The Sigil Trilogy (Omnibus Volume1-3) by Henry Gee

Author:Henry Gee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: apocalypse, science fiction, steampunk, archaeology, evolution, solstice, pyramids, hard sf, eclipses, galactic empires
Publisher: ReAnimus Press

Chapter 11. Pilot

The Wilderness of Judaea, Earth, August, 2054

Blood and destruction shall be so in use

And dreadful objects so familiar

That mothers shall but smile when they behold

Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war.

William Shakespeare—Julius Caesar

The pilot once had a name but he had forgotten it. It had been drilled out of him in a dozen training camps across the Khalifa. But he was content to have submitted himself to a greater mission, a greater conquest. For the final moment had come, when the Khalifa would regain Holy Al-Quds and drive the Zionists into the sea at last. Secure in the cockpit of his strike jet, he was wired so thoroughly into its computer, its avionics and weapons systems, that he could control them all with a flicker of thought. He and his aircraft were one, and yet just one barb of one vane of one feather in the ten thousand wings of the Prophet.

With his remaining spark of individuality, he was proud to have been selected for this, the very first wave, to demonstrate that the Khalifa had the resolution to sweep all opposition away, and not (for shame) talk so vividly of blood and skulls and death and yet run screaming like children at the faintest hint of opposition. Those times were over. His task now was not destruction, but terror: to fly beneath the Zionist radar too fast for their missile systems to follow, buzz the rooftops of Tel Aviv, circle over the sea and return. After that, the batteries of missiles would pound the cities into dust, and waves of ground troops would do the rest.

Not that the passage of an aircraft flying at Mach 7 less than a hundred meters over the city wouldn’t be destructive in itself. The turbulence of its wake would be as a white-hot airquake, piercing eardrums, shattering windows, ripping any unprotected object smaller than a laden truck off the ground with the demonic rage of a twister. Buildings immediately beneath its path would have the air sucked out of them and implode, and anything organic within fifty meters would burst into flames. The effect on any exposed human being in this range would not be far short of that of a nuclear strike.

The pilot mused on such things with satisfaction as he arrowed across the Jordanian Desert, the currents of his thoughts exalting as his craft danced and wheeled to his direction through the canyons, tracing the contours of the grey and yellow mountains on the wings of dawn, generating a roaring cloud of dust in its train. This was true exhilaration—to have achieved the dreams of centuries, to be as free as a dove, as a raven, even though on an errand of war.

That his senses were occasionally clouded with spots of blackness he attributed to the lurching shifts in acceleration as the plane altered its course constantly under his direction. His own human body, wired into the system, was physically immobile: and so at first he ignored the

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