Foaly scratched his hairy belly. “With funding the way it is, not until we have us a fatality.”
Holly cranked open the heavy door, the rubber seal yielding with a hiss. The pod was not built for comfort. There was barely enough space for a restraining seat among the jumble of electronics.
“What’s that?” asked Holly, pointing at a grayish stain on the seat’s headrest.
Foaly shuffled uncomfortably.
“Erm . . . brain fluid, I think. We had a pressure leak on the last mission. But that’s plugged now. And the officer lived. Down a few IQ points, but alive, and he can still take liquids.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” quipped Holly, threading her way through the mass of wires.
Foaly strapped the harness on to her, checking the restraints thoroughly.
“All set?”
Holly nodded.
Foaly tapped her helmet mike. “Keep in touch,” he said, pulling the door closed behind him.
Don’t think about it, Holly told herself. Don’t think about the white-hot magma flow that’s going to engulf this tiny craft. Don’t think about hurtling toward the surface with a MACH 2 force trying to turn you inside out. And certainly don’t think about the blood-crazed troll ready to disembowel you with his tusks. Nope. Don’t think about any of that stuff. . . . Too late.
Foaly’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “T-minus twenty,” he said. “We’re on a secure channel in case the Mud People have started underground monitoring. You never know. An oil tanker from the Middle East intercepted a transmission one time. What a mess that was.”
Holly adjusted her helmet mike.
“Focus, Foaly. My life is in your hands here.”
“Uh . . . Okay, sorry. We’re going to use the rail to drop you into E7’s main shaft, there’s a surge due any minute. That should see you past the first hundred klicks, then you’re on your own.”
Holly nodded, curling her fingers around the twin joysticks.
“All systems check. Fire it up.”
There was a whoosh as the pod’s engines ignited. The tiny craft jostled in its housing, shaking Holly like a bead in a rattle. She could barely hear Foaly speaking into her ear.
“You’re in the secondary shaft now. Get ready to fly, Short.”
Holly pulled a rubber cylinder from the dash and slipped it between her teeth. No good having a radio if you’ve swallowed your tongue. She activated the external cameras and put the view on screen.
The entrance to E7 was creeping toward her. The air was shimmering in the landing light glow. White-hot sparks tumbled into the secondary shaft. Holly couldn’t hear the roar, but she could imagine it. A raw skinning wind like a million trolls howling.
Her fingers tightened around the joysticks. The pod shuddered to a halt at the lip. The chute stretched above and below. Massive. Boundless. Like dropping an ant down a drainpipe.
“Right-o,” crackled Foaly. “Hold on to your breakfast. Roller coasters ain’t got nothing on this.”
Holly nodded. She couldn’t speak, not with the rubber in her mouth. The centaur would be able to see her in the podcam anyway.
“Sayonara, sweetheart,” said Foaly, and pressed the button.
The pod’s clamp tilted, rolling Holly into the abyss. Her stomach tightened as G-force took hold, dragging her to the center of the earth. The seismology section had a million probes down here, with a ninety-nine point eight success rate at predicting the magma flares. But there was always that point two percent.
The fall seemed to last for an eternity. And just when Holly had mentally consigned herself to the scrap heap, she felt it. That unforgettable vibration. The feeling that outside her tiny sphere, the whole world was being shaken apart. Here it comes.
“Fins,” she said, spitting the word around the cylinder.
Foaly may have replied, she couldn’t hear him any more. Holly couldn’t even hear herself, but she did see the stabilization fins slide out on the monitor.
The flare caught her like a hurricane, spinning the pod at first until the fins caught. Half-melted rocks pelted the craft’s underside, jolting it toward the chute walls. Holly compensated with bursts from the joysticks.
The heat was tremendous in the confined space, enough to fry a human. But fairy lungs are made of stronger stuff. The acceleration dragged at her body with invisible hands, stretching the flesh over her arms and face. Holly blinked salty sweat from her eyes and concentrated on the monitor. The flare had totally engulfed her pod, and it was a big one too. Force seven at the very least. A good thousand-foot girth. Orange-striped magma swirled and hissed around her, searching for a weak point in the metal casing.
The pod groaned and complained, fifty-year-old rivets threatening to pop. Holly shook her head. The first thing she was going to do on her return was kick Foaly straight in the hairy behind. She felt like a nut inside a shell, between a gnome’s molars. Doomed.
A bow plate buckled, popped in as though punched by a giant fist. The pressure light blinked on. Holly could feel her head being squeezed. The eyes would be first to go— popping like ripe berries.
She checked the dials. Twenty more seconds before she rode out the flare and was running on thermals. Those twenty seconds seemed like an age. Holly sealed the helmet to protect her eyes, riding out the final barrage of rocks.
And suddenly they were clear, sailing upward on the comparatively gentle spirals of hot air. Holly added her own thrusters to the upward force. No time to waste floating around on the wind.
Above her, a circle of neon lights marked the docking zone. Holly swiveled horizontal and pointed the docking nodes at the lights. This was delicate. Many Recon pilots had made it this far, only to miss the port and lose valuable time. Not Holly. She was a natural. First in the academy.
She gave the thrusters one final squeeze and coasted the last hundred feet. Using the rudders beneath her feet, she teased the pod through the circle of light and into its clamp on the landing pad. The nodes revolved, settling into their grooves. Safe.
Holly smacked herself on the chest, releasing the safety harness. Once the door seal was opened, sweet surface air flooded the cabin. There was nothing like that first breath after a ride in the chutes. She breathed deeply, purging the stale pod air from her lungs. How had the People ever left the surface? Sometimes she wished that her ancestors had stayed to fight it out with the Mud People. But there were too many of them. Unlike fairies who could produce only a single child every twenty years, Mud People bred like rodents. Numbers would subdue even magic.
Although she was enjoying the night air, Holly could taste traces of pollutants. The Mud People destroyed everything they came into contact with. Of course they didn’t live in the mud anymore. Not in this country, at least. Oh no. Big fancy dwellings with rooms for everything—rooms for sleeping, rooms for eating, even a room to go to the toilet! Indoors! Holly shuddered. Imagine going to the toilet inside your own house. Disgusting! The only good thing about going to the toilet was the minerals being returned to the earth, but the Mud People had even managed to botch that up by treating the . . . stuff . . . with bottles of blue chemicals. If anyone had told her a hundred years ago that humans would be taking the fertile out of fertilizer, she would have told them to get some air holes drilled in their skull.
Holly unhooked a set of wings from their bracket. They were double ovals, with a clunky motor. She moaned. Dragonflies. She hated that model. Gas engine, if you believe it. And heavier than a pig dipped in mud. Now the Hummingbird Z7, that was transport. Whisper silent, with a satellite-bounced solar battery that would fly you twice around the world. But there were budget cuts again.