Free Rain Saga by Riley Barton Page A

“Terence, bring the ship down! I repeat, bring the ship down! She’s being blown out!”  
    “ What ? Keith, I can hardly control this thing!”
    “Just do it!”  
    Luna could feel her fingers slipping, and she began to sob with terror. “I’m slipping! I’m slipping!” She screamed, kicking frantically at the air. “Oh God, oh God! Please! Someone help me!”  
    “Don’t move!” Keith shouted. “I’m almost there, Luna. Don’t move!”  
    Her left hand slipped free, putting all the strain on her right arm. She heard pop, and her body twisted violently as her shoulder dislocated, ripping the narrow handhold from her grasp as her body whipped around in the rushing wind like a kite in a storm.  
    She screamed in terror and pain and desperately flailed her arms and legs in a futile attempt to slow her fall as she watched the smoking Stratocruiser growing smaller and smaller above her.  
    A fraction of a second later, her body connected with the swamp. The force of the impact knocked her unconscious before she had completed her first skip across the foamy, green waters. She bounced two more times before coming to rest in the shallow murk near shore.

Chapter 10

    “She fell! I repeat: she fell!” Keith shouted through the comm, watching in stunned horror as Luna’s body slammed into the water below.
    “Oh crap! Did she make it?” Agent Fox yelled.
    “I can’t be sure. What was our altitude?”
    “When she fell? Like, maybe ninety feet—a hundred tops!” Terence shouted back “I really don’t know! I’ve got a lot on my mind right now! Like keeping this bird in the air so we don’t all die!”
    So she could have survived, Keith thought, bracing himself.  
    “Terence, can we make it back to the city?”
    “No way, Keith—we’re hit too bad! I’ll try to get us as close to New Denver as I can, but we’ll probably end up ditching long before then.”
    “All right,” Keith said, crawling away from the gaping hole where their V-244’s rear hatch had been. “Ditch us in the first open place you find. We’re going back for Miss McKelly.”
    “What? Are you crazy? That place is crawling with Swampers! And what if she didn’t make it? I don’t know about you, but I’d hate to go through all the trouble of trudging through hostile swamplands just to bring back a corpse!”
    “She’s our objective, Fox!” Keith said, returning to his seat. “And Agency protocol dictates that we do everything in our power to keep that objective from falling into enemy hands. Now take us down! We’re not going to leave her out here!”
    “Yes, sir. Understood,” Terence replied through clenched teeth. “I’m switching to AI assist.”
    Keith cinched his harness and settled into his chair, his adrenaline surging as the Stratocruiser began to lose altitude. He gripped his chair’s armrests firmly, forcing himself to remain calm. He knew he would need a level head in order to salvage what was left of his mission.
    “Brace yourselves! We’re coming in hot!” Terence shouted.  
    The Stratocruiser dipped and rocked, banking in an attempt to slow its descent, before slamming into the ground. The stricken aircraft bounced, sheering off its starboard engine strut on a tree before flipping nose over tail and skidding to a stop several hundred yards from its initial point of impact.  
    Keith shook his head, tasting blood. He took stock of the situation—forcing himself to remain conscious. He was hanging upside down in his seat, suspended nearly seven feet off the floor. The cabin was dimly illuminated with flashing red status lights and the occasional sparking conduit. The only thing immediately in his field of vision was the area directly below him, which was strewn with the shattered pieces of Luna’s field equipment, weapons, and ammunition.  
    Well … at least we didn’t explode, Keith thought, slowly regaining some of his bearings.  
    He glanced up and could see that all of his team members