CHAPTER 4 — THE PLANE BEGINS TO FAIL
CHAPTER 4 — THE PLANE BEGINS TO FAIL
A piercing electronic tone exploded through the cockpit.
MASTER CAUTION.
MASTER WARNING.
Both at once.
Grace grabbed the dashboard.
"What now?"
Malachi stared at the screens.
The left navigation display had disappeared.
Then the engine display.
Then weather radar.
Dark.
Dark.
Dark.
Only a handful of instruments remained alive.
Captain Hale's voice became urgent.
"Malachi, report what you still have."
"Primary flight display."
"Standby attitude."
"Altitude."
"Compass."
"No engine page."
"No navigation map."
The controller inhaled sharply.
The aircraft wasn't dead.
But it was becoming blind.
Across the Atlantic, inside London's Air Traffic Control Center, the emergency room had doubled in size.
Supervisors.
Engineers.
Meteorologists.
Military liaison officers.
Medical specialists.
Every available expert crowded around one radar target.
Flight 782.
On a nearby screen appeared an old photograph.
Captain Isaiah Brooks.
Someone had quietly placed it beside the radar.
No one said why.
No one needed to.
Captain Hale looked at the picture.
Then back at the radar.
"Come on, Isaiah..."
"Your boy needs you."
Maintenance Control called again.
"We found something."
"Go ahead."
"The avionics bay fire suppression bottle discharged."
Grace frowned.
"So?"
"It wasn't supposed to."
"That system uses compressed gas."
Another engineer interrupted.
"If someone tampered with it..."
"...the discharge could damage multiple electronic systems."
Captain Hale finished the sentence.
"And blind the cockpit."
The room fell silent.
This wasn't one failure.
It was a sequence.
Pilots poisoned.
Electronics failing.
Environmental system altered.
Someone had planned this.
Then another horrifying realization emerged.
The engineer's face turned white.
"Oh no..."
Captain Hale looked up.
"What?"
"The suppression bottle..."
"...can only be activated manually."
Grace whispered,
"From inside the airplane?"
"No."
The engineer swallowed.
"From inside the avionics compartment."
"So whoever did this..."
"...was physically inside the aircraft."
Meanwhile, several thousand feet below...
A military radar station transmitted an alert.
"Unknown aircraft drifting off assigned oceanic track."
Within moments, two fighter jets were placed on standby.
Not because Flight 782 was hostile.
Because nobody knew who—or what—was controlling it anymore.
Inside the cabin, passengers noticed something new.
The cabin lights dimmed.
Brightened.
Dimmed again.
Overhead screens shut off.
The entertainment system died.
Phones stopped charging.
Only the emergency lighting remained.
A little boy asked,
"Mom..."
"Is the plane running out of electricity?"
His mother couldn't answer.
Malachi could.
"The main electrical buses are failing."
Grace stared at him.
"Can we fix them?"
He looked toward the overhead panel.
Maybe.
If his memory was right.
His father had once spent an entire weekend teaching him electrical schematics using cardboard models.
"Electricity isn't magic," Isaiah had said. "It's just a path. Find where the path is broken."
Malachi reached overhead.
Thirty switches.
Dozens of guarded covers.
Hundreds of possibilities.
One mistake...
...could shut down the remaining flight instruments.
Captain Hale's voice was steady.
"I trust you."
Grace looked at the child.
"So do I."
Malachi closed his eyes for one second.
He could almost hear his father's voice beside him.
"Never flip a switch because you're scared."
"Flip it because you know why."
He opened his eyes.
Then reached toward a guarded selector that no one had mentioned.
His fingertips rested on it.
Maintenance Control suddenly shouted through the headset.
"STOP!"
Everyone froze.
The engineer's voice cracked with panic.
"If you move that switch..."
May you like
"...you may accidentally disconnect the last source of electrical power keeping Flight 782 in the sky."
END OF CHAPTER 4
