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Chapter 1 – The Storm

 

Data inquiry: What is the UTSR?

 

Central Data Storage reply: The Universal Treaty for Survival and Repopulation (UTSR) was negotiated and signed by representatives of all Remnant Societies and Recovery Populations in the year 19 PGC (Post Global Collapse). Its Articles prohibit the research, development, storage, or use of any technologies assessed to have contributed to the Dall Wars and the subsequent global collapse.

 

 

The dissonant wail of a weather klaxon jerked me abruptly from sleep, and I cracked my heavy eyelids open. Soft morning light shone through my window, belying the klaxon’s ominous warning, and my groggy brain struggled to grasp the information buzzing in my auditory link. Annoyed at the rude awakening, I groaned and slapped the snooze indicator on the cuff hanging beside my bed, then rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. When the voices in my ear did not shut off as I’d expected, I reluctantly realized the blaring caution message was a central broadcast, not my alarm.

 

Sitting up, I pushed away the clinging fog of sleep to listen to the weathernet warnings. When I finally made sense of them, any lingering drowsiness vanished, and a huge, happy grin spread across my face. A storm was coming. Bad news for the Toppers, but good news for me.

 

Excitedly, I leapt out of bed and grabbed the rumpled jumpsuit I had discarded on the floor the night before. Lifting it to my nose for a quick sniff, I decided I could probably get another day out of it before it started to offend people. Throwing on the jumpsuit, I snatched up the cuff from my bedside and snugged it over my wrist. It’s reassuring weight hugged my forearm as I yanked my hair back into a haphazard ponytail, listening as the cuff automatically toggled through my messages.

 

In my excitement, I jogged down the stairs two at a time, dodging around my mom in the kitchen to grab a cup of caffeine from the dispenser.

 

“Hold on there a minute,” she reprimanded, turning me back toward her before I could get my liquid elixir of life. “Is that what you’re going to wear to your exams?”

 

I groaned, and my shoulders slumped, all excitement draining away. “Are those today?” I almost whined.

 

“What do you mean, ‘are those today?’” my mother exclaimed, sounding shocked. “Of course they’re today!”

 

I grimaced. I had forgotten about exams. Maybe that was on purpose. “Sorry,” I said, chagrined. “I forgot.”

 

“How could you forget?” she huffed in exasperation. “You’ve been studying two years for this!”

 

I shrugged. “I just…had something else on my mind.”

 

“What could be more important than your exams?” she asked, fixing me with a pointed look.

 

“I, uh, you know, the storm,” I stammered as I scrambled to come up with a good excuse.

 

“Oh,” my mother nodded, slightly mollified. “The storm won’t get here until this afternoon,” she said in attempted reassurance. “Don’t let it distract you from your tests this morning.” She waggled a remonstrating finger at me, and I rolled my eyes.

 

My sister chose that moment to come down the stairs and chime in. “The storm’s not supposed to be a bad one. We may not even feel it much down here.”

 

“I know,” I grumbled under my breath, recalling the predicted surge and windspeeds from the weathernet broadcast as I glared at her for taking mom’s side.

 

My sister, who was almost ten years older than me, was, unfortunately, visiting us to “support” me in my exams. I suspected she was really here to gloat over how much better her exam scores had been than mine would be. She had always been the perfect child, setting a standard I could never live up to, and in my eighteen years, I had gotten thoroughly sick of my every failure being met with comments like “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” and “Your sister never had that problem.” It made me want to scream.

 

And, as if having her shining example of unattainable perfection rubbed in my face on this high-pressure day was not enough, she had piled on even more by bringing along her perfect husband and her three perfect kids, who were now scrambling noisily down the stairs after her. I glanced grumpily at the family I was doubtless expected to emulate someday in the near future.

 

“Try not to think about the storm, Kaialyn,” my mother said, patting me on the shoulder and misinterpreting the cause of my bad mood, even as she poured and handed me a much-needed cup of caff.

