Orion Shall Rise Read Online Free Page B

announced.
    ‘Zhesu ward you,’ said the major shakily.
    Iern shrugged. He attended services because that was what a proper Clansman did, but made no bones about being an agnostic. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’ll spiral in loops of three kilometers’ radius, two kilometers apart. That looks to me like the best flight plan.’ He couldn’t resist bravado: Ask my comrades to wish me good hunting, as I wish them it!’
    His falcon stooped.
    Night closed in. Wind raved and tore, lightning flared, thunder crashed, rain and sleet smote metal and hammered the pilot’s canopy. Flung back and forth, up and down and around, half deafened by skirl and roar, he lost himself in the fight to keep his antagonist from ripping his craft asunder or casting it into the sea. Sometimes he lurched out into the calm at the center, but instantly speared back into the wall. And always as he whirled, his instruments gauged, while a hard-driven ultrahigh-frequency beam sent their messages outward – pressures, velocities, ionizations, potentials, gradients – the numbers of the beast.
    Afar in Skyholm, computer technicians fed their engine what he and his fellows gave. To the meteorologists it returned an understanding that grew. Its program was the product of hundreds of years of study, thought, trial, and ofttimes fatal error. Even during the Isolation Era that the Enric Restoration ended, that work had gone forward. For was not the Aerogens king and queen of heaven?
    Iern’s radarscope glowed a warning at him. He was close to hillhigh waves; he had done what he could, and his next duty was to escape. He reeled out of turbulence, into the central quietness, stood his vessel on its tail, and climbed. Above him the sky was a disc of purple wherein a star trembled.
    He broke free, arched above the monster, and streaked eastward. ‘Iern Ferlay reporting,’ he sang into the microphone at his throat.
    ‘Finished and safe. Did you copy my transmission?’
    ‘Yes. Well done, Lieutenant.’
    ‘What about the rest?’
    ‘They’re safe too. We’ll be ready for action in minutes. Get clear. Set course for Tournev.’
    Iern nodded and obeyed. His plane, like the others, required inspection, and perhaps repairs, of the sort that only the facilities at the headquarters city could perform. As for the pilots, they would get the traditional conqueror’s welcome, followed by at least a week of ease and celebration.
    Whether or not they were conquerors – Not every attempt succeeded.
    Slowly Iern realized that he had spoken and acted automatically. His awareness had been elsewhere, in some unknown place, and was just now returning to him. He could not quite recollect how he rode the storm; the experience had been transcendental, he had been one with his adversary. … His body throbbed and ached. Paddedjacket or no, the safety harness had probably striped him with bruises. But peace and joy welled up within him … yes, it
had
been a kind of lovemaking.…
    The excitement wasn’t over! The real show was about to start.
    He had won fame, promotion, honor for his family and Clan. He had not won the right to waste a single liter of fuel by hanging around to watch the spectacle. He could, though, fly high and slowly, unbuckle, kneel on his seat and look backward. Barely soon enough, he remembered to don dark goggles.
    The laser beams struck.
    Throughout each day, never hindered by cloud or mist or rain, sunlight played across the aerostat. On a sphere two kilometers in diameter, that was an input measured in gigawatts. A fraction of it, shining through the double skin, kept hot the air at the center, and thus held Skyholm aloft. More went into solar collectors or thermal converters and became electricity. Of this, a portion ran the jets which maintained station against stratospheric winds, and supplied other needs on board. A portion, sent earthward, powered synthetic fuel plants and similarly essential industries. However, those were few, and