SECTOR 64: Ambush (20 page)

Like the surface of a small sun, the energy wave's advancing front now filled her field of view, so big its curvature was no longer evident. Along the vertical plane—above, left, right, and below her—the expanding sphere of energy created new horizons. For a moment, it generated the impression Sandy was tunneling straight up from some dark depths to emerge into a white-gold sky. Then, the illusion reversed. It appeared she was plummeting nose-first into a star's surface.

When the intensity of the light grew unbearable, Sandy threw an arm across her face. The ubiquitous light rendered flesh translucent. Even with her eyes squeezed shut, the shadows of her right forearm bones were clearly visible.

Air Force Captain Sandra Fitzpatrick screamed in horrified agony.

In an instant, the all-consuming light and its attending agony vaporized. As if cast from an x-ray binary's brilliant star into its paired black hole, Sandy plunged into impenetrable darkness. In the radical reversal of sensations, she felt as if she'd fallen into a sensory deprivation tank.

A scream echoed through the black void.

Sandy gasped for air, and it stopped. Panting, she probed her surroundings. Her right hand fell on hard surfaces familiar to her touch. No longer masked by her screams, the surreally normal sounds of her fighter's cockpit reasserted themselves. Blinking furiously, her eyes darted left and right in a desperate search for visual input.

A moment before, she'd flown toward a blindingly bright energy wave. Now, she couldn't see. Sandy's elation at still being alive ebbed as a new horror gripped her soul.

Am I blind?

A few panicked seconds later, the cockpit's instruments and then the city lights below came into focus. "What the hell was that?" A quick scan of the instruments showed all aircraft systems functional. She still rocketed toward the enemy ship at Mach two.

Sandy looked down. Without realizing it, she'd placed a protective arm over her abdomen when the wall of light had approached. Somehow, she knew the baby was okay. She didn't know how she knew it, but she did.

After a moment, she lifted the arm and manipulated the tactical display. On its surface, symbols of hundreds of her fellow aviators still rocketed in every direction. However, something was wrong. All communications had ceased. The previously manic radio chatter had evaporated.

Knowing she would receive no reply, but needing to check anyway, Sandy tried to reach one of her flight members. "Any Dragonfly assets, please check in."

Nothing but deafening digital silence.

She wiped a tear from her cheek.
Damn it! Chuck, Major Donaldson … I'm so fucking sorry I couldn't help you.

After a moment, she changed to the command network. This time, the snake of fear slithering up her spine worked its way into her words. "To any aircraft in the vicinity of San Francisco, this is Dra-Dragonfly Five. P-please come in, over."

Nothing, silence.

She swallowed, reining in her fear. After a calming breath, Sandy continued. "TacCom Forward, this is Dragonfly Five. Come in, over."

Still nothing. Only the normal clicks and ticks generated by cosmic rays and the secure radio's frequency hopping algorithms came through her helmet speakers.

She looked at the tactical display again. It still showed hundreds of aircraft over San Francisco.

Looking outside, she glared at the giant alien ship seventy-five miles ahead of her fighter. Even from this distance, it was huge.

"What the hell did that light do?"

A yellow flicker drew her attention. On the ground, near the bottom of the mountainous ship, the bright flash of a small explosion blossomed along her line of sight. Checking the tactical display, she saw a purple icon disappear before she could read its identifier.

No laser had fired. It looked as if the aircraft had simply flown into the ground.

Scanning her instrument panel, Sandy's tear-muddled eyes kept gravitating to the tactical display. Something was odd, she couldn't put her finger on it. Except for the ones lost in the lead-up to the light, hundreds of aircraft symbols still flooded her display. Represented by every color of the rainbow, all the ships continued on various vectors.

"Vectors?" The word triggered something. Sandy felt an insight trying to percolate to the surface.

She jumped as the hauntingly silent radio sparked to life. "TacCom, this is Nellis Actual. What is your status? Over."

Again, Sandy recognized the voice as General Pearson's. He was calling from Nellis Air Force Base's command center. The general received the same silence that had greeted her efforts.

"TacCom, this is Actual," General Pearson said with irritated impatience. "What is your status? Your data stream has flat-lined."