 

“Not a chance,” I sighed quietly to myself, thinking longingly of how perfect the storm was predicted to be, and trying not to be irritated by the use of her pet name for me. She is the only one who calls me Kaialyn. Everyone else calls me Kai because Kaialyn is just way too much to say. And my full name, Kaialynairi, is preposterous, so not even she calls me that. My sister’s name is the same: Awalanielle. We all just call her Lani. Can you imagine what it’s like to fill out forms using those names? My parents said they wanted our names to be unique, but I think it’s just a snob thing. Kai suits me way better than some big, pretentious name.

 

“Thank you,” I murmured more loudly, indicating the cup of caff and holding it close as I tried to dodge away from the enthusiastic nieces and nephew swarming toward me with gleeful squeals. Unfortunately, I didn’t dodge quickly enough, and they wrapped themselves around my limbs.

 

“They just love you,” my sister said, smiling fondly as her kids hung off my arms and legs, laughing and giggling.

 

“Joy,” I replied dryly. I really wanted to get out the door quickly, and this was not helping. Kids are great and everything, I’m just not a big fan of them. I know, with the extremely low fertility rate, being able to have kids is a big deal, and my sister having three healthy children is almost unheard of. As I said, she always was an overachiever.

 

“Uh, shouldn’t they be in school?” I asked awkwardly, struggling to extricate one of my arms before I spilled caffeine over everyone.

 

“They got the day off for storm prep,” Lani’s husband, Tral, supplied as he dispensed a cup for himself and Lani.

 

“Not fair,” I complained, wishing my med school had the day off too. “What about you?” I asked Lani. Being absolutely brilliant, she works as a psi-designer, of course, developing all the different tech that links human brains to various tools and gadgets. Her husband is also a brilliant psi-designer, and since psi-tech is pretty much part of everything in Theran society, I guess what they do is really important or whatever.

 

“We already took the day off for your exams,” Lani answered brightly, and I cringed inwardly.

 

We were interrupted by another storm klaxon, and all our cuffs began scrolling the updated weather alert, while automated mandatory-shelter messages buzzed in our earpieces. After the klaxon subsided, Tral said to Lani, “We may have to rethink this and head home early, with the storm coming in.” Lani’s expression clouded.

 

One of the children finally lost her grip on my arm and plunked solidly to the floor with a wail. “Sorry,” I said, and patted her awkwardly on the head before pulling my foot free from my nephew so I could make my way to the table with my breakfast.

 

“You’re right. We should probably head home soon,” Lani conceded reluctantly to Tral after a moment, picking up the wailing child consolingly.

“What about you, Mom?” I asked as I shoveled food into my mouth. “You working today?” She works in the city’s psi-ops center. According to her, she keeps the city running, so I knew she wouldn’t be able to take the day off, regardless of the storm.

 

“I’m needed to help shut the city’s transportation down, but I’ll be back before the storm hits.”

 

We didn’t even bother asking my dad. We all knew he wouldn’t take the day off, even if they asked him to. He works in psi-bio, which is so advanced that it’s limited to military applications at the moment. Which means he can’t talk about what he does. Not that he would talk to any of us much anyway, I thought, noting that his preoccupied gaze did not even glance up from his cuff when my wailing niece knocked Lani’s cup across the table and spilled caff everywhere.

 

“Even if we can’t stay, I’m so happy I was able to be here to wish my sister good luck before her exams!” Lani enthused as she mopped up the mess and gave me a side hug.

 

“Yay!” I said, pulling away slightly and trying unsuccessfully to sound appreciative.

They were all so excited that I had finished my apprenticeship and was taking the exams for the journeyman program. If all went well, I would be able to proceed into the psi-doctor program. If it did not go well, I would be relegated to the less prestigious rudimentary doctor program. Psi runs in the family, though, so of course we all knew I was going to be a psi-doc, using neural links to medical scanners and equipment to interface with patients.

 

Secretly though, I was drawn to the idea of becoming a rudimentary doctor instead. The thought of actually working with patients in person was fascinating, but I couldn’t say that to my family and expect them to understand. For me to become a rud-doc would be an intolerable disappointment to them, far beneath the family standard.

