammed with spectators to watch him and his ten competitors vie for the 2018 Schneider Cup. He still had the cockpit open to get some air in; Speed Week was the last week of August, and despite being in the north Pacific, Spontoon boasted a hot tropical climate in the summer months.
The rat closed his canopy and started to throttle up as the light display in front of the racers began to flash. They’d launch at carefully-timed intervals, a few seconds apart. No one wanted a disaster like the 1973 Schneider, where two planes had collided on takeoff and taken three more planes with them. There was a monument at the Eastern Island Airport to the three men and two women, and all pilots in the Schneider would visit it before the race.
The Italian plane, a FIAT-built craft in the Azurri racing colors, accelerated and lifted off. It was followed by the silver German entry from MBB and the Rain Island Silver Dart, a one-off model from Kypriakos-Volstead to refine their new jet fighter concept. Two privately-built planes followed, and then it was his turn.
Water takeoffs were tricky when the engine was a jet; too much thrust and the floats would shear off. Barry eased the throttle forward to takeoff speed, and as the lights went green he pulled back on the controls. His plane, designed by a group of enterprising young men and women from New Haven’s Collegiate School and powered by an engine from Aerojet Dynamics, lifted off of the waters of the lagoon and began to pick up speed. As he passed fifty feet, he flicked a switch and the floats retracted, snuggling up against the undersides of the wings.
The companies and nations had competed for the Schneider Cup in the skies over the Spontoon Independencies since the 1930s because this was where new designs and airframes could be tested in close to combat conditions. However, personalities could still intrude; the American President had gotten into a slap fight over social media with the head of the Spontoon Island Racing Association. Predictably, the President lost the argument, and petulantly ordered the U.S. Navy and Air Force to not participate.
Drake Lawton, the formidable head of the Racing Association and the son of its founder, was not a fur to be trifled with when it came to the Schneider.
Not even the Yankee Ambassador was allowed to attend in his official capacity - in his official capacity; it was reliably reported that the hound was in the stands somewhere, wearing a loud shirt and happily munching popcorn.
Barry’s plane was called the Frank Stagg, and apart from its red and aqua paint job it sported the once and current Republic of New Haven’s air force insignia, a blue circle with a white field and three red intertwined circles for the Trinity. The plane’s name had immediately endeared the jet to the Spontoonies, but Barry didn’t know why. Still, it wasn’t the strangest art on one of the entrants; there was a combined Australian – New Zealander effort bankrolled by the Sultanate of Sinatra that sported a turbaned anthro kiwi riding a winged feral kangaroo.
He put all of it out of his mind, breathing deeply and concentrating as the first pylon came up. Barry had always loved flying after he visited the Old Rheinbeck Aerodrome when he was a child. A trip up in a model of a World War One biplane, and he was hooked. He’d trained in this plane, flown it, bled on it while making repairs or maintenance. He knew every part of it.
And he could fly it like it was an extension of his body.
He snap-rolled the plane to the left and pulled into the first approach, feeling his G-suit inflate and force blood from his legs up toward his head. As he pulled around the pylon he leveled out and increased speed. One down.
The course had ten pylon turns, and the course extended out to ten miles from the lagoon. To make sure that the spectators didn’t lose sight of the racers, each pylon was equipped with cameras, and the Racing Association made sure that there was enough bandwidth to stream the whole thing live. A few race teams had even agreed to have cameras installed so that the furs in the stands could get a pilot’s-eye view of the contest.
Barry goosed the throttle, the Frank Stagg jumping to five hundred miles an hour in a few seconds. Afterburners were not allowed, as the Russians had discovered three years earlier, and the straights had to be taken at full speed to stay on time. The plane soared at a thousand feet over the Rain Island aircraft carrier NSS Eider, one of a group of warships gathered outside the atoll. There was another pylon just beyond the last ship of the carrier’s screen . . . there it was!
The plane shook a bit as he took this one, and he muttered into his microphone, “Picking up some buffeting. What do you see?”
His crew chief’s voice crackled back, “It’s the air. You’re a little low.”
“Trying to stay in the envelope, Zack.” Entrants couldn’t stray too far off the course, or risk having time added or being eliminated from the race altogether.
“Roger that, but be careful.”
“Gotcha.” There was the third pylon, coming up fast, and it wasn’t as sharp a turn as the first two. “Hey, Barry.”
“Yeah?”
“Italian entry’s dropping out.”
The rat glanced up and saw a smoke plume on the horizon. “He okay?”