"Flat-lined!" The word triggered an epiphany. Sandy looked at the myriad fighters flying across the tactical display. The elusive oddity snapped into perfect clarity. Its message struck Sandy like a slap in the face.

"Oh god," she whispered.

After a hard swallow, she selected the tactical command frequency and toggled the mic button. "Nellis Actual, this is Dragonfly Five, over."

"Dragonfly Five, what in the hell is going on over there? Have any missiles hit the enemy ship?"

"Nellis Actual, the target was successfully engaged with at least three GBU Twenty-Eights."

"Great! How'd they work?"

"I was still pretty far away, sir, but they looked ineffectual. We may as well have thrown firecrackers against a tank."

The general paused, apparently taking in what she had said. When he spoke again, the impatience had returned. "Roger, Dragonfly Five. What happened after that? Why can't I raise TacCom?"

"Sir, when our missiles hit their ship, I think they fired some kind of … main weapon. Something we hadn't seen before."

Closing to within fifty miles, the alien ship now towered above the horizon, its top obviously higher than her fighter.

"I think we lost everyone."

"Everyone?" The general sounded dubious. "Dragonfly Five, I'm not talking about your squadron. I mean TacCom. Why have all the data streams flat-lined? Why can't I get ahold of anybody?"

"Sir, I don't mean my unit. I think we lost
everybody
within a hundred miles."

After a moment, she realized she wasn't getting any closer to the alien ship. Even at Mach two, it appeared to be shrinking. Checking her tactical display, she realized the ship had already moved north of San Francisco Bay.

The general was still chewing on her ear. "What in the hell would make you think that?"

Sandy ran a hand across her abdomen. "General, whatever that weapon was, it almost killed me too, and I was still over a hundred miles away."

"Dragonfly Five, I said the data had flat-lined, not died. I'm still getting feeds. They're just not doing anything. Everybody hasn't been blown from the sky. I don't know what you think you saw, but I still have a few hundred aircraft out there, and I need to talk to them!" He shouted the last part, the staccato sound of a hand slapping a desk accompanying each word.

General Pearson had touched on the oddity that had tugged at her subconscious. "Sir, when our aircraft lose all pilot input, they default to straight and level flight. If you check your data stream, you'll see that all of them are now doing just that."

After a pregnant pause, the general said, "Oh my god."

The enemy ship was gaining speed. Even at this distance, she could see it shrinking in apparent size. "Nellis Actual, the alien ship is moving north."

Falling behind at Mach two, Sandy cut the fighter's afterburners. Retarding the throttle, she set the autopilot to maintain 250 knots. Looking northwest, she watched in horrified amazement as it plowed through the atmosphere. A supersonic shockwave haloed the massive ship. A few seconds later, the monstrous vessel disappeared over the horizon.

A computerized voice snapped Sandy out of her trance. "Traffic, traffic!" On the tactical display, a blue symbol was dead-ahead. The target's six hundred knot airspeed combined with her own generated a closing speed in excess of eight hundred knots. Sandy had a split-second to avoid a head-on mid-air collision.

A flick of the wrist sent her fighter into a ninety-degree right bank. A metallic flash followed by a shockwave marked just how close the plane had passed.

A quick scan of the tactical display showed the other aircraft was a navy F-18 single-seat fighter. Clicking on its icon, she discovered its call sign, Blackjack Twenty-Two. Switching to guard—a frequency monitored by all military aircraft—Sandy transmitted. "Blackjack Two-Two, this is Dragonfly Five on guard."

Nothing.

"Blackjack Two-Two, this is Dragonfly Five." Sandy's voice took on a desperate tone. "Come in, please."

Nothing, only deafening silence.

Banking hard to reverse course, she checked the display. Blackjack Twenty-Two still headed east, its altitude and heading apparently unperturbed by the near-miss. While working to close the gap between the two fighters, she returned to the TacCom frequency. "Nellis Actual, this is Dragonfly Five. Still no contact on all frequencies, but be advised, the enemy ship disappeared over the northern horizon." Not waiting for a reply, she continued to transmit. "I just had a near-miss with a naval F-18, Blackjack Two-Two. He's not responding on guard. I've turned to intercept. I'll try to visually verify the pilot's condition."