 

I sighed and finished my breakfast while my sister turned away, annoyed that I wasn’t suitably enthusiastic about her gracing me with her presence.

 

“How do you feel about the exams. Do you think you’re ready?” my brother-in-law asked, seeing his wife’s peeved expression and trying to rescue the conversation. I glanced sidelong at him. He was always trying to smooth things over between us.

 

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to humor him so Lani wouldn’t take her irritation out on him later. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

 

“Are you sure?” my mother asked anxiously. “You’ve barely studied. Awalani always studied so hard, and see where she is today?”

 

“We all know how wonderful Lani is,” I grated in renewed irritation.

There was a short, awkward silence, then Lani offered, “Really, don’t be anxious about the storm.” Clearly, she had mistaken my irritation at her for anxiety about the storm. She went on in a reassuring tone, “You’ll be done with exams and safely back here long before it hits.”

No, I won’t, I thought silently to myself, but saying nothing out loud as I quickly dumped my empty plate into the sanitizer.

 

My mother looked worried at my lack of reply and nudged my father for backup.  

“Hmm? Oh, yes, you should study more,” my father said vaguely in response to the nudging, having completely missed the thread of the conversation.

 

I rolled my eyes again. I really had better things to do today than this. “I’ll be sure to do that,” I said as I snatched up my travel harness and hurried out of the house, shutting the door on my mother and sister’s concerned expressions.

 

The humidity hit me as soon as I stepped out the door, and I took a moment to appreciate the bird song and vibrant life flourishing around me in the massive jungle Apoka trees where we live.  The hollow pockets in the tree trunks and branches make great living spaces for people, and their exteriors support an entire plant and animal ecosystem right alongside us. Of course, not all people can afford to live inside the pockets, so they build their homes onto the outside of the tree branches and trunks. My family lives inside a branch in the Central district, but the less affluent areas are up in the higher branches, where they’re subjected to a lot more heat and wind. And the really bad areas are down in the Boughs, where only the faintest sunlight reaches, but at least the storms rarely stir them down that deep. My pulse quickened again at the thought of the approaching storm. I really needed to get these exams out of the way quickly, before I missed it.

 

Setting aside my annoyance with my family for the time being, I quickly snapped on my travel harness and walked to the nearest clip point. There were already several people lined up, but with the morning commuter traffic just getting started, the wait was short. When it was my turn, I clipped into the waiting link, tapped a few buttons on my cuff to sync my destination with the uplink, and stepped off into open air. The quicklines are definitely the best way to travel around Thera. They zip you from one place to another with smooth efficiency. If you’re just travelling a couple trees, you can always take the walkways and footbridges, but I prefer the quicklines so I can have my own space without jostling through a crowd.

 

I’m lucky because my commute to the medical school is mostly covered by automatic line transfers. I only have to clip and unclip twice as I whiz through the complex webwork of the city quicklines, and so I can spend most of my time sitting back in my harness and studying or reading. This morning, I should have been looking over my study notes, but I was too preoccupied with daydreams of the approaching storm to concentrate. It seemed only a few short moments passed before I was unclipping at the med school, and with a resigned sigh, I headed inside.

​

***

​

As I expected, the tests were a breeze. Like I said, my family is a bunch of geniuses, and though I’ll never excel by their standards, I still do alright by normal standards. Even the psi tests, which checked my brain for the ability to create neural pathways required to link with medical and surgical equipment, were embarrassingly easy.

 

The exams lasted half a day, and as soon as we were released, I bolted out of the testing room. But as I rushed for the exit, I heard a voice behind me, “Kai! Wait up!”

Reluctantly, I turned to see my friend Emna rushing to catch up to me. “How’d you do?” she asked breathlessly, looking a bit anxious. We know the results of our tests are calculated immediately, but the medical school always takes a few days to review them before releasing our scores. So in the meantime, we all just have to wait on pins and needles.

