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One

September 26, 2013
100 kilometers south of Bermuda

“What a nice day to fly. Hardly a cloud in the sky, hardly any wind, light load, shame this bird can’t do any fancy maneuvers.” Lieutenant Commander Reginald Hawkins thought to himself. He was flying an MH-60R Seahawk, while it didn’t have the maneuverability of an AH-1Z, the Seahawk was a nice helicopter.

“Good day for a cruise Blackjack,” said his co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Samuel Mackenzie. “It’ll make it easy to land on the deck.”

“True, at least it isn’t pitch black, with a 15 knot cross wind across the deck.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me.”

Hawkins remembered that one particular landing. What Mackenzie forgot to mention was the ten foot seas as well. After two unsuccessful attempts to land, their third was a little rough. And by a little, it was more like the ship decided that they needed to be on the deck then and there, and rose up to meet them. Broke one of the landing the tail landing gear, and fractured the strut on the left one."

“Hey Chief,” called their crew chief, Warrant Officer Robert Michaels, “How’d you get your callsign anyway?”

Hawkins laughed a bit. His crew chief was new, so he let it slide. Before he could say anything though, Mackenzie spoke, “Well it’s kind of a long story.”

“Oh here we go,” moaned Hawkins.

“One night at a bar, he and a bunch of his friends were having a few drinks.”

“So called ‘friends’ I should mention, Mackenzie.”

“Yeah yeah. Anyway, so he’s out with his friends, right? Well, one of his friends spots some good lookin’ girls over at another table. So he says, ‘Hey, let’s go hook up with those cuties.’, ‘Ain’t enough of ‘em to go around bro.” says another.”

Hawkins sighed, Mackenzie was always so eager to tell this story, since he found it so damn funny for some reason. He ignored the story and went back to the instrument panel. ‘Yup, still looking good.’ He brought his eyes up and scanned the sky, ‘Doesn’t get much better than this, man.’ He thought. While they were flying in the Mid-Atlantic, and it was hurricane season, there wasn’t anything in the forecast for bad weather. Hell, he almost wanted a storm to brew up just to make it interesting.

“So Hawkins here goes, ‘Well if you can beat me in a game of Blackjack, then she’s all yours my friend.’, ‘Alright, you got a deck?’”

“And I go,” he added, “’Why yes I do.’ So I reach into my breast pocket, and grab this very deck from it.” as he says this, he reaches into his left breast pocket of his flight suit and grabs a deck of cards.

“You still have those damn things?”

“Hey now, don’t be rude. This deck of mine has helped me out in many occasions. Which is why they call me ‘Blackjack’”

“Aww, you ruined the story.”

“Wasn’t much of a story to tell Mackenzie. Besides,” he returned the deck to his pocket, “while I did win the game, gal was smart enough to know that I was only looking for a good lay that night and didn’t want the same.”

“That’s now what I heard Chief.”

“Doesn’t make it the truth Mackenzie. Besides, there was this one time-“

“Sir,” called Michaels, “were we supposed to get any storms in the area?”

“No, why?” curious, he turned his head to look at his crew chief, and as he did so, he saw the blackest clouds he had ever seen in his flying career off to their right.

“Holy hell, where did that come from?!” said Mackenzie, his voice a bit nervous.

“Heck if I know Mackenzie, whatever it is, doesn’t look good. Iwo Jima on the line, see if they know anything about where the hell this came from.”

“Yes sir!” Warrant Officer Mackenzie reached for the radio controls, and tuned it to the frequency that their chip, the USS Iwo Jima used. “Iwo Jima this is Charlie two-six.” He paused. “This is Charlie two-six calling Iwo Jima” He waited again, and called twice more. “Sir, they’re not responding.”

“Hey Chief, I’d hate to bring more bad news, but that storm is starting to come our way.”

“What do you mean? Like, at us, or in our general direction?”

“Looks a whole lot like at us sir.”

“Shit, this is not going to be pretty.” Almost as soon as he said that, the helicopter was buffeted by winds, almost knocking the stick out of his hands. “What the hell! For a small storm, it packs a freaking wallop!” He grabbed the stick, and strained his muscles to keep the stick from jarring out of his grip

“Shut up and let me fly Mackenzie!”

