by Dale Brown
They laughed.
“But I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Zen continued. “Few years from now, maybe two, maybe ten, maybe twenty—hell, I don’t know, the future. Somebody’s going to find our work on a shelf somewhere, and they’re going to realize we were right. They’re going to pull our reports out and they are going to save themselves a ton of work. Probably enough work to save one or two pilots in the process. So we have to get as much done before they pull the plug. Bastian’s going to save Dreamland,” he added, “by doing what he has to do. So we have to hang tough and do what we have to do.” Zen wheeled backward, starting for the door. “Let’s go kick some butt out there today, huh?”
Zen left them in silence, wheeling out the door before they could react. He continued across the hangar and out onto the tarmac where the modified 707, “Boeing,” waited.
The Flighthawk remote systems had grown even bigger since Zen’s accident. The UM/Fs had been grounded for nearly nine months while the entire project was reviewed; computer capacity had been increased on the controlling end, adding to the stored emergency procedures and routines. In the interim, and unrelated to the accident, the cooling mechanisms for the secure communications gear had been “improved.” These increased the remote controlling computer pallet from the size of a Honda Accord to that of a Chevy Suburban with a weight problem. Not only did it no longer fit in an F-15E, it was a squeeze to make the rear of the Boeing.
The scientists swore the gear would be miniaturized in the future—but they kept coming up with “improvements” that added to its bulk. Near-room-temperature superconducting chips and circuitry promised great advances in speed and much smaller sizes, but the gear was still too sensitive to be relied on. Not to mention expensive.
Zen’s accident had led the Air Force to abandon an important part of the original concept—having a combat pilot fly the robots along with his own plane. There were proposals to fit the gear into a B-2, but the guidance telemetry could theoretically alert next-generation sensors to the invisible bomber. The B-1 fuselage needed extensive modifications to fit the controlling unit. Neither plane’s wings could easily handle both UM/Fs, though the B-2’s could be reinforced to do so.
The Megafortress EB-52, on the other hand, was big and strong enough to handle the job. And in fact they had conducted several airdrops and test runs from the Mega-fortress before Zen’s accident. They’d managed one last week, just to make sure some of the modifications to the computer worked properly. Zen would have liked to do more, but the only Megafortress currently plumbed for airdrops was being used as a test bed for next-generation radar and communications jamming equipment. Those tests were running behind and had very high priority. By the time the plane—nicknamed “Raven”—was free for real feasibility work, the Flighthawks would be history.
“Hey, Major. Ready for blastoff?” asked Pete Connors out on the concrete apron.
“I’ve been ready all my life,” Zen told him, following Connors out toward the Boeing. The airman had parked a forklift near the rear crew door. They’d perfected this method of boarding the plane several days before. It was a hell of a lot easier than crawling down the stairs on his butt—which he had done on Raven.
“I ought to get one of these built into my wheelchair,” Stockard told him as he maneuvered under the large forks. Connors had played with the blades so he could easily lock them beneath Zen’s chair.
“Gee, Major, I’m surprised you haven’t gone for the Version 2.0 Upgraded Wheelchair,” joked Connors. “Has your TV, your satellite dish, your come-along cooler.”
“No sauna?” Jeff braced his arms as the metal forks clicked into the bottom of his chair.
“That’s in 3.0. You should sign up for beta-testing,” said the airman. “Ready?”
“Blastoff.”
It took Connors two attempts to get him lined up and through the special equipment bay in the rear of the plane. But that was a vast improvement over the first day, when it had taken eight or nine and he’d nearly fallen to the ground. Zen gave the airman a thumbs-up before rolling forward into the test-crew area.
“Great speech, Major,” said Ong, who’d sprinted out to oversee one of the engineering crew’s most important pre-flight tasks—brewing coffee in their zero-gravity Mr. Coffee.
“I thought you guys fell asleep on me,” said Zen. “I heard some snores.”
