One - The Desert's Secret

   The sands shifted, blown constantly by the unyielding wind, forming, deforming, and forming once again, as they had since before humans had cared to take notice.  The sun beat down, eradicating any moisture that the sand might possess.  A shadow flicked across the ground, and for a fraction of a second, the sand did not feel the sun.  The shadow would change the worlds.

“Striker one one, this is Magic, stand by for commencement of test.”

“Copy that Magic; we are ready to drop at any time, over.” James Thalin sat with his back pressed firmly against his ejector seat.  Oddly enough, after a few months of flying this thing, you almost forgot you were sitting on a rocket.  Almost.  “Alex, everything still green-light back there?”

“Copy that boss.” Alex replied from the back seat of the F-15E strike eagle. “Still think this thing is safe?”

“No, but that’s the point of a bomb, isn’t it?”

“I meant safe to have on the jet genius,” Alex playfully punched James on the shoulder.

Alex and James’ strike eagle was carrying the military's latest toy, some new bunker buster.  The bomb in question weighed three thousand pounds, enough explosive to make anyone nervous, especially when it was still classified as “experimental.” The idea was to test it on a little concrete and steel structure out in the middle of some desert, and more or less create a large hole in the ground.

“Striker one one, this is Magic, commence test, accelerate to eight hundred knots, acquire the target, and release payload.”

“Copy that Magic, this is Striker one one, commencing test now.” James pushed the throttle forward, feeling the powerful engines of the jet rumble behind him.  As the jet neared the target area, it broke the sound barrier.

“Striker one one, this is Magic, do you have a visual on the target?”

“Copy Magic, observation plane and target are both forty miles out, on the nose.”

Alex spoke from the back seat, “everything is locked in and ready to go, over.”

“Copy that Striker one one, you may fire when ready.”

James finger tightened around the trigger. “Weapon is hot, dropping… Now!”  The F-15 Jumped upward slightly, free of its burden.  Alex watched the bomb on his thermal display.  One hundred meters in front of the target, the bomb burrowed into the ground.  It would continue, propelled by its momentum, until it was under the target.  The Thermal scope suddenly went white, and the world below the F-15 grew bright.  The crew of the Strike Eagle heard nothing, having already passed the speed of sound.  James decelerated, and circled back around.

“I think it worked!” Alex whistled behind him.  A huge cloud of smoke and Sand hung over the area where the test structure used to stand.

“Striker one one, this is Magic, nice work!  Everything looks good and… wait.” James noticed the observation planes veering away from the area.  “Oh crap, Striker one one, we have massively weird readings in the-KSsshhhHHHkkkKK- Get out of there!  Repeat Get the heck out of there!”

James pulled the back on the stick.  Nothing happened.  The engines suddenly died behind him.

“Magic!  Come in, this is Striker one one, I can’t control my aircraft, repeat aircraft is inoperable!  Magic?  Magic can you read me?” The F-15 seemed to be plummeting down towards the crater.  James reached above his head, yanking the ejection levers.  Nothing.  The electronics in the planes were all haywire.

“James!” Alex yelled, “We can’t bail out, what the heck is going on?”

“I wish I knew!” James frantically yanked on the stick, but the F-15 kept plummeting.  It was as if the hole was pulling them towards it.  The F-15 spun down, down, down.

“DANG IT!”

The F-15E dropped into the crater.  There was no explosion.  No impact.  Suddenly, all there was, was silence.

<(^)>

“Control surfaces, normal, engines operating at one hundred percent, fuel is at eighty three percent, HUD is back online, Alex what have you got back there?”

“Electronics are all green, Infrared is back online, Radar is good to go.” Alex seemed to hesitate.

James glanced back, “Alex, what’s going on back there man?”

“Well… I have no radio contact on all frequencies, and GPS has yet to acquire any satellites, also, radar is not showing anything recognizable… and all the antennas seem to be working properly.”

“Hmm… keep trying, meantime, let’s fly up and see if we can spot any land marks.”

Alex spoke up, “I like that idea but, it seems to me… what the heck just happened?”

“No clue, I was hoping you had some bright ideas.”

