by Nick Cook
‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ Tom said through a clenched jaw. ‘Anyway, unless that device of yours has a way to freeze time too, we need to get out of here as quickly as possible before they realise we and the micro mind are missing.’
We took hold of the micro mind between us, Tom wincing as his hands partially disappeared into it, and carried it towards the door. I pressed the door release on the third attempt and the door swung open. We slipped out into a passageway that was nearly deserted aside from a woman pushing a cart with office supplies. I was just thinking that this was almost starting to feel too easy when an alarm shrieked out.
A voice came from a speaker over the door. ‘Security breach detected in Cell Twelve. Lockdown initiated.’ The sound of bolts sliding into place came from the door to the stairwell ahead of us. A blast door began to lower to shut off the hangar on the other side of it, a red light spinning above.
‘They must have realised that you’ve escaped and are locking down all the exits,’ Tom said.
‘But you must have studied every conceivable way in and out of this base, lockdown or not?’ I said, knowing Tom well.
‘I have, but it’s sealed tight. Not so much as a fly can get out of here.’
Just like that my misplaced confidence evaporated. Invisible or not, just like before I was about to be trapped inside this base.
But then I saw the woman with the cart had managed to get it jammed under the descending blast door, wedging it open.
‘How about stealing a TR-3B?’ I said.
Tom’s shimmering mouth fell open. ‘Bloody hell, Lauren. It’s such an utterly insane plan that I have to say I actually rather like it.’
I grinned at him as we carried the micro mind towards the jammed-open blast door.
A lift door opened in the corridor and Alvarez and a team of Overseer soldiers appeared. I mentally held my breath, but they rushed past us towards in the direction of the cell we’d just come from.
‘OK, we need to get a move on,’ Tom said.
‘What really?’ I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
We reached the blast door just as the woman who’d been frantically pulling at her jammed cart was joined by a guard. He tried to help her, but it didn’t shift and he pulled a radio from his belt. ‘This is Reece. Raise and then lower Section A doors. We have a jammed obstruction beneath one that needs clearing.’
‘Affirmative,’ a woman’s voice replied over the radio.
With a grinding sound the blast door began to raise, freeing the cart. As the guard pulled it clear, Tom and I quickly carried the micro mind through. A moment later the heavy door slammed closed behind us with a loud, reverberating clang.
We ran across the empty hangar towards the nearest TR-3B as the wail of an alarm echoed throughout it. It seemed everyone working there had disappeared and then I spotted the last few people disappearing through a door, no doubt into a secure area for the lockdown.
‘I’m assuming you know how to fly one of these things?’ I said as we neared the Astra.
‘Not exactly,’ Tom replied. ‘But I’ve been studying this ship’s schematics. Although the theory is one thing – putting that knowledge into practice is entirely another matter.’
My brilliant plan didn’t seem quite so clever now, but I did my best to inject utter confidence into my voice. ‘You’ve got this, Tom. So how do we get this ship back to the surface?’
‘Well, that guard will be out cold for another thirty minutes before he comes round to tell anyone I’m involved. Lockdown or not, I still have some clout here for now. I can issue an order to Control to give us clearance to fly out.’ He pointed towards the blurring pips on his shoulders. ‘Rank does have its privileges.’
We reached the craft and Tom pressed a button on its belly. A short while later, with our precious cargo stored in the hold, we headed up the ramp into the now familiar cockpit of a TR-3B.
With a flick of my wrist I dropped us back into particle reality, much to Tom’s evident relief.
He settled himself into the pilot’s seat and I sat beside him, in the seat Zack had used on the other ship. The screens before me were filled with what seemed like hundreds of readouts. It would have taken years of training to fully understand them. Unfortunately, that was a luxury we didn’t have.
Tom stretched his fingers. ‘OK, let’s give this a whirl.’ He pressed a button in his chair arm. ‘Control, this is Commander Jenson,’ he said with the southern drawl back in place. ‘Immediate permission for departure with ship –’ he glanced at one of his screens – ‘zulu, delta, four, three, one, for an infiltration mission. Authorisation, Skybird.’