“No, seriously. Thanks.” Ong tapped his shoulder. “You’re damn right.”
“Thanks,” said Zen.
“Oooo, Mr. Coffee is smiling,” said Jennifer, climbing in. “Smells like we should use that for fuel.”
“Too corrosive,” said Ong.
Zen wheeled over to the nighthawk station, carefully setting the brake on his wheelchair before snapping the special restraints that locked it in place. The mechanics had cleared a pair of seats and reworked the control area so his seat could be locked in place.
Zen reviewed the hard-copy mission data Ong had left for him before getting ready for takeoff. Placing the Flighthawk computer in static test mode, he took hold of the mirror-image flight sticks, working quickly through the tests with the dedicated mission video tube at the center of the console. He limbered his fingers—they were always cramping like hell—and then pulled on the heavy flight helmet for a new round of checks.
The ground crew, meanwhile, had wheeled the Flight-hawk and its portable power cart out onto the runway. With the control systems operational, Jeff and the computer began yet another round of tests, making sure that both sets of flight computers and the link between them were optimal. Only when this new round of tests was finished did the ground crew fire up the Flighthawk engine, powering the small plane with a “puffer,” or power cart specially designed for it. The Flighthawk’s miniature engine needed a large burst of air running through its turbines before it caught fire.
The UM/F purred like a contented kitten. Impatient to get going, Jeff ran through the control surfaces quickly, flexing the flaps and sliding the rudder back and forth. He split the top screen of the visor into feeds from the forward and tail cams for the test, confirming visually the computers’ signal that all the surfaces were responding properly. He revved the engine one last time, checking temps and pressures.
Preflight finally complete, he put his visor screens back into their standard configuration. Blue sky filled the top half, with a ghosted HUD-like display in the middle and engine and flight data in color graphs to either side. The bottom was divided in three, with radar, flight-information, and instrument screens left to right. If he were flying two Hawks, the typical layout would feature the second plane’s optical or FLIR view on the left, and a God’s-eye of both planes and the mother ship in the middle.
“Let’s get this show on the road, Captain,” he told Bree.
“Acknowledged, Hawk Commander,” she said. “Hell of a speech, Jeff. Everybody appreciated it.”
“Uh-huh.”
The jerk of the aircraft as it moved toward the main runway always took him by surprise; he was so absorbed by the Flighthawk’s stationary view that the sensation was momentarily disorienting.
“Fly the prebriefed orbit,” he told Breanna as they waited for the tower to give them final takeoff clearance. “I wouldn’t do otherwise,” said his wife.
“Anything else you want to say?”
“No,” replied Bree.
“I stayed in the officers’ guest suite. I was too tired to come home.”
“I wasn’t asking,” said Bree.
Zen waited silently as Boeing lifted off and began to circle across the range. Hawk One continued to idle, waiting for its mother ship to hit its first way marker before coming up.
“Point Alpha reached,” said Breanna finally.
“We’re good, Jeff,” said Jennifer, monitoring the systems a few feet away from him. “It’s your show.”
“Flighthawk Control to Dream Tower, request Clearance B for Hawk One, takeoff on Lake Runway D, per filed plans,” he snapped.<
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“Tower confirms, Hawk Control. Hawk One, you are clear for takeoff,” said the controller. “Unlimited skies, we have no wind at the present time. Not a bad day for a picnic. Good aviating, Major.”
“Thanks, Straw,” Zen told the controller. He brought the Flighthawk to takeoff power and let off the brake. The slope graph indicating speed galloped upward as the ground flew by in Jeff’s visor view. By 120 knots the Flighthawk was already starting to strain upward. Zen pulled back on the joystick and the aircraft darted into the sky, eager to fly.
How could they kill this plane? he thought. It needs less room to take off than a Piper, is harder to find than a Raptor, and can turn twists around an F/A-18.
