She was looking at him attentively, not glaring, not accusing, just watching.
“Look, I know it’s likely the project is going to be cut,” he said, looking back at the others. “There’s no reason to bullshit you guys. You’re too damn smart. There’s no political backing for the Flighthawks. You guys have been dealing with it for a hell of a lot longer than I have.”
He noticed one or two heads going up and down, saw a few frowns. Jennifer put her hands in front of her face as if she were going to cry.
“The thing is, we’re right. I know we’re right. The Flighthawks, UM/Fs, are the way of the future,” Jeff said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, as we all know, but somewhere down the line, these guys are going to be saving a hell of a lot of lives. They’re going to keep pilots from getting their butts blown off.” He laughed. “Not every pilot. But a lot of them. And this is what’s going to happen. They’ll mothball us, close us down. We’ll all go on to better jobs. Me, I’m thinking McDonald’s. Can I supersize that for you, sir?” he mocked.
They laughed.
“But I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Zen continued. “Few years from now, maybe two, maybe ten, maybe twenty—hell, I don’t know, the future. Somebody’s going to find our work on a shelf somewhere, and they’re going to realize we were right. They’re going to pull our reports out and they are going to save themselves a ton of work. Probably enough work to save one or two pilots in the process. So we have to get as much done before they pull the plug. Bastian’s going to save Dreamland,” he added, “by doing what he has to do. So we have to hang tough and do what we have to do.” Zen wheeled backward, starting for the door. “Let’s go kick some butt out there today, huh?”
Zen left them in silence, wheeling out the door before they could react. He continued across the hangar and out onto the tarmac where the modified 707, “Boeing,” waited.
The Flighthawk remote systems had grown even bigger since Zen’s accident. The UM/Fs had been grounded for nearly nine months while the entire project was reviewed; computer capacity had been increased on the controlling end, adding to the stored emergency procedures and routines. In the interim, and unrelated to the accident, the cooling mechanisms for the secure communications gear had been “improved.” These increased the remote controlling computer pallet from the size of a Honda Accord to that of a Chevy Suburban with a weight problem. Not only did it no longer fit in an F-15E, it was a squeeze to make the rear of the Boeing.
The scientists swore the gear would be miniaturized in the future—but they kept coming up with “improvements” that added to its bulk. Near-room-temperature superconducting chips and circuitry promised great advances in speed and much smaller sizes, but the gear was still too sensitive to be relied on. Not to mention expensive.
Zen’s accident had led the Air Force to abandon an important part of the original concept—having a combat pilot fly the robots along with his own plane. There were proposals to fit the gear into a B-2, but the guidance telemetry could theoretically alert next-generation sensors to the invisible bomber. The B-1 fuselage needed extensive modifications to fit the controlling unit. Neither plane’s wings could easily handle both UM/Fs, though the B-2’s could be reinforced to do so.
The Megafortress EB-52, on the other hand, was big and strong enough to handle the job. And in fact they had conducted several airdrops and test runs from the Mega-fortress before Zen’s accident. They’d managed one last week, just to make sure some of the modifications to the computer worked properly. Zen would have liked to do more, but the only Megafortress currently plumbed for airdrops was being used as a test bed for next-generation radar and communications jamming equipment. Those tests were running behind and had very high priority. By the time the plane—nicknamed “Raven”—was free for real feasibility work, the Flighthawks would be history.
“Hey, Major. Ready for blastoff?” asked Pete Connors out on the concrete apron.
“I’ve been ready all my life,” Zen told him, following Connors out toward the Boeing. The airman had parked a forklift near the rear crew door. They’d perfected this method of boarding the plane several days before. It was a hell of a lot easier than crawling down the stairs on his butt—which he had done on Raven.
“I ought to get one of these built into my wheelchair,” Stockard told him as he maneuvered under the large forks. Connors had played with the blades so he could easily lock them beneath Zen’s chair.
“Gee, Major, I’m surprised you haven’t gone for the Version 2.0 Upgraded Wheelchair,” joked Connors. “Has your TV, your satellite dish, your come-along cooler.”
“No sauna?” Jeff braced his arms as the metal forks clicked into the bottom of his chair.
“That’s in 3.0. You should sign up for beta-testing,” said the airman. “Ready?”
“Blastoff.”
It took Connors two attempts to get him lined up and through the special equipment bay in the rear of the plane. But that was a vast improvement over the first day, when it had taken eight or nine and he’d nearly fallen to the ground. Zen gave the airman a thumbs-up before rolling forward into the test-crew area.
“Great speech, Major,” said Ong, who’d sprinted out to oversee one of the engineering crew’s most important pre-flight tasks—brewing coffee in their zero-gravity Mr. Coffee.
“I thought you guys fell asleep on me,” said Zen. “I heard some snores.”
“No, seriously. Thanks.” Ong tapped his shoulder. “You’re damn right.”
“Thanks,” said Zen.
“Oooo, Mr. Coffee is smiling,” said Jennifer, climbing in. “Smells like we should use that for fuel.”
“Too corrosive,” said Ong.
Zen wheeled over to the nighthawk station, carefully setting the brake on his wheelchair before snapping the special restraints that locked it in place. The mechanics had cleared a pair of seats and reworked the control area so his seat could be locked in place.
Zen reviewed the hard-copy mission data Ong had left for him before getting ready for takeoff. Placing the Flighthawk computer in static test mode, he took hold of the mirror-image flight sticks, working quickly through the tests with the dedicated mission video tube at the center of the console. He limbered his fingers—they were always cramping like hell—and then pulled on the heavy flight helmet for a new round of checks.
The ground crew, meanwhile, had wheeled the Flight-hawk and its portable power cart out onto the runway. With the control systems operational, Jeff and the computer began yet another round of tests, making sure that both sets of flight computers and the link between them were optimal. Only when this new round of tests was finished did the ground crew fire up the Flighthawk engine, powering the small plane with a “puffer,” or power cart specially designed for it. The Flighthawk’s miniature engine needed a large burst of air running through its turbines before it caught fire.
The UM/F purred like a contented kitten. Impatient to get going, Jeff ran through the control surfaces quickly, flexing the flaps and sliding the rudder back and forth. He split the top screen of the visor into feeds from the forward and tail cams for the test, confirming visually the computers’ signal that all the surfaces were responding properly. He revved the engine one last time, checking temps and pressures.
Preflight finally complete, he put his visor screens back into their standard configuration. Blue sky filled the top half, with a ghosted HUD-like display in the middle and engine and flight data in color graphs to either side. The bottom was divided in three, with radar, flight-information, and instrument screens left to right. If he were flying two Hawks, the typical layout would feature the second plane’s optical or FLIR view on the left, and a God’s-eye of both planes and the mother ship in the middle.
“Let’s get this show on the road, Captain,” he told Bree.