Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

While the Soviet military was secretly drooling to get its hands on this new bomber, sending the cream of Soviet propulsion engineers here to make sure it worked, they already had been outflanked. Typical idiocy. What they'd overlooked was that these two planes still belonged to Mino Industries, and only Mino Industries had access to the high-temperature ceramics and titanium composites required to build more. Tanzan Mino held all the cards. He surely knew the capabilities of this plane. Everything was already in place. Mino Industries now owned the ultimate weapon: they had built or subcontracted every component. Was Lemontov such a dumb party hack he couldn't see that?

All the more reason to get the cards on the table. And soon.

So far the plan was on track. He had demanded that the schedule be moved up, and Ikeda had reluctantly agreed. In four days Yuri Androv would take Daedalus into the region of near space using liquid hydrogen, the first full hypersonic test flight. And that's when he intended to blow everybody's neat scenario wide open.

He felt the fuselage shudder as the trucks disengaged from the eyelets on the landing gear. Then the radio crackled.

"This is control, Daedalus I. Do you read?"

"Daedalus I. Preflight nominal."

"Verified. Engine oil now heated to thirty degrees Celsius. Begin ignition sequence."

"Check. Daedalus I starting engines." He scanned through the instrument readings on his helmet screens, then slipped his hand down the throttle quadrant and pushed the button on the left. He could almost feel the special low-flashpoint JP-7-originally developed for the high-altitude American SR-71 Blackbird-begin to flow from the wing tanks into the twelve turboramjets, priming them. Then the ground crew engaged the engines with their huge trolley-mounted starters. As the rpm began to surge, he reminded himself he was carrying only 2,100,000 pounds of fuel and it would burn fast.

He switched his helmet screens to the priority-one display and scanned the master instrument panel: white bars showing engine rpm, fuel flow, turbine inlet temperature, exhaust temperature, oil pressure, hydraulics. Then he cut back to the infrared cameras and glanced over the tarmac stretching out in front of him. Since the American KH-12 satellite had passed twenty minutes earlier, flight conditions should now be totally secure.

For tonight's program he was scheduled to take the vehicle to Mach 4, then terminate the JP-7 feeds in the portside outboard trident and let those three engines "unstart," after which he would manually switch them to scramjet geometry, all the while controlling pitch and yaw with the stability augmentation equipment. That would be the easy part. The next step required him to manually switch them back to turboramjet geometry and initiate restart. At sixty-three thousand feet. Forty minutes later he was scheduled to have her back safely in the hangar chocks, skin cooling.

Nothing to it.

He flipped his helmet screens back and looked over the readouts one final time. Fuel pressure was stable, engine nozzle control switches locked in Auto Alpha configuration, flaps and slats set to fifteen degrees for max performance takeoff. He ran through the checklist on the screen: "Fuel panel, check. Radar altimeter index, set. Throttle quadrant, auto lock."

The thrust required to take Daedalus I airborne was less than that needed for a vertically launched space shuttle, since lift was gained from the wings, but still he was always amazed by the G-forces the vehicle developed on takeoff. The awesome power at his fingertips inspired a very deceptive sense of security.

"Chase cars in place, Yuri. You're cleared for taxi. Ne puzha, ne pera!"

He started to respond, thinking it was the computer. But this time there was no computer. He'd deliberately shut it down. If he couldn't get this damned samolyot off a runway manually, he had no hopes for the next step. The voice was merely Sergei, in flight control.

"Power to military thrust." He paused, toes on the brakes, and relished the splendid isolation, the pure energy at his command as Daedalus began to quiver. Multibillions at his fingertips, the most advanced…

Fuck it. This was the fun part.

"Brake release."

In full unstick, he rammed the heavy handles on the throttle quadrant to lock, commanding engines to max afterburner, and grinned ear to ear as the twelve turboramjets screamed instantly to a million pounds of thrust, slamming him against the cockpit supports. Sunday 7:29 P.M.

"We are now cruising at twenty-nine thousand feet. However, the captain has requested all passengers to please remain seated, with their seat belts fastened." The female voice faltered as the plane dropped through another air pocket. "We may possibly be experiencing mild turbulence for the next hour."

Michael Vance wanted a drink, for a lot of reasons. However, the service in first class was temporarily suspended, since attendants on the British Airways flight to London were themselves strapped into the flip-down seats adjacent to the 757's galley. The turbulence was more than "mild." What lay ahead, in the skies and on the sea below, was nothing less than a major storm.

Why not, he sighed? Everything else in the last four days had gone wrong. He'd been shot at, he'd killed a mobster, and Eva had been kidnapped.

Furthermore, the drive back to Athens, then down to the port of Piraeus to put Zeno onto the overnight ferry to Crete, had been a rain-swept nightmare. Yet another storm had blown up from the Aegean, engulfing the coast and even the mountains. When they finally reached the docks at Piraeus, the old Greek had just managed to slip onto the boat as it was pulling out, his German rifle wrapped in a soggy bundle of clothing.

"Michael, I must hurry." He kissed Vance on both cheeks. "Be safe."

"You too." He took his hand, then passed him the Llama, half glad to be rid of it and half wondering whether he might need it again. "Here, take this. And lose it."

"It's final resting place will be in the depths of our wine dark sea, my friend." Zeno pocketed it without a glance. "No one will ever know what we had to do, not even Adriana. But we failed. She is still gone."

"Don't worry. I'll find her. And thank you again, for saving my life."

"You would have done the same for me. Now hurry. The airport. Perhaps there's still time to catch her." With a final embrace he disappeared into the milling throng of rain-soaked travelers.

The downpour was letting up, but the trip still took almost an hour. When he finally pulled in at the aging Eastern terminal, he'd left the car in the first space he could find and raced in. It was bedlam now, with flights backed up by the storm, but he saw no sign of Eva. Where was she? Had she even come here?

Planes had just started flying again. According to the huge schedule board over the center of the floor, the first departure was a British Air to Heathrow, leaving in five minutes.

There was no chance of getting through passport control without a ticket, so he'd elbowed his way to the front of the British Airways desk.

"That flight boarding. Three-seventy-one. I want a seat."

"I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to wait-"

"Just sell me a ticket, dammit."

The harried agent barely looked up. "I'm afraid that's out of the question. Now if you'll just take-"

"There's a woman who may be on it," he lifted up the empty leather suitcase, "and she left this at the hotel."

"The equipment is already preparing to leave the gate." He glanced at the screen, then turned to a pile of tickets he was methodically sorting. "So if you'd please-"

"Let me check the manifest." He'd stepped over the baggage scale, nudging the agent aside. "To make double sure she's aboard. Maybe I can try and locate her in London."