Nerve Center d-2

by Dale Brown

  Aboard Hawkmother

  18 February, 1141

  Madrone pushed Hawks one and two ahead, closing on the enemy fighter, precisely as planned. The MiG’s radar spotted his two planes, but held course as they’d planned.

  If it were a real encounter, he would have flown the U/ MFs much differently. C gave him several suggestions. The best had the two-ship split up right about now, with Hawk One vanishing into the ground clutter before beginning an end run toward the MiG’s rear, where its radar coverage was poor. Then Hawk Two would disappear as well.

  Smith would finally find Hawk One gunning for his tail. His only option would be to flood the afterburners and speed straight away, outrunning his adversary.

  Which would take him into the second Flighthawk, waiting ahead. The small planes could outmaneuver the MiG; no matter what the bandit did, Madrone would get one pass with his cannon.

  And one pass was all he needed.

  But not today. Today he had to swing around the back, just as they’d mapped it out.

  Make more sense to mount a front-quarter attack, rake the SOB. Not a high probability in a conventional fighter, but the Flighthawks and C wouldn’t miss.

  The computer glowed at the top of his head.

  Why not do it, just for giggles? Frost that asshole Smith and his jerk-face smirk.

  Aboard Sharkishki

  18 February, 1145

  Mack ran his eyes over his instruments. His right engine had the temp indicator pegged at the extreme edge of the acceptable range, a bit hotter than the left. Fuel burn seemed constant, and the two power plants seemed to be working in unison. Mack suspected the gauge was flaky — he was always suspecting gauges were flaky.

  As he looked back at the windscreen, he realized the two Flighthawks had deviated from the planned course. Instead of flying in the planned arc, they were heading straight for him.

  Oh, real funny, Zen.

  “Yo, Gameboy, we sticking to the program or do I get to shoot these suckers down?” he asked.

  “Gameboy to Hawk Leader,” boomed Zen over the circuit. “Kevin, you’re off course. Is there a problem?”

  “Yeah, like I believe you and Monkey Brain didn’t cook this up on your private line,” said Mack.

  He said it, but he didn’t transmit. He rolled the MiG, accelerating at the same time as he swooped around to outfox Zen and his nugget sidekick controlling the U/MFs.

  Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1153

  Madrone couldn’t tell at first what the MiG was doing, and C3 offered no clues. He started to cut power, then realized Sharkishki would try to slice behind his two planes. Kevin nudged Hawk One north, intending to send the two planes in opposite directions, ready for anything Mack might pull.

  Pain crashed into his skull, pushing him back in his chair. He gave the computer full control of the two robots. The fight drifted to the edge of his consciousness as the heavy control helmet seemed to shear his skull in half. The crankshaft of an immense engine revolved around and around at the top of his head, its counterweights smashing against his cranium, pounding through the bone into the gray matter beneath. Ma-drone tried to relieve the pressure, but couldn’t, felt himself weighted down, pushed back by the pain.

  He heard a tapping noise somewhere in the corn set.

  Rain.

  His Theta metaphor.

  Relax.

  He tried to conjure the jungle, the rain just beginning, the dark shadows around him.

  “Knock it off! Knock it off!” screamed Zen.

  The rain surged, but the pain backed away. Madrone realized he was hyperventilating. He controlled his breaths, let his shoulders droop, found Hawk One and Two under control, approaching from opposite ends toward the MiG; the computer had followed his directions without being distracted by his pain.

  “Knock it off!” repeated Zen.

  “Hawk Leader acknowledges,” said Madrone, retaking control of the planes and sending them back toward their prearranged course.

  “What the hell happened there?” said Zen.

  He seemed to be talking to Kevin, but it was Mack Smith in the MiG who responded.

  “Microchip Boy came at me for a front-quarter attack,” said Smith. “I just waxed his tail.”

  “You were out of line,” said Zen.

  “I held the wrong course a little too long,” said Madrone. The pain was gone; it had been an aberration, probably because he’d been breathing too fast. “Let’s try it again.”

