Dale Brown - Dreamland

The scientists swore the gear would be miniaturized in the future – but they kept coming up with ‘improvements’ that added to its bulk. Near-room temperature superconducting chips and circuitry promised great advances in speed and much smaller sizes, but the gear was still too sensitive to be relied on. Not to mention expensive.

Zen’s accident had led the Air Force to abandon an important part of the original concept – having a combat pilot to fly the robots along with his own plane. There were proposals to fit the gear into a B-2, but the guidance telemetry could theoretically alert next-generation sensors to the invisible bomber. The B-1 fuselage needed extensive modifications to fit the controlling unit. Neither plane’s wings could easily handle both U/MFs, though the B-2’s could be reinforced to do so.

The Megafortress EB-52, on the other hand, was big and strong enough to handle the job. And in fact they had conducted several airdrops and test runs from the Megafortress before Zen’s accident. They’d managed one last week, just to make sure some of the modifications to the computer worked properly. Zen would have liked to do more, but the only Megafortress currently plumbed for airdrops was being used as a test bed for next-generation radar and communications-jamming equipment. Those tests were running behind and had very high priority. By the time the plane – nicknamed ‘Raven’ – was free for real feasibility work, the Flighthawks would be history.

‘Hey, Major. Ready for blastoff?” asked Pete Connors out on the concrete apron.

“I’ve been ready all my life,” Zen told him, following Connors out toward the Boeing. the airman had parked a forklift near the rear crew door. They’d perfected this method of boarding the plane several days before. It was a hell of a lot easier than crawling down the stairs on his butt – which he had done on Raven.

“I ought to get one of these built into my wheelchair,” Stockard told him as he maneuvered under the large forks. Connors had played with the blades so he could easily lock them beneath Zen’s chair.

“Gee, Major, I’m surprised you haven’t gone for the Version 2.0 Upgraded Wheelchair,” joked Connors. “Has your TV, your satellite dish, your come-along cooler.”

“No sauna?” Jeff braced his arms as the metal forks clicked into the bottom of his chair.

“That’s in 3.0. you should sign up for beta-testing,” said the airman. “Ready?”

“Blastoff.”

It took Connors two attempts to get him lined up and through the special equipment bay in the rear of the plane. But that was a vast improvement over the first day, when it had taken eight or nine and he’d nearly fallen to the ground. Zen gave the airman a thumbs-up before rolling forward into the test-crew area.

“Great speech, Major,” said Ong, who’d sprinted out to oversee one of the engineering crew’s more important preflight tasks – brewing coffee in their zero-gravity Mr. Coffee.

“I thought you guys fell asleep on me,” said Zen. “I heard some snores.”

“No, seriously. Thanks.” Ong tapped his shoulders, “You’re damn right.”

“Thanks,” said Zen.

“Oooo, Mr. Coffee is smiling,” said Jennifer, climbing in. “Smells like we should use that for fuel.”

“Too corrosive,” said Ong.

Zen wheeled over to the Flighthawk station, carefully setting the brake on his wheelchair before snapping the special restraints that locked it in place. The mechanics had cleared a pair of seats and reworked the control area so his seat could be locked in place.

Zen reviewed the hard-copy mission data Ong had left for him before getting ready for takeoff. Placing the Flighthawk computer in static test mode, he took hold of the mirror-image flight sticks, working quickly through the tests with the dedicated mission video tube at the center of the console. He limbered his fingers – they were always cramping like hell – and then pulled on the heavy flight helmet for a new round of checks.

The ground crew, meanwhile, had wheeled the Flighthawk and its portable power cart out onto the runway. With the control systems operational, Jeff and the computer began yet another round of tests, making sure that both sets of flight computers and the link between them were optimal. Only when this new round of tests was finished did the ground crew fire up the Flighthawk engine, powering the small plane with a ‘puffer,’ or power cart specially designed for it. The Flighthawk’s miniature engine needed a large burst of air running through its turbines before it caught fire.

The U/MF purred like a contented kitten. Impatient to get going, Jeff ran through the control surfaces quickly, flexing the flaps and sliding the rudder back and forth. He split the top screen of the visor into feeds from the forward and tail cams for the test, confirming visually the computers’ signal that all the surfaces were responding properly. He revved the engine one last time, checking temps and pressures.

Preflight finally complete, he put his visor screens back into their standard configuration. Blue sky filled the top half, with a ghosted HUD-like display in the middle and engine and flight data in color graphs to either side. The bottom was divided in three, with radar, flight-information, and instrument screens left to right. If he were flying two Hawks, the typical layout would feature the second plane’s optical or FLIR view on the left, and a God’s-eye of both planes and the mother ship in the middle.

“Let’s get this show on the road, Captain,” he told Bree.

“Acknowledged, Hawk Commander,” she said. “Hell of a speech, Jeff. Everybody appreciated it.”

“Uh-huh.”

The jerk of the aircraft as it moved toward the main runway always took him by surprise; he was so absorbed by the Flighthawk’s stationary view that the sensation was momentarily disorienting.

“Fly the prebriefed orbit,” he told Breanna as they waited for the tower to give them final takeoff clearance.

“I wouldn’t do otherwise,” said his wife.

“Anything else you want to say?”

“No,” replied Bree.

“I stayed in the officers’ guest suite. I was too tired to come home.”

“I wasn’t asking,” said Bree.

Zen waited silently as Boeing lifted off and began to circle across the range. Hawk One continued to idle, waiting for its mother ship to hit its first way marked before coming up.

“Point Alpha reached,” said Breanna finally.

“We’re good,” Jeff,” said Jennifer, monitoring the systems a few feet away from him. “It’s your show.”

“Flighthawk Control to Dream Tower, request clearance B for Hawk One, takeoff on Lake Runway D, per filed plans,” he snapped.

“Tower confirms, Hawk Control. Hawk One, you are clear for takeoff,” said the controller. “Unlimited skies, we have no wind at the present time. Not a bad day for a picnic. Good aviating, Major.”

“Thanks, Straw,” Zen told the controller. He brought the Flighthawk to takeoff power and let off the brakes. The slope graph indicating speed galloped upward as the ground flew by in Jeff’s visor view. By 120 knots the Flighthawk was already starting to strain upward. Zen pulled back on the joystick and the aircraft darted into the sky, eager to fly.

How could they kill this plane? He thought. It needs less room to take off than a Piper, is harder to find than a Raptor, and can turn twists around an F/A-18.

Hawk One’s speed and altitude built exponentially as the P&W powering it reached its operating norms. Zen flew to five thousand feet, steadying his speed at five hundred knots. He began banking into an orbit approximately three miles south of the mother ship, Boeing’s tail appearing in the top of his screen. The techies would run through a series of signal tests here before proceeding with more difficult maneuvers.