 

“Okay, I guess,” I replied. I knew I’d passed, but it would be arrogant to just say that. Emna was one of those students who studied like crazy and was determined to get the highest grades in the class. Her dedication was admirable, but I just did not feel that kind of zeal.

 

“How did you do?” I asked in turn.

 

“I don’t know,” she replied worriedly. “I think I might have mixed up some of the steps in the DNA and RNA transcription phases.”

 

“I’m sure you did just fine,” I said reassuringly, and I was absolutely sure she had. Emna had never gotten anything less than top marks in all the years I had known her.

 

“That’s easy for you to say,” she replied, and I heard the slight note of resentment in her voice as she cast a quick sideways glance in my direction. “You never study, and you always do great.”

 

I grunted noncommittally. It’s not my fault I’m smart, and I certainly don’t go around bragging about it. But that doesn’t mean others don’t notice and resent me for it.

 

“So what are you going to do now?” Emna asked, changing the subject.

 

“Uh, why?” I replied, hesitantly.

 

“A few of us are headed over to Entu Tree for a bite to eat, and then Eris is having a party over at his house tonight. Would you like to come with us?” Emna invited, a hopeful note in her voice.

 

“Umm, I don’t know,” I evaded. I definitely had other plans, and besides, I really don’t do parties.

 

“Don’t worry, his place is in Kella Tree Trunk, so you won’t even notice the storm. And he’s said that everyone can stay until it’s over, so you don’t have to worry about being stranded.”

Storms are no joke for the parts of town further up in the branches of the massive trees that make up our home city-state. Luckily, the med school is in the mid-branches, where there’s less sway from the heavy winds of a storm. And my family is well-enough off that we can afford one of the homes inside a branch, but we aren’t Trunkies like Eris; we can’t afford to live in the actual tree trunk itself. That’s where the really rich people live. And given Eris’s reputation for throwing lavish parties, I was sure it was going to be epic, but I really needed to get going.

 

“Sorry,” I replied to her querying look. “I’m really not up for a party tonight.” I knew she’d be disappointed. She had been crushing on Eris for almost a year, and she probably wanted me there for moral support. “You’ll be just fine,” I said in response to her forlorn look. “You don’t need me there making things awkward for you. Just go for it! He likes you!”

 

“You think so?” Emna asked dubiously.

 

“I know so!” I snorted certainly. I’d been pushing her to approach him for months. Hopefully, this party would be her chance to do something more than pine over him.

Thankfully, Selli joined us at that moment, and since she and Eris’s sister had been making moon eyes at each other for the past couple weeks, she was delighted to go to the party with Emna, getting me off the hook without too much guilt.

 

“I’ll see you after the storm!” I said, waving as they headed off in the direction of the quickline to Entu Tree. They had their heads together, chatting and planning excitedly, so I felt less bad as I hurried off in the other direction before anyone else could catch me with offers of post-exam celebrations.

 

I took a series of lifts and ascending quicklines, eagerly looking forward to what I had planned. As I rose higher and higher into the canopy, the branches became smaller and more leafy. The light shifted from the soft blue of Central to the dappled, brightening green of the Sunnyside levels. Finally, after taking a few ladders and footbridges, I broke out into the dazzlingly bright daylight of the upper canopy.

 

I was on one of the many platforms that dotted the tops of the Apoka trees across Thera. Some of the platforms were launch-and-landing pads for the slow aerial transports that took people and goods across longer distances. Others were scientific posts or weather-monitoring stations, but this one was reserved entirely for sport – wind surfing to be exact. I had taken up wind surfing with my parents’ very reluctant permission when I was sixteen, but now that I was eighteen, they really had no say in it. They certainly did not approve of it, though, and they would totally freak out if they knew I was riding the leading edge of a storm.

 

My father already wrote the sport off as a bunch of morons looking to get themselves killed, and my mother complained constantly that I looked like a low-class Sunnysider with the tan I acquired from exposure to the direct sunlight up here. I may not have the creamy cinnamon complexion of most of the mid-branchers, but she should at least be happy I don’t have the pallor of the low-branchers who live in the Boughs of the Apoka trees. Even if we all start out with the same skin shade when we’re born, by the time Therans are five, because of the differences in sun exposure, you can pretty much tell what part of town everyone is from.

