With These Eyes (30 page)

Soon the threatening raptor was barreling
down the Arctic runway on its take-off towards Berlin, where Tasha
was loading herself down with weapons. While strapping on yet
another handgun, the bitter Commander instructed her troops.

"Blue Team will maintain the perimeter.
Purple Team reports to the command post. Extraction will commence
under lethal protocol, there is zero benefit in maintaining the
life of the package."

The pilot next to her reported in. "Ma'am,
Pterodactyl is en-route and going supersonic." On his screens were
the plane's radar view and charted course to Germany on a world
map.

Inside the throne room, Isabelle still hadn't
gotten any further with her escape. A guard had arrived at one of
the windows with a glass cutter where he was scoring a circular
crease into the pane. Ryan's efforts, however, were about to come
to fruition. He had found a spot on the throne's arm rest that
matched the scepter's outline. After a few unsuccessful tries, he
managed to twist it into place. The flames in the fireplace behind
the throne extinguished and the wall behind the artificial logs
slid open.

"I just knew it. The kind of people who used
this room would be the types who'd have a need to get away
unnoticed," shouted Ryan. Together with Kenshin and Isabelle, he
ran towards the secret passage. Isabelle’s knight in shining armor
pulled on a lever that protruded from the wall inside the passage.
It prompted the fire to flame back up and the wall to close.
Isabelle could see the palace guards pop out a glass disk from the
window's cutout and reach for the handle just as the entrance to
the secret passage closed.

A musky and dark, yet surprisingly warm
hallway stretched to a faintly lit staircase. Isabelle, Ryan and
Dr. Kenshin found their way along the hidden corridor and arrived
at the base of the stairs. Passages lead off in three other
directions.

Isabelle had a hunch; she knew where to go.
"The eagle rises high above the masses! The top of the rotunda is
the highest point of the building."

The two men exchanged a doubting look in the
relative darkness before Ryan turned his head to Isabelle. Her
choice of an escape route didn't agree with him much.

"We'll be stuck there like a cat up a tree.
We should follow one of these tunnels."

Isabelle gave Ryan a look full of
disappointed surprise. "We'll run right into Tasha's trap, that's
not a way out."

Kenshin's face showed the strain that the
stress of this chase had put on him. Sweat had formed a moat around
his receding hairline. He had relieved himself of the burden that
had laid so heavily on his shoulders.

"I don't have the strength for this sort of
thing." He reached into his watch pocket and pulled out a
thumb-size computer drive. "On here are the schematics for the
launch facility in Madagascar. The whole complex operates offline.
There are no outside connections. The complex is built into an old
graphite mine underneath a lake that has formed at the location.
There is only one hidden access shaft. It’s mined and under
constant surveillance. You just can't get in."

Ryan reached for the chip-drive and thanked
the scientist before he put it in his pocket. Isabelle knew where
she had to go. "C'mon," was all she said to the two guys before she
climbed the steps. Kenshin and Ryan hesitated, but eventually
followed Isabelle. The source of the light on top of the stairs was
the opaque face of a clock that overlooked the palace gardens.
Isabelle and the two men were standing inside an enormous
clockworks. She found a latch by the side of the clock face. Like a
door, the large disk of milky glass swung open, leaving the ticking
mechanism open. The festivities were continuing below. The glare
from the balloon above Isabelle made her difficult to be seen from
below. Under the cover of light, the three stepped out onto the
perimeter of the domed roof. Isabelle latched the clock face. The
gigantic helium balloon hovered above them. Three evenly-spaced
tethers around the base of the dome were holding the balloon in
place. Isabelle took a moment to size up the situation. She
unhooked one of the tethers from the balloon and then from its
anchor on the roof. She pointed to one of the two remaining
straps.

"Ryan, unhook that one."

Unsure why, but lacking any better ideas,
Ryan complied. The two climbed on top of the clock from where they
could reach the small platform that leveled off the apex of the
dome. Isabelle pulled herself over the railing that ran along its
perimeter. She swiftly and skillfully fashioned two body harnesses
out of the webbing that moments ago supported the large luminous
sphere. The light was now swinging in the wind by a single tie-down
like a child's balloon.

