Lighting the Way
"How did you get here, Captain?" asked Manal, chief engineer of UNIRO's Greenland Meltwater Capture Project.
"My team and I fast-roped down few hours ago, ma'am," answered Captain Nartey. "We received your distress call just in time it looks like," he said, pointing to an approaching storm front.
"Yeah," agreed Manal. "Any longer and we would have been stranded here for weeks. That storm is the force of a hurricane."
"Don’t worry, it won't slow our progress," assured Nartey. "We have standing orders to get this project completed within two years."
Manal laughed. "You UNIRO guys… statements like those make me wish I wasn’t just a contractor. I've struggled for years to find funding for this project. Since you guys came along though science and engineering has surely found its place in the world again… And just in time to. You guys have lit the way for so many."
"We do what we can, ma'am," smiled Nartey from under his ski mask and goggles. The temperature was minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit but winds that were gusting to thirty miles per hour were making it feel even colder.
"When will our ride be here?" Manal asked, beginning to get nervous. She knew that if they waited any longer they would begin to get frostbite on the Greenland ice sheet. "How can they see us in all of this?"
Captain Nartey did not answer her. He was listening to something in his earpiece. Suddenly he removed his large backpack and unzipped it. From one its many pockets he pulled out an orange flare gun, loaded it, and aimed it up to he sky.
"What are you doing?" asked Manal, taking a few steps back.
Nartey fired a bright orange flare several hundred feet into the air. "Lighting the way…" he said, lowering the gun.
A few seconds later, over the whistling snowy wind, Manal began to hear a rumble in the low clouds. It was rhythmic, deep, and growing. A half a dozen beams of powerful LED light began to breakthrough the gray haze and graze the Earth. Manal raised one of her hands to her eyes. Through her fingers she saw a huge white aircraft dip out of the sky like a whale gliding back into the water after a jump. It had six engines, each affixed with fast spinning rotor blades that were tilting upwards from a horizontal to vertical position. Two sets of engines were at the planes front, two were at its midsection, and two were at its rear attached to wings that protruded from near the top of its fuselage.
"What is that?" Manal asked with wonder.
"Phoenix 2," said Nartey, "a heavy-lift VTOL transport. She's fresh off the assembly line."
"Wow," said Manal, still in awe as the aircraft, which was a little larger than a C-130, slowly descended from the pale abyss.
The boots of the UNIRO personnel in the aircraft hit the ground moments before the aircraft itself, ushering in the frigid surface party. Once inside, Manal found herself a seat behind Captain Nartey.
“Captain,” she asked, “how often does UNIRO recruit from their previous contractors?”
Nartey turned around, uncovering his face to reveal a smirk, “Most of the time, they’re converted before they have a chance to be considered ‘previous’.”