The Shark that Turk Mako flew was the F–40 Tigershark II, the experimental aircraft owned by the Pentagon’s Technology Office, now being equipped with the Medusa control unit to work with the Sabre UAVs. It was the latest in a long line of experimental aircraft, a cutting-edge plane that would have looked right at home on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise.
Technically, two previous aircraft had been called the Tigershark. The first was actually an informal name applied by the British to their versions of the P–40 Warhawk, after squadrons began painting sharks’ mouths on the nose. Fighting against the Japanese in China, Claire Lee Chenault’s Flying Tigers saw how good the paint looked and added teeth to their versions, helping to make the look famous.
Tigershark II’s direct namesake was the F–20, a lightweight, multirole aircraft developed by Northrop in the 1970s and early 1980s from the basic blueprint of the F–5E. It was incredibly nimble, capable of hitting Mach 2 and climbing to over 54,000 feet. It could take off in only 1,600 feet, a relatively short distance for a jet of that era, and the simplicity of its design made it easy to maintain — an important consideration for its intended target consumers, friendly American allies who might not have or want to spend the money for more expensive aircraft.
Though an excellent aircraft, the F–20 eventually succumbed to the realities of international weapons purchasing, where politics often overshadowed other considerations.
Like its predecessor, the new Tigershark was light, small, and fast. Very, very fast.
The airframe had essentially been built around the engine, a combination hypersonic pulse and ramjet that could take the sleek, needle-nosed plane to Mach 5. The engine also allowed it to operate around 135,000 feet. The wings came out in a triangular wedge, with faceted and angled fins on both sides.
The engine’s quad air scoop was located directly under the cabin area of the fuselage; rail guns were mounted on either side. The rail guns were directed energy weapons, firing small bursts of plasma at high speed. The bursts were roughly the equivalent of a 50-millimeter machine-gun bullet. Devastating to another aircraft, the weapon had several advantages over conventional machine guns, starting with the fact that its projectile, though as potent as missiles, were the size of 25mm bullets. Its effective range was just over twenty miles — well before the aircraft would be seen on radar.
The weapon did have some limitations. Only a dozen charges could be fired before it had to cool down and recycle, a process that took two minutes under ideal conditions. And with each firing, the gun literally tried to pull itself apart. Maintaining it in working order was, so far at least, very expensive.
Turk counted another negative to the weapon, though this was never mentioned by its builders. Great precision was needed to target a moving adversary, and the forces created as the weapon was fired made the Tigershark hard to control at all but top speed. These facts combined to dictate that the aircraft be flown entirely by the computer during the combat sequence. In other words, he had to hand the stick over to the silicon to take his shot.
He didn’t particularly like that. No computer was ever going to be as good as he was at flying. Ever.
Turk had joined the Air Force to fly. He was good at it — very good, he liked to think. He’d flown everything the service had given him — from F–16s to Flighthawks. In his not too humble opinion, he was the best. It irked him to give up the stick, even if he wasn’t literally standing back out of the way. But that was the way it was.
In a very real sense, he knew he was lucky to have a job where his seat was actually in a cockpit. All of the good young jocks were headed toward UAV programs now, a dramatic switch from just a few years ago. Unmanned planes were the Air Force’s future.
That sucked. There was nothing like the smell of rapidly evaporating jet fuel to get you moving in the morning, he thought. He took one last whiff and plugged up, snugging the Tigershark’s cockpit.
Time to rock and roll.
“Control to Tiger One, Tiger One, you read?” prompted the control tower.
“Copy, Control, strong read.”
“Status?”
Part of Turk wanted to give a real wise guy answer — maybe something like, “I feel like I gotta pee.” But the flight control computer at Dreamland that was talking to him had no sense of humor. In fact, the only thing in the universe that had less of a sense of humor was the flight control computer’s human boss, Major Samantha “Killjoy” Combs, who had promised to write him up if he goofed on the computer again. His joking around had frozen the system, grounding flights for over two hours.
Or so she claimed.
“Write me up?” he’d laughed. “I just discovered a flaw in your stupid computer program.”
“You caused two flight ranges to shut down.”
“Better we found the problem now rather than in battle,” said Turk.
“Captain.”
“Hey, make yourself happy. What are you gonna do, give me a parking ticket?”
Twenty minutes later his boss, Breanna Stockard, had called from D.C., telling him that if the three-star general commanding Dreamland complained about him again, he was going to be reassigned to clean toilets in the coldest part of Alaska.
So Turk was very straight today when dealing with the computer controller.
“Status is green,” said the pilot. “Awaiting clearance to take off.”
“Tiger One you are cleared to proceed on the filed flight plan. You are cleared for takeoff.”
The computer continued, giving him a rundown of the weather conditions. They were basically the same as they always were at Brown Lake: clear skies, unlimited visibility.
“Engines, military power,” said Turk, powering up from soft idle. The power plants — there were actually four of them, though they worked as an integrated unit — came on with a soft thud. The aircraft immediately began to shake. Turk worked his control surfaces quickly, getting green status lights on the right side of his visor. He could choose to use the LED screens on the aircraft — there was no glass canopy — but generally left that as a backup. His smart helmet could do everything the computer-controlled screen could, and was connected directly to the plane.
Turk checked through his instruments for his last takeoff checklist, meticulously looking at each indicator even though the computer would have alerted him if anything was out of spec. Then he took a long, deep breath, slowly emptying his lungs.
“Let’s go,” he told the plane, simultaneously reaching for the throttle.
And they were off.
All airplanes are built to fly. Engines on full and left completely on their own, their wings would gladly propel themselves through the air, straight and level, forever. Or at least until their fuel ran out.
The Tigershark didn’t just love to fly. It loved to accelerate. Its engines supplied more lift per pound than any other aircraft in the American inventory, which meant any other aircraft in the world. If the Tigershark were a person, it would be an Olympic-class sprinter — the Carl Lewis of the skies.
Speed is lift. Turk’s job was basically to manage that lift, using it to get from Point A to Point B and back again. To do that in the Tigershark, he had to think not just of Point A and B and all the subpoints in between, but Point C and D, and a little bit of E and F on either side of the wings. Because living at Mach 2.3, the aircraft’s normal cruise speed, entailed certain responsibilities.