by Mark Wandrey
“Grraaah” came over the radio.
“Who was that?” he replied.
“I couldn’t tell,” came one of the other fighters with him. Davis craned his head left and right, then saw one of the planes in his group plunging toward the ocean.
“It’s Thompson!” another flight member said. “He just suddenly lost control.”
“Did you see anything?” he asked Cox on the intercom. “Hey, Cox, you awake back there?” He looked up at the little curved mirror on the side of the cockpit that let him see to the rear. All he could see was her head slumped forward. “Alice! Talk to me. You okay?” The helmet moved slightly. “Taz, say something?”
“Haggh,” she gurgled. Davis felt his blood run cold.
“Oh, God, no.” Her head shot up, and her eyes locked with his in the mirror. They were wide with rage. What he could see of her face above the oxygen mask was twisted and…wrong. In an instant she was lunging at him, reaching around his seat, fingers clawing for his throat.
Davis had nowhere to go. He pushed forward, and the movement jarred the stick, pushing them into a dive. Cox was screaming and snarling, reaching for him. She had unlocked her harness and removed her gloves before the virus took her, and had now somehow gotten her harness unfastened. There wasn’t enough room to actually get over the seat at him, but she was still doing a lot of damage with bare hands. In a moment she’d ripped his oxygen mask away and was ripping at his skin.
“Camelot One Zero Nine, my wizzo is…Alice no!” Davis never finished the call. Lieutenant Commander Alice Cox managed to hook her hands through Davis’ ejection handle and pull with enough force to trigger it. The canopy blew away. She was half sucked out of the cockpit a heartbeat before her ejection seat fired, nearly tearing her in half. Davis’ own seat ejected, slamming into her body as well, killing Commander Mike Davis. Pilotless, the F/A-18F spun toward the ocean below.
* * *
“Mr. Osborne, are you serious?” Captain Gilchrist was watching in the electronics room as several of his guests worked on what they claimed was an alien starship.
“Dead serious, Captain,” Jeremiah said. “As I explained, we found one just like it back before the plague set in. The engine inside is what we used on our ship.”
“And you flew it faster than light?”
“No,” Jeremiah said, “they did.” He gestured at Alex West and Alison McDill. He’d decided to leave out the part where the pair had destroyed the International Space Station.
“Frankly, mister, I’m inclined to think this is all bullshit.” The captain crossed his hands over his chest and observed. A dozen technicians from the Ford were also watching as Alison spent a minute improvising tools from the available equipment. She was incredibly fast and knowledgeable about electronics, and, as Jeremiah had already noted, she’d done this before.
“We’re ready to open it,” West said, and the captain came closer. He and Alison ran a hand-held probe along the shiny surface of the ship, found a point, and there was a ping sound. They moved, and it happened again, and again. After the sixth one, a piece of the ship’s skin popped free and floated about a millimeter above the surface. West reached in and plucked it away. Gilchrist leaned a little forward and saw an opening with strange blue-glowing cylinders inside. Alison and West grinned at each other.
“Bingo,” she said.
“How long were you planning on keeping this from the military?” Gilchrist said, his eyes narrowed at Jeremiah.
“Frankly, we found the first one with help from NASA, and I’ve been trying to get back in touch with them since the day I found it.” Gilchrist started to ask something, but a young sailor trotted up and spoke to him. After a second, the captain turned back to them. “The situation is devolving fast,” he told them. “I’m still not convinced this is going to work. How long are you going to need?”
Alison pulled one of the formerly-glowing modules from inside the ship and examined it. “We have the control module cobbled together,” she said. “It won’t be as delicate and effective as the one we made for Azanti.”
Captain Gilchrist gave Jeremiah a look.
“That’s what we named the ship they took into space,” Jeremiah explained. He shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
“Please proceed with all haste,” the captain urged.
