Nerve Center d-2

by Dale Brown

  He could crash them into his enemies, burn the bastards to hell.

  No. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. That wasn’t him. He’d felt bad even for the Iraqis after they’d killed them in the tanks.

  Madrone found himself in the tower again, the storm flashing above him. He took a long breath, but it didn’t disappear. Someone cried below. There was a growl — the guttural yap of a jungle cat approaching its helpless prey. A jaguar about to strike.

  Christina!

  “I’m coming,” he told her. “I’m coming.”

  He fell into Hawkmother’s cockpit. The plane settled down perfectly toward the runway, guided by the autopilot. Dreamland’s modifications to the airfoil allowed the plane to slow to seventy-seven knots without stalling; she could have stopped in half the distance.

  The tower controller gave him a command. Madrone concentrated on steering, forcing everything else away. He spotted a plane being serviced near a hangar at the far end of the access ramp. He told the computer to take him there, felt a twinge of pain, but nonetheless realized his directions were being followed. His thoughts ransacked the computer, desperately searching for information on how to refuel the plane.

  The onboard computer did not appear to hold the ground refueling procedures, but a schematic of the aircraft showed him where the main refueling panel was located on the fuselage.

  He jumped to the Flighthawks — no one was nearby.

  He jumped back to Hawkmother, saw from the video feed that a crew was refueling an old DC-9 in front of a warehouse-like building at the right side of the ramp.

  The tower tried again to contact him.

  He had to get out of the plane and refuel it himself. He’d have to convince them somehow to help.

  To do that, though, he had to leave Theta and ANTARES.

  The big Boeing rolled slowly to a stop. He couldn’t see the maintenance people working on the DC-9 anymore.

  If he left Theta now, would he ever get back? If he got out of the plane, could he return?

  Madrone took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and jumped.

  He tumbled from a great height, passing through a thunderstorm. Time jerked sideways into a different dimension, as if each second split in half — one part fast, one part slow.

  The thud when he landed shook every bone. When he opened his eyes, he was sitting in the ANTARES control seat, out of Theta, unconnected.

  Carefully but quickly, Kevin removed the control helmet and the skullcap. The cabin lights stung his eyes. He rose, pushing past the control panels to the door. He unlocked it and pushed it open, at the same time retrieving an emergency access ladder kept in a small panel at the side of the door. The ladder was no more than a roll of chain links and metal bars; it swung wildly as he descended, further distorting his sense of balance.

  He tumbled as he reached the ground, arms and legs unfurling in the warm, moist air. He lay on his back a moment, his senses as limp as his body.

  I’ve escaped, he thought. I’ll never go back. I’m free of ANTARES; I’m free of the bastards trying to poison me, of Bastian and Geraldo, of Smith and Jeff. I’m free.

  Why had they taken his daughter and sent his wife away? To turn him into a computer?

  “Qué le pasa?” said a trembling voice above him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He looked up and saw a mechanic. His mind seemed to snap back into Theta. He jumped up.

  “Nada,” said Madrone. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I need to be refueled.”

  The man stared at him. He had come from fueling the nearby plane and smelled like kerosene.

  “What is this?” asked the mechanic in Spanish. He swept his hands, referring to the plane.

  “I will pay you well to refuel me,” said Madrone. “Petro, petróleo aviación démelo, “ he stuttered, struggling but failing to get the words into presentable Spanish. He tried again, his brain reaching for the right room — the right part of ANTARES and the control computer, as if they were still attached, as if they had to be there somewhere. But even as he tried to find the words, he knew he couldn’t; he kept talking as he rushed toward the man, bowling him over.

  Taken by surprise, the mechanic fell easily. They rolled on the ground, thrashing. Madrone felt everything as if it were being presented by the Flighthawk video feed. Then the Mexican managed to strike him on the side of the head where the ANTARES chip had been implanted.

  The pain shocked him. The blood in his arms and legs drained away; his heart stopped.

  Lightning flashed. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, the mechanic lay limp on the ground, neck twisted.