 

As I walked out on the platform, the sun’s heat beat down on me, and the wind whipped through my hair. Yep, there was definitely a storm on the way. The increased winds that presaged its arrival were a big contrast to the normally stifling, languid rainforest heat, and it would make for great flying, at least until the storm got closer. Clearly, other surfers had the same idea, and the platform was bustling with people setting their rigging and moving to and from the launch and landing area.

 

I approached the end of the platform with a small sheltered area behind a long counter, and Araks, the man who ran the platform, greeted me with an enthusiastic, “Kai! Come to join the ranks of the foolhardy on the front of the storm?” His hair was bleached by the sun, and his skin was tanned almost to the point of leather from the long hours he spent in the air and on the platform.

 

I grinned broadly at him. “I sure am! First real storm in over a year, how could I resist?”

Araks snorted and shook his head with a rueful grin as he turned and pulled my rig out of one of the storage compartments behind him. He handed it to me with a warning, the look on his face serious, “I’ve already shut down free flight, and I’m only allowing kiting now this close to the storm.”

 

I nodded in acknowledgement, happy enough to know I would have an anchor to the platform as I saw the fliers already out getting buffeted by the rising gusts. “Don’t cut it too close,” Araks cautioned.  “You know how some people push it to the edge, and I’m shutting the platform down as soon as I think the gusts are getting too strong.”

 

“Right,” I agreed, handing him my travel harness and cuff to put into the now-empty storage compartment. After all, I was still relatively new to wind surfing. Some of the veteran fliers had been out here for twenty or thirty years, and I was just a fledgling in comparison to the hours they had racked up. The winds weren’t too dangerous yet, but I could see that, already, some of the free fliers were gaining big altitude or fighting the winds to make it back to the platform for landing.

 

I checked my rig carefully as always, looking over all the lines and material as I unpacked it. When I was satisfied, I shrugged into my harness and secured it tightly, along with my helmet. I gathered the lines of my wind wing up and looked, purely out of habit, at the wind indicator fixed on the roof of the storage shelter. Any idiot could have felt the wind pushing at us from the south, though, and I moved to the large south launch pad where several others were lining up to take off as well.

 

Araks double-checked all our harnesses and clipped us one-by-one into winch lines. When it was my turn, I carefully laid out the synthetic material of my wing and gathered the lines in my hands. All it took in this stiff breeze was for me to lean back into my lines, and the soft fabric of the wing leapt into the air, catching the wind’s flow. I stood for a moment, the wing billowed full above me as I checked to make sure none of my lines were tangled. Satisfied that everything was in order, I turned to face the platform and gave Araks a nod to indicate I was ready to launch.

 

Reeling the winch line taut, he flipped the switch to turn control over to me, and as I stepped backward off the platform, I was whisked into the air, toggling the winch with my right hand to play out line as I rose. Immediately, I was engulfed in the peace and calm of flight. I continued to play out line and rise into the air, and the bustling platform and all its occupants shrank away beneath me. I went up one hundred meters, as far as the winch would allow, and relaxed into the peace of gliding on air.

 

The wind sang through the lines of my rig, a soothing sound, and the jungle canopy stretched out all around me. It was beautiful. The dark green of the Apoka tree foliage was offset by splashes of color from blooming vines and bromeliads everywhere. Even though flora and fauna abounded at all levels of the towering Theran jungle, color always seemed so muted at the Central levels where I spent the monotonous day-to-day hours of my life. Up here, the jungle fairly burst with color and vibrancy, and my eyes were dazzled by its intensity. Everything was so alive up here in the clear sunlight. Yes, it was blindingly hot, but it was also blindingly splendid.

