Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 09

He picked up the cloth and using the scissors, he cut two pieces off in strips about five inches long and tied them to each other in the middle. From there, he tied the end of a long piece of string to the knot in the middle.

"What is that for?" D'Jymm asked.

Lucas smiled, "This is our mouse."

He placed it inside of the open end of the piping and pushed in farther inside with a thin rod. Setting the rod down, he picked up the air hose and tested the nozzle.

There was a hissing blast of compressed air for an instant as he released the button on the nozzle to stop the air. He looked at Ric and smiled, "Try to let the string go in freely. If it looks like it's gonna knot up or anything, just stop paying it out and we'll fix it. Shouldn't happen though."

After seven careful blasts of the air, the 'mouse' flew out of the other end of the pipe with a very soft pop and lay on the floor.

"Trained mouse," Lucas smiled.

He walked to the other end and cut off the mouse before tying the single wire to the string. "Just pull the string back slowly and evenly," he said to D'Jymm, "Give me time to feed this wire in as we go."

When the end of the wire had followed the string out of the other end, Lucas walked back and cut off the string after pulling a little more through. Then he began attaching each wire and cable one at a time to the tow wire. He was careful about it, making sure that no wire crossed over another as it would increase the thickness of the bundle. When he had everything, he checked to make certain and then wrapped the whole thing with tape as tightly as he could.

D'Jymm said, "You have more here than I counted originally."

Lucas nodded. "Remember that we pulled a cooling line in too. Overtemp won't be an issue now. The extras are spares just in case."

"Ok D'Jymm," he smiled as he pulled on a pair of leather gloves, "you just feed it in as I pull. If it looks like you're about to get any wires or cables crossed, just tell me and I'll stop pulling so we can straighten things out before we continue. I'd have wanted pulling lube for this, but this bundle's gotta live in a warm place. We might get a little lucky here."

Inside of five minutes, the nose of the bundle was sticking out of the other end of the conduit.

"Just leave it there," Lucas said after pulling another few feet through in case. "Cut it off long enough to make the connections and let's pack this up and head for the engine on the other side."

Inside of an hour, they had all three pulls in and armed with the engineering drawings in D'Jymm's communicator, he set to making the connections as Lucas ran in the manifold for the cooling line. Two hours later, the "kids" were checking the wire ID's to the schematic on the screen.

---

On Lucas' recommendation, they ran two of the auxiliary turbines for an hour to power all of the electrical buses so that the batteries got a quick charge after the last few days of sitting mostly idle, the largest draw being the lighting. With the charging complete, they ran diagnostics on the three engines and when every test showed green D'Jymm and Lucas started and brought all of the thrust engines on line.

"Shift some of the hot bleed air into the gear wells, "the old man said. "You've been here getting on a week. That's plenty of time to accumulate a few hangers on down in the wells The gear wells on this bird are pressurised and if you leave with caterpillars and leeches in the wells, they'll arrive with you and maybe cause some headaches for whatever port that you drop anchor in."

D'Jymm looked over at Daniella, who'd been sitting and listening to weather broadcasts with a bit of a long face.

"What is it?" he asked and she sighed, "There are severe hurricane warnings everywhere in the region. The first one did not get far before it stalled off the coast. It has just been sitting there for a few days now, moving very slowly, but that is not the trouble.

"A new one is coming, they say, and it looks to them that it will collide with the first one. I think that we are stuck here and I saw the way that the mud runs down from the mountain behind us. If much more rain comes, I think that what you feared will happen and we will be walking, if we are not killed in here."

D'Jymm stepped over to where Daniella sat and he leaned down to kiss her. "That is the kind of weather that I'd want.. I have enough power in the engines that I can fly through a storm like that. It is how I came to be here. I did not just come here and set down hurriedly in fear for my life. I wanted weather like we had then to hide my approach.

"You and Maria should find seating for the flight. And keep the small ones with you. Do not let them play or wander after I warn you that we are taking off."

---

D'Jymm sat at the helm and began the start sequence for the rear engine. With it lit off and settling down to idle, he began the sequences for the engines on the wings.

With his indicators showing good starts all around, he swung the wingmounts outward until they showed as in position for flight. He selected V/TOL mode and once the engine nacelles had transitioned to vertical he applied just enough throttle to lift them up slowly.

"Is everything in the green?" he asked and Lucas replied that there were no signs of trouble.

D'Jymm began to ease them forward. It was slow, but he needed to be careful to get them out from under the stone archway where they'd been for days now.

"I'm showing the IFF is off," Lucas said.

"Correct," D'Jymm replied, "leave it off until we are at the far end of the system."

As the craft emerged from the high overhang of the forest, he applied more throttle and began to transition to horizontal flight mode.

The night was dark and the rain on the windscreen ran in sheets and rivulets. "I need more bleed air to the windscreens,"D'Jymm said.

"Coming up," Lucas said as he retracted the gear and closed the gear doors. "Had to chase out the freeloaders."

The windscreen cleared in seconds and they were rocketing down the long pass in the dark. D'Jymm illuminated the pass before him by pulsing his forward mapping radar at intervals. Recognising the landscape at the end of the pass, he pulled back on the yoke and they shot upward into the heavy clouds and buffeting winds of the hurricane.

"Where are we headed? Lucas asked.

"First, to the southern pole area," the Anubian smiled. "We fly west once we are out of the cyclone, taking the highest commercial flight level. Out over the ocean, we turn south, beginning a descent as we near the Antarctic coastline. There is minimal radar coverage there, probably the least on this whole world. Over the pole, we will climb and accelerate out of atmosphere."

"Our destination is Nanworth Colony." D'Jymm said as he throttled back since the wall of the storm receded below them to ease them into the commercial flight lanes, "I'll hide in orbit until we are on the other side of Earth at which point I'll take us out of orbit and we'll be on our way."