This is an exciting bit.

Chapter 15: The Two Towers

Docian had the throttle pushed to maximum, but the blips on his radar kept getting closer. “They’re catching up,” he announced to Haley and Archie, who were strapped into the two rear seats in the cockpit.

“Well,” Archie suggested, “do something!”

Docian yanked the yoke to the left and back. G-forces pressed everyone into their seats. Through the front window, Archie saw the smoke trail of a missile zooming past them to impact on the large rock formation ahead.

“They’re firing!” Docian pointed out.

“Why don’t you cloak the ship or something?” Haley offered.

“Cloak? What is that? Never heard of it.”

“Oh,” Haley replied, disappointed. “It was worth a shot.”

“Listen,” Docian called out over his shoulder as he continued his evasive maneuvers. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get away from these guys. In case you survive and I don’t, there are things you need to know.”

“If they shoot us and blow us up,” Archie asked, “how would we survive if you didn’t?”

“Under your seats. Put them on.” Archie and Haley reached under their cushions and found a pair of wide white lengths of either heavy plastic or light metal, with a large disk on each end and a rectangular box in the middle.

“They’re belts,” Archie identified. He squirmed in his seat to strap the belt onto him without unhooking himself from the seat’s restraints. The side of one disk attached itself to the other by what Archie assumed was magnetism.

“Anti-gravity belts,” Docian explained. “One dial controls up and down, the other forward and reverse. Power button’s on the battery pack in the back. It will last maybe ten minutes, if you don’t push it. I’m going to try to get inside the atmosphere of that island up ahead. If I can’t lose our tail there, you may have to jump.”

“Seriously?” Haley asked, intrigued. “That is so cool.” She reached behind her to look for the “on” switch.

Archie had other opinions. “I’m not jumping out of anything.”

Docian reminded him, “You may have no choice.” The cockpit filled with the beeping of alarms. “Hang on to something!” He pushed the yoke straight forward until they were pointed down, then turned into a tight roll. They heard the momentary roar of rocket exhaust buffeting the hull of the ship. He pulled up again, swerved wildly, and resumed course. “Close one.

“Listen carefully. If you can, try to make your way to the land of Coldplaya. It’s a mountainous land above here. In the main city of Frieze, one of the town councilmen is the leader of my resistance cell. His name is Hreen. He’ll keep you safe and give you everything you need to plan your revolution. He—“

“Now wait one damn minute,” Archie interrupted. “I thought we had this discussion already. I’m not whoever you think I am. I’m not starting any revolution. As soon as we can find someone who doesn’t immediately try to kill us or draft us, we’re going to get them to help us get back to that temple and go home. That’s final.”

“Grandpa, are you sure? If Effulgia’s any indication, the rulers here are terrible and cruel.”

“That’s not our problem, Haley. I feel bad for them, of course, but they’re the ones who have to deal with it, not us. Our only responsibilities here are seeing to our own safety and going back to where we came from.”

The ship lurched to the right as an ear-splitting noise reverberated through the cabin. “We’re hit!” Docian cried.

“You think?” Archie replied. The ship started shaking as Docian wrestled with the yoke.

“I’m not going to be able to control it much longer!” Docian’s voice vibrated in tune with the shuddering of the ship. “Get ready to jump!”

“How?” Haley asked.

“The bottom hatch! The way you came in!” Haley unstrapped herself and stood up shakily. She grabbed the headrest of Archie’s seat to balance herself while she struggled to release his restraints as well.

Another noise joined the chorus of complaints echoing through the ship: the sound of rushing air. “We’re inside atmosphere now!” Docian yelled over the cacophony. “I need to slow down, or you’ll be ripped in half when you try to exit!”

“What about you?” Haley cried.

“I’ll be right behind you. Just have to keep it level until you’re out.” The wind noise was starting to die down. When it was down to the level of a dull roar, he called out, “All right. Get ready! See that tall stone spire?” He pointed out the windshield at such a rock formation, standing alone in an otherwise smooth, barren expanse. In the far distance, the edge of a green forest was visible. “We’ll meet there. Got it?”

“Okay!” Haley agreed. Archie stood mute.

Docian hit a control on his panel. A section of floor slid aside, revealing a narrow tube, wide enough for one person to pass. The hatch at the other end of the tube was open. Haley could see the ground rushing past underneath the ship. “Go!” Docian ordered.

Haley reached behind Archie and flipped his power switch. Then, she activated her own. “You go first!” she shouted over the wind and the ominous groaning noises coming from the rear.