Everyone who wasn’t involved in the process—everyone except Alison and West—watched while the two mated the alien device to some human-manufactured electronics. “Now some power,” Alison said, and one of the Ford’s technicians shook his head as he handed her a simple 9-volt battery.
“That is what powers it?” Gilchrist asked in surprise.
“Yes,” West replied. “We went faster than the speed of light with a 9-volt battery.”
Alison finished making connections. “We’re good.”
“We’ll get that beast off the deck,” West said.
“With all due respect,” Andrew Tobin said, “that’s USAF property. I’ll take care of it.” He’d been at the back of the bay watching with interest.
“And with all due respect,” West countered, “you don’t understand the control processes. We do.”
“Captain?” Andrew asked. The captain looked at the device they’d cobbled together. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a failed high school science experiment, or a prop from a Dr. Who episode from the 1970s.
“We just need it off the deck safely,” Gilchrist explained, “if you can…float it, over to the side and sit it in the water, we’ll have a SAR helicopter pluck you both off before it can sink.”
“Captain,” Alison said, “with that battery we can float it there for a couple years. For that matter, we can just follow along behind you, if you want.”
“To the side, please. We’ll have planes landing from behind.” West nodded. Alison waited. “Fine, do it. Move.”
“Do you need to know how to power it up?” Andrew asked.
“Nope, we can run this from anywhere on the bird,” West said.
“As long as we can put it in contact with the metallic structure of the plane,” Alison reminded him. “However this drive field works, it requires a metallic structure to operate.”
“Go!” Gilchrist ordered. West and Alison took off without another word.
“Captain?” Gilchrist turned to find Commander James Young in a flight suit.
“Commander?” the captain asked, surprised to see the other man so attired.
“Sir, we know the Marines are in trouble. I have both F-35s fueled, armed, and waiting by the elevator. The shooter says he can have us on the cat in five minutes, if you give us the go.”
“Us? You’re the only Lightning-qualified pilot on board.”
“Actually, Tobin here worked on the development of the F-35A.”
“He’s never done a carrier shot.”
“No, you’re right,” Andrew said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t.” Gilchrist stared at Andrew, who met it unflinchingly.
“And what about a landing?” Andrew’s lips made a thin line before he spoke.
“Does that really matter?”
“I would think so, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, those Marines need help, badly. Help that a helicopter can’t deliver. Heavy iron help.”
“The POTUS has forbidden—”
“The president isn’t here, sir!” Andrew exclaimed more sharply than he’d intended.
Gilchrist’s eyes narrowed. “I understood from Rose you saved their asses. I also understand you were in custody, something about disobeying orders in the sandbox?” Tobin didn’t answer, he just stood at attention. “If two Lightnings happen to be fully armed when they leave the flight deck, I don’t know shit. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir,” Tobin said.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Young said, and the two pilots left in a hurry.
“I didn’t think he’d approve it,” Andrew said.
“He didn’t,” Young replied. “He’s just not going to st
op us.” Young came up short at a phone, punched a number, and waited a second. “Bowers?” Someone answered. “Yeah, we’re a go. Get them up to the flight deck ASAP.” He hung up and resumed.
“What would we have done if the captain said no?”
“We’d have tried to launch anyway,” Young said.
Andrew laughed. “I’m beginning to like you Navy boys.”
“No long, romantic showers. That stuff’s all a lie.”
As they walked toward the flight deck, Young went over all the various steps of a catapult launch. He’d gone over them before, when the two had first conceived their plan, but Andrew didn’t complain. He didn’t want to let on he was scared shitless. He didn’t know why, but it was infinitely worse than landing. Maybe because he knew what was coming in full detail. All Air Force pilots knew about carrier landings. They watched plenty of videos, especially the takeoffs that went wrong. And Ford had only launched with its EMALS, electromagnet aircraft launch system, under carefully controlled-test environments.
The two pilots reached the flight deck. Already the two F-35s were being towed off the elevator. He thought they looked strange with their wings folded up, something the F-35A wasn’t equipped to do; it was an adaptation the Navy needed to make the fighters fit in the cramped environment of a carrier.