Alex stopped running the analysis on the GPS unit. “I… I don’t know man, but something just feels sort of… off right now.” James paused for a second.  Apparently he wasn’t the only one.  A few moments earlier, he had shot threw a cloud of smoke, heading towards certain death, his eyes clinched shut.  When he had opened them again, he had been flying a few hundred feet off the ground, his aircraft in perfect working order, on a sunny day.  James leveled off the strike eagle at twenty five thousand feet.

“Alright Alex, tell me if you get eyes on anything, especially something that looks like civilization.”

“I’ll tell you the second I see any…”

James glanced back at Alex. “Alex?  You alright buddy?”

Alex stopped gazing off into the distance, shook his head violently, and continued scanning for signs of inhabitants. “Sorry man, I just saw this cloud formation that looked really weird, almost like…” Alex shook his head again. “Just forget about it.”

James shot a glance at Alex, slightly worried.  Alex wasn’t one to get thrown by anything, even if they had just somehow magically avoided becoming a permanent addition to the desert.  Still… after a ride like that, anything could happen, right?

Alex spoke again. “Hey, looks like we have a mountain at two o’clock, pretty big thing too, can you get a closer look?”

James banked the fighter towards the stony monolith. “Yeah, Alex, you were supposed to be a geography whiz or something right?  Do you think you could recognize what mountain this is?”

“Well, it would have to be like Mount Everest or something, I mean, most mountains look pretty much the same.  I was hoping that there might be a town or something at the base of it or… a castle hanging off the side of it!”

James shook his head.  A large city sat at the base of the mountain, its exact features hard to make out from such a high altitude.  The one clear thing was a castle that reached halfway up the slope of the mountain, though it reached down to the edge of the city.

“Any idea where we are now?”

“Seriously man?  In all my days studying geography, I have never, EVER heard of any place like this, not in a million years.”

James looked at the gleaming castle once more.  Its walls were gleaming white, and a series of turrets and towers decorated it.  James marveled at the sight. “Can you raise anyone on the radio?”

“Negative, still no contacts, and besides, if that castle is a good indicator of the tech level of these people, then I doubt they would have a runway for us anyway.”

“No,” James said, “But that might work.”

A quick glance at the city showed Alex what James was talking about.  A long road seemed to stretch from the city entrance all the way to the castle’s courtyard.  More than long enough for the strike eagle to put down on.

“Alright,” James banked the F-15 over towards the long street, “we’re going to do a flyby over the street popping flares, and hope that it scares everyone into their houses.”

The jet swooped in low, bleeding off speed in preparation for the landing.  James lined up the jet with the road, his finger hovering over the counter measures button.  He pressed it.  Flares spewed from the aft end of the fighter, falling slowly to the street below.  Alex watched as the tiny pedestrians ran for cover.  Even from this altitude, he noticed that something about the pedestrians seemed a little odd.  Still, anything could look queer from a thousand feet in the air, especially today.  The strike eagle completed its pass over the city, and then turned around, lowering its landing gear.

James brought the fighter in nice and easy, flaps down with slight pressure on the stick.  The buildings seemed to float up on either side of them.  Everyone seemed to have run inside and bolted the doors behind them.  Alex gripped the jets handles, eying the rough cobblestone slipping by a few yards away uneasily.  The back wheels impacted the road, and the front soon followed.  The entire jet vibrated as it rumbled down the cobblestone road.

James groaned, “Wish I had seen that before we landed.” Alex looked.  In the distance, a statue was looming up, in the middle of the castle court yard.

“We’ll stop short of it… right?”

James grimaced, “Yeah… perhaps.”

The jet lost speed quickly, but the elegant marble monument seemed to race towards them. “Dang… it…” James yanked the stick to the side.  The jet careened to the side, now in the castle courtyard.  For a second the F-15’s right wheel left the ground.  Then it slammed back down again.  The fighter skidded to a stop.

“Engines are off, flaps at zero degrees, air brakes down, everything is looking good.”

Alex scanned his consoles, “Copy, opening canopy,” the glass bubble slid upwards, “master power switch, off.”

James tore off his helmet. “We made it buddy!” Alex smiled, and then something caught his eye.  Glancing upward, he gaped, “Uh oh…”

James looked at his friend, confused.  Then he followed his gaze. “Oh crap…” Hovering all around the jet, were more than two dozen Pegasus, wearing golden armor, all pointing spears at the strange creatures that had just landed in their world.