Buck Rogers
grip to his right. His forearm rested in a padded groove. He felt a sense of famiharity with that system. It was the right-hand stick control instead of the larger stick mounted in midfloor of the cockpit. Even the F-16s he'd flown awhile had the side-mount stick, as did several of the bigger jetliners of his day.
He glanced up at Wilma. "Firing controls?"
"Two buttons in the front of the right-hand controller. The top button is for homing stingers. They have a combination of seeking devices—infrared, electrical, radar, and magnetic. They all work at the same time, so one of them is bound to do the job. You have fourteen stingers. Each trigger squeeze sets off one missile at a time. You want a bunch of stingers out there, just beat a tattoo on the stick."
"Lower button?"
Wilma took a deep breath. "Laser," she said slowly. "We don't know how it works in atmosphere, because it scatters the beam and attenuates the power charge."
"Then what the hell is it doing in the ship?" Buck demanded.
"It's designed to work in space," Wilma said. "I can cut the heart out of a ... a battleship of your time out there, because the laser is really a disintegrator ray. There's no attenuation in vacuum. We get full power. It also sets up a vibration where it strikes. It turns molecular and cellular structure into mush, and the laser beam keeps right on going to gut the interior of your target."
"But we don't know if it works from this flybaby," Buck insisted.
"We'll find out soon enough," came the rejoinder.
Buck turned back to the flight instruments and controls. "Fly-by-wire, right?" Wilma nodded. 'You put pressure on those controls, the computer senses your requirements and makes corrections two hundred times a second. The Skua is basically unstable. Without this system, it would tumble like a toy thrown by a child and—"
"Rogers! Admiral Barney here. Come in." Barney's voice came to them simultaneously.
"School's out, Colonel. Get the devil out of that oversized toy and into the real article. Deering, you reading me?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Then get with it, woman! I want launch in three minutes or
A Life in the Future
less. You have anything left to tell Rogers, you do it while you're on your way upstairs. Go!"
"We're on our way, Admiral," Buck answered for them both.
They slipped away from the simulator and crossed into the adjoining bay where the launch readiness crew awaited them. Buck moved into the front seat; everjrthing was exactly the same as the simulator. Except that this thing is a winged bomb, he told himself This ride is going to be for keeps.
"Get rid of that oxy helmet," Wilma ordered from the back seat. "Put on the globe helmet. The tech crews will fasten everything and hook us up for radio communications."
The crew was there immediately. A bubble pressure helmet went over Buck's head. There were no wire connections; everything was high-frequency FM within the ship, including their spoken words picked up by their mikes and short-beamed to radio communications with lo.
"You clear, sir?" a tech asked.
"Clear in front," Buck replied.
"Clear in back," he heard Wilma's call.
"Closing and sealing the canopy," They heard the tech's voice through their helmet headsets. A rounded clear glassite dome lowered from a back hinge. It seated tightly against the fuselage, and Buck felt the change in pressure as the Skua was sealed within its own systems.
"All right, people," Wilma sang out. "Clear the launch bay. Open the doors and flumes."
Buck felt the thudding sounds of thick protective hatches slamming into their lock-and-hold positions. "Launch leader, give me a ten countdown for jet start."
"We're ready, Major. Starting now. Ten . . . nine . . . eight. . ."
"Throttle advance for the jet engine to thirty percent," Wilma called. Buck eased the green knob forward with his left hand. He kept his right hand on the sidestick controller. He never wanted to remove his hand for any reason when they prepared for launch or during flight.
At the call of "One" and "Jet start," Buck felt and heard the booming roar of the powerful ramjet behind and beneath him. The engine howled like a banshee, causing the Skua to quiver in her restraints. He was impressed. They were only at thirty percent power, and he felt as if he had more juice at his disposal
Buck Rogers
than all four engines of the jetliners he had flown back in the twentieth century.
"Buck, through launch, I'll handle the power sequence and you fly this mother. Got it?"
"Got it."