"Roger, Five. We monitored the ship's departure. That's a good plan. I need to know what the hell happened to our people. Check out the F-18 and report back. Nellis Actual, out."

"Roger, sir. Five out."

She was already closing on Blackjack 22. In tactical mode, it was running dark with position and anti-collision lights off. However, her forward-looking infrared scope had no problem picking out the small twin-engine aircraft. Locking onto its IR signature, she programmed in an intercept vector. Taking over, the autopilot guided her fighter into gun range. Designed to keep the fighter's nose oriented on a potential foe, the system commanded the autopilot. Using fire control computer data, coupled with the target's infrared signature, and fine-tuned with laser ranging and predictive algorithms, the system only required an F-22 pilot pull the trigger to engage a tracked object. While the auto-lock feature wouldn't bring her into formation with the F-18, it was bringing the navy fighter into gun range. She had no intention to fire on the fighter. However, the resultant position would expedite the night link-up.

Indicating target in range, the symbols bracketing the F-18 changed from red dashed lines to solid green. Silhouetted against the snowcapped Sierra Nevada mountains, the fighter glowed in the monochromatic light of the half-moon. Sandy turned on her landing lights. The beams were invisible in the arid desert atmosphere. However, the sleek gray twin-engined fighter looked white in their brilliance. Hoping to get the pilot's attention, Sandy toggled the lights on and off several times.

"Blackjack Two-Two, this is Dragonfly Five. Please come in, over."

Nothing.

Wondering what horror awaited, Sandy shuddered as a chill ran down her spine.

The landing lights didn't work as a searchlight. She wouldn't be able to slew them sideways to inspect the fighter's cockpit. To preserve her night vision, she killed the lights.

Moving her fighter forward, Sandy narrowed the gap. Approaching the naval F-18 from the left rear, she studied the airplane's moonlit surface. Its iconic slanted twin tail-fins emerged from the darkness. Stenciled on the nearest vertical stabilizer, an uppercase S sat above an uppercase D. As she drew alongside, the wing and the rest of the gray fuselage came into view. Just forward of the cockpit, 22 was stenciled on the left side of the F-18 nose. In a flowing font, the pilot's name adorned the area below the canopy's bottom edge: "
Major Gregory Stillson
."

Studying the fighter's transparent bulbous canopy, she shook her head. "What the hell?"

The moonlit far horizon glowed clearly through the transparent enclosure. Nothing occupied the space between the ejection seat and the instrument panel. Held up by seat belts and shoulder harnesses, even an incapacitated pilot should be visible.

She keyed the mic. "Blackjack Two-Two, Major Stillson, this is Dragonfly Five. Come in, over."

Still nothing.

"Shit!" From this angle, there wasn't anything to see. No helmet, body, blood, gore, grinning skeleton, or any of the myriad encounters she'd feared greeted her. It was clear she'd have to find another way to inspect the fighter's cockpit.

After a moment's consideration, she pulled a flashlight from its bracket by her right leg and switched it on. Pulling off her oxygen mask, she stuck the back end of the flashlight in her mouth. To ensure she had all the light possible, she pre-positioned the map-lights that sat over each shoulder.

With a final glance at the moonlit F-18, Sandy grabbed the F-22's throttles with her left hand, and the stick with her right. Making sure not to disturb the navy fighter, she flipped her airplane over. A quick snap of her wrist accompanied by an appropriate power adjustment rolled her fighter on its back. Maneuvering cautiously, she positioned her jet over the F-18.

Sandy's heart pounded. She'd never been this close to another aircraft.
This is crazy.
Panting around the flashlight, she stole a quick overhead glance.
Crap! Still too far.

Partially obscuring the moonlight, her F-22 cast a wedge-shaped shadow across the gray fighter. The exposed portion of the F-18's wings glowed in stark contrast to the darkened fuselage.

Concentrating on keeping her hands steady, she eased her fighter closer.

Sandy glanced overhead again. The map lights only illuminated the top of the other fighter's instrument panel.

She was too forward.

Palms sweating through her flight gloves, drool running down the flashlight clamped in her teeth, and hanging inverted from her ejection seat's restraints, Sandy struggled to rein in her body's physiological responses. She took in a deep breath. After holding it for a moment, she slowly released it as a long sigh.