Excerpt: Dreamer of Mars

She picked up the glider, and grunted at the weight. The wings were quite long, longer by far than any Terran glider. But they would have to be wider here to catch the thin atmosphere, and that meant more weight. She hefted the structure once or twice, then turned toward the crater wall, seventy-five meters away.

Dejah took a couple of deep breaths, drawing air in with a rush, and expelling it in sharp gasps. Then, without warning, she began to run towards the crater rim. She tried to keep her course straight and even, but even on this empty plane, there were small craters and debris everywhere, and dodging them robbed her of valuable speed.

The edge of the crater loomed nearer, a scar on the surface of the landscape, and she could see the far wall.

Puffing, she added a burst of speed and ran to the crater's edge faster than ever, fighting her natural desire to stop at the edge of the drop off.

Forty steps away. Thirty-five. Thirty! She quickly ran over the launch sequence in her head, and then it was time. The edge was so near she felt as if she would trip over it.

With an extra burst of strength, she leaped over the edge of the crater, feeling her body swinging through empty air, a feeling of falling for a moment, then the awareness of the gilder, hanging by both hands to the control bar as if death itself were after her. She struggled to get an elbow up and hooked over the support bar, but her muscles screamed in protest, and she let her body swing freely under the glider.

“Dejah!” She could hear Max' voice shouting in her ear through the intercom. “Dejah, you've got to get up. You have a few seconds left, and then you're going to start sinking. Try rocking back and forth to give yourself some momentum.”

Dejah kicked, her boots feeling like lead weights. She began to swing, slowly, back and forth, back and forth. One more time, she thought wildly, one more time! As she swung forward, she thrust an arm out and pulled herself up onto the support bar. She could feel her arm muscles strain and give way, but she held on, and found herself steering the glider naturally.

“Don't forget your feet,” Max called, and Dejah saw that he had flown the Hammer until it was running parallel to the Valkyrie. Every muscle in her body ached, and she lay across the support bar, trying to gather energy for the final move that would make the test a success.

With a quick intake of breath, she forced her body towards the front of the glider, and slipped her feet into place. She let herself slide back down the support bar, and reached out for the control bar.

The exhaustion dropped away like a stone, and she felt the vibrations of the wind on the wings run down the metal pipes, through her arms, and down her spine.

Looking down Dejah could see the floor of the crater far below, rushing by under the glider. With a gasp, she noticed that she could even see the shadow of the Valkyrie, an odd triangular shape, flitting over the stone.

She leaned left, and the glider began to bank smoothly; she leaned right, and again, the glider quickly responded.

“Dej! Dej, are you ok? How’s it going?” She realized that Max had been calling to her over the communicator for a while, and could hear the engines of the Hammer nearby.

“Max, this is incredible,” she shouted. “I know you love your ship, but it has got nothing on this. I can feel the wind on my atmo suit, and the control is incredible! I think we can make some adjustments and get it better, but seriously Max, you have to try this!”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to something that actually protects me from that wind. You commune with Nature, I’ll keep my engines.” He flipped the Hammer into a loop, and circled back to keep up with the slower glider.

Dejah wriggled her shoulders, causing the wings of the glider to dip in the unofficial pilot’s greeting, and Max laughed. “You are a cheeky little punk, you know that? Hey, listen that far wall is coming up pretty fast, can you see it from where you are?”

She looked up from the mesmerizing rush of the ground below. “Yeah, I can see it. Should get there in about…oh, probably eighty seconds. Gonna try something.”

“Ok, well, don’t get yourself killed.” Max circled his ship again. “I think if I let that happen, I would get a very unpleasant visit from your boyfriend, and I’d really rather keep this pretty face intact.”

Dejah laughed, but didn’t reply; the wall of the crater was coming up. She could tell that she had lost altitude, as the rim was high above her head.

“Careful, Dej, the walls of that crater are pretty irregular, and the wind can do weird things. It can drop out from under you, or slam you into the wall faster than you’d think possible.”

“Yeah, I got it.” Her eyes focused straight ahead, Dejah tightened her grip on the control bar, and waited for the right moment. The wall of the crater came nearer, nearer, and at the last second, she leaned hard left. The wings of the glider hummed as they vibrated against the air, catching the wind and bank sharply.

“Just gonna circle the wall till I find an updraft, then I think we’ll call it a day.” She could feel the muscles in her arms beginning to tremble, and trickle of sweat ran down her nose.

The rough wall of the crater rushed by, faster than she had expected, and she could feel the wind gusting, dropping off, and returning, and struggled to keep the glider on course.