“You ready for this?” Young asked, smiling.
“No,” Andrew admitted. Young laughed and slapped him on the back.
“Just remember what I said, and don’t forget the flight deck is only 250 feet wide. Keep it slow until it’s time to catapult.”
“Can we just call it takeoff?”
“Sure. Good luck.”
“You too.”
“This way, sir,” a sailor with a brown vest said. He was led to the plane, its steps open and waiting. He handed the helmet to the man in brown and climbed up. The cockpit, at least, looked the same as the simulator.
“I can do this,” he said.
“Yes you can, sir,” the man said as Andrew slid down into the snug cockpit. His left leg stump pained him a bit, as it always did, until he was settled in. The pedals under his feet didn’t take much force to operate, which was why he was still qualified to fly. He wasn’t sure he could still be a pilot if helicopters had been his thing. “I’ll give you the signal when you’re clear to start, sir,” the man said, hooking up Andrew’s mask. “Good luck.” Andrew nodded distractedly. The man climbed down, and he was alone.
Young had given him a thigh board with all the checklists he’d need. The first one was startup. He quickly ran through the last few steps not completed by the ground crew. In a second, the turbine began to whine to life. Once the engine speed was at idle, he activated the controls that brought the wings down. They descended smoothly and locked in place with a couple of smooth clunks. In front of the plane, a man in a yellow vest was holding his hands up. Andrew gave him a salute, and the man started guiding him. Andrew released the brake and gave the Lightning a little power. He was moving.
* * *
West and Alison scrambled up the hi-lo lift the carrier crew had put under the huge C-17’s fuselage for them so they could reach the boarding door. As soon as they were inside, the lift started to go down.
“Do we need to move the chocks?” one of the men in a yellow vest yelled a question up at him.
“Not necessary,” West yelled back. The confused look on the man’s face made West laugh as he closed the door.
“What’s so funny?” Alison asked.
“Everyone who wasn’t in the meeting is in for a huge surprise,” he said. “Let’s wire this damned thing into the cockpit so we can see where we’re going. Are you sure it’s going to work?”
“Pretty sure,” she said.
“What?”
“Reasonably sure,” she added.
“We’ve been through too much to be trolling each other,” West said.
Up in the cockpit, they spent a frantic minute finding an open structural member. West ended up having to yank a panel cover clear. Alison used some conductive paste she’d taken from the Ford’s electronics shop and smeared it liberally on the metal before using duct tape to attach the alien/human hybrid drive. The controller was a PlayStation controller with an extra-long cord, donated by an electrician. She handed it to West.
“Okay,” she said. She reached over and flipped a switch. “It’s live.”
West looked down at the joystick and made a face. “It’s configured like the one on Azanti, right?”
“Yep,” she said.
“Okay,” he replied, and touched the forward control. The C-17 rocketed off the end of the carrier like a missile launch.
“Shiiiiitttt!” Alison screamed as she watched out the front window, eyes wide in terror. Just as before, they didn’t feel any of the acceleration, but the blast of wind against the plane’s fuselage hit their ears like a bomb.
“Sorry!” he apologized. “Calibration must be off.”
“Ship!” she screamed while pointing out the cockpit, this time with an obvious edge of panic in her voice.
“Gah!” West said unintelligibly as he worked the joystick, but gently this time. The nose of the C-17 angled up and he had a hair-raising view of a massive tanker flashing by incredibly close underneath. They continued to angle upward as he both reduced the speed and banked them to the left. Alison was frantically buckling into the engineer’s seat. “Why bother?” he asked.
“And what happens if that cobbled-together alien mashup suddenly shorts out?”
West glanced at her, and she gave him a ‘Well?’ look. A second later, he set the controller on his knee, reached over to the controls, and started the auxiliary power unit. “Not a lot of fuel,” he said. “It’s just as well we only need it for the generators.”
