Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Part 14, Chapter 7 - Mission (Finally) Accomplished

You know what's weird? Jonnie triggered an explosion powerful enough to get the absurdly tough gas drone to slew about, but it had no effect on its payload. It'd be pretty hilarious if there was now a cloud of concentrated toxic fumes spreading through the atmosphere over the Atlantic.

Anyway, as Jonnie's preparing for an unplanned return to sea level, he just barely manages to avoid crashing into the plummeting drone. After it whizzes past, Jonnie's ship is buffeted by a plume of water two hundred feet high. He has enough time to open his windows before hitting the sea.

He's knocked out by the crash (not killed, of course, oh no) but woken right up by bitterly cold seawater flooding his ship. Jonnie is filled with "a sudden surge of energy" even while hit by the futility of his actions, which is a little confusing. Nonetheless he frees himself from his seatbelt and floats to the rainy surface.

Jonnie thinks he hears a voice, which he puts down to stories of the dying being called by angels, but then he's hit in the face by a safety line. It's Dunneldeen! Yay! Dunneldeen's dangling just four feet away by a cable ladder, and he reels Jonnie in.

"Come on now, laddie," Dunneldeen said. "Just hold on and they'll pull you up to the plane. 'Tis a wee bit cold for a swim."

So, after chasing down a drone bomber that's conveniently slow and conveniently tailed by a Psychlo fighter that isn't invisible to sensors, Jonnie boards the drone through a conveniently open door, sparks a firefight that conveniently destroys the other plane to get the attention of Dwight, conveniently manages to find a weakness in a mind-numbingly invulnerable aircraft, and is conveniently rescued mere minutes after surviving a crash into the middle of the Atlantic during a storm.

I know fiction thrives on coincidences and twists of fate, but there ought to be a limit to how much you pull off in a given section.


Back to Part Fourteen, Chapter Six

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