‘Commander, I’ve no record of any mission in the flight log,’ a man’s voice replied.
‘This mission is off-book, son,’ Tom replied.
‘But, Commander, we have a lockdown in place. You’ll need to wait for the all-clear.’
Tom huffed. ‘For god’s sake, this mission is time-critical. We have an asset that is about to be captured by the enemy. Don’t make me come down there and tear a strip off you. Or would you prefer to be thrown in the brig for ignoring the orders of a commanding officer?’
There was a long silence and I raised my eyebrows at Tom. He just shrugged.
A coughing sound came over the channel. ‘Initiating platform-raising procedure now.’
‘That’s more like it, son. I’ll put in a mention of your cool, level-headed thinking in an emergency. You’re a credit to this base.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the man said in a much happier tone, and Tom killed the channel.
‘That was an absolute masterclass in how to bluff your way out of a tight corner,’ I said.
Tom raised his chin towards me. ‘Oh, I have years and years of experience in how to excel at exactly that.’
With a lurch, the view on the monitor screen of the outside hangar started to scroll downwards as our TR-3B was raised on its platform towards the entrance to the shaft in the ceiling above.
We were travelling at a respectable ten miles per hour or so, but I was itching to accelerate our ascent. It felt like several lifetimes passing as we entered the shaft and the steel panels began to move past us as we moved up towards the surface. With every passing second I became increasingly convinced that our deception would be discovered and the platform would come to a shuddering stop.
Oblivious to my building paranoia, Tom busied himself with the flight controls, practising moving the joysticks through all orientations and spinning every button. When he at last seemed satisfied he turned to me.
‘I’m going to have my hands full flying this bird, Lauren. So just in case I am going to need you to familiarise yourself with the weapon systems.’
I stared at the bank of controls. ‘How the hell do I do that? This thing looks like the deck of the Enterprise.’
‘Relax, it’s not as complicated as it looks. The large middle touchscreen is the gunner’s target control system. All you need to do is double-tap something you want to shoot down and a lock icon will appear if the target is in range. This ship’s AI control system will then track it. You’ll just need to take the shot by squeezing the button of the joystick on the right arm of your seat.’
I glanced down to see the controls exactly as he’d explained them and nodded. ‘OK, that sounds straightforward enough. But let’s hope we’re long gone before there’s any need to shoot anything down.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ Tom replied as the surface hangar finally came into view.
As before there were jet fighters parked up, along with some helicopters. The hangar doors were already open revealing a clear blue sky…one that hopefully we’d shortly be flying through.
‘You are authorised for immediate departure,’ the man’s voice said over the cockpit speaker.
‘Thank you, Control,’ Tom replied. He took a deep breath and gave me a sideways glance. ‘Do you remember your first driving lesson, Lauren?’
‘Of
course. I scared my Aunt Lucy half to death. I managed to mix up the accelerator and the brake pedal. I nearly hit a lamp post in an empty car park.’
‘Well, this feels about a thousand times more stressful than that.’
‘I’ve every faith in you, Tom.’ I made sure I didn’t let my nerves come through in my voice, only injecting Tom with confidence.
‘Let’s just pray your belief is well placed then. Commencing pre-flight checks.’
He toggled several switches and I heard the familiar gentle hum of the drive buzzing into life as gravity relaxed its grip within the cabin.
Tom squeezed his eyes shut before snapping them open again. ‘Close hatch and then raise legs…’
His verbalised checklist so didn’t fill me with confidence.
Tom pressed a few more buttons and a hiss came from the hydraulic systems beneath the cockpit floor. The slit of light from the hangar vanished as the ramp closed. ‘OK, we’re floating free on the GR drive.’ Tom gently twisted the right joystick round until the nose was pointing towards the open doors.
An alarm warbled out and the doors ahead of us began to close.