“So now what?” she asked after they’d turned around and were flying back toward the Ford at a far less insane speed. He got the gear retracted, then shrugged.
“I guess we’ll make contact and see if there’s anything we can do.”
* * * * *
Chapter Fifteen
Late Afternoon, Sunday, May 1
Over Coronado
Andrew calmed his breathing as he carefully followed the yellow-vested man’s directions and aligned the Lightning on the double white lines painted on the deck. The hand signals were similar to those he was used to in the Air Force. The man signaled stop, and a second later he felt a slight lurch as the catapult shuttle made contact with his tow bar. Just to his right, Commander James Young in his own Lightning was already hooked into the catapult. He would launch first, just in case Andrew didn’t succeed.
The deck crew looked confused. The hulking shape of the C-17’s tail was only a few feet in front of them, and its improbable mass blocked the bow of the carrier. The outer set of wheels were only feet from the edge on each side, and its port wingtip overlapped the carrier’s waist catapult flight path. The crew didn’t appear to understand why they were preparing to launch the fighters with the giant transport still in the way.
Andrew called over the radio to Young. “X-Ray Two, X-Ray One.”
“What’s up?” the other pilot asked.
“How long do you think until they get that thing moving?”
“Man, I have no clue.”
“Oh, I was just—” Andrew stopped, mouth open, as the C-17 shot away. It didn’t accelerate, it was just…gone! He saw it now, hundreds of yards off the nose of the carrier, streaking through the sky, as a Boom! echoed and his fighter shuddered. Dozens of deck hands were blown off their feet, sucked forward by the sudden shockwave as air rushed in behind the improbable departure.
“Medical response teams to the flight deck!” a voice over the ship-wide 1MC PA system ordered. Andrew could see a number of injured personnel and hoped no one had been sucked over the side. In a world gone slightly mad, he somehow wasn’t surprised to see something even more impossible than armies of cannibal zombies.
“Camelot X-Ray One, you are clear
ed to launch!”
They’d been assigned the “Camelot” call sign of the Tophatters of VFA-14, a squadron assigned to the Reagan, and X1 and X2, for Young and Andrew’s Lightnings. “Roger, X-Ray One, cleared to launch,” Young called. Andrew looked over, and Young gave him a wave. The big steel blast deflector raised behind his fighter. Off to the other side of Young’s fighter, a man in a yellow vest, known as the ‘Shooter,’ was pointing at the fighter and giving him the signal to run up his engines. Young’s jet roared as he gave it full throttle. He cycled the controls to ensure they worked and checked his gauges. Happy with what he saw, he saluted the shooter. The man dropped down in a sideways stoop, cleared the area around the aircraft and its flight path, then tapped the deck and pointed forward toward the bow. An instant later, the catapult fired, and Young hurtled off the deck. His Lightning dropped slightly as it raced off the deck, then climbed into the sky. He was away.
“Camelot X-Ray Two, you are cleared to launch!” Oh fuck.
“R-roger. Camelot X-Ray Two, cleared to launch,” Andrew replied. He almost managed not to stutter. The shooter on his side made a whirling motion over his head. Andrew rammed the throttles full forward, and the engines spooled up to a roar. He checked the controls and gauges, turned his head, and gave the shooter a sharp salute. The man grinned; he knew it was Andrew’s first catapult. He cleared the area around and in front of the aircraft, then tapped the deck. Andrew ensured the throttles were full forward and held onto the catapult grip to make sure they didn’t retard on the catapult stroke.
Four G’s of thrust slammed him back against his seat as he went from zero to 180 miles per hour in three hundred feet. It was over before he had time to think about it, then the deck was out from under him, and he was less than seventy feet off the water. In a panic, he started to yank back on the stick—it was the only sane thing to do, his mind insisted—then his training kicked in, he pulled back smoothly, and the jet angled effortlessly into the sky.