  The mechanic’s assistant stood a few feet away, terror on his face. Madrone took a step and the man bolted.

  Kevin ran to the fuel truck. The hose lay below the old McDonnell Douglas airliner, unattached. It rolled to an electrically operated spindle at the rear of the fuel truck, but Ma-drone didn’t bother with that. Instead, he jumped into the cab. The motor kicked over slowly, then caught. He drove quickly to Hawkmother, hands shaking, thoughts careening as the hose clattered on the ground behind him.

  Pain mixed with anger and grief. The bastards had made him into a monster, made him kill his own daughter, kill his friends. Everyone had turned him against him.

  Hawkmother’s fuel-access panel had been updated for the automated attendant system being tested at Dreamland; it whooshed open with a touch of the access button and a light blinked next to the receptacle access port, a guide for the robotic nozzle assembly. Madrone had no trouble inserting the fuel truck’s old-style hose, but couldn’t figure out how to get the fuel flowing. He punched the truck buttons madly, felt his head begin to ache.

  He felt himself in Hawk One, circling above the ocean.

  Madrone slammed the panel at the rear of the fuel truck, desperate. The hose jumped.

  Sirens in the distance.

  The jaguar raced for him, lightning flashing from its eyes.

  Run. Run!

  He had to do this. For Christina.

  For himself.

  For the dark woman, calling to him.

  The fuel flowed freely, monitored and helped by the Boeing’s automated circuits, which could compensate for changes in the pump pressure and automatically controlled the flow.

  The flashing lights of a police vehicle approached from the other end of the field. Kevin left the hose as it pumped, and ran to the Mexican he had killed on the tarmac. He searched the man’s jumpsuit pockets for a weapon.

  Nothing but a butane lighter and cigarettes.

  Lighter in hand, he ran back to the truck and the hose. The police were in a pickup truck, now a few hundred yards away. He would pull the hose from the plane and set the truck on fire.

  Wouldn’t the Boeing burn as well?

  Hawkmother wouldn’t permit him to simply remove the nozzle. He pulled and twisted, but it wouldn’t relent. He stared at the square buttons next to the receptacle assembly. Two were lit; pushing them had no effect.

  He tried another, then a fourth. Nothing. He punched a large rocker switch, heard a whoosh. The hose fell into his arms.

  The pickup slammed to a stop about thirty yards from fuel truck. The police jumped out, ducking behind the opposite side of the truck. A voice called over a loudspeaker in Spanish and then English for him to stop and step away from the plane.

  The automated fueling system on the Boeing had stopped the fuel flow with a bubble of compressed air, then closed and safed its fuel system. Had Hawkrnother been interfaced with the Dreamland system it was designed for, the automated control on the other end would have felt the puff, reversed flow momentarily, and then shut off the pump and retrieved the hose, assuring that there would be no spill.

  Here, the pump momentarily hiccuped, confused by the backflow pressure. Rather than shutting down, it sucked and then spat harder against the vacuum — after a brief moment of pumping nothing, jet fuel poured out everywhere. The hose slapped up and down against the paveme
nt.

  One of the policemen fired at him. Kevin grabbed the hose. As he began to run out from under the plane, he slipped and fell headlong on the tarmac. Jet fuel washed over him as the lightning broke above; he rolled in the rain, splashing through the gas and fumbling for the lighter. He needed a wick — he tore at his sleeve for the cloth, but the ANTARES jumpsuit didn’t give way.

  He had a handkerchief in his pocket.

  More shots. The dull, metallic click of an automatic weapon.

  The pavement chipped near him. Time had split again; his brain fuzzed as if he were in the middle of an LSD-induced hallucination.

  Madrone wadded the handkerchief, pushed it away, took the lighter, and clicked it. Flames burst everywhere.

  Breathe, he told himself. Warmth enveloped him and he saw the dark woman a few feet away in the rain forest, beckoning as fire leapt up his shoulder.

  Roll and breathe.

  Agony.