“Yeah, he’s coming home. Chase plane’s minding him.” Spontoon’s Naval Militia was tasked with keeping an eye on the racers.
“Okay, gotta stay sharp. The Needle’s coming up.”
“Roger.”
The Needle was two pylon gates, side by side; a pilot had to go through one, execute a sharp hairpin turn, and go through the second one. It was essential that the turn be tight, as there was a mountain three miles away.
All of the pilots had taken familiarization flights through The Needle, and even the former combat pilots thought it was a crap shoot. Take the pylons at speed and run the risk of hitting the mountainside, or slow down, risk a stall or flameout, and lose time.
Barry slowed the plane down to three-fifty, went through the first gate, then gained altitude and inverted before diving through the second set of pylons, leveling out and accelerating as he tried to get his heart out of his mouth and back into his chest where it belonged.
He swore that he could have counted individual leaves on some of the trees cloaking the mountain.
Fortunately, The Needle was the hardest of the pylon turns to take, with the ninth and tenth over the lagoon to delight the spectators. As he blazed through the tenth gate to start his second lap, Zack radioed, “You’re about three seconds off the leader.”
“What happened to the Germans?” The MBB entry was favored to win.
“She’s the leader. The other two private planes veered away from The Needle, and are DNF.”
“Got it.” The rat gave the plane a bit more throttle. “Who’s behind me?” He caught a glint of reflected sunlight far overhead, where the German zeppelin Kaiser Ludwig floated, acting as a spotter and camera platform.
“The Sinatra plane, the Rain Islander, the Brits and the French.” The last two were perennial rivals in the Schneider, along with the Germans. “But never mind them. You have nine more laps, so stay sharp.”
Barry grinned. “Roger that.”
Through gate after gate the racers tore, the stress on the pilots and the planes beginning to take a toll on both. Barry’s tail was cramping in its pouch, he could hear a pounding in his ears, and his paws felt like they were welded to the throttle and the control stick. Four more laps . . .
Zack’s flat New Haven accent cut through the haze of pain. “Barry? Barry? We got trouble.”
That snapped him out of it and he started looking at the gauges. Fuel state good, hydraulics . . . “What sort?”
“Telemetry’s saying that the fly-by-wire’s starting to fail. Switch to analog.”
“Right – Jesus!” The rat had switched the plane’s electronic controls to the old-fashioned hydraulic system, and it seemed like he was now flying a truck – a truck trying to drive down a rocky slope. “Controls are iffy, having trouble keeping her level.”
The unaccented English of the air traffic controller cut into his radio circuit. “Spontoon ATC to Frank Stagg. Are you declaring an emergency?”
Seconds ticked by as he thought it over, even as The Needle began looming ahead of him. He tried the stick, and growled as it seemed like he was trying to pull an iron bar through solid rock. “Yeah. MaydayMaydayMayday.”
“Roger your Mayday. All racers, break off and assume holding pattern over the lagoon at angels three. We have a course emergency. Frank Stagg, can you make it to the lagoon?”
Barry tried the controls again, and this time it felt like pulling an iron bar through a rock embedded in concrete. He glanced at the head-up display. “Negative, Spontoon ATC. What’s the damage if the plane hits the mountain?”
“That depends. You riding it down?”
“Negative. I’m punching out.”
“Roger. Emergency teams are being alerted. Happy landings.” He snorted at that and, with a grunt of effort, managed to level the plane a bit more. It’d take the first pylon gate at speed.
Right.
He slapped the right chair arm upright and winced as the canopy blew off, then reached between his legs. Remember, he thought, arms and legs as close in as you can . . .
He yanked up on the lever.
The world’s biggest giant kicked him dead in the ass and the wind tore at his G-suit as he was catapulted clear of the plane, tumbling erratically until the seat’s drogue parachute started to deploy. As soon as it stabilized, he hit the central buckle of his seat harness and fell forward. A quick ten-count, and he pulled the ripcord on his parachute.
Through his helmet he heard the wind, and the rustling of the parachute, then a sharp upward tug and he looked up to see the rectangular red and white canopy ballooning out above him. The shrouds looked okay, and he grabbed at the two control handles with paws that shook only a bit. The rat drifted down and he looked around to see a plume of smoke rising from the jungle-cloaked mountain a few miles away.
He started swearing as tears stung his eyes momentarily. Shaking it off, he angled the chute in order to start finding an appropriate landing site.