A sizable number of palace guards assembled
below after a few of them noticed the commotion on the roof. Lead
by one of their officers, the group stormed into the palace on
their way to the roof. Isabelle knew time was running out. She
handed Ryan one of the webbings that now looked like a parachute
harness.

"Get into this."

A bit lost, Ryan watched Isabelle step into
the loops formed by the nylon straps and followed her example. She
motioned for him to follow her to the balloon's remaining tether.
She unhooked the carabineer that held the floating bubble to the
roof and connected it with hers and Ryan's make-shift harness. The
balloon shot up, tightening the slack in between. Ryan was getting
nervous.

"What?! Did you actually think you could just
click your heels three times and float home?"

Fuji's spaceplane had entered German
airspace. With no registered flight plan, his unusual craft quickly
attracted the country's air defense forces. A squadron of
Luftwaffe
fighter jets that had been flying patrol in the
area took pursuit. The squadron leader had Fuji on his radar
screen. His attempts to persuade Fuji via radio to decelerate and
set down where met with silence. While he and his two wingmen had
locked their radar-guided weapons on the spaceplane, Fuji knew they
wouldn't fire upon a civilian plane during peace times. Even if he
had been wrong about that, the scandal of massive civilian
casualties in the densely populated north of Germany below ruled
out the use of firepower against Fuji. Isabelle's mentor was still
traveling at mach 2. Intimidated by his speed, the jet fighters
continued their threatening transmissions.

"I'm sorry gentlemen, but unfortunately I
won't be able to comply with your requests," was the only response
Fuji gave while his ship was bouncing in the turbulence from the
high-pressure front which had pushed out the morning's ice-storm.
Fuji could hear a nervous growl from the cabin. With both hands on
the yoke, fighting to keep the ship steady, he turned his head back
and spoke in a calming, strong voice. "Don't worry love, you will
see your friend in just a little bit." In his console, a duplicate
of the image in Tasha's command post showed the perimeter of
Troopers around Sanssouci Palace.

Kenshin nervously looked up at Isabelle and
Ryan from the catwalk at the base of the dome. The guards below him
had made their way through a utility corridor and reached an access
shaft to the roof. The building's rotunda-roof cast a grotty shadow
across the festivities as a gust of wind pushed the balloon light
towards the other side of the palace. Isabelle and Ryan struggled
to hold on to the top platform's railing. The wind pushed the
balloon far over the edge of the building, leaving the entire ball
in the darkness of the palace's shadow. The luminous orb bathed
Isabelle in light with Ryan in her shadow, leaving her the
brightest point over the festivities of darkness. Isabelle spotted
the distinctive row of landing lights on Fuji's spaceplane approach
at incredibly high speed. Ryan's eyes followed her look and noticed
the rapidly approaching craft. He hurried to secure his glasses in
his pocket. His mind was bouncing between fear and jubilation at
such a dizzying rate that he was unable to formulate the question
Isabelle knew he wanted to pose.

"It's alright, I've done this before off an
ice float for a story." A statement that completely missed its
objective of calming Ryan down. He was finally able to compose
himself enough to figure out what Fuji and Isabelle were about to
attempt.

"Fuji was there, was he?"

"He saw the report."

"Who was with you then?"

Isabelle gave Ryan an annoyed look. She was
surprised someone as intelligent as Ryan would be asking such a
question and replied, "Airhooks aren't designed for two." Isabelle
had a much bigger concern and continued. "Let's hope Fuji was right
about the blood-thinner wearing off in time."

Ryan's heart dropped into his stomach. The
spaceplane had gotten close and was still barreling in at
tremendous speed. Suddenly, the large clock-face at the rotunda's
base shattered and an army of palace guards poured onto the lower
catwalk. Dr. Kenshin threw his arms in the air, but to no avail.
The first group of men dressed in attire of the Renaissance tackled
the aging scientist to the ground and beat him brutally with steel
batons. The next wave of warriors rose along the side of the dome
towards Ryan and Isabelle.

