William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Left five, fire. Blip. Left five, fire. Blip.

Essential to have a mind like his now. No room to fuck up. No room to think. Thinking caused fuck-ups. So his mind sent instant signals, unimpeded by the sludge of doubt, unsullied by love or hate, by good or bad, to the rawboned fingers that were so adept at so many tasks. Thinking would tell him that his adversaries were pulling him left, hard left, up against the wall, the canyon wall, where the odds were all on their side, not his, from which escape was possible but random. And unlikely. Thinking would tell him that now it was him or them, perhaps even bring in the emotion of fear. So his mind sent light-speed signals, ruling out thought about what training long ago had taught him.

Left five, fire; left five, fire. Blip. Blip.

The fingers deftly followed each command. They ignored the wall, ignored the known that his adversaries, desperate in their extremis, raced faster now—subsonically, supersonically, accelerating their offense, accelerating their defense, luring him toward the wall. Left ten, fire. Blip. One more now, streaking, drawing him along, his crew’s fate, Moreau’s fate, Halupalai’s fate, Tyler’s and Radnor’s and O’Toole’s, the world’s, riding with him.

Left ten. His left index finger responded.

Fire. His right forefinger responded.

Blip.

It was good. So clean. So professional. He relaxed, ever so briefly. His taut shoulders sank, the fireproofed flight suit sinking with them. The double white bars of his Air Force captain’s shoulder patch drooped, as did the lightning bolt, the eagle’s talons, and the olive branch of the emblem on his right arm. He would not relax long, because they’d be back, a full squadron, and the chase would begin anew. He had accepted the inevitability of that long ago, just as he accepted the inevitability of succumbing. He was good, very good. He had to be. But he could not win. He could extend the period of survival. He could take far more of them than they could of him. His scores, indeed, often ran up toward 100,000, he was so good. The ultimate, he knew, was in the range of 1,000,000, in a far-off city on the shore of the deepest lake in the world. But he could not survive, not taking 100,000, not taking 1,000,000. In the end he lost, and he always would. Such was the system, and he accepted it. He was EWO ready.

Kazakhs felt so good, having survived green out flawlessly, that he began whistling exuberantly as he paused. O beautiful, for spacious skies… The tension oozed out, bringing the dull throb of a hangover just above the level of consciousness, reminding him also that he had played early into the dawn after the two-A.M. closing of the Boom-Boom Room in the High Pine Lounge near his isolated place of work. His fingers, as usual, had been quite adept at the after-hours play, too. He continued whistling at the brief intrusion of the thought…for amber waves of grain…

Behind him, Moreau muttered audibly. Halupalai had fixed his eyes on the window vista again.

Kazakhs was aware of neither. The tension began to surge back, the silver captain’s bars rising, the Strategic Air Command’s lightning bolt stretching into an attack poise. The hangover ebbed, leaving him with a fleeting thought about the irritations of the PRP regulations. Officially, with the Personnel Reliability Program taken literally—which it was, being the regulation governing the fitness of those, like him, with hands on nuclear weapons—he was not EWO ready. He dismissed the thought. He was the best they had. They knew it; he knew it. He had just performed perfectly. On green out. Which was low level. Which was where he was supreme. Which was what it was all about, taking his big lumbering B-52 down on ground-hugging nuclear-bombing practice missions.

In his most recent practice run, Kazakhs had commanded his Buff for eight hours on night low-level, the ultimate test. He had gone out with the same slight nag, the Jack Daniel’s gone from his system but his system not quite having forgotten the Jack Daniel’s. He had flown after the same kind of mostly sleepless night with one of Spokane’s awestruck lovelies, different girl that time, but the fingers and other gear working just as deftly. He had found the target precisely, evaded the computer-simulated SAM missiles expertly. He had come back exhilarated. It had been his brain, sending those light-speed signals to his fingers, that moved his huge craft ten degrees left, five degrees right; moved the great plaything of his B-52 around western buttes and mesas and down long, narrow gorges that remained inky black until the moon peeped briefly over a ridge and glittered spookily off the snow below. Three hundred feet below, racing past at five hundred miles an hour. The moon also glittered off the canyon walls just beyond his wingtip. The walls flashed up above him, closed off in front. High terrain at twelve o’clock, Tyler radioed from below. The radio voice crackled. Ten degrees left, careening over the frozen riverbed, the moon gone now, the wall ahead disappearing into the black night, only the dim red glow of his radar screen telling Kazakhs it still was there, giving way to the safe tunnel of the river gorge that his brain told his fingers to follow. Red screens in darkness, better for night vision; green screens in daylight.

The screen was green now, the pause over, the garishly yellow computer letters disappearing, a formation of adversaries lining up, eleven across and five deep, moving to a hum-dum-a-dum narcotic beat.

Kazakhs came to full alert, although it took added effort. This part was tedious, just like the duty he had begun today. Dull. Sit and wait. Howling klaxons, the top-speed sprint to his nuclear-armed plane. Engines on. Sit and wait. Engines off. Just to show the Russians they were ready. Always. Then back to the alert bunker and wait. He wasn’t in it for this. He was in it for low level and the sheer flier’s joy of snaking the biggest bomber in the American Air Force down western canyons, granite just off his wingtips, his mind transforming the American deserts into the steppes of Russia, his imagination making the Missouri River the Volga or the Lena.

His fingers moved automatically, this being a trip of his trained mind, too—blip, blip, blip—carving out one row of adversaries, then another. Kazakhs long ago had broken down the adversaries’ computer program, learned the secret of the count, filed away the pattern of their attack and all its variations. He had done this exactly as his SAC colleagues had broken down the computer programs of the heat-seeking SAM missiles that would come up at him, just as they had cracked the secrets of the MIG’s he could expect north of the Beaufort Sea, just as they had probed and adjusted for the radar defenses he could expect near the entry point over the Arctic islands, Novosibir-skie Ostrava. Exactly as the Russians, after more than thirty years, had learned and adjusted for every secret of the B-52. But he would never see the entry point, never see the deep lake so far inside Siberia. Not even if he went there, went for a million.

He was on the count, ready for the bonus shot at the command ship, when Moreau brushed past him. The distraction was minor, but fatal. Instead of the bonus shot, a lone adversary caught him just as his brain frantically signaled hard right. The explosion resounded through the computer screen.

“She-e-e-e-it!” Kazakhs exploded in unison with the machine.

He glared at Moreau.

Moreau’s face wore the slightest smile of satisfaction.

“You, Kazakhs, are a fuck-up,” the copilot said to the pilot, sensing that nothing could be more demeaning.

Kazakhs bristled instantly, the eagle’s talons flexing. Then he grinned from ear to ear, knowing his crew member’s vulnerabilities far better.