Hawk One’s speed and altitude built exponentially as the P&W powering it reached its operating norms. Zen flew to five thousand feet, steadying his speed at five hundred knots. He began banking into an orbit approximately three miles south of the mother ship, Boeing’s tail appearing in the top of his screen. The techies would run through a series of signal tests here before proceeding with more difficult maneuvers.
“Data flow is good,” reported Ong. “Ninety seconds more,” said the engineer. Physically, he was somewhere to Zen’s left, but he seemed a thousand miles away, back on the ground.
God, to be flying again, Jeff thought. To feel the g’s hitting you in the face as you yanked and banked, to hear the roar of the engines as you went for the afterburners and shot straight upward, to gag on the kerosene as the smell of jet fuel somehow managed to permeate the cockpit.
Okay, some things he could do without.
“We’re ready to push it,” said Gleason.
“Pilot, proceed to second stage,” Zen told his wife. “Proceeding,” said Breanna.
Smith was gone. Jeff hadn’t said anything to her about the SOB that night—what was there to say? Who could blame her for going somewhere else?
He would have preferred anyone else in the world. But you didn’t get to choose who your wife had an affair with.
“Major, we’re ready. If you can bring your altitude up to ten thousand—”
“I’m on it,” he told Ong, pulling back on the flight stick and nudging the throttle slide.
They were going to simulate an air launch with a roll and tumble beneath the mother ship—not the preferred, smooth method, but a necessary test to make sure the improvements to the communications system held. Jeff pushed away the extraneous thoughts, pushed his head into the cockpit, into the unlimited sky around Hawk One. He was flying again, and if he didn’t smell the kerosene in his face or maybe feel the g’s kicking against his chest, his head was there, his mind rolling with the wings as his eyes fought for some sort of reference, his sense of balance shifting and almost coming undone as the small plane inverted beneath Boeing to kick off the test pattern.
“Good, good, good,” sang Jennifer. “Oh, Mama, we’re good.”
“Yes!” said Ong. “Solid.”
“Hawk One copies,” said Jeff, swinging around and heading into a trail pattern behind Boeing as briefed.
“Drop simulation was perfect,” added Ong.
“I got that impression.”
“You want to push it? We can try that penetration test we put off yesterday,” added the engineer. “I think our game plan was way too conservative.”
“Copy. Bree?”
“I’m game, if you tell me what you want.”
“Circle back and just begin again. I’ll take it from there.”
“Roger that,” she said.
Jeff took the Flighthawk off toward the west end of the range, zooming near Groom Mountain before heading back on a high-speed intercept with the mother ship. As he came around, the search-and-scan radar bleeped out a big, fat target for him, painting Boeing as if she were an enemy bomber trying to sneak in for an attack.
Fit this sucker with some decent missiles and it would be a front-line interceptor.
“Beginning Test Phase,” Jeff told the others as he closed behind the Boeing at a rate of roughly fifty miles an hour. “Ten seconds.”
“Go for it,” said Ong.
“Copy,” said Bree.
Why was he avoiding her? It was more than Smith. Hell, Smith had nothing, or almost nothing, to do with it.
Zen pushed the Flighthawk into a dive as it flew under the tail area of the mother ship. He mashed the throttle and rolled inverted, swooping down and around in the direction of the mountains. The plane swooped through a thousand feet before he leveled off at five hundred feet, cranking at just over five hundred knots.
“Computer, ground terrain plot in left MUD,” he said. Immediately a radar image appeared. Zen pushed the Flighthawk lower, running toward the mountain range.
Attack planes often flew at low altitude to avoid radar. The reflected ground clutter made it difficult to detect planes when they were close to the ground. Something as small and stealthy as the Flighthawk would be invisible.
Zen flew Hawk One into a long canyon at the far end of the test range, gradually lowering his altitude to three hundred feet above ground level. The floor of the canyon was irregular; he went through one pass with only fifty feet between the UM/F and the side of narrow ridge.
