controls to maintain that angle. It’s not an easy task but Seven reminded himself that he was the top graduate of his flight class. He used the remaining fuel in his tanks to take Bev high in the atmosphere. High enough hopefully to see the ship and guide Big Bev in.
Bev began to sputter and cough as Seven neared ten thousand feet. The mission protocol required that the ship black out until the team returned and Seven was unable to make any type of radio contact to alert them of the emergency. Big Bev choked and coughed one final time before her powerful engine lost the battle.
It was quiet, and nothing should be quiet in an airborne helicopter. Seven disengaged the transmission and worked the controls to adjust the blade angle. Davis climbed up behind Seven’s chair and announced that anything not breathing had been tossed out of the cargo hold. He said nothing else and just watched as Seven began the process of a controlled crash over open water.
Finding a blacked-out ship in the blunt darkness of an endless sea seemed an impossible task. Seven knew the night vision goggles were useless without even a speck of light emitting from the ship. He kept his hand adjusting the blades and his eyes fixed on the water below. “Go back to the cargo hold and secure yourselves as best as you can; don’t tie yourselves down to anything in case we hit water,” he told Davis.
Bev was falling quickly but still moving forward as Seven finessed the craft delicately. He just needed to find that black needle in the black haystack. He knew what to look for; he just didn’t see it. Science had provided a method for landing his helicopter; now he needed science to provide a road map to the ship and very soon. He began to route the possible avenues of escape for the team and himself in the event that Bev hit the drink. Getting wet was becoming more and more of a reality and Seven was preparing himself for that reality when he saw a flickering neon green runway begin to form in the sea below.