How, then, would they get the remote control to engage?
“I’m thinking if we could jolt the plane electronically,” Rubeo told Terci. “If we could surge the power, and the computer would reset. At that point we can contact it and take over.”
“You mean reboot the entire electrical system? In the air? Sure, but how do we do that? And still have something left?”
“Well how would you do it?” Rubeo asked. He let his mind wander, trying to visualize the system.
“Can’t think of a way,” said Terci. “Not while it’s flying. Not and still have the plane able to fly.”
“If we shoot out the generators?”
“Then you have no power at all. Not going to work.” Terci made a strange sound with his mouth. Rubeo realized the engineer was biting his thumbnail.
A good sign; he only did that when he was on the verge of an idea.
“No, it’s simpler,” said Terci. “Just have a flight condition where the autopilot takes over. Then sign in from there. But you have to get the autopilot on… Say there’s a sudden dip so the airplane loses altitude.”
“The safety protocol won’t allow the system to take over if it went into autopilot while under pilot control,” said Rubeo. “We still need to have the system reboot somehow.”
“Yes,” said Terci, repeating Rubeo’s point. “You need an electric shock to delete what was originally programmed, or it will just return to the pilot. It just has to reboot — no, wait — you could just delete that part of the memory. No, just make the computer think there’s an anomaly. You don’t need a massive event, just a reset.”
“How?”
“Hmmph.”
“What if we overload a data collector circuit so the computer reads it as a fault and has to reset? If the circuit no longer exists, it will reset into test mode.”
“Yes. You take over in retest. Sure, because it’s resetting the program registers.”
“Will that work?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. But what circuit would be the right one to blow out?”
“There must be a dozen. Can you access the schematics?”
“I don’t know if my computer is on. Then I have to get into the company mainframes.”
“You have less than ten minutes to discover the proper circuit,” said Rubeo. “Please do not waste them by saying how difficult the task is.”
Turk heard Li contact the tanker. He could tell from the tone in her voice that she thought Ginella was gone.
And maybe he did, too.
There was no reason for him to want to save her. On the contrary, he was sure his life would be easier if she were dead.
But it was his duty to try.
“Captain Mako, this is Ray Rubeo.”
“Go ahead, Doc.”
“I have a sequence of events that I believe if followed very minutely will result in the aircraft’s remote control apparatus starting up. At that point, you will be able to issue the proper commands and fly the plane from the Tigershark.”
“Really?”
“There is an element of doubt,” added Rubeo. “But I am of the mind that it is better than nothing. I think it does have a chance of working.”
“I’m game.”
“I am going to add one of my specialists to the line. Your first shot must be very precise. The second even more so.”
Turk listened as the engineer described the locations on the Hog that had to be struck. Fortunately, the engineer was able to upload the targeting data to him through the Whiplash system, and within a few seconds the Tigershark’s computer marked the location.
Making the first shot was simply a matter of climbing 5,000 feet, then ramming straight down to an intercept course at exactly 632 knots and firing.
That was tough, but the second shot involved an even more difficult problem. It had to be made at a box housed near the plane’s right wing root within thirty seconds of the first.
“Thirty seconds?” Turk asked.
“Has to do with the monitors that control the emergency system check-in,” replied Terci. “The battery will—”
“All right, all right,” said Turk. “Getting into position for the first shot.”
Turk hit his mark 5,000 feet over the Hog and pushed down so he would be on the intercept point. As he reached the target speed, the computer gave him the shooting cue and he fired.
Perfect shot.
But as he swung into position for the second shot, the A–10E turned on its wing and began to dive straight down.
“There’s a problem,” he told Rubeo. He pushed his plane to follow. “I think we’re going to lose her.”
Since the helmet was tied into the Whiplash system, Rubeo could command the screen to show him what the Tigershark saw. He did so, then immediately began to regret it — the A–10A was in what looked like a slow motion downward spiral, heading for the ground.
They had not calculated this possibility.
Why?
“The pilot must be semiconscious,” said Terci. “She’s fighting the controls.”
“Yes.”
“If she can level off at ten thousand feet or so, she’ll be fine.”
“What about the second shot?”
“You won’t get it now. Get her to level off.”
“I doubt that will be easy for her to do. How else can we override that system?”
“That’s the only circuit possible, and even that’s iffy.”
Turk looked at the airplane. He had to strike a glancing blow on a plane that was very close to entering a spin. Even lining up to get to the right parameter for the computer to calculate the shot was going to be tough.
There was no other choice.
“I don’t know that I can make the shot, even with the computer’s help,” said Turk.
They were now at 25,000 feet, moving downward in a large but gradually tightening circle. If Ginella was trying to regain control — a theory Turk was dubious about — she wasn’t having any particular success.
The computer’s solution was for the Tigershark to exactly duplicate the Hog’s flight. It was the sort of solution a computer would propose — it saw nothing out of the ordinary, since the impossibility of doing that hadn’t been programmed.
“I can’t follow this course and keep my plane,” Turk told Rubeo. “She’s going to end up in a spin. It’ll get faster and faster. I have to try to stop it, then take the shot.”
“How exactly do you propose to do that?”
“I come in along the wing and tap it. It’ll knock the plane out of the course she’s on.”
“Will it stabilize it?”
“No way — but if I can just get the flight path to straighten out a little, I can take that shot.”
“How do you propose to do this?” said Rubeo sarcastically. “Are you going to reach your hands out?”
“No. I use my wings. It’ll work if I’m careful. I just have to do enough to disrupt the plane.”
“You’re sure?”
It was as much of a long shot as Rubeo’s original solution, even more so. It was very possible he might throw it into an even worse situation. But it was the only thing he could think of to save her. And he knew he had to try.
“Yes,” he told Rubeo, trying to put steel in his voice. “It will work.”
Turk dropped the Tigershark closer to the Hog, ignoring the proximity warning.
Every novice flier has to demonstrate that he or she can recover from an incipient spin before being allowed to do anything very fancy in an airplane. The first few times, the experience is fairly scary, as the sensation of vertigo — and worse, the feeling that you aren’t moving at all — tends to completely unnerve someone new to the cockpit. There is actually considerable time to correct the problem, but only if you go about things methodically, with a clear mind.