"You can climb out at any angle you want."
"One last question." He knew the final seconds were rushing away. "What's the climb rate?"
"One hundred and thirty thousand feet a minute. Save the questions for later! Final check. G-suit inflated?"
"Go."
"Harness?"
"Set."
"Get your head back hard against the seat rest behind you."
"Okay set."
"Launch crew," Wilma called through her mike. "Five-second count and launch."
"Roger that, Major." More hatches moved. Buck felt a sudden pressure buildup; even in the enclosed space of the Skua cockpit, he felt the trembling of compressed air ready to blow.
"... three, two, one. Launchr
There wasn't even time for Buck to feel the explosive surge of compressed-air energy around him in the angled launch tube. At the same instant he heard the word "Launch!" he realized the upper hatch cover leading to the exterior of/o was still closed, and they were being hurled straight into the thick metal plate.
A tremendous surge of compressed air shot violently upward from lo, much like a great slug of ice-hard water. At the same moment, the firing officer depressed the launch button and a circular metal hatch swung to one side, leaving behind a frangible fiberglass covering between the ocean and Skua.
Everything worked as designed. Buck saw the world before him turn violently white. Simultaneously the charge of compressed air blew the Skua upward through the angled tube. Buck barely had an instant to see the fiberglass housing erupt into a thousand pieces. Everything happened with blinding speed, like a motion-picture film being run a hundred times
A Life in the Future
faster than normal.
Acceleration mashed him back against his seat, glued his head and helmet to the padded headrest. The g-suit bladders squeezed his legs, thighs, and stomach like a giant vise, but at least he was prepared for the physical blow.
Then water took over the world as the Skua hurtled upward, still encased in its great slug of compressed air. Before he could even worry about whether they might be damaged or trapped within the ocean, green yielded to brilliant sunlight. For a moment, weight fell away. The Skua poised in midair, slowing almost to a hover, well away from lo and safely above the ocean surface.
Before the killer fighter could begin to fall back toward the water, a green light flashed on the control panel in front of Wilma, and a computer voice, in a frantic tone, boomed, "'Fire!'" Wilma had been ready for it, but even if she had been incapacitated by the wild lunge away from /o, automatic controls would have taken over the climbout.
She tried to call to Buck to hang on, but the words never had time to change from thought to voice. She squeezed the rocket motor grip. Sound smashed back from the Skua, booming through the fighter, and in that same instant a huge pillar of fire blasted into existence, white-hot, shrieking, a dinosaur cry of uncontrolled energy.
Flame shot back into the ocean, exploding into a huge geyser of foaming steam erupting skyward. It never touched the Skua. Two hundred and sixty thousand pounds of blazing rocket thrust blew the Skua skyward as if shot from a monster gun. The killer ran for the high heavens.
Buck sat transfixed, amazed, overwhelmed by the rapid sequence of events. Suddenly Wilma's voice, straining against the high g-forces, came grating through his headset. "Fly this thing, damn you!" she shouted. "Zero three zero heading, nowr
Buck pulled himself together and concentrated. He moved the sidestick controller to the right, then barely touched the right rudder pedal. He wondered how the aerodynamic controls could overcome the surging rocket thrust, realizing almost with the same thought that the stick control and rudder pedals must be linked through the electronic control system to the rocket motor, which was gimbaled to allow any combination of up-and-down or
Buck Rogers
side-to-side movements in response to his control pressure.
He realized just how right he was when an invisible force from his right mashed his body against the side of the cockpit. The Skua turned in response to his controls and was veering east from a northerly heading to Wilma's call for 030 degrees, the change in direction bringing on the sideways g-loads.
Buck had climbed sk5rward in some hot fighter planes, but this was like a continuous, nonstop blast from some giant cannon. Clouds appeared as if by magic; the ship flashed through them as if they were faint traces of vapor.
