Land Of The Thunder Dragon Read online

  Chapter 15

  “A Life Without Adventure”

  While everyone strapped in and prepared for the inflight re-fuelling operation, Skye asked the question that must have been on everyone’s lips.

  “Grandpa Jack?” Skye began, “Do you believe that the involvement of adults in your mission, is ultimately what compromised it? I mean, if the prophesy said that ‘you had to make the journey alone,’ where did the journey begin, and are we making the same mistake?”

  “You have asked the question that I tried to answer for myself from the moment the device failed to activate, to the day that I felt strong enough to head back out into the world. I talked it over with Monks and Lamas in the monastery on several occasions, and while I think you are on the right track Skye, there is no doubt that what caused the failure, was me witnessing my Grandfather’s death. I know this, as this is the memory that the device accessed when it was assessing my suitability to activate it,” Grandpa Jack said.

  He continued, “This is why there has been such an effort to protect all of you, and especially David, from the outside world while you all grew up. The actual words of the prophesy are that, ‘No man may accompany the disciple on his journey to the Tiger’s Nest.’ We are interpreting this as meaning that any other innocent person may help. So, while David must be the one to activate the device, as long as his four cousins remain innocent, you can all help him as much as you can. The other question is, at what point should the adult involvement end. It was during this debate that we realised we had made another grave error.”

  “Following the failure of the device and my subsequent five year stay at the monastery, the monks were stunned that I had not previously been taken to a Lama to receive my Buddhist name. Despite how this sounds, it is not receiving a name to be known by, like Wayne or Jack or Pema, it is more of a talisman, to show a connection, and is often very simple, but enormously important in potentially revealing your path in life.”

  David asked, “So did you later receive a Buddhist name Grandpa Jack?”

  “Indeed I did David. My Buddhist name translates simply as ‘Tree’. Now while you may laugh at the simplicity of this name, it is up to the holder of a name to decide how to interpret its meaning to you and your life. For me, the meaning was clear. A tree is strong, and through its roots has a strong connection to the earth and cleans the air that we breathe. We also need a lot more of them. So, while I had failed one mission, I could see that as a result of receiving my name, I had actually received a path in life. And that is how I decided to make my Life’s work all about re-forestation projects and sustainable agriculture. But it is so much more than that. Think about how my attitude towards this planet influenced the choices that your parents have made and the amazing things they have achieved.”

  “But to answer your question Skye and David, I have decided that once we arrive in Paro, we will take you to a special Lama to receive your Buddhist names and then the journey from there will be your own.”

  Flynn moved to stand up to speak, and laughed when he realised that he was still restrained by his seat belt. “I have a question Grandpa Jack,” he said very thoughtfully. “The monk in the device room said that he could offer no help to you in what you needed to do. But you have now told us, David, how to activate the device. Is this not assistance beyond what you should be telling us?” he asked.

  “You make a very good point Flynn. I found out afterwards, that before that day, the monks had never seen the hexagonal hole in the keystone, despite having polished that floor on hands and knees for centuries. And further to that, it has not been seen since. It is our belief that the device has re-set itself and will require David to find a new access point to activate it.”

  David seemed to slump in his chair, “Just as I was thinking we had a head start, some advantage to get us started, we have lost it again.”

  “Never fear David,” said Grandpa Jack. “You know all you need to get started. Visit the Lama in Paro to get your Buddhist name, head for The Takstang Monastery, activate the device and wait for further instructions. Simple,” he laughed with that wicked smile of his.

  “Remember this, it’s a very important thing my Grandfather taught me. ‘Life without adventure, is no life at all.’ And if you can maintain the right spirit, an adventurous spirit, you can easily achieve what you set out to achieve. There will be hard days, and later in life, they will be the days that you remember and cherish the most.”

  Chapter 16

  “Just Another Bump On The Road Of Life”

  “Umm, guys? You might want to get up here.” Wayne broadcast to everyone over flashnet.