As the winds continued to howl and buffet the helicopter, Hawkins strained every muscle in his arms and legs to keep his aircraft straight and level. They had another forty minutes to go until they got to Iwo Jima. But at this rate, it may take a lot longer if the winds kept up.

“Keep trying to raise Iwo Jima, tell her that we are having some issu-“

An intense flash of light and a thunderous crack interrupted him before he could say anything else. The aircraft suddenly lost power, and began to spin out of control in the wind.

“Shit! I’ve lost all power, controls aren’t responding!”

Mackenzie already had the radio keyed, “Mayday, mayday! This is Charlie two-six. We’ve lost power and are going down! We’re 100 klicks south-west of Bermuda headed east, bearing zero-seven-six. Mayday, mayday!” Mackenzie kept repeating the mayday call.

But something bothered Hawkins. The entire sky was black now, and he couldn’t see the ocean beneath them. And he was pretty damn sure that they were over an ocean when this storm picked up. Just then, the sky cleared up beneath them, and he saw what looked like to be green fields beneath them, and rising very fast to meet them.

“Hang on boys!” he shouted, “We’re going in hard!”

The last thing he saw was the green fields, before everything went black.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pain, that was the first thing he felt. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘pain means that I am alive, and I am not dead. Yet.’ He blinked and tried to open his eyes. First thing he saw was a dark blur. But as his vision cleared, he saw the inside of the cockpit, and the instrument panel directly in front of him. ‘Oh good, I didn't get ejected from the helicopter.’ He struggled to turn his head to his right to see how his co-pilot had fared.

He wished he hadn’t. Mackenzie’s face was bloodied, but his neck was twisted at an odd angle. What was worse was the tree limb that was impaled through his chest from the front wind-screen. His flight suit was dark, soaked with his own blood. As he looked around, he saw that there was indeed a tree directly in front of the helicopter. And that a second branch had missed him by scant inches. He tried to open his door, but it was broken, and refused to budge. Hawkins looked around again, and saw that the side door had broken away. It was then that he saw the smoke.

“Aww crap.” Being in a crashed helicopter was one thing. Being in a crashed helicopter that was on fire was another thing entirely. And something that he wanted to get the hell away from. As he struggled to get his harness released, he heard his crew chief groan. ‘Crap, I almost forgot about the kid.’ He finally got his harness released, and went back to his crew chief. He quickly looked him over and saw that he was beat up pretty bad.

“Damn, kid.” He said “Let’s get you out of there.”

Michaels’ harness was easier to release, and he quickly dragged Michaels from the helicopter. Once outside he could see the full extent of the crash. The helicopter had crashed at the edge of a field, near a wooded area. The nose of the aircraft was crumpled like a wad of paper. The landing skids were shoved into the airframe, the tail had sheared off, and was lying on its side fifty meters behind the aircraft. Almost all of the rotor blades had sheared off, save the one still attached to the assembly and embedded into the trunk of the tree that the helicopter was stopped by. Thankfully, for the time being, there was to seeable fire, but there was smoke billowing out of the engine.

Reverting to his training, he dragged Michaels to a nearby tree and propped him up against its trunk. In doing so, he realized that he too did not escape from the crash unscathed. He could not walk without a limp in his left leg as well he noticed that his right side hurt immensely. Still, he went as quickly as he could to the aft end of the helicopter, and retrieved what he could from the baggage compartment. He returned to Michaels, and broke out the medical kit. Through rudimentary, he did what he could to patch him up. He bandaged the cuts that he could see, but worried that there may be internal bleeding. And if there was, Michaels didn’t have a lot of time.

He then worked on himself. Besides the limp, which he couldn’t do anything about, the pain in his side was from what felt like, a broken rib. That was also bad, but the kit did have some anti-inflammatory pills, which he took two of. As he did this, the reality of the situation clicked into place.

“How the hell,” he muttered, “Did we get here?” He tried to remember what happened. ‘Flying over the ocean, headed back to the USS Iwo Jima. Storm out of nowhere. Aircraft lost power. Landed…in a field?’

“Now that can’t be right, no matter how weird it sounds.” He said to himself. "I better have not landed in Oz of all things."

He then heard voices. He couldn’t tell who they were from, but they sounded very excited. He quickly checked his gear. survival kits, as well as his 9mm pistol, and three spare magazines. He stowed the gear back in the bag, holstered his pistol, and dragged Michaels farther into the woods.