‘Commander, you’re instructed to shut down your systems and prepare to be boarded,’ came the voice from Control.
‘What do you mean?’ Tom asked as he placed his left hand on the trackball.
‘I’ve just had confirmation that no flights are to leave. The base security level has been raised to FPCON Delta. A terrorist is believed to be on the loose in the base.’
‘Sorry, I’m having problems hearing…you…you’re breaking up.’ Tom made some pop and crackling sounds, before pressing a button to kill the comm link.
‘Do you honestly think they’ll buy that?’
‘Not for a second, especially when I do this.’ He pushed the right joystick forward and we sped towards the gap that was surely already less than the width of the ship.
I pressed myself back into my seat. ‘Um, Tom…’
‘Relax. Remember I studied all the manuals…twice.’
I couldn’t help but notice the beads of sweat popping out over his forehead. I was absolutely certain Tom was about to slam our craft into the closing doors, and my stomach muscles instinctively clenched as I braced for the massive impact.
But then, at the last second, Tom tipped his left joystick to the right and the Astra veered over on to its side. With centimetres to spare, and thankfully no shower of sparks, we shot through the gap in the doors and into the outside world.
I whooped. ‘Amazing flying, Tom. We’ve bloody well made it!’
Tom cast me a frown. ‘Nothing like it, Lauren. Trust me, they’ll already be scrambling an intercept squadron to chase us.’
My brief feeling of euphoria evaporated.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We’d been speeding away from Area 51 at a steady Mach 7 for the last ten minutes. From my understanding of physics I knew that this was even faster than a bullet, which only travelled up to Mach 2.5. It was mesmerising watching the dusty barren hills covered in swathes of dark scrub, whipping past at an incredible speed.
Under Tom’s directions, I’d managed to turn off our flight transponder, making it harder for anyone to locate us. Meanwhile, he’d settled into his role as pilot and had honed his skills as best as he could in the short time available. Testimony to that, the ride had been silky smooth so far. And of course there was no turbulence to worry about when you were flying in a ship that didn’t rely on aerodynamic lift but sat in its own gravity bubble.
I had just begun to think that maybe this might be easy compared to what we’d just been through when an alarm shrieked out. I made a mental note to myself to never relax when out on a mission.
Tom glanced at one of his screens. ‘I knew it was only a matter of time. We have pursuing craft at six o’clock behind us. Keep an eye on them with your gunner’s screen, Lauren.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘Just move the joystick in the direction the arrows indicate.’
So far I’d been using my gunner’s screen targeting reticle to follow our progress towards the horizon. Now three arrows had appeared to its side. I tilted the control, following the direction indicated by the arrows, and immediately the screen view spun round until it was pointing backwards.
The arrows vanished and three small green boxes appeared, ascending fast into the sky. Next to them was an information tag that read: TR-3Bs – 60.5 nautical miles.
Goosebumps broke out across my back. ‘Tom, what range do the weapons on this craft have?’
‘According to the schematics, the rail gun should reach a hundred miles or so if fired in a parabolic arc.’
‘Then I can take a shot.’ I centred one of the tiny green boxes in my targeting reticle and began to tighten my finger on the firing trigger.
‘Lauren, stop,’ Tom said. ‘Those Astras shouldn’t be able to catch up with us and can only maintain a steady distance, so there’s no need to shoot. Besides, they could dodge even a hypervelocity round at that distance. A rail gun might be a great weapon for a static target at long range, like a naval gun on a battleship, but less so with a target that can manoeuvre fast enough to avoid it. You’ll need to wait until they’re almost on top of us to stand a chance of hitting them.’
‘You’re telling me they don’t have guided missiles?’
‘There’s little point because they’re far too slow to react at the speed that TR-3Bs fly. Skunkworks are researching antigravity-driven missiles for the Navy who operate that fleet of TR-3Bs out of Area 51. However, they aren’t ready to be deployed yet.’ He tapped his breast pocket. ‘Saying that, I have the schematics for them on a USB memory stick, procured from Area 51. Jodie is going to have a field day when she sees it, especially with all the other secrets I managed to steal. On balance, my mission, though somewhat truncated by your appearance, has been a success.’
