Nerve Center (34 page)

“I hope you’re all enjoying yourself,” said Rap, pushing the Megafortress into the long slope that would launch the U/ MFs.

At least Jeff seemed in a good mood today.

“Flighthawk launch in zero-five,” she told her husband. “Prepare for alpha maneuver.”

“Rosin the bow, maestro.”

THE AIR LAUNCH OF THE FLIGHTHAWKS WENT OFF without a hitch, as did the first refuel, despite the increased turbulence generated behind Gal by the new engine configuration. When Dreamland Control asked them to shift ranges to accommodate another flight, Jeff was happy for the break.

“Trail One,” he told C3 as Breanna brought the EB-52 southwestward. The computer informed him it was complying, and Jeff slid his flight-control helmet up over his head. He glanced at the console to make sure it duped the controls—it did—then eased back in the seat.

With both Jennifer and Ong tied up on other projects, they were flying without a techie aboard today. While Zen thought the minders had long ago become superfluous, he did miss having someone on the deck to joke with—or hand him a Gatorade during downtime.

He fumbled for his small thermos cooler stowed between the two stations, barely within reach from his seat in the widened Flighthawk control bay. The original B-52’s had three different crew areas. The pilot and copilot sat on the flight deck at the top front of the plane. The electronics warfare officer and gunner had a cabin on the same level behind them, where their side-by-side seats faced the rear of the plane. Below and roughly between these two areas was a bay for the navigator and radar operator.

In the Megafortress, the pilot and copilot—along with the extensive array of flight computers and advanced avionics—could handle all of the offensive and defensive duties as well as fly the plane. This allowed the other compartments to be modified and adapted according to the plane’s specific mission. Raven, for example, had been intended as a test bed for advanced ECM warfare and Elint-gathering craft, and her upper rear bay included extensive gear for that mission.

Gal, intended from the start as a dedicated Flighthawk “mother” with AWACS-like tracking capabilities, had duplicate U/MF control consoles in the upper compartment as well as the lower, where Jeff sat now. Lengthening and reshaping of the plane’s nose area during the remodel added two more seats on the flight deck, which would be used for the operators of the plane’s long-range surveillance radars. The changes had also made the lower Flighthawk bay somewhat more spacious than the offensive weapons station of a B-52G, though most of the extra space was taken up by test equipment and recorders.

Gal’s T/APY-9 surveillance radar had been installed, but its programming was not yet complete. For now, only the system’s most rudimentary capabilities were available, though even these were impressive for a fighter jock used to the traditional limits of small-area pulse-Doppler units. Operating in F band like the AN/APY-2 in the AWACS/E-3, Gal’s next-generation slotted, phased-array antenna was twelve feet wide, rotating in a slight bulge at the bottom of the fuselage roughly where the strike camera and ECM aerials would be located on a standard B-52. While only a third of the diameter of the APY-2, the radar had nearly the same range and capability as the earlier AWACS, with Pulse Repetition Frequency and environmental modes helping it pick up fighters “in the bushes” at fairly long range. At present there was no way to slave its inputs into C; Jeff had to manually send the feed to one of the multi-use display areas, read the plot, and take appropriate action. While most combat pilots would kill to have what amounted to their own personal AWACS unit, the procedure felt somewhat clunky in the Flighthawks’ otherwise seamless overlay of information and control.

Jeff popped the top on his soda and sipped slowly, watching the control panel. The U/MFs sat in their trail positions as precisely as a pair of Blue Angels preparing for a flight show.

The T/APY-9 required a few minutes to “warm up”—the revolving radar unit slowly accelerated from idle (one turn every four minutes) to operational mode, which was four revolutions per minute. The spinning disk changed the plane’s flight characteristics, and the pilots had to adjust their control surfaces and in some regimes their engine settings to compensate for it.

Jeff checked the unit’s status on panel two of the starboard station, then told Bree that he was about to gear up.

“Hang tight a second, Zen. We need to run through a systems check up here,” she replied.

“Roger that.”

