Life on Earth

In the depth of night, when shadows played tricks with the mind, an Indian Air Force C-130J heavy-lift aircraft cut through the darkness above Wadi Sayyidna airstrip, a lonely speck of civilization about 40 kilometers north of the beleaguered Sudanese capital, Khartoum. The IAF's mission was to rescue 121 souls, each carrying a story of their own—a pregnant woman, people who had lost their way to Port Sudan, and others whose lives had become entangled in the chaos of a country in turmoil. April 27 bled into April 28, the fabric of time fraying at the edges. The airstrip, itself a testament to the isolation and desolation of the place, offered no navigational aid or fuel, and the darkness was so complete that the landing lights normally found on such airstrips were rendered useless. The IAF crew, however, found solace in the poetry of their electro-optical and infrared sensors, which whispered secrets of the runway's emptiness and the absence of hidden threats. And i