  Timothy was first out of his harness and making his way towards the cockpit, the others followed close behind.

  On entering the cockpit, Timothy could see that there was a massive black hose extending from just above the cockpit windshield up to another large jet aircraft. It was astonishingly close. And then he saw the problem. About two metres from the rear of the refuelling aircraft was a dark blob. On closer inspection he could see that it was a person, dressed in a black battle suit and harness with a pulley system lowering himself down the fuel line towards Priscilla. “This can’t be a good thing,” Timothy said.

  He could hear Rajid talking on comms to the flight crew of the tanker. They had no knowledge of this person, but they could now see him on their camera feed from the re-fuelling engineer’s position. They could see their engineer lying on the deck in his compartment unconscious as well. They were sending a crewman down to assist. They suggested disconnecting the fuel line our end to prevent this intruder from boarding.

  “Roger that, Tanker Crew, fuel load is at eighty percent, which is more than enough for what we need. Shut down flow your end and we will begin the disconnection procedure.” Rajid said in a cool calm voice.

  “Copy that,” said the tanker crew, “Flow has been shut off, allow ten seconds for the line to drain before disconnection.”

  Rajid waited the ten seconds, “Initiating fuel hose release,” he said as he reached for a switch on the refuelling control panel and flipped it up into the disconnect position. Nothing happened, the lights indicating the connection status, hadn’t changed from green to red. He toggled the switch on and off again. Still nothing. “All lights are green for connection tanker crew. The fuel line has not, I repeat has not released. The boarding party must have over-ridden it, can you check it out your end please?” His voice was becoming a little less calm.

  Rajid toggled the crew comms switch, “Bazz, we have vermin coming down the tanker line, can you get on it and see if you can manually override the connection? Vermin will be aboard in estimated, eighty seconds.”

  “Copy that skipper, I’m on it, Out.” Bazz grabbed a small tool kit and headed towards the nose of the plane.

  Flynn commed, “Lurch and I will see if we can help Bazz.” He left the cockpit hatch and indicated to Lurch that he should meet him wherever Bazz was going.

  Meanwhile, the figure descending the fuel line was now about half way down to Priscilla.

  Lauren turned to Skye, “We might need your help Skye, do you think you can create one of your shields to prevent this guy from getting any further down the line?” Lauren indicated that she should take the jump seat from Wayne. “I suggest that everyone else should head back to the main cabin and strap in.”

  Skye sat, strapped in, and tried to focus on creating a shield around this ‘vermin’. The bubble formed instantly around the intruder, but he just passed straight out of it as he continued down the fuel line towards them. She tried again, but the same thing happened. He was now only five metres from the plane. If he didn’t have a full-face helmet on, they would be able to clearly see the intruder’s face by now.

  Lauren spoke up, “Skye, I am seeing a pattern here, nothing can get into your shields from the outside, but anything can get out, you need to reverse your strategy and try to encapsulate the whole of Priscilla, rather than the intruder. All you are do
ing is protecting him.”

  Skye nodded and re-focused. “No pressure,” she thought to herself and she concentrated hard once again.

  Flynn and Lurch found Bazz in a very tight compartment right at the front of the plane, up above the cockpit. There was a lot of swearing and cursing going on as Bazz was wrestling with spanners in the tight space. “Is there anything we can do to help you Bazz?” Flynn asked. A grease stained face appeared through the overhead hatch, it was Bazz, looking to see who was there.

  “Indeed you can young fella,” Bazz said. “You are much smaller than me mate, get yourself up here and bring that nineteen millimetre socket and ratchet with you.”

  Lurch helped Flynn climb up through the hatch, and Bazz indicated to him to start undoing a series of six bolts on the other side of the inlet plate that he was working on. “I have already disconnected the main line below this plate, if we undo the rest of the bolts, the fuel line can retract with the plate still attached.” Flynn started working the ratchet spanner.