“No way in hell!” Archie replied. “I’m not putting my life in the hands of a disco belt!”

Haley twisted one of the dials on her own belt and lifted off of the deck. “Look, it works! Go!”

“You go, then!” Archie shouted, becoming hoarse.

“Not without you, Grandpa!”

Ahead, Docian called out, “The port engine’s going critical. Any second now it will—“ And then it did. Explode, that is. Archie was knocked off his feet as the ship bucked both from the explosion and the sudden change in its aerodynamics. Docian manhandled the controls, trying to keep the ship in the air. Haley bounced off the ceiling. Archie grabbed her legs and held on to her, trying to keep her from ricocheting off of anything else.

With a groan and screech of metal stressed beyond its breaking point, the left rear of the ship ripped away entirely, exposing the passenger cabin to open atmosphere. Before Archie had a chance to react, he and Haley were sucked out of the ship through the gash and flung out into the sky. They tumbled, Archie losing his grasp on Haley. Haley rose up away from him as he, dazed, watched in confusion. “That shouldn’t be happening,” he thought.

Some corner of his mind managed to correctly process the information it had been given, despite the refusal of the rest of it to accept the facts. Haley wasn’t rising. Archie was falling. The wind whipped past him with a nearly deafening howl. He managed to spin himself around and saw that, indeed, the ground was rising up to meet him. He thought about an old Irish friend of his, and considered the irony of his blessing to Archie as it applied to this situation.

Then, he remembered the belt. It had to work, didn’t it? That was why Haley was suspended unconscious in midair while he was plummeting toward painful squishy death. He decided to give it a shot. He reached down and twisted the dial closer to his right hand. The belt squeezed against his abdomen painfully. The wind noise slowed, stopped, and then started again. However, this time Archie was being dragged upward. Very quickly, by the sound of it.

He looked upward, trying to spot Haley. She was not directly above him. He finally spotted her off to the side. The prevailing winds must have caught her. As he watched, a trio of angry-looking ships flew overhead in the direction of the forest Archie had seen before. By the time he looked back, he was even with Haley. By the time he managed to adjust the dial on his belt he was above her, feeling dizzy from a sudden burst of vertigo.

He adjusted the dial this way and that until he thought he was at roughly the same altitude as Haley. She was dangling limply in her anti-gravity belt, knocked unconscious or worse during the explosion and its aftermath. Archie turned the other dial, and found himself moving closer to her. He found by trial and error and plain dumb luck that the left dial would move him in whatever direction he was facing at the time. So, in fits and starts, he managed to get within arm’s reach of his granddaughter.

Suspended in space, he shouted at her. “Haley! Wake up!” When she didn’t respond, he felt her neck for a pulse. It was there, but it was either too fast or too slow. Archie had no idea. He had to get her to the ground.

Archie wrapped both arms around Haley from behind, below her arms. Then, he reached down and turned the altitude knob on her belt down. He felt her weight increase in his arms. Then, he reached between them and reduced his own lift. As they dropped, he continually adjusted the knobs on both belts to keep them at a balanced rate of descent. Overhead, he noticed the wide trail of black smoke left behind by Docian’s ship. It looked like he at least made it over the trees. Maybe the fighters had not gotten to him before he crashed or managed to bail out.

They were near the ground when the power packs on both belts started to vibrate. Archie correctly deduced that it was a warning that the power was about to run out. He considered turning one of them off to conserve power, but he did not think he would be able to hold the weight of whichever person until they reached the ground. Instead, he reduced the power on both as much as he dared. They plummeted to the bare, beige ground. At the last moment, he turned Haley’s back up, on the basis that if he was going to lose his grip and drop someone, he’d rather he was the one who fell than she. He felt the lurch of deceleration killing most of their momentum, and then let them drop the rest of the way.

He only misjudged it a little. They landed hard, but not hard enough to break anything. The impact jarred Haley awake. Archie laid her down on the ground and started checking her head for injuries.

“What happened?” she asked blearily.

Archie replied matter-of-factly, “Ship exploded. We got sucked out. I flew us down to the ground.”

“Aw,” moaned Haley. “We flew, and I missed it. Where are we?”

Archie looked around at the field of boulders in which they had landed. “I can’t come up with a meaningful answer to that question. But, we’re alone, so we’re probably safer than we have been since we arrived in this cockeyed place.”

A voice came from behind one of the boulders. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, ferner.”