 

I could look down, and there was nothing but air beneath my boots. All the mundane problems and worries of normal life were left far below in the moments I spent up here. My family thought I was hooked on some sort of adrenaline rush from the sport. How could I explain to them that it was the peace and beauty, the utter tranquility of flying, that drew me to the surfing platform any chance I got? My sister just rolled her eyes when I tried to explain, and though my mom would smile politely, the vague look in her eyes conveyed clearly that she did not credit a word I was saying. They didn’t understand, and so I had stopped trying to explain.

 

I tilted my head back and inhaled deeply of the scents carried on the wind, letting the annoyance and anger drift away. I was briefly tempted to disengage the winch line, longing to soar and dive on the currents of the wind, but I heeded Araks’ advice not to overdo it. I could see there were several other free fliers still darting about, but it looked like all of them were making their way, tacking laboriously, back to the platform. I knew I was not yet experienced or skilled enough for such antics, so instead I just relaxed into the harness and enjoyed the surf.

 

I don’t know how long I stayed up there, maybe an hour or so, just listening to the wind singing in my lines and taking in the fresh air and jungle canopy. Normally, there would be birds of all sorts flitting about the wings curiously. I noticed their conspicuous absence and realized, with a jolt, that the storm must be close enough to send them hunkering into the deeper branches for cover. Feeling the winds pick up suddenly, I squinted my eyes against the glare of the bright sun and scanned the horizon all around me. Sure enough, there to the south, I could see the clouds beginning to sprout across the sky. At first, it was just white, puffy, innocuous clouds, but building right behind those were the gray thunderheads of a real storm.

 

The clouds billowed up tens of thousands of meters into the air as the updrafts and tearing wind currents roiled and fought in the leading edge of the storm system. Its interior was dark and impenetrable, and I saw jagged lightning cutting across the tumult. As the strengthening gusts began to buffet me against the tow line, I decided uneasily that it was time to head into the platform. Chagrined, I saw that all the other kiters had already reeled in and were packing up their rigs far below, and with a pang at my own complacency, I toggled the winch control to tow me back in, aware I would probably get chewed out by Araks as soon as I landed.

 

The wing bucked and swayed alarmingly as the winch line reeled in, and several times I dropped and veered wildly in the sharp gusts of the approaching storm. By the time my feet touched the platform and I was able to collapse my rebellious wing, the sky had started to darken. Araks rushed over to me with a meaningful glare that promised the dreaded lecture later, but he helped me bundle up the fabric of the wing tightly before it could catch the wind and jerk me off the platform again. I packed everything away as carefully as I could in the growing gale and saw that everyone but Araks had already left, heading down into the deeper levels for shelter.

 

Quickly, I stowed my rig back in its storage compartment and donned my cuff and travel harness to keep my hands free. Then I went to help Araks secure the platform for the storm. As I approached him, Araks raised his voice over the growing noise of the wind and pointed up into the sky, “Dennett’s still out!” I followed where he was pointing and could just make out a dark speck against the roiling clouds above.

 

Running to the spotting scope, I swung it around to focus on the speck. I could just make out Dennett’s wing tossing on the increasingly violent wind currents, and I watched helplessly as he struggled to fight the gusts to return to the platform. I cast a glance at Araks, and after a moment more, with Dennett only getting further and further away, Araks signaled me to hit the emergency beacon. I ran to the wall of the storage area, where all surfers had been briefed to find the beacon in emergencies, and I hit it with the fleshy part of my fist.

 

Immediately, a bright white light began to flash from the roof of the storage area, and I knew the beacon would be sending a signal to the city ops center. What could help get Dennett down out of the storm, though, I had no idea. No Homeguard rescue hover could weather a storm like this. It would be knocked out of the sky as surely as Dennett.

 

Rushing back to the spotting scope, I again focused it on the splotch of color that was Dennett’s wing, fixing his coordinates into the scope’s memory as we waited for help. Horror grew in the pit of my stomach as he was tossed like a rag doll in the turbulence of the building storm. The updrafts sucked him into the clouds, and I saw him purposely collapse half his wing in an attempt to lose altitude. The maneuver had no effect, though, and I knew the air at that altitude would be getting too thin for him to breathe. Soon, he would be battered and covered in ice, beyond saving.