  Bazz open commed the flight crew, “Raj, you are going to have to speak to the tanker crew and work out some fancy flying to get us down lower and start depressurising the cabin, in two minutes this plate will be loose, and we don’t want to be sucked out of this hole with rapid depressurisation.”

  “Roger that Bazz, we are on it, Skye has us isolated from the intruder, he can’t get any closer to us than he is right now.” Rajid said.

  “Blimey, I would like to be there seeing that,” Bazz said. “How does she do that? I can see another PHD from M.I.T. studying her once this is all over.”

  Rajid realised that Bazz needed to chat while he was working under pressure, but he privately suggested that he continue the conversation with his new assistants so that he could concentrate on flying Priscilla. “I don’t think that anyone has ever flown a rapid descent while connected to a fuel tanker, you might want me to be able to pay attention to this, let me know when you are ready for release.”

  “Roger, Out.” Bazz cancelled the comm link.

  Skye sat calmly, looking at the intruder, as if she was willing him to fall off. Lauren reached back from her position in the Co-Pilot’s seat and held her hand, hoping that it helped Skye to feel that she wasn’t alone in her task. The bubble shield glowed a little brighter at her touch.

  Rajid finished calibrating the descent parameters with the tanker pilot and started the descent. He also adjusted the cabin pressure to lower faster than the rate of descent, just in case the fuel line attachment plate let go before they got low enough.

  Lauren was watching the intruder, struggling against Skye’s shield. He was kicking at it, trying to break through. Lauren was confident that he wouldn’t be able to do that as long as Skye could maintain her concentration.

  Bazz opened the comm connection again, “We have two bolts left Raj, one each, so we need about one more minute. Do you want us to wait?”

  “No, we are descending through five thousand metres now, in another minute we will be through four thousand and that will be ok, we will get a little pressure drop but it won’t be too bad. Go for it. Raj Out.”

  Bazz looked at Flynn, “You heard the skipper, but be ready, when this plate lets go, it’s going to get seriously windy in here.”

  The intruder, dangling on the fuel line, pinned against Skye’s shield by the wind, was reaching into his suit to get something.

  Bazz and Flynn were turning the last threads of the connector plate bolts while Lurch held onto both of their feet, just in case. Cabin pressure was now sucking through the gaps around the loose plate.

  Everyone’s ears were hurting from the rapid decompression, but as the plate let go, there was still a sudden drop which caused Skye’s right eardrum to burst in excruciating pain. She lost concentration and the shield dropped out.

  As Rajid rapidly banked Priscilla away from the tanker and its trailing fuel line, the intruder realised that the shield was gone and threw a black package that he had extracted from his battle suit. It went splat against the cockpit windshield and stuck there. Raj just looked at the red l.e.d. display on it that was giving an altitude readout that matched the cockpit display exactly. “Oh crap, you have got to be kidding me,” Rajid gasped.

  Lauren was attempting to comfort Skye who was in terrible pain. She grabbed the first aid pack from the overhead locker and quickly removed a pain patch that she activated and pressed against Skye’s cheek, as close to her bleeding ear as she could. The patch also had an infusion of Nanobots that immediately went to work repairing the source of the pain.

  The intruder had disconnected from the fuel line and was plummeting towards the ground.

  “I hope you enjoyed your flight scumbag, thanks very much for flying Save The Planet Airlines, you clown.” Rajid was saying as he watched on. “And the crowd roared, ROAR.” He yelled. “And the crowd roared again, AGAIN.” He yelled. Then at the last minute the intruder’s parachute opened. “And the crowd was disappointed, OH SHIT.” He yelled.

  Lauren looked at him with a grin, “You are one seriously twisted individual Raj.” They laughed, the ‘I just shit my pants laugh,’ and even Skye couldn’t help but laugh. The pain patch must be working.

  “So,” Lauren said while looking at the black blob on the cockpit windshield. “C4 limpet bomb with altitude activated detonator?”