  “I think we ought to go home,” said Stockard.

  “Jeez Louise, 1 can’t make a mistake?” Madrone snapped. “Come on, Zen. Don’t be a baby,” said Mack. “Just because I spanked Junior.”

  “I think we could run through the scenario again,” said Geraldo. Her voice sounded like a soothing whisper; Kevin caught a glimpse of her, standing at the side of him, long hair, much younger.

  How did he see her beyond his visor array?

  His mind projected her, just as it did with the Flighthawks. No, not like that. But it felt the same.

  His memory created the image. But it had distorted it as well. She didn’t really look like that; he’d never seen her that young.

  “You sure, Kevin?” asked Zen.

  “Let’s go for it,” said Madrone.

  “All right. Everybody back to their starting positions. This time, exactly as we planned.”

  Chapter 30

  Aboard Raven

  18 February, 1213

  “What happened?” Breanna asked Jeff as she began the bank at the end of the racetrack pattern they were flying.

  “Kindergarten bullshit.”

  Bree said nothing as she pulled the Megafortress through the lazy turn. They were at thirty-five thousand feet, well above the action. Jeff s annoyance was interesting; while it was true that Madrone and Smith had disregarded the planned scenario, Jeff himself had said during the briefing that they could freelance as circumstances allowed. Granted, it was early in the exercise, but the fact that Madrone had taken the initiative there seemed to her a good thing.

  Kevin had definitely changed since ANTARES began. He was more confident, more self-assured. He seemed to be working out; his chest and arms had bulked. She was annoyed with him, though — he’d made, but then blown off, a date with her friend Abby.

  Very un-Madrone-like. But people did weird things when they were in love.

  “They’re in position,” said Chris Ferris, her copilot.

  “Try it again,” said Jeff over the shared circuit.

  Aboard Hawkmother

  18 February, 1227

  Kevin steadied the two robot planes on their course. Actually, the flight computer did — he simply acquiesced to its suggested course.

  Maybe Mack was right. Kevin was just a monkey here; the computer could fly the planes without him.

  True enough, but that didn’t make him useless or unimportant. On the contrary. He could go anywhere. He had no limits. He told the computer what to do, and it did it.

  What had the red shock of pain been? He didn’t have control over that. It was a storm that had struck without warning. He could go anywhere. He hadn’t completed an actual refueling yet — that was on tomorrow’s agenda. But he had no doubt he could master it. And then, what were the limits?

  Whatever his mind flowed into, ANTARES, the gateway, C3 — those were the limits.

  He could get beyond them. He didn’t want to be tethered to dotted lines laid out on maps. He wasn’t a monkey boy or microchip brain or whatever Smith decided to call him — he was beyond that.

  Madrone felt a twinge in his temple, the hint of the headache returning. He concentrated on his breathing, and the twinge receded into the pink space beyond the edge of his vision.

  Where did it go’? He slid out toward it, focusing his thoughts into a kind of greenish cone, his curiosity forming into a shape. But he couldn’t penetrate the haze; his vision darkened and he began falling out of Theta.

  He heard the rain of the forest, r
eturned to full control. He moved the Flighthawks farther apart, closing on the MiG at ten miles.

  C3 gave him a warning: “Connection degrading.” The Flighthawks had extended to nearly twenty miles ahead of Hawkmother. The 777 couldn’t keep up.

  He backed off his speed. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. He had to learn to segregate his thoughts, to monitor the computer but to think beyond it as well.

  The difficulty was the pain.

  Maybe. He didn’t have control of everything, not even his own mind, not yet anyway. It worked in a way he didn’t completely understand or control.

  The MiG sat at the apex of a V. dead meat between his two planes, his two hands.

  If his curiosity were a snake, it would slither beyond the edge of his brain, over the round seam that marked the end of his universe.

  The autopilot system of the Boeing. Thick metal levers and motors.

  No vision, but the radar.

  Safety protocols suspended. The autopilot was off. It was helpless, just watching.

  Could he switch it on?

  No. Yes?

  No. It was off.