Landing in the jungle didn’t seem like a good idea, so he let some of the warm updraft spill out from under the canopy and looked further. Below, close to the slopes of the mountain, was something that looked like a cane field. His rescue beacon had already activated, so he’d be found soon after he landed.
He’d had parachute training, of course, but the tall plants seemed to get very large very fast. Barry flared the chute and planted his feet, then twisted partially to the left and collapsed his legs. Taking the impact on his hip, he grunted and rolled up to a kneeling position while hauling the shrouds and canopy toward him before the wind could catch it and drag him.
The rat was taking his flight helmet off as a couple Spontoonie youngsters came running up to him. They were tigers, a boy and a girl, the boy dressed in a grass skirt and the girl in a fabric wraparound. “Heya, creature-with-big-teeth outlander! We all same see you fall out of sky!” He said something in Spontoonie to the tigress, who pulled a cell phone out and started calling someone.
Barry chuckled. “Yeah, that’s me.” He removed his parachute harness and started balling it all together. There was a collective twitching of ears at the sound of a siren. “Ambulance coming,” and he sat down as the adrenaline drained out of him, leaving him feeling weak.
“You okay, creature-with-big-teeth outlander?” the little boy asked.
“Just tired. And thirsty. And hungry.” The rat glanced back toward the plume of smoke that marked his plane’s grave. Well, he’d managed almost seven laps; all that time, money and effort, all gone . . . Well, he’d managed to live through it, and any landing, blah blah blah.
He was already thinking of ways to manage the course when he flew it next year, even as the two tigers jumped and waved to guide the ambulance in.
end
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2019 by Walter Reimer
Prompt: curve
Based on the Spontoon Island universe.
As the words of the invocation echoed in his headphones, Barry sat in his cockpit and stewed. He didn’t understand Spontoonie and he had bigger fish to fry.
He and his crew and sponsors had been building up to this day, this moment, for two straight years. Now, all the planning, all the building, the test flights, the retooling and repairs, the long nights and grueling days, all culminated in the sleek red and aquamarine jet that he sat in as it bobbed on its floats in the atoll’s lagoon.
Of course, he had company; ten more planes sat to either side of him, representing companies and nations from around the world. The stands and probably all five of the atoll’s main islands were crammed with spectators to watch him and his ten competitors vie for the 2018 Schneider Cup. He still had the cockpit open to get some air in; Speed Week was the last week of August, and despite being in the north Pacific, Spontoon boasted a hot tropical climate in the summer months.
The rat closed his canopy and started to throttle up as the light display in front of the racers began to flash. They’d launch at carefully-timed intervals, a few seconds apart. No one wanted a disaster like the 1973 Schneider, where two planes had collided on takeoff and taken three more planes with them. There was a monument at the Eastern Island Airport to the three men and two women, and all pilots in the Schneider would visit it before the race.
The Italian plane, a FIAT-built craft in the Azurri racing colors, accelerated and lifted off. It was followed by the silver German entry from MBB and the Rain Island Silver Dart, a one-off model from Kypriakos-Volstead to refine their new jet fighter concept. Two privately-built planes followed, and then it was his turn.
Water takeoffs were tricky when the engine was a jet; too much thrust and the floats would shear off. Barry eased the throttle forward to takeoff speed, and as the lights went green he pulled back on the controls. His plane, designed by a group of enterprising young men and women from New Haven’s Collegiate School and powered by an engine from Aerojet Dynamics, lifted off of the waters of the lagoon and began to pick up speed. As he passed fifty feet, he flicked a switch and the floats retracted, snuggling up against the undersides of the wings.
The companies and nations had competed for the Schneider Cup in the skies over the Spontoon Independencies since the 1930s because this was where new designs and airframes could be tested in close to combat conditions. However, personalities could still intrude; the American President had gotten into a slap fight over social media with the head of the Spontoon Island Racing Association. Predictably, the President lost the argument, and petulantly ordered the U.S. Navy and Air Force to not participate.
Drake Lawton, the formidable head of the Racing Association and the son of its founder, was not a fur to be trifled with when it came to the Schneider.
Not even the Yankee Ambassador was allowed to attend in his official capacity - in his official capacity; it was reliably reported that the hound was in the stands somewhere, wearing a loud shirt and happily munching popcorn.
Barry’s plane was called the Frank Stagg, and apart from its red and aqua paint job it sported the once and current Republic of New Haven’s air force insignia, a blue circle with a white field and three red intertwined circles for the Trinity. The plane’s name had immediately endeared the jet to the Spontoonies, but Barry didn’t know why. Still, it wasn’t the strangest art on one of the entrants; there was a combined Australian – New Zealander effort bankrolled by the Sultanate of Sinatra that sported a turbaned anthro kiwi riding a winged feral kangaroo.