"Ten seconds," Wilma sang out. Digital numbers appeared, glowing, directly before Buck's eyes on the cockpit windscreen. The HUD glow told him everything. Without taking his vision from where was fl3dng, he was able to get all the data he needed from the heads-up display. Wilma's call meant their rocket boost would be gone in ten seconds. By now they were rushing through the sky with such speed the ramjet had more than enough air smashed into its burn chambers to continue ignition.
He directed his attention to the engine gauges as the seconds of remaining rocket thrust flashed away. The air gauge read 115 percent, more than enough for the ramjet to continue at full power. What a bird! he exulted. And everything works just as advertised. . . .
Abruptly he was thrown forward against his harness. They were climbing at supersonic speed, and in that virtual silence, the rocket thunder remained far behind them. As quickly as the rocket burned away its last fuel, even before it could tail off in sputtering flames, the automatic controls set off the pyrotechnic charges to separate the spent rocket casing from the Skua. Now they flew on ramjet thrust alone, and the Skua responded much more easily and quickly to his control inputs.
"I have the target locked into the sweep search," announced Wilma. "Still at zero three zero degrees, but it's accelerating and climbing, turning to a more easterly heading."
"Range? Altitude?" Buck said quickly.
"One niner miles slant range; we're closing steadily. The enemy aircraft—"
"Just call it a bogey," Buck said, reverting back to the old combat aircraft calls.
Wilma hesitated only a second. She was sharp, fast, support-
A Life in the Future
ing him beautifully.
"Bogey at seven-two thousand."
"And no contrails," Buck noted.
"Buck, I'm picking up unusual gamma radiation," Wilma said quietly. "Much more than we should expect up here."
"Stand by one," he replied, switching to open frequency. lo would be trailing an antenna that would pick up his radio calls.
"Barney, you on the line?"
Admiral Benjamin Black Barney answered immediately. "Five by five. Buck. Go ahead."
"We're closing in on the bogey—"
"We've got you both on the scope."
"Okay. Did you read Wilma on the gamma radiation?"
"Affirmative. I don't like it. That's their main power source. We've checked back at Niagara Orgzone. That thing has been in the air for the last three days and nights."
"Which means they've got power coming out of their ears," Buck said grimly. "The crew has to be far forward in a compartment that protects them against their own radiation, as well as blast effects. I don't think we can keep our laser firing long enough to bother them. From what I know of these designs—and we worked on them, too—it's probably armored in all its vulnerable points."
"Buck . . ." Barney paused, and the momentary break brought a scowl to Buck's face. "Our computer shows they produce more than free radiation from their reactor. They can direct a beam of gamma radiation directly at the Skua. It won't hurt the structure, but it will go right on through your canopy. You'll be okay for about ten or twenty minutes, but then it's . . . well, you know."
"Sure I do," Buck said. "It's called a death sentence. Wilma?"
"Go."
"We can still use the disintegrator. It won't take the plane out, but in a bird like that, with their electronics, they'll seal off the crew compartment inside their blast and vibration shields. Which means they'll be viewing everything through video-holo scan. They'll be inside a winged tank, and with our laser working, there's no eyeballing us directly."
"Range nine miles, closing steadily. Bogey is now at eight-three thousand, heading zero eight two. Okay, Buck. What you just said. We use the laser disintegrator to keep their heads down
Buck Rogers
inside their cockpit. We can fire the stingers at them at the same time."
"Wilma, it isn't good, baby. That ship is a flying tank. Either we get a direct hit on the reactor or penetrate the crew cockpit; otherwise we can't stop them. The only other way is to send some stingers right up the tailpipes of those jet engines. That way we can bust up their plumbing and—"
"Skua, Barney here. We show four missiles directed at you. Radar-homing, computers on board the missiles. You better do some fancy flying, fella, right now!"
Buck watched the incoming missiles in his heads-up display—four bright lights racing toward them. "Wilma! Do you have decoys in this fancy toy?"
"Yes."
"Set for radar disruption and absorption. Fire two at the missiles coming in from the right. Fire nowT
Two decoy missiles, slender and accelerated by pencil-thin dazzling green fire, flashed away from the Skua, rushing to intercept the larger missiles curving toward their fighter.