The image in the main viewfinder was breathtaking. He could see the sides of the mountains towering above him as he raced down the long corridor. He flicked his wrist right, pulling the small plane on its wing as he took a turn into a pass. The radar plot in the lower quadrant flashed with a warning of an upcoming plateau, but Zen was on it, gently pulling back and then nailing the throttle for more speed. The exercise didn’t call for him to break the sound barrier, but what the hell. He felt the shudder, then eased back as the image steadied—there was no longer a line between him and the robot plane; the distance had been erased.
“Looking good,” said Ong somewhere behind him.
“Mama!” yelled Jennifer.
“I’m having trouble keeping up,” reported Breanna.
A complaint? A compliment?
The Flighthawk was at nearly top speed, flying at less than a hundred feet over the ground. Zen began his turn, starting to lose speed as the wings dragged through the air. The UM/F’s flight surfaces adapted to minimize some of the loss, the forward canards pushing upward as he made the turn. He was down to 550 knots, pretty damn good, the plane having taken nearly nine g’s. The maneuver would probably have blacked out a “real” pilot.
“We’re still hot,” said Ong. “Okay, Major, Captain—knock off and return to holding track. Series One, Two, and I guess we’ll call Three complete. We need a few minutes to dump the data, but it looked impressive.”
“Full communications gear and functions,” reported Gleason.
“I had some trouble at the end,” said Breanna. “You pulled out to about eight miles.”
“Yeah, well, you just have to keep up,” Zen told her.
“Doing my best, love,” she snapped.
Zen could feel the others in the control area around him bristling. They used to banter back and forth like this all the time—but then it had been joking fun; now it seemed to stick, to wound.
“Sorry, Captain,” he said. “I guess I was feeling my oats. I’m still getting the kinks out.”
“No apology necessary.”
He couldn’t remember how they’d been. He couldn’t remember the past and didn’t want to—the past was poison now.
“Let’s try the same test, only at twenty-five miles,” suggested Ong. “You think you can work the track out, Zen?”
Twenty-five miles was twice as far as their improvements were supposed to be good for, and beyond the theoretical limit of the communications and control system. But Jeff just snapped back, “Copy,” and began pushing the Flighthawk to its starting point.
This time he took the initial dive a little easier, letting his wings sweep out as he found the thicker air. Boeing swept south, widening the distance between itself and Hawk One. Zen concentrated on the virtual windshield, moving with t
he small plane as it sailed over the mountain slopes at five hundred knots. His altitude over ground level dipped to a bare fifty feet.
He could go lower. He nudged the stick, more brown flooding into the view screen.
He was fifteen miles from the mother ship, forty feet AGL.
Thirty-five.
He felt like he was there. The dirt-alert buzzer sounded, warning him of an upcoming ridge.
Zen leaned his body with the stick, sliding around the obstruction.
Oh baby.
“Hawk connection lost,” scolded the computer suddenly.
“Hold present course. Override safety procedure. Reacquire,” Zen demanded. He still had live visuals, and in fact thought he was in control.
“Out of range,” said the computer. “Safety Routine Two.”
“Shit. Bree.”
“We’re where you put us,” she said defensively. “Reacquire,” Zen repeated. He jerked the stick, but nothing happened.
Then the view screen went blank.
Behind him, the engineers were scrambling.
“It went into fail-safe mode,” said Ong. “Sorry. Once it’s in Routine Two it’s impossible to override. That was added.”
He stopped short of saying, “After your accident.”
“We did really good, though,” insisted Gleason. “We were at seventeen miles before the signal began degrading.”
“Once it did, it went like shit,” added Ong.
“Com modules are off-line,” reported Jennifer.
“Hawk One is returning to the lake bed,” said Ong. He broadcast a generic “Knock it off” alert over the Dreamland frequencies, even though the skies were clear.
“Well, at least we know the fail-safe is working,” said Breanna.