  The jaguar roared from the fire. Madrone took a long breath and pushed his hands down. The fuel truck turned into an outline of flickering red.

  The chain ladder slapped against his hands. He pulled himself upward. The plane seemed unscathed, safe.

  Kevin slammed the door shut, then jammed the helmet on his head. He was there, in the cockpit, surrounded by flames. He could see the dark woman and the jungle beyond.

  The engines wound up.

  More vehicles came, an entire armada. He began to back away, saw them all in the video.

  Madrone looked to the right and he was in the Flighthawks. The U/MFs flashed upward from the ocean, streaking toward Hawkmother.

  Back in the Boeing. Moving.

  He would fly right through the trucks if he had to. One was an armored car.

  Hawk One streaked at the armored car, slashing in front of her. The vehicle slowed, but did not stop.

  Crash into it.

  No. Not yet. Only if necessary.

  An access ramp paralleled the runway. It was wide and would be long enough for him to take off, but only if he started from the beginning.

  He couldn’t turn and keep the Boeing on the ramp. He’d have to back up.

  Reverse thrust.

  Hawkmother didn’t like the sudden change of momentum. She rumbled as the engines tried to follow his commands. Slowly, she stopped moving forward. Then, trembling, she inched backward on the narrow pathway.

  Hawk One and Two danced before the armored car and a sedan. The armored car finally stopped. A police car reached the runway and began driving parallel to him.

  The armored car began moving again.

  The runway. They thought he would use it and were trying to block it off, ignoring the ramp. Good.

  He had it now. He jumped back into the Flighthawks, harassed a knot of men piling off a pickup truck, sending them to the ground.

  He looked left. He was in Hawkmother.

  Full throttle. Go. Go.

  The fuel truck exploded. Though it was by now several hundred yards away, the shock wave nearly pushed Hawk-mother off the narrow ramp. Her right wheels nudged the soft dirt.

  He pulled back on the stick. The 777, not yet at eighty knots, far too slow to take off, hesitated. The safety protocols screamed.

  He swept them away with his hand, demanded more thrust. The armored car began to fire its cannon at him.

  Now, he told the plane, and she lifted into the sky.

  Chapter 47

  Dreamland

  19 February, 1705 local

  Jeff undid his restraints and leaned back in his seat as Raven rolled toward her hangar. The day had been impossibly long, and he’d had nothing to eat beyond the sludge from Ong’s zero-gravity Mr. Coffee. But the way his stomach was roiling, Zen was glad it was empty.

  They had found and retrieved the copilot with help of SAR assets from Nellis, working at long distance. But the storm over the mountains had whipped into a fury as they worked, hampering even Raven and its sophisticated sensors. The pilot and Madrone were still missing, and no one had found the wreckage of Hawkmother or the Flighthawks.

  “Major, you need a hand?” asked Ong behind him.

  Poor egghead looked like he was ready to fall down on the deck and sleep there.

  “Nah,” Jeff told him, swinging his chair out from its mounting. “I’m fine.”

  “Tight squeeze,” said Ong.

  “Yeah. You should see me trying to get into a phone booth.” He leaned forward, then levered his arms against the low-slung seat rests, maneuvering his fanny backward into the wheelchair. He supported his entire weight with his left hand, then walked it back a bit before sliding into the chair. He’d done it maybe a thousand times, but tonight fatigue made him slip a bit, and he nearly fell out as he plopped backward. He rolled to the hatch slowly, attaching the chair to the special clamps on the ventral ladder that allowed him to use the specially designed escalator.

  Colonel Bastian was waiting on the tarmac. “So?”

  “Dalton and Madrone are still missing. We think we have the area narrowed down,” said Jeff.

  “McMann told me they saw a chute,” said Bastian. Colonel McMann was in charge of the search-and-rescue assets that had been scrambled from Edwards.

  Zen nodded. “The infrareds didn’t find anything there. They were going to wait until morning to send some PJs down unless there’s a radio transmission. Bitchin’ terrain.”