“Dej, things are looking pretty unstable from up here, you've got a lot of variations in the wind right there. Just coast in towards the center of the crater and I'll come and pick you up.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the plane bank and circle again, and called into the headset. “No, Max, I really need to see if I can catch an updraft here. If I can't, then it's just going to be of limited use, a toy, something that college kids play with. But if it's capable of catching an updraft and gaining height, think of the possibilities! There's hundreds of canyons and canyon arms that are too narrow for ships like yours; they can be scouted in these. I've got to try this. Look, I think I'm coming up on a good spot, the wall's pretty regular there, and I think it's facing the wind. Perfect conditions. If I can't catch it there, I'll come back and land and let you pick me up.” She signaled the headset to go silent, and focused all of her attention on the stretch of wall ahead.

The glider began to buck, sometimes falling a few feet, sometimes edging dangerously close to the crater wall. “Come on baby, we can do this. Let's show them all how badly we want it, huh? Let's show them what we can do,” she whispered to the fragile craft. Her arms trembled with the effort of keeping the glider on track; for Dejah, the world condensed into a few key elements: wind, balance, the rocky floor below, and a few pounds of silk and metal that hung just above serious injury.

Suddenly, the Valkyrie stopped shaking, and surged upward. Immediately, Dejah threw her weight to the left, banking in a steep curve, spiraling upward. The draft was strong and steady, and the Valkyrie climbed it easily.

“Wooohooo,” Dejah shrieked as the control bar pulled her arms strongly. “Yeah, baby! This is it!”

Max turned the Silver Hammer around just in time to see the Valkyrie nose into the spiral, and began cheering as it rose in a tight helix. “Yes! Yes! I knew you could do it! Dejah, can you hear me? Dejah? Damn it, turn your comm on!”

In a few minutes, the glider was far above the floor of the crater, and Dejah could see the rim below her. She turned the comm back on, and shouted, “Max! Still there?”

a click, and then “Of course I'm still here, you insane Aresian! Holy haleakala! That was something to see! Now get your butt back down to the surface before you get yourself killed in your moment of glory!”
“I hear you there, I'm wiped out. Heading back to the rim now. Meet you at 60 degrees from my current position.”

Max acknowledged, and banked the Silver Hammer, swinging it around for a landing vector.

Dejah leaned slightly to her left, and grinned as the Valkyrie responded without hesitation. “Oh yeah. We're going to make a killer team, I can tell that already.” She felt as though the craft was an extension of her own body, responding to every motion she made, and her own body felt every vibration and gust of wind that shook the Valkyrie's frame.

On a whim, she tucked the right wing of the Valkyrie far down into the wind, and fell into a dive. She could feel her stomach tighten as she plummeted toward the ground beyond the rim of the crater.

“Dej! Pull up, pull up! What in the frakking hell are you thinking? Get on the ground now!” Max was yelling into the comm, but Dejah ignored him, concentrating on judging the distance to the ground.

It was funny, she thought, how so many details could impress themselves on her mind in the short time of the fall. Rocks, dune patterns, a dust devil off on the horizon to the west, even the slight variation in wind speed and strength. All of it came at her in a rush, and her mind calculated, planned, took note.

Then, too soon, the ground was rushing up in far greater detail, and she strained to pull the craft out of the dive. A knot of fear wrapped itself around her stomach. The Valkyrie shook, and wobbled, but the nose refused to pull completely out of the drive.

Dejah swore, and threw all of her weight backwards, shoving her feet forward. The glider began spinning, tumbling towards the surface of the planet. But it was no longer pointed straight down, and that angle was all she needed. She wrenched the control bar to the right, and felt a hot knife of pain slice through her shoulders and back. Pushing the pain aside, she concentrated on banking the glider, coming in to land at an angle.

“Dej, you're still coming in too hot! You land at that speed, at that angle, and you're not walking away from it!” Max shouted into the comm. He had already landed the Silver Hammer, and was struggling to get out of the cockpit.

“I know, I know!” she responded, blinking the sweat out of her eyes. She held the pressure on the control bar, trying to keep the glider in a downward spiral. Gradually, the angle of descent lessened, but she was still going fast, much faster than she had planned.

She could see the horizon ahead of her, and realized that she'd never thought much about the abundance of rocks that covered the ground near craters. “Damn ejecta,” she muttered, as the ground rushed up to meet her.

Max was already running towards the spot where he knew the glider would land when he saw the shadow cross the ground at his feet. He glanced up to see the Valkyrie zip over his head and crash into the harsh terrain, plowing up a furrow of rock and dust behind it.