 

The wind tugged at my hair and clothing, and I had to lean into it to keep my balance. The sound of the wind tearing through the leaves and branches of the jungle was loud in my ears, and the platform swayed. Over the roar of the storm, I did not even hear the approach of help until it announced itself with a massive thump and a shuddering of the platform.

Araks and I whirled around to the sight of an enormous dragon peering down at us sharply.

 

Of course, I had seen the military drags before as they flew past on maneuvers or training flights, but I had never seen one up this close. It ruffled its blue fur and feathers as it slapped its wings shut. The man sitting at the junction of the dragon’s long neck with its forequarters turned his head to look at us, and the movement was mimicked by the dragon. The man wore a psi helmet and was obviously the drag-pilot. Two other men sat further back on the dragon, each of them secured by harness straps to the dragon’s rigging.

 

“Got your signal!” the pilot yelled down to us over the noise of the wind as his dragon eyed us critically. “What’s the problem?”

 

“Flier caught in the storm!” Araks yelled back, pointing at the dot in the sky that was Dennett.

 

The pilot and dragon turned their heads in unison to look where Araks pointed, and when they had sighted the wayward surfer, they bounded into the air and flew towards him. Their launch sent another shudder through the platform, and I was nearly knocked off my feet. When I regained my footing, I ran breathlessly back to the spotting scope to watch and see what happened.

 

I knew a bit about psi-bio technology, gleaned mostly from tidbits that my dad had dropped during the rare occasions he actually spoke. So I knew the drag-pilot was seeing and feeling things through the dragon he was linked to. He would have learned how to think and fly like a dragon, and he would be piloting the dragon’s flight right now, maneuvering better than any man-made machine could. I had only known about it in theory before, and seeing it in action like this was incredible, giving me a whole new perspective on the work my dad did.

 

I watched as the dragon beat its wings, fighting the storm as it climbed into the roiling grey clouds. The winds buffeted it, knocking it violently sideways several times. I sucked in my breath as the dragon and its crew plummeted suddenly in a downdraft, but the pilot and drag righted themselves and regained the lost altitude.

 

Finally, the drag and its crew reached Dennett, who was tossing about limply in the lines of his wing. The drag made several swooping passes to assess the best way to rescue the surfer. On the final pass, it snagged the fabric of the wing with one of its taloned forefeet, and the lines quickly entangled both of its forelegs. It struggled against the entanglement, but when this only made things worse, it held its forelegs very still and began to backwing in place, holding as stable as possible in the wildly turbulent air.

 

Araks was right beside me, squinting into the wind with his binoculars. We watched intently as one of the men from the dragon’s back was winched down to Dennett’s unconscious form beneath the drag. The buffeting winds rocked the dragon, causing the winchline to swing in an unsteady arc. After several misses, the lowered man’s swing finally intercepted the surfer, and I could see the rescuer grapple to gain a hold on Dennett. Once he did, the man quickly and efficiently secured Dennett into a harness, then drew a large knife and cut the entangling lines away from the surfer. When Dennett was clear of the lines, the winch immediately pulled him up, but the rescuer stayed down and crawled over the dragon’s forelegs, cutting lines and fabric free from the dragon’s forelegs.

 

His work done, the rescuer was pulled back up, and the drag and pilot wasted no time in getting out of the storm. They went into a steep dive, plummeting quickly and making a beeline for the hospital. As it whooshed past the platform, Araks and I waved jubilantly, and the dragon wagged its wings in acknowledgment.

 

“That was amazing!” I yelled to Araks in wonder. Araks beamed his relief as well, and it was a long, relieved moment before the heavy swaying of the platform dragged our attention back to our own precarious position.

 

“Right,” Araks ordered crisply, giving me a shove, “get yourself down the tree before I have to call a rescue for us!” He was right, of course. The full fury of the storm was not even close to hitting us yet, and it was already difficult to remain standing. Both of us scrambled for the stairs and headed down as quickly as possible to escape the storm.