That was the scene into which Fuji was
piloting his unique airship. Paper and supplies were whirling
across the cabin. He had opened the rear hatch and extended the
plane's hydraulic arm. Tonati could tell he was getting close to
Isabelle and kept relatively calm in his travel restraints.
Isabelle and Ryan were easy to spot. Like a light bulb over their
heads, the swaying balloon gave Fuji the first reassurance that
Isabelle had done much more than just catch on to his airhook idea.
His plan would have been pointless to announce on the tapped phone
call. Isabelle had actually evaded an armada of Troopers and
managed to float a tethered balloon. A rush of energy flooded
Fuji's body that made the hairs on his arm stand on-end. Fuji saw
how well he had taught his student. He looked back towards
Tonati.

"You can be very proud of your
companion."

Tonati's triumphant roar acknowledged Fuji's
compliment, but moreover, it served as the regal announcement of
the mentor's descent to guide his disciple over her hurdle. The
plane approached the palace. Still too fast, Fuji brought the ship
into a very tight 180 degree turn. At the curve's apogee, the arm
protruding from the tail grappled onto the tether and yanked
Isabelle and Ryan off the roof. The plane's utility arm had not
been designed to withstand the forces of Fuji's maneuver and
suffered a hairline fracture in its hydraulic cylinder. The
pursuing fighter jets overshot the palace but soon turned in
formation, a process much slower than the spaceplane's extreme
maneuver. Fuji placed his ship on autopilot with a slow climb and
exited the cockpit to get to the open aft section of the plane. He
passed Tonati on his way who excitedly watched Isabelle dangle
outside. Ryan had interlocked his body with Isabelle's right before
the tether had tightened. He opened his eyes for the first time
since their feet had lifted off the palace roof only to see he was
now airborne. Terrified, he looked at Isabelle, who had a big smile
on her face when their eyes met. Before he even had a moment to
contemplate Isabelle's reaction to the situation, his attention was
drawn forward. The balloon-light's power cable had run out of
slack. The tension tore the globe and its socket out of their
suspension on the center of the still fairly round balloon. The
stress shattered the white-hot light bulb. Darkness enveloped the
ominous ball below. Heat from the glowing shards of glass set the
balloon fabric on fire. Isabelle and Ryan were skillfully dodging a
hail of hot glass and metal, followed by the burning remains of the
balloon. The plane was climbing at a steady rate, Isabelle and Ryan
could feel their ears pop as air pressure decreased with altitude.
Fuji's words rang in her memory.

"The blood-thinner will wear off in a couple
of days' time."

It had been almost three days since Isabelle
woke up with the strange scratches on her wrist. She could only
hope that her body had metabolized the toxin Tasha had administered
in her sleep. Another piece of burning fabric flew past her head
and drew her attention back to the task at hand. "Help pull us in!"
she shouted at Ryan who was dangling next to her. The three
Luftwaffe jets had almost come about and wouldn't be much longer.
Isabelle and Ryan were pulling with all their strength on the long
piece of nylon webbing that was towing them into the night sky. The
last piece of glowing glass dislodged from what little was left of
the light's electric works. Ryan looked up from his hands towards
the plane and spotted the hot projectile speeding towards them.
Isabelle was too busy with the tether to notice. Ryan, still
loosely interlocked with her body, reached for her shoulder and
quickly pulled it towards himself. He managed to sent the two into
a short spin, just enough to avoid being hit.

Fuji noticed Ryan and Isabelle's difficulties
and operated the plane's articulating arm to bring them in towards
the open aft hatch. The arm's hydraulic pump was pushing fluid into
the cracked cylinder until it shattered in a violent explosion. A
large piece of steel separated from the mechanism and embedded
itself deep inside Fuji's right shoulder. The inertia of the
quickly traveling object threw him across the cabin's cargo area.
With the burst hydraulics cylinder, the mechanical arm lost support
of its articulating end. The short-end segment of the robotic
appendage was bouncing violently in the turbulent air. Like an
alligator stunning its prey, it whipped Ryan and Isabelle up and
down. Ryan was getting disoriented from the dizzying motion and
lost all grip of the tether. The force of both their masses tugging
had become too much for Isabelle who, too, lost her grip. The
lightwarrior could feel the makeshift harness tightening around her
torso. She felt dizzy and could only hope the source was her
brain's motion from the unusual ride, rather than a burst blood
vessel's paralyzing effects on her grey matter.