  Could he be in all three planes at once? Guide them all? Hawkmother’s seat felt foreign to him, deliciously unfamiliar, spiking his taste buds.

  He slipped. His body began to sink.

  He could hold it.

  The tingle again. A harsh red circle around his head. A massive band of pressure, thick oily pressure erupting below his head, his neck on fire, the flames of pain consuming the center of his being.

  Chapter 31

  Aboard Sharkishki

  18 February, 1250

  Mack’s altitude held steady at 7,500 meters, roughly 22,500 feet. The Flighthawks passed by and began banking for their attack. Monkey Brain was doing it by the book this time, and so did he, flying exactly on the prebriefed course.

  Kick on the afterburner, tuck down, head for the open sea. Be over the Pacific in what? An hour?

  Easy. Except with the afterburner he’d blow through his fuel and bail out over Baja.

  Go west, young man — buzz L.A. Why the hell not? His career was toast anyway.

  If the future really was bleak, maybe he should look up that Brazilian geezer. Or just hang it all and fly airliners for a living.

  Yeah, right. That was fine for some guys. Hell, you couldn’t argue with the bucks or the time off. But Mack needed more; he needed the edge.

  The Flighthawks roared up behind him, closing to pointblank cannon range. They were directly behind his wings, vectored at a slight angle.

  “Bang-bang you got me,” he said over the radio.

  Then he realized they weren’t stopping.

  Aboard Hawkmother

  18 February, 1257

  Geraldo’s voice burst all around him.

  “You’re off the chart,” she told Kevin. “The peaks are overlapping. Your heartbeat is at one-fifty. Your brain waves are off the chart.”

  Did she mean he was out of control? Pain pressed against him from all different directions. His head was a block of glass being broken into a million jagged pieces.

  Except that if it were glass, the pain would have stopped. Madrone tried to breathe, tried to relax — he forced himself back into the jungle, into his Theta metaphor, the pathway for his control.

  Someone spoke to him, a woman with a deep voice. From behind the greens and browns and blacks. She spoke Geraldo’s words, urging him to breathe slowly, but it wasn’t the middle-aged psychiatrist speaking; it was a dark woman, a beautiful woman.

  Karen, his wife.

  No, not Karen. Someone infinitely more beautiful. He could see her through the dark trees. Rain streamed down her naked body, coursing over her breasts and hips.

  Come to me, darling. Come.

  The Flighthawks were above him. They had a target in sight, closing on a collision course.

  C3’s safety protocols had been suspended.

  Who did that? Had he?

  The pain flashed in waves. Madrone tried to push himself back into the Flighthawks, back into control.

  Aboard Sharkishki

  18 February, 1301

  Mack pushed his left wing down, dropping the MiG into a violent, sliding dive. The Flighthawks had caught him flat-footed; they were closing so fast he couldn’t even hit his afterburner and rely on his superior speed to get away. All he could do was duck.

  He slammed the MiG through a series of hard rolls, taking close to ten g’s as he jerked violently down, the MiG just barely controllable. Gravity pirouetted against the sides of his body, punching so hard that even the advanced flight suit he wore couldn’t ward off all of the pressure. A black cowl closed around his head. His eyes stopped working together; he saw the world as two circles of spinning blue and brown in a thick bowl of grayness. Knife lost sight of his instruments, of the cockpit; he flew by dizzy feel, the stick his only consciousness.

  Somehow he pulled out as the spin threatened to overwhelm him. Somehow he managed to get the MiG moving in the direction opposite the one he’d started in, gaining speed.

  Knife pushed his wings flat. The world expanded around him, the effects of oxygen deprivation receding. One of the Flighthawks shot ahead, well off his left wing, but where the hell was the other?

  He started to move his head around the cockpit, and belatedly realized he was flying upside down. Still disoriented, he swooped right, losing three thousand feet in a roll that brought him nearly to the desert floor.

  The second U/MF was on his tail, over him about five hundred feet, still trying to close.

  Knife knew he should call time-out, push the mike button and yell knock it off. He might already have done that — his brain was so scrambled he couldn’t remember whether he had or not.

