I've Flown Twenty Thousand Hours, and You're Telling Me Someone Out There Is Racing on a Sword?!
Meanwhile, inside the cockpit.
Captain He Yiming picked up the insulated mug beside him and leisurely sipped the warm water steeped with goji berries.
Forty-five years old, twenty thousand flight hours, a retired ace fighter pilot from the air force.
Those credentials made him a gold-lettered signboard for Jing Airlines as a whole.
To him, flying a Boeing airliner was little different from driving a mobility scooter on level ground. His whole approach was to be as steady as an old dog.
Beside him, First Officer Chen Ye sat with one leg crossed over the other, humming a pop song off-key.
"Old He, want to grab some skewers once we finish this flight and land in Jinghai? My treat," Chen Ye said with a grin.
He Yiming kept his eyes ahead without so much as raising his eyelids.
"Cut the crap. Watch your instruments."
Just then, a burst of commotion filtered faintly into the cockpit through the thick, reinforced bulletproof door.
It sounded like hundreds of people screaming at once.
He Yiming's brows instantly drew into three deep furrows.
"What's going on back there? Are they clubbing?"
Chen Ye wiped the smile off his face too and hurriedly pressed the intercom button.
"Chief purser, what's happening in the cabin? We can hear it all the way in the cockpit. Get it under control!"
The other end went quiet for two seconds.
Then the chief purser's voice came through, on the verge of tears.
"C-Captain Chen... outside... there's someone outside..."
"Someone?" Chen Ye laughed and turned to glance at He Yiming. "What, someone hanging off the wing to dodge the fare? Is your blood sugar low? Are you seeing things?"
"No! There really is someone! Flying! He's standing on a sword!"
The chief purser babbled incoherently, while the background was filled with ghostly wails and wolfish howls of "An immortal!"
He Yiming's face darkened. He snatched the handset, his tone stern.
"Nonsense! Keep order in the cabin! Whatever the passengers saw, tell them it's optical refraction from reflections in the glass! You're cabin crew. Why are you joining the uproar? Calm the passengers down immediately!"
Click.
He Yiming cut off the call and snorted.
"Young people these days panic at everything. No mental resilience. What else could be up in the sky besides birds and other planes? Aliens?"
Chen Ye scratched his head, about to agree and butter him up a little.
But his gaze unconsciously swept over the TCAS radar display to his right.
Chen Ye froze.
On the display, less than five hundred meters ahead and to the right, a glaring red blip had appeared.
And that blip was moving extremely fast, maintaining exactly the same heading as the airliner.
"Old He, something's wrong." Chen Ye dropped his flippant expression and pointed at the screen. "Something really is coming close. The radar's picking it up."
He Yiming remained as steady as Mount Tai and glanced at the screen.
"Probably a high-altitude weather drone that's strayed off course, or a larger bird. Radar gets clutter sometimes. No need to make a fuss."
Chen Ye said nothing.
He followed the bearing indicated by the radar, raised his head, and looked out through the right-hand windshield.
Just one look.
Chen Ye went rigid in his seat.
"O-Old He..."
Chen Ye's voice cracked completely, and the finger he pointed out the window shook as though he were having a Parkinson's episode.
"What? Developed a stutter?" He Yiming frowned.
"Science... seems to have slipped out of our hands!"
Utterly impatient, He Yiming followed Chen Ye's pointing finger.
The next second.
This ace pilot, who had flown twenty thousand hours and earned a first-class merit citation in the air force.
His brain buzzed and crashed completely.
Five hundred meters ahead and to the right.
In the stratosphere, amid a churning sea of clouds.
A streak of azure light was ripping through the clouds at an unbelievable speed, flying forward.
That was no weather drone.
Nor was it some stealth fighter.
That was a fucking person!
A living, breathing person!
He Yiming's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets as he gripped the control column with both hands.
"What the fuck... is that thing?!"
He Yiming had never sworn in the cockpit in his life. Today, he broke that rule.
He stared fixedly at the figure ahead. In his mind, that unshakable framework of aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, and aviation physics came crashing down at that moment, shattering until not even scraps remained.
This was ten thousand meters up!
The temperature was forty or fifty degrees below zero! The air was thin enough to suffocate someone instantly!
That guy was wearing short sleeves? Wasn't he cold?! How was he breathing?!
Most absurd of all, that lousy iron sword beneath his feet didn't even have canards. It had no aerodynamic configuration whatsoever. How was it generating lift?!
Where was the engine?! Where was the fuel?!
Just as He Yiming's entire worldview was shattering madly.
The fellow standing on the sword ahead seemed to find flying in a straight line too boring.
With both hands behind his back, the man lightly tapped the sword with his toes.
The iron sword, shimmering with azure light, carried that gray-clad figure into a sharp climb. Then, following its momentum, it rolled through three hundred and sixty degrees.
An impeccably textbook, impossibly smooth... barrel roll!
After completing the roll, the man came to a steady stop in his original position and even reached back to scratch his lower back.
"Holy shit!!!"
Chen Ye sprang straight out of his seat and slammed his head against the cockpit ceiling. He grimaced in pain, but his eyes stayed fixed on the scene outside.
"A barrel roll! He did a fucking barrel roll on a sword! No G-suit, no G-loading! This defies science!"
He Yiming said nothing.
He stiffly raised his right hand and delivered a solid slap to his own left cheek.
It burned.
Not a dream.
Not a hallucination.
Someone really was fucking racing through the sky on a sword!
He Yiming reacted extremely quickly. His veteran's discipline let him forcibly suppress his heart, which felt ready to explode. He grabbed the handset and switched straight to the emergency common frequency.
"Jinghai Air Traffic Control! Jinghai Air Traffic Control! This is Jing Airlines 8732! Calling Jinghai Air Traffic Control!"
A calm reply soon came through the handset from air traffic control. "Jinghai Air Traffic Control copies. Jing Airlines 8732, go ahead."
"Unidentified flying object sighted ahead of our aircraft! Repeat! Unidentified flying object sighted! Range five hundred, moving toward Jinghai!"
The voice from air traffic control grew serious. "ATC copies. Radar shows no anomalies. Please describe the target's characteristics. Is it a drone or weather equipment?"
He Yiming clenched his back teeth, his voice practically forced through the gaps between them.
"Target characteristics... the target is a fucking living person standing on a sword! Alive!"
The other end audibly faltered. A full two seconds of silence passed before the controller's puzzled voice came through. "Jing Airlines 8732, please repeat? What did you just... say?"
"I said there's someone outside racing on a sword!"
He Yiming roared into the microphone.
"Short sleeves! Standing on an iron sword! Estimated speed over Mach 0.8! He even did a barrel roll right in front of me! Requesting radar confirmation! Request military radar confirmation immediately!"
After shouting all that, He Yiming slumped weakly into the broad pilot's seat.
Only the hiss of static remained on the other end.
The cockpit fell into that same deathly silence once more.
Only Chen Ye kept pinching his own thigh beside him, sucking in sharp breaths from the pain.
He Yiming stared blankly at the roiling sea of clouds beyond the windshield, looking in the direction of that azure light.
He had spent half his life flying, earned an outstanding pilot medal, and trained countless students.
He had always firmly believed that this sky had rules, that it belonged to aerodynamics and aviation fuel.
But now, he felt that half his life had been lived straight into a dog's belly.