  Bastian nodded. “No use going out in this weather in the dark.”

  “Crew’s beat,” agreed Zen, even though he and the others had debated going back out.

  “Dr. Geraldo tells me you want to rejoin ANTARES.”

  “Technically, I never left,” said Jeff.

  “It’s a tight schedule until we get another Flighthawk pilot.”

  “I realize that,” Jeff told him.

  Bastian nodded, but the silence remained awkward.

  “I thought I’d go downstairs and see if they made anything out from the mission data,” said Jeff. “See if we can turn up anything. I had Ong transmit the data when we were inbound.”

  “Yeah, okay. Look, Zen …”

  Bastian touched his shoulder, but didn’t say anything. In the dim morning twilight he suddenly looked very old.

  “I’m okay, Dad,” he told his father-in-law.

  Bastian nodded, then took his hand away. Zen gripped the top of his wheels.

  “Dad?” said Dog, slightly bemused. Jeff had never called Bastian “Dad” before.

  “Don’t get used to it, Colonel.”

  “I don’t know that I’d want to.” Bastian gave him a tired smile, and waved him on.

  Chapter 48

  Computer Lab

  19 February, 1715

  Jennifer Gleason spread the printouts across the black lab tables, trying to see if there was a pattern to gibberish that had inserted itself into C3’s resource-allocation data.

  Of course there was a pattern; there had to be a pattern. But what was it? Her diagnostic routines hadn’t a clue. Baffled, she decided to get them all on a printout in one place, mark them, and see if anything occurred to her. Scrounging tape and a marker, she laid out the pages of the printout, then began the laborious process of highlighting the interesting sections.

  Following their usual protocol, the entire test session had been recorded on the diagnostic computers. The flight computer’s different functions were logged as they were monitored in real time, tracking flight commands and the U/MF’s responses. She also had a hard record of C3’s processing and memory allocations, which corresponded with the various instructions and inputs on the log. Specific commands — takeoff, for example — always resulted in a certain pattern of resource allocations, in the same way human brain waves corresponded to certain actions.

  The correspondences were all there, a perfect set of fingerprints showing that C3 and the Flighthawks had worked flawlessly, at least until the point when Raven lost its link with Hawkmother over the Sierra Nevadas.

  But the diagnostic program th
at she’d run to check for the correspondences had discovered a large number of anomalies in the allocations. Sparse at first, they’d increased dramatically by the time contact was lost.

  They were short too, and didn’t correspond to actual or virtual addresses in the memory or processing units. But they were definitely there — as her yellow marker attested. Jennifer climbed onto the table, bending low to mark them. She was about three quarters of the way through when the door to the lab slid open.

  “Hey, Jen,” said Zen, rolling in.

  “Hi,” she said, continuing to mark the sheets.

  “What are you doing on the table?”

  “Cramming for the test,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Just a joke.” She lifted her knees carefully and slid off the table.

  “Some view,” said Zen.

  “If I’d have known you were coming I would have worn a miniskirt,” she said.

  “Seriously, what are you doing?”

  “Something strange happened with the Flighthawk control computer,” she said, explaining about the allocations.

  “Maybe it’s just a transmission problem.”

  “No way. We’ve done this a million times without anything like this showing up.”

  “Not with ANTARES.”

  “True.”

  “This related to the crash?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  Jennifer tugged a strand of hair back behind her ear. “I don’t see how. You have no idea what happened?”

  “Kulpin thought the flight computer on the Boeing whacked out and somehow took over.”

  “Hmmmph.”

  “Possible?”

  What if the gibberish were code from the Boeing’s computer pilot?

  “Well?” asked Jeff.

  “I uh, well, probably not,” she said. “We’ve never had that kind of problem with the autopilot before. It’s basically a subset of the systems we’ve used in the Megafortress.”

  How could the Boeing’s command computer leak across into C3?

  Through the interrupts they used for the video, and to coordinate the flight information. But the gateway and thus ANTARES were in the way.