‘God, I’m so sorry for blowing your cover, Tom. I had no idea you’d be there.’
‘You weren’t meant to. Nobody was. Anyway, we can discuss all that later when we get back to…’ His words trailed away as a warning red arrow appeared at the side of my screen.
Enemy radar lock flashed up on my screen.
‘I thought you said they weren’t going to be a threat?’
Tom stared at one of his screens. ‘It’s not them. I’m seeing two other incoming aircraft flying at Mach 2. They’re one hundred and forty miles out at our one o’clock position.’
‘Oh, bloody hell!’ I spun my gunner’s screen round to see the targets for myself.
As the view shifted forward, the new arrows that had appeared were replaced by two red lock boxes with text-info tags alongside.
‘Targets identified, Tom. They’re US Airforce F-22 Raptors.’
‘They must be flying flat out with their afterburners to achieve that speed.’
‘But there’s no way they can stop us, right?’ I asked.
‘As far as I know—’
The rest of his sentence was drowned out by an alarm. Two diamond boxes had appeared over the red lock boxes and were growing larger.
‘Enemy missile lock,’ a female computerised voice announced. Thirty seconds till impact flashed up on my screen.
‘Good grief, they’ve just fired at us,’ Tom said. ‘You try to shoot those missiles down, Lauren, whilst I do my best to avoid them altogether.’
Adrenaline thrummed through my body as I pressed the screen icon locked on to the left-hand missile. ‘Target lock,’ the computerised voice said.
I tightened my jaw as I pulled the trigger.
A rising tone hummed through the ship and a circular cloud of shockwave air appeared in front of our Astra as a dart shape sped away from us at an impossible speed. I counted to ten. A tiny fireball appeared beneath the left-hand missile lock box on my gunner’s screen. I stared at it as the missile vanished in a cloud of tumbling debris. The rocket engine burst from it and cartwheeled towards the ground.
&nb
sp; ‘Nice blooding shooting!’ Tom said.
But I ignored him, focusing fully on the other lock box that was growing rapidly in size. I stabbed the gunner’s screen, desperately trying to lock on to it, but the AIM missile was closing way too fast thanks to our crazy speed. It hurtled towards us, leaving a corkscrewing smoke trail behind it.
‘Ten seconds until impact,’ the computerised voice calmly announced
‘Tom!’ I shouted.
‘On it!’ He flicked his right joystick sideways.
Even with the gravity-reduction drive, I was shoved hard to the side of my seat as our Astra instantly switched direction and hurtled at a right angle to its original flight path.
The gunner’s screen spun round automatically as it tracked the remaining missile as we sped away at an incredible speed. The missile’s turn was almost slow motion in comparison to the manoeuvre we’d just pulled as it desperately tried to reacquire its lock.
But Tom was already centring the joystick and pushed it forward. I was slammed back into my seat as our TR-3B raced forward at Mach 7 again.
The view on the gunner’s screen continued to track the missile as attempt to turn. But it was already falling away far behind us. Now I’d seen for myself exactly what Tom had meant when he’d said that conventional missiles were no match for this craft.
‘OK, we’re past those Raptors and are out of range of their weapons’ range,’ Tom said. ‘We’re lucky that our systems even picked them up. F-22s are incredibly stealthy and present an almost invisible radar profile. That’s testimony to just how sophisticated the sensor suite is on these TR-3Bs.’
I let out a long puff of breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. ‘And thank god for that.’ My heart only gradually beginning to decelerate, I spun the gunner’s screen back towards the other pursuing squadron of Astras. As I read their info tags a trickle of electricity ran down my spine. The distance between us had closed to fifty miles. A moment ago I would have considered that a huge distance, but not after our encounter with the F-22s.