He put all of it out of his mind, breathing deeply and concentrating as the first pylon came up. Barry had always loved flying after he visited the Old Rheinbeck Aerodrome when he was a child. A trip up in a model of a World War One biplane, and he was hooked. He’d trained in this plane, flown it, bled on it while making repairs or maintenance. He knew every part of it.
And he could fly it like it was an extension of his body.
He snap-rolled the plane to the left and pulled into the first approach, feeling his G-suit inflate and force blood from his legs up toward his head. As he pulled around the pylon he leveled out and increased speed. One down.
The course had ten pylon turns, and the course extended out to ten miles from the lagoon. To make sure that the spectators didn’t lose sight of the racers, each pylon was equipped with cameras, and the Racing Association made sure that there was enough bandwidth to stream the whole thing live. A few race teams had even agreed to have cameras installed so that the furs in the stands could get a pilot’s-eye view of the contest.
Barry goosed the throttle, the Frank Stagg jumping to five hundred miles an hour in a few seconds. Afterburners were not allowed, as the Russians had discovered three years earlier, and the straights had to be taken at full speed to stay on time. The plane soared at a thousand feet over the Rain Island aircraft carrier NSS Eider, one of a group of warships gathered outside the atoll. There was another pylon just beyond the last ship of the carrier’s screen . . . there it was!
The plane shook a bit as he took this one, and he muttered into his microphone, “Picking up some buffeting. What do you see?”
His crew chief’s voice crackled back, “It’s the air. You’re a little low.”
“Trying to stay in the envelope, Zack.” Entrants couldn’t stray too far off the course, or risk having time added or being eliminated from the race altogether.
“Roger that, but be careful.”
“Gotcha.” There was the third pylon, coming up fast, and it wasn’t as sharp a turn as the first two. “Hey, Barry.”
“Yeah?”
“Italian entry’s dropping out.”
The rat glanced up and saw a smoke plume on the horizon. “He okay?”
“Yeah, he’s coming home. Chase plane’s minding him.” Spontoon’s Naval Militia was tasked with keeping an eye on the racers.
“Okay, gotta stay sharp. The Needle’s coming up.”
“Roger.”
The Needle was two pylon gates, side by side; a pilot had to go through one, execute a sharp hairpin turn, and go through the second one. It was essential that the turn be tight, as there was a mountain three miles away.
All of the pilots had taken familiarization flights through The Needle, and even the former combat pilots thought it was a crap shoot. Take the pylons at speed and run the risk of hitting the mountainside, or slow down, risk a stall or flameout, and lose time.
Barry slowed the plane down to three-fifty, went through the first gate, then gained altitude and inverted before diving through the second set of pylons, leveling out and accelerating as he tried to get his heart out of his mouth and back into his chest where it belonged.
He swore that he could have counted individual leaves on some of the trees cloaking the mountain.
Fortunately, The Needle was the hardest of the pylon turns to take, with the ninth and tenth over the lagoon to delight the spectators. As he blazed through the tenth gate to start his second lap, Zack radioed, “You’re about three seconds off the leader.”
“What happened to the Germans?” The MBB entry was favored to win.
“She’s the leader. The other two private planes veered away from The Needle, and are DNF.”
“Got it.” The rat gave the plane a bit more throttle. “Who’s behind me?” He caught a glint of reflected sunlight far overhead, where the German zeppelin Kaiser Ludwig floated, acting as a spotter and camera platform.
“The Sinatra plane, the Rain Islander, the Brits and the French.” The last two were perennial rivals in the Schneider, along with the Germans. “But never mind them. You have nine more laps, so stay sharp.”
Barry grinned. “Roger that.”
Through gate after gate the racers tore, the stress on the pilots and the planes beginning to take a toll on both. Barry’s tail was cramping in its pouch, he could hear a pounding in his ears, and his paws felt like they were welded to the throttle and the control stick. Four more laps . . .
Zack’s flat New Haven accent cut through the haze of pain. “Barry? Barry? We got trouble.”
That snapped him out of it and he started looking at the gauges. Fuel state good, hydraulics . . . “What sort?”
“Telemetry’s saying that the fly-by-wire’s starting to fail. Switch to analog.”
