Nerve Center

And frightening as well. Madrone whittled his nail, nervously razoring two sharp V’s on the cartilage. Blood pricked from his finger as he finally broke away from the conflict to glance at the screen on his right, where one of the computers monitoring the encounter was kicking up data.

“Weapons test complete,” declared the computer.

As the test supervisor, Madrone ought to end the encounter. But instead he turned back to it, drawn by the swirling energy and fascinated by his own fear.

The Flighthawk suddenly veered straight up. Mack’s F-16 seemed to stutter in midair, less than two hundred feet from the smaller craft. The planes seemed to collide. Then it became obvious that the F-16 had veered off at the last possible instant, wings spi

The two pilots cursed at each other.

“You stinking cheater. You used a hole in the programming!” snapped Mack.

“Oh, like you didn’t to nail the helos.”

“Knock it off,” said Kevin, snapping into his role as mission boss. “Exercise over.”

Neither pilot acknowledged.

Aboard EB-52 BX-2 “Raven”

Range 2, Dreamland

9 January, 1415

“YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOUR SPEED UP OR YOU WON’T GET off the ground.”

“I’m not stupid,” snapped Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian, struggling to get the big EB-52 off Dreamland’s Runway Number Two. The big plane was trimmed for takeoff, its four freshly tuned engines humming at maximum takeoff power. He even had a crisp takeoff kind of wind at eighteen and a half knots in his face.

And still he couldn’t coax the plane into the sky. The mountains loomed ahead.

Worse—the computer-pilot-assist droned a stall warning in his ear.

“Daddy. “

“I have it, Brea

But Colonel Bastian didn’t have it. The Megafortress’s nose stubbornly remained horizontal and its wheels on the pavement. He was nearly out of runway, and nothing he did—nothing—would get his forward speed over seventy-eight knots. Way too slow for anything but disaster.

Dog started to curse. In the next second, the plane magically lifted her chin, instantly gaining momentum. It wasn’t until he went to clean his landing gear a few seconds later that Bastian realized what had happened—the computer had taken over.

His copilot, meanwhile, was having serious trouble stowing a smirk.

“What the hell, Bree?”

“You tried to take off with only one engine.”

“What do you mean, one engine? They were all in the green.” The colonel ignored a query from Dreamland Tower, which was monitoring the airplane’s progress toward Range DL/2. “The controls—”

“You never punched it out of Sim-2,” said Brea

They had used the plane’s command computer’s simulator module to run through a few mock takeoffs before starting down the field. The colonel realized now that he had failed to authorize the computer to switch back into real mode for takeoff. Obviously, Brea

Which, of course, they had.

“That’s dirty pool, Brea

“No. I just dialed them down to ten percent. You weren’t paying attention,” she added. There was no trace of humor in her voice now—she was the veteran flight instructor verbally whacking a greenie pilot. “You didn’t ask for a check, which you should have, because as you can see, my screen clearly indicates the proper output. Inattention is a killer. In any airplane except the Megafortress, you would have bought it.”

“Any other plane and there’s no way you could have done that,” said Dog angrily. “You tricked me with a bogus reading.”

“Your screen clearly says sim mode. You didn’t go through the checks properly,” she said. “This was a dramatic way to point that out. I’m sorry, Daddy,” she added, her voice suddenly changing.

The change in tone killed him.

“No, you were absolutely one-hundred-percent right,” said Bastian. He practically spat the words through his clenched teeth, then sighed. She was right, damn it—he hadn’t dotted his stinking i’s and it could have cost him his plane, his crew, and his life. “Can I get control back?”

Brea

“Don’t call me Daddy.”

Bunker B, Dreamland

9 January, 1415

THE FLIGHTHAWK AND F-16 SWIRLED IN THE SKY, CAT and dog locked in a ferocious match. Neither could gain enough of an advantage over the other to end the battle. Then the big screen at the front of the room flashed white and a loud pffffffff cracked the speakers—Captain Madrone had cut the feed.

“I said, knock it off” Madrone stood back from the console, folding his arms in front of his chest. At five eight and perhaps 140 in a winter uniform with boots, thermals, and two sweaters, Madrone hardly cut an imposing figure. Even for an engineer he was considered shy and quiet, and most people at Dreamland who knew him even casually could mention several nervous habits, begi

Except for the two men at the heart of the battle, that is.

“You fucking cheated,” Zen told Mack, tossing off his Flighthawk control helmet. A control cable caught the custom-built device about a millimeter from the ground, just barely keeping it from turning into a bucket of ridiculously expensive but busted computer chips.

“I didn’t cheat,” said Smith, standing from his station on Madrone’s left. “I just flew under the radar coverage. How is that cheating?”

“You flew beyond the parameters of the plane,” said Zen. “You pulled over ten g’s twice. And besides, no way no how could you have gotten past the F-15’s at Mark Seven.”

“The computer let me take the g’s,” said Mack. “As for the F-15’s, where were they?”

“He got past us,” admitted Captain Paul Owens, who’d been handling the F-15 combat air sweep from one of the back benches. “The damn simulator has a hole in the radar coverage big enough to fly a 747 through. You can’t see anything under a thousand feet.”

“Gentlemen, please.” Dr. Ray Rubeo, one of the scientists overseeing the simulation, leaned over the railing at the back of the room. His voice had the world-weary tone a kindergarten teacher would use at the end of a long week. “I believe we have our data for today. I suggest everyone take the afternoon off to play with their Tinkertoys. Live-fire exercise in the morning. Tomorrow, please, keep the WWF routine on the ground.”

Rubeo turned and walked from the room, shuddering slightly at the doorway, as if shaking a great chill from his body.

“Easier to walk away than fix the holes in the sim program,” muttered Zen.

“I think he was right,” said Madrone. “We all pretty much know what we have to do tomorrow.”

He turned to Captain Rosenstein and Lieutenant Garuthers, who were to pilot the actual helicopters they would test tomorrow. The Army commanders were here to test new helicopter upgrades and combat communications in something approaching real conditions; they cared little for what they called the “Hair Force testosterone show,” and were only too happy to knock off early.