"Buck . . . those two on the left—" Wilma let the sentence hang.
Buck knew he had to time this perfectly. If one of those missiles hit them directly, the party was all over. But he still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
"Wilma . . . the decoys with the radar signal beacons? The moment you see the stingers explode those missiles on our right, fire them directly ahead."
He hadn't spoken a moment too soon. Two enormous roses of boiling flame followed his words. He barely had time to shout, "Fire decoys!" Wilma was ahead of him. At the first glare of the explosions, she had launched two simulator missiles, each radiating a powerful signal to attract any radar-homing device.
"Buck . . . those missiles coming in ... " Wilma's voice showed strain. He didn't have time to explain.
"Time to impact from the two on the left," he said calmly.
"Seventeen seconds," she snapped out.
"A lifetime, baby, a lifetime," he said with an unexpected lilt to his voice. "Count me down at eight seconds."
"Eleven seconds to impact."
''Now!" he shouted. He forgot about Wilma, about the enemy
A Life in the Future
aircraft, about everything save those two missiles boring in and what he could do now to thwart them.
His hands and feet moved in a blur. The Skua seemed to go wild. He tramped left rudder, and the fighter whipped into a dervish of aileron rolls to the left, whirling crazily. The two missiles coming in lost hard acquisition and veered toward the radar decoys Wilma had fired directly ahead of them.
Now Buck slammed the right rudder, brought the stick to the right, and then again to the left. The Skua slewed wildly, tumbling. Buck felt blood running down his lips—a g-force nosebleed. He'd had plenty of them, but the sight his wild maneuver produced was worth it.
Two enormous explosions filled the sky with great clouds of flaming smoke. Immediately Buck rolled the Skua back to the right and then shot straight ahead. Just short of the mushrooming smoke clouds, he horsed back on the stick. G-forces squeezed him painfully, and Buck felt gray along his peripheral vision. They must have pulled fifteen to twenty times gravity. He shot upward
, half-rolling to the left, climbing inverted so he could keep both the two remaining missiles and the Mongol plane in sight.
"What's the speed of those missiles?" he asked quickly of Wilma.
"Straight and level at Mach two."
That would work . . .
"Are they following us?"
"Yes! I've set your screen up so you can see our position relative to the missiles and—"
"How fast can this buggy go?"
Mach three, but we burn fuel like mad that way."
"We don't need much. Hang on to your hat, Wilma! And keep tracking the missiles."
"Will do. I'll let you know if they close in on us."
His next words almost paralyzed Wilma. "That's just what I want them to do," he said, laughing. "Okay, baby, down we go!"
He whipped the Skua into a rolling turn, coming out of inverted flight into a punishing, curving dive in pursuit of the Mongol plane. With gravity working with the Skua, their speed jumped quickly to three times the speed of sound and kept increasing. The great winged shape of the enemy aircraft
Buck Rogers
expanded swiftly.
"Buck! Two more missiles coming at us. They're in a fan spread!"
"Just what I want."
""Are you crazy?"
"Nope. Just like the admiral said, more like a maniac. Turn on our transponder. Full sweep."
"But. . . they'll home in on us. We'll be a sitting duck for—"
"Save the speeches for later. Do it!"
She switched on their ultra high frequency broadcast signal. To any radar tracking system within a hundred miles, the Skua was now a perfect illuminated target. The missiles veered toward them.
Buck's timing was exquisite. When it appeared they must surely be hit, he threw the Skua into wild barrel rolls, enormous around-and-around maneuvers describing a great corkscrew in the sky. Tracking the powerful signal from the Skua's transponder, the electronic brains in the missile warheads did exactly what they were designed to do—they followed the Skua.
Or at least they attempted to. One of the four missiles tumbled wildly from its gyrations, flipping out of control to crash into another missile, causing another fiery explosion in the sky.
Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 19