Zen listened in as the two pilots worked through a short checklist; the procedure mostly consisted of his wife saying something and her copilot replying “in the green” or simply “green,” indicating that the item was at spec. But the snap in her voice fascinated Jeff, giving him a window into part of her that he hadn’t seen before the Megafortress and Flight-hawk projects were wed. He loved his wife for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that she was an excellent pilot and a fine officer; in fact, while he’d known that those things were true when they dated and married, he hadn’t paid much if any attention—they’d worked in what were then completely different areas. But over the past few months he had come to admire her on a professional level as well. There was a certain satisfaction listening to or watching her work, as if her efforts justified some judgment he had made: My wife is not only beautiful and a great lover and companion, but she can kick ass too. Zen knew it was probably just a selfish ego stroke, but he couldn’t help smiling to himself as she and her copilot cleared him to start the radar.

“We’ll be at the next mark in, oh, call it three minutes,” Bree told him.

“Looking good,” said Jeff, sliding on his Flighthawk control helmet.

“Sitting that close to the radar,” joked Chris, “you won’t need birth control tonight.”

“Ha-ha,” said Jeff.

“Fuel burn?” said Bree in her most businesslike voice.

Jeff jumped into the cockpit of Hawk Three and began descending, watching the radar plot on the left side of the screen supplied by T/APY-9. The feeds were being recorded and the diagnostics were all automated, but Zen didn’t see the point of having the damn thing on and not using it. Smaller and stealthier than a normal fighter, the Flighthawk had a radar cross-section about the size of a sparrow’s, but the T/APY-9 followed it easily as it slid downward. Jeff’s rudimentary controls allowed him two views—full and close-in—as well as query and non-query mode, which attempted to identify targets through ticklers or ident gear. The finished product would be able to fall back on a profile library for planes that didn’t respond, a feature C3 already had.

Close-in mode painted the Flighthawk at two thousand feet AGL, five miles distant, which was the test spec.

“Gal, I’m going to push Hawk Three out to ten miles and then dial the radar down to ten percent, see if we can follow it. Give the radar a real run. What do you say?”

“Simulating a hundred-mile scan?”

“Two hundred radius, give or take.”

“That’s going to put you outside the test range, Hawk Leader.”

“Roger that.”

“Wilderness area,” said Chris. “Sometimes they run tour helicopters up across the lake and around the mountain.”

“I’ll scan it first,” Jeff said. He clicked the Flighthawk’s radar into long-range search and scan while lowering his airspeed, making sure the air ahead was clear. Then he clicked the tactical AWACS radar’s plot into long-range view as well.

Clear.

He tucked the Flighthawk on her right wing, nudging toward a vast orange-colored plateau. There were times when he flew that the universe seemed to open up; he forgot he was sitting in the belly of a lumbering bomber, totally absorbed in the experience projected on his visor. He forgot about everything and just flew.

There was a valley about a mile south. Ducking into its recesses would give the T/APY a real workout. Jeff nudged the fuel slider on the underside of the control stick, picking up speed before plunging with a glorious roll down into the canyon.

A rock outcropping jagged off the side ahead. He had to pull hard left. He tried hitting the rudder pedals, didn’t get a response.

Of course not. His legs were useless. He had no rudder pedals.

Damn, he thought to himself, I haven’t done that in months.

ANTARES.

They were still weaning him from the drugs. Sometimes he thought of saving all the pills, taking them together, seeing if that might do it.

Zen pushed the idea away, concentrating on the flight, but he’d lost the magic. He began to climb mechanically, easing back toward Galatica as the bar showing the signal strength edged toward critical.

The Flighthawk was fat on the radar. But there was something else on the screen, at the far edge, something low and very small.

Not blue, as a civilian plane should have been coded by the gear.

Red with a black bar.

Another Flighthawk.

A spoof or bizarre echo.

Another contact swallowed it. A large civilian plane, flying very low, less than a hundred feet from the ground.

Jeff pressed the ident gear, but the contacts had disappeared.

“Bree, change course, go to 0145,” he said, naming a vector to the southeast. “Go!”

“Jeff?”

“I need you to snap on that course,” he said.

