They sent me out here with a rookie?

“It looks like a road sign,” he yelled, pulling his goggles back over his eyes.

She squinted at the green piece of metal, desperately trying to make out the weathered white letters. “D-E-N-V-E . . .” Sophie hesitated. Could it really be?

“Denver,” she shouted over the noise. “It fucking says ‘Denver.’ ”

The pilot chuckled. “My girlfriend grew up there. Before the solar storms scorched it.”

“I don’t find this situation particularly humorous, Captain. Now let’s figure out how to get the—” The chopper shook violently before Sophie could finish her sentence, as more debris crashed into the metal exterior.

“Hold on, I have an idea!” Slowly, the pilot pulled the cyclic up and then rammed it toward the floorboards. The sign slid off the windshield with a whoosh, and became metal confetti seconds later as the chopper’s titanium rotor blades tore it apart.

Sophie didn’t have time to celebrate. Another barrage of debris tore into the exoskeleton of the chopper, melon-sized dents forming on the inside of the door.

The pilot tried to straighten the bird out, holding the controls so tightly his knuckles looked as if they were going to explode. “She can’t take much more of this. Check the radar again!” he yelled.

In the center of the console, the radar was fading in and out, the blur of red disappearing in a wave of static. “The storm must be disrupting the transmission,” Sophie guessed.

A deafening groan interrupted her as the blades above struggled through the cloud of dust. Every inch of their metal cage creaked and moaned. They were in the thickest, most violent part of the storm now.

Two more baseball-sized rocks smashed into the windshield, cracks exploding in all directions.

“Just a little farther, baby,” the pilot pleaded.

Sophie continued to monitor the cracks, mentally willing them not to get any larger. But her pleas went unanswered as another small rock hit the windshield. She held her breath, listening to the sound of her fate as the windshield slowly split, inch by inch. Even over the roar of the storm, she could hear the acrylic glass splintering. It was an odd sensation, knowing a thin piece of glass molded on some NTC assembly line was all that remained between her and the storm. She could almost picture her skin peeling off her bones as the windshield gave way and brown dust swallowed the chopper.

“The radar,” the pilot shouted, shocking Sophie out of her trance.

The hologram was working again, the red bleep representing the storm crawling across the translucent image. “It looks like we’re almost through it!” she exclaimed, maneuvering to the edge of her seat for a better look.

“Thank God. We aren’t going to last much longer,” the pilot said. His red goggles dipped toward the control panel where he studied the pressure gauges. “We’re losing hydraulic pressure by the second.”

Sophie remained glued to the radar. The chopper appeared to be on the eastern edge of the storm, a mere fingernail’s length from safety.