“Right – Jesus!” The rat had switched the plane’s electronic controls to the old-fashioned hydraulic system, and it seemed like he was now flying a truck – a truck trying to drive down a rocky slope. “Controls are iffy, having trouble keeping her level.”
The unaccented English of the air traffic controller cut into his radio circuit. “Spontoon ATC to Frank Stagg. Are you declaring an emergency?”
Seconds ticked by as he thought it over, even as The Needle began looming ahead of him. He tried the stick, and growled as it seemed like he was trying to pull an iron bar through solid rock. “Yeah. MaydayMaydayMayday.”
“Roger your Mayday. All racers, break off and assume holding pattern over the lagoon at angels three. We have a course emergency. Frank Stagg, can you make it to the lagoon?”
Barry tried the controls again, and this time it felt like pulling an iron bar through a rock embedded in concrete. He glanced at the head-up display. “Negative, Spontoon ATC. What’s the damage if the plane hits the mountain?”
“That depends. You riding it down?”
“Negative. I’m punching out.”
“Roger. Emergency teams are being alerted. Happy landings.” He snorted at that and, with a grunt of effort, managed to level the plane a bit more. It’d take the first pylon gate at speed.
Right.
He slapped the right chair arm upright and winced as the canopy blew off, then reached between his legs. Remember, he thought, arms and legs as close in as you can . . .
He yanked up on the lever.
The world’s biggest giant kicked him dead in the ass and the wind tore at his G-suit as he was catapulted clear of the plane, tumbling erratically until the seat’s drogue parachute started to deploy. As soon as it stabilized, he hit the central buckle of his seat harness and fell forward. A quick ten-count, and he pulled the ripcord on his parachute.
Through his helmet he heard the wind, and the rustling of the parachute, then a sharp upward tug and he looked up to see the rectangular red and white canopy ballooning out above him. The shrouds looked okay, and he grabbed at the two control handles with paws that shook only a bit. The rat drifted down and he looked around to see a plume of smoke rising from the jungle-cloaked mountain a few miles away.
He started swearing as tears stung his eyes momentarily. Shaking it off, he angled the chute in order to start finding an appropriate landing site.
Landing in the jungle didn’t seem like a good idea, so he let some of the warm updraft spill out from under the canopy and looked further. Below, close to the slopes of the mountain, was something that looked like a cane field. His rescue beacon had already activated, so he’d be found soon after he landed.
He’d had parachute training, of course, but the tall plants seemed to get very large very fast. Barry flared the chute and planted his feet, then twisted partially to the left and collapsed his legs. Taking the impact on his hip, he grunted and rolled up to a kneeling position while hauling the shrouds and canopy toward him before the wind could catch it and drag him.
The rat was taking his flight helmet off as a couple Spontoonie youngsters came running up to him. They were tigers, a boy and a girl, the boy dressed in a grass skirt and the girl in a fabric wraparound. “Heya, creature-with-big-teeth outlander! We all same see you fall out of sky!” He said something in Spontoonie to the tigress, who pulled a cell phone out and started calling someone.
Barry chuckled. “Yeah, that’s me.” He removed his parachute harness and started balling it all together. There was a collective twitching of ears at the sound of a siren. “Ambulance coming,” and he sat down as the adrenaline drained out of him, leaving him feeling weak.
“You okay, creature-with-big-teeth outlander?” the little boy asked.
“Just tired. And thirsty. And hungry.” The rat glanced back toward the plume of smoke that marked his plane’s grave. Well, he’d managed almost seven laps; all that time, money and effort, all gone . . . Well, he’d managed to live through it, and any landing, blah blah blah.
He was already thinking of ways to manage the course when he flew it next year, even as the two tigers jumped and waved to guide the ambulance in.
end
Category Story / General Furry Art
Species Rat
Size 120 x 92px
File Size 52.1 kB
Listed in Folders
It sucks when your backup isn't ...
Good on him checking/picking where to plant his bird, seen it done once in RL where the crew rode it to the last second to reduce the damage/body count. (One pancaked RF-4C into an empty lot in Austin, some damage to a couple You-Stow-and-Go units, minor injuries to one person from flying junk when it all fell out of the sky. Considering it was noon on a weekday I think they done did pretty good. )
Good on him checking/picking where to plant his bird, seen it done once in RL where the crew rode it to the last second to reduce the damage/body count. (One pancaked RF-4C into an empty lot in Austin, some damage to a couple You-Stow-and-Go units, minor injuries to one person from flying junk when it all fell out of the sky. Considering it was noon on a weekday I think they done did pretty good. )
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