  “Got it in one Lauren.” Rajid said as he connected to Bazz, “Bazz? I have another job for you if you could join me in the cockpit please.”

  “Copy that, be there in two.” Bazz’s reply came back accompanied with a lot of wind noise.

  “Lauren, I think you should get Skye back to the main cabin and get everyone else kitted out with jump suits just in case. At this stage I am going to have to maintain this altitude, as I don’t know whether the altitude switch is set to a deck height or ceiling. It could even be both. We only have two hours before we will have to start climbing for the approach to Paro. We are currently at thirty two hundred and I have to pass through four thousand five hundred before we can begin the descent into Paro. We have five hours of fuel with the extra drag at this altitude, so that only gives us one extra hour over our required flight time.”

  A curse emanated from the cockpit doorway as Bazz entered and saw the bomb on the cockpit windshield.

  “Just another bump on the road of life Raj.” Bazz said. “I’ll have that fixed for you in a jiffy Skipper.” As he walked back out of the cockpit, he scratched his head, wondering just how he was going to achieve that.

  Chapter 17

  “And”

  David, Skye, Wayne, Timothy and Grandpa Jack were continuing the ongoing question and answer session as Lauren was fitting them up with jump suits and emergency parachutes. She had them set the parachutes to automatic. “If we have to abandon ship,” Lauren said, “The tail ramp will drop, and I want you all to just run out the back and jump as quick as you can. You can connect your flashnet to the parachute controls. I want you to network to each other but keep the auto pilot in control. That way, the chutes should bring us all down in a safe landing area within a one hundred metre radius of each other. That will help us to stay together.”

  Lauren queried with David, “I’m not sure how it’s going to work for you David, as your body rejected the comm implant pack.”

  “It’s ok Aunt Lauren, I have the Heads Up Display in my vision, I have connected to the parachute. Don’t ask me how, but it has. I can see the names of the other parachutes and I’m getting speed and altitude displays as well as a topographic GPS mapping read out. We just crossed the coast of Bangladesh near the mouth of the Brahmaputra River.”

  “Wow,” said Lauren, “I’ll need to get your upgrade, I don’t get all of that on mine.” She looked envious and perhaps a little suspicious.

  David smiled back, feeling a bit special for a change is nice, he thought.

  Bazz, Flynn and Lurch were in the laboratory trying to come up with ideas to remove the sticky bomb from the cockpit windshield.<
br />
  “Why don’t we make some magnetic boots for Lurch in the 3d fabricator,” suggested Flynn. “Then he could go out through the fuel line hole and just walk around to pull it off.”

  “I like the way you are thinking young fella,” Bazz said. “But there is one problem. We had the fuselage sheeting replaced with aerospace grade carbon fibre about six months ago. Magnets won’t stick to it. Suction cups certainly won’t stand up to the wind loads, he would just get blown off. Keep thinking, we have some time.”

  Flynn, thinking aloud, said, “If only we had really long arms, we could just stand in the fuel line hole and reach out to grab it.”

  “Genius.” Shouted Bazz. “I have a design for a telescopic robot arm that we can make in the fabricator, we just have to scale it to fit your synthetic friend.” He looked in Lurch’s direction. “Start taking his right arm off young Fella.”

  Bazz opened his lap top and started working on tweaking the design. He looked at Lurch’s shoulder joint position briefly, took some measurements and then went back to his station. A few minutes later, he hit the enter key hard, and said, “There, take that, you crazy vermin bomber. You can’t outsmart technology and brains with violence.” He laughed maniacally, and the 3d fabricator burst to life.

  “Bazz?” commed Rajid. “What’s the plan?”

  “We have a solution,” replied Bazz. “Another forty minutes of fabrication time and then, say, ten minutes to remove the bomb?”

  “That will be cutting it fine, don’t lose any time on that Bazz.” Rajid knew that Bazz always overestimated the time needed to do something, he never wanted to disappoint anyone by being late.