Hawkins swore to himself. He should have been paying attention to his surroundings, and remembered his training. Get as far away from the aircraft after you crash. Make sure you’re safe first. Michael groaned the whole way to another tree, this time propped up against it, facing away from where they came. Hawkins crouched by a tree not too far from Michaels. As the voices got closer, he also heard the sound of several hooves. ‘Horses,’ he thought, ‘great. That just makes it a whole lot better if they’re not friendly.’

He could hear six voices, a smart sounding one, a quiet one, a loud and obnoxious one, a cheery one, one that had what sounded like a southern drawl, and one that sounded sort of ‘posh’. While his head told him not to do it, he leaned and tried to get a good look at who were at the crash site.

And then his day just got a whole new level of weirder. He quickly retreated behind the tree and tried to put sense into what he just saw. He saw six, what he thought were, ponies. Four were on the ground, the other two were…flying? Not to mention the colors. Purple, blue, yellow, white, orange, was that one wearing a cowboy hat?… And pink?! But there were no humans, or anything humanoid for that matter. So logically the voices had to be coming from the ponies. He stuck his head around the tree to get another look.

“Ponies? Talking ponies?! Christ almighty, what kind of freaking world did we get ourselves into?”

Just then, Michaels began to cough uncontrollably, spurting up blood as he did so. ‘Shit. Not only does he have internal bleeding, but those…things are going to hear-‘

“Hey, shh! Do you hear that?”

“I think it came from the forest!”

‘Him. Crap.’

He went over his options quickly. He could leave his crew chief behind and escape on his own. He could try to escape with him, but with his condition he doubted that Michaels would last much longer anyways. Or he could stay and see what these…ponies wanted. But he was in a strange place, and had no idea who was going to be nice to him, or what they could do. As they approached, he made his decision.

He left.

Author's Note:

To anyone reading this with any military background, I would greatly appreciate any assistance you can lend on any mistakes I make regarding military matters, I would greatly appreciate the assistance as I am civilian, not military.

Thanks again!

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holmesiv

holmesiv #1 · Feb 14th, 2013 · 1 · ·

Fact Check: Navy Warrant Officers are SENIOR personnel. Officers are the ones who get to be pilot; Not the Warrants. Warrant Officers are Sirs, not Chiefs.

Rockdio

Rockdio #2 · Feb 14th, 2013 · · ·

2121669

Thanks, I'll go edit that right now. I wasn't sure, so I went with my gut feeling on that.

holmesiv

holmesiv #3 · Feb 14th, 2013 · · ·

No Problem. All in all it has the makings of a good story.

FicCritic

FicCritic #4 · Feb 14th, 2013 · · ·

Research.
I say this again and again when people try to write things they know nothing about. You need to research the things you don’t know, or adjust the story to something you do know.
There are quite a few issues with how the main character is acting if he were military.
For one, they were flying VERY close to Bermuda, and last time I checked there weren't any conflicts between Great Britain and the US, so in the area he crashed (it would not be that far fetched to say they could be blown 50 miles off course in a storm) would be on friendly little Bermuda.
So you have him crash land on what would most likely be a ‘friendly’ country, then abandon the very expensive government property (which he is responsible for) and hide not only himself but also his wounded crew-mate (who he is also responsible for) from what could very likely be either rescue personal or local civilians checking on the crash.
Do you see where I find great issue with his actions?

Is it absolutely necessary that the main character be military personnel on a military aircraft?
Would it really damage the story that much to instead have the main character as a Civilian pilot taking tourists/clients to/from a destination like Bermuda?
Other Options...
1: Civilian pilot taking tourists. He would be responsible for their safety. He could possibly own the aircraft he is flying, or could be under contract from a tourist agency to fly one of theirs.
2: Civilian pilot taking clients. He would likely be contracted from the owners of the aircraft to fly them wherever they want to go. He would NOT be responsible for anything other than keeping the aircraft in as good a shape as possible while it is in the air.

Does it NEED to be a helicopter?
Yes, I get that the Seahawk is a cool chopper and all, but does it absolutely have to be a helicopter rather than fixed wing aircraft?
If it needs to be a helicopter it could just as easily be a much smaller helicopter ferrying folks from a private yacht to land and back, or island hopping in the Bahamas. Both types of travel aren’t that uncommon and would make sense as to why he was there.

Just some things to think about.

Rockdio