The Boeing complied, but the contact was lost. Jeff told C3 to put Hawk Three back into Trail One, then slid his control helmet up and reached to the other panel. But he couldn’t remember the right sequence to get the radar feed to replay off the test equipment.

“On course,” said Breanna.

“Chris—a hundred, hundred and fifty miles ahead on this vector. There any military installations?”

“You’ve got us straight on for Mount Trumble and the Grand Canyon,” said Chris.

“Beyond that.”

“Have to look at the paper map.”

“What’s the story, Zen?” asked Bree.

“I think I picked up another Flighthawk.”

“Jeff, no way. The radar probably just had a shadow or something.”

“I think we have to check it out. We have the fuel, right?”

Breanna didn’t answer.

“Nothing on the map,” said Chris.

“No Army base?”

“Well, I mean, how far do you want me to look?” asked the copilot.

“Two hundred miles.”

“Zen—”

“We have to check this out, Bree. The radar picked up a Flighthawk.”

“At two hundred miles?”

“It was flying in front of a larger plane. I think it’s Kevin.”

“Geraldo said she thought he would try and hit Los Alamos. If he’s still alive. And crazy.”

“We have to check it out,” he told her.

There was another long pause.

“Gal Leader concurs,” she said finally. “Notifying Dreamland Tower. I’ll see if there are any other government facilities along the route.”

“In the general area. It could be north of our course,” he added, picturing a pair of Flighthawks hugging the terrain en route to a target.

“Copy that.”

Aboard Hawkmother
Over Hulapi Mountains, Western Arizona
7 March, 1120 (1020 Dreamland)

THE GRAY-STRIPED JAGUAR STALKED BACK AND FORTH as the wind gathered force, the trees stirring and then shaking. The cat stopped, looking upward as it scented danger.

But it was too late. Madrone opened his talons wide and caught his enemy behind the neck, twisting with a sharp jerk so hard that the sharp claws severed the head completely from the body.

The first Avibras FOG-MPN crashed through the roof and down into the floor of the reception area of the DOE building at Skull Valley; it cleared a large hole to the basement. Ma-drone managed a quick correction on the trail missile, getting it cleanly through the two holes and into the basement laboratory area where he believed Theo Glavin would be. Hawk One, which had launched the missiles, shot wildly to the right as a massive secondary explosion rocked the sky. Madrone pitched the plane upward, his sensors temporarily blinded by the massive explosion of a pressurized helium tank.

He’d blown it. Even with his modifications, using the short-range weapons had been a tremendous mistake. Minerva had been wrong—she’d tricked him somehow, keeping him from his revenge.

Madrone felt himself falling from the plane, tumbling toward the parched desert. He was out of Theta, about to die.

I just want to be left alone, he thought. I want to be at peace. I don’t want to be a robot—I don’t want revenge or to kill anyone. I just want peace.

I want to die.

Christina stood before him, crying.

But warm hands clamped around his shoulders, and Minerva whispered in his ear.
I want you. I want you.

Even though he did nothing to initiate it, even though he didn’t think of his Theta metaphor or try to control his breathing—Madrone snapped back into Theta, back in control of the Flighthawks.

Hawk One circled above the roaring flames of the Skull Valley DOE facility. Hawk Two, still carrying its missiles, hit its IP two miles from the target, approximately six miles from Hawkmother.

The security shack was the only part of the facility left intact. Madrone zeroed in on it from Hawk Two and fired one of the Avibras FOG-MPNs. As the missile sped toward its target, he saw a small culvert on the roadway about a half mile south. He targeted it and pickled, wiping out the only approach to the lab.

“Target destroyed,” he told the Boeing’s pilots. “Return.”

He felt the pull of gravity as the pilots jerked the plane into a tight bank and hit the rocket-assist pods to accelerate. It felt good. He needed to get home, needed to wrap himself around his lover, sink deep inside her.

Aboard Galatica
Over Arizona
7 March, 1130

DREAMLAND TOWER HAD JUST REQUESTED ADDITIONAL information when the sky exploded fifty miles ahead of Breanna’s left wing. The flare of the explosion seemed to tear the bluish haze in half.

“Holy shit,” said Chris.

“Get a fix on the location. Tell them,” Breanna said.