  But Goddamnit. If Zen and his shadow were going to play for keeps, so was he.

  He forced his hand to the throttle, notching his speed back. He could feel the Flighthawk trying to close.

  He’d pull his nose up at the last second, send the son of a bitch right into the dead lake bed. Easy as pie, as long as he kept his head clear and his speed up high enough to avoid stalling.

  Madrone would smash the $500-million Flighthawk to bits. Let him explain that, the SOB.

  Aboard Hawkmother

  18 February, 1307

  Kevin’s thoughts and ideas streamed through the blue sky, comets jittering and disintegrating. He thought of sending the Flighthawks crashing into the MiG.

  The idea remained there, a contrail in the jungle sky. He grabbed for it desperately, trying to wipe it away.

  “Knock it off! Knock it off!” Zen yelled.

  The red disappeared. The sky and rain forest disappeared. And then he felt Hawk Two, felt the wind coursing below his wings. He relaxed, put his nose up, and circled away from the MiG, breaking pursuit.

  Kevin’s head pounded; his heart thumped against his chest. He wanted to turn the two robot planes back over to their flight computer, but he dared not. He couldn’t be sure what other ideas sat out there, ghosts ready to jump in and take control.

  “What the hell’s going on, Kevin?” asked Stockard.

  “Hawks One and Two returning to base,” he answered. “Requesting permission to land.”

  Aboard Raven

  18 February, 1313

  Zen punched the transmission switch angrily. This time it had clearly been Kevin’s fault; Mack had flown the pattern perfectly until the Flighthawks homed in on his tail. If anything, Mack had waited too long to take evasive maneuvers. It was a miracle there hadn’t been a collision, and at least a minor miracle that he hadn’t lost Sharkishki.

  Jeff had screwed up too. He hadn’t told them to knock it off soon enough, hadn’t taken over the Flighthawks the instant his command wasn’t obeyed.

  Why? Because he thought he’d been a little too harsh on the first go-around?

  “What are we doing, Gameboy?” asked Mack. He sounded winded, his voice hoarse.

  “Calling it a day,” sa
id Jeff. “Return to base.”

  Chapter 32

  Dreamland Security Office

  18 February, 1315

  Danny slid into his desk chair and opened the folder of FBI foreign-contact alerts in his lap. Officially known as Monthly Referral of Foreign and Suspicious Contacts (Form 23-756FBI/DIA), the five pages of eight-point single-spaced type strained Danny’s eyes as well as his patience. The report compiled rumors and rumors of rumors about base personnel and their alleged contacts with foreigners; he was required to acknowledge any that pertained to Dreamland personnel and indicate what he intended to do about it. If the report had added anything to base security, he might have at least felt more comfortable about it, but the real goal was clearly COA — cover our ass — on the FBI’s part. Every conference a Dreamland scientist attended was listed, along with a roster of foreigners; any potential contact was noted by Bureau spies or sources. An engineer who found himself in the same cafeteria line with a British journalist would rate a paragraph. If he’d been served by a Mexican national, he’d get two paragraphs. And if he’d had the misfortune to be at the cashier when a Russian scientist entered the room, he’d get an entire page.

  Danny skimmed through the report with as much attention as he could muster, looking for “his” people. Lee Ong had been to a lecture sponsored by the Department of Energy on utilizing computers for some sort of nuclear-test thing; someone from Taiwan had been there. Blah-blah-blah.

  Freah yawned his way through the rest of the report until he came to a three-paragraph account detailing a “contact meeting” between Major Mack Smith and a high-ranking member of the Brazilian defense establishment. The details were trivial — the FBI agent fussed over the cigars they had smoked — Cuban Partagas, blatantly illegal, blah-blah-blah.

  Brazil was said to be trying to buy MiGs from the Russians, the agent added, almost as an afterthought.

  Danny hit a combination of keys on the computer, calling up a file that compiled data from foreign-contact forms — official paperwork that was supposed to be filed by certain key personnel when they were approached by a foreign national.