“The Flighthawks remain a priority,” Dog told her, guessing what she was going to suggest. “Raven has to stay with them.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest we stop using the EB-52 as the Flighthawks’ mother ship,” she said. “Though I’ve heard the control gear won’t fit in the Megafortress weapons bay once you reach eight U/MFs.”
Obviously she’d been talking to Rubeo.
“That may be a problem,” said Bastian. “That’s why we’re in business—to solve those sorts of things.”
Damn Rubeo. He was throwing every possible objection in the way of ANTARES.
“We can’t solve it if we don’t have the resources,” said Cheshire.
“Pete Rensling suggested using the 777 airframe as the ANTARES mother ship,” said Dog. “It has a huge bay, and the fuel tanks that would be needed for refueling were already part of the tanker testing.”
“That’s not a bad idea, if the wings could take it.”
“Being studied right now. If it works, that will lessen some of the burden on you. In the meantime, I’ll expedite more conversions as part of ANTARES.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” said Cheshire. She was smiling broadly. “Now how about more pilots?”
“I’m still working on that,” said Bastian. There were presently only six qualified B-52 pilots on the base; since even with the new flight computers it typically took two to fly a Megafortress, there was only one crew per plane. Two of the pilots were due to be transferred next week.
“You better be careful, Colonel. If you get any good, we may slide you into the rotation.”
“I’ll help out anyway I can,” said Bastian, smarting a bit from her tone.
“You sure you don’t want to take this run? I still need another pilot.”
“Maybe I will,” he said. “As a matter of fact, let’s go for it.”
Dreamland Handheld Weapons Lab
23 January, 0807
“LATE, AS USUAL.”
Danny grinned at the gray-haired woman in the white lab coat. Her frown turned into a smile, even as she shook her head and wagged her finger.
“Captain, you need a secretary to look after you,” Annie Klondike told him. She turned and began walking briskly toward the back rooms of the handheld weapons lab.
“You want the job?” asked Freah, falling in alongside. “You wouldn’t last twenty-four hours.”
Klondike shuffled toward the large room where the firing ranges were located.
“Annie, those new slippers?”
“Don’t get fresh.”
Klondike walked to a large gray box that sat in front of a series of drawer-shaped lockers. About eight feet wide and another six feet deep, the box came up to the diminutive weapons scientist’s chest. It seemed to be made of a very hard plastic material. Klondike put her palms on the top and the box began to move. Fascinated, Danny watched as the box pulled itself apart, a shallow section remaining behind the top.
“Opens only with my palm print and could withstand a one-megaton explosion,” said Klondike.
“This thing?” asked Danny. The shell material was no more than three inches thick.
“As long as it’s not a direct hit. Of course, if it was one of my bombs—”
“You do nukes too, Annie?”
“In my youth, Captain. I’m retired from that.”
“You shittin’ me?”
Klondike lowered her face, but kept her eyes fixed on him, as if she were a Sunday school teacher peering over her glasses. She sighed, then again shook her head, shuffling over to the table.
“At the moment, the Combat Information Visor must be attached to the Smart Helmets,” she said, turning her attention to the device Danny had come to inspect. “I have some hopes of miniaturizing it further, so that it can be used as goggles. I find the visor cumbersome, and I’m told some troops do not like the helmet.”
“It’s heavy,” said Danny. The so-called Smart Helmet included a secure com link and a GPS system. It could withstand a direct hit by a fifty-caliber machine-gun bullet from fifty yards—though that produced a hell of a headache. Klondike’s prototype visor added two additional functions: a long-range multi-made viewer, and an aiming screen for a specially adapted M-16.
The visor looked like a welder’s shield. It shifted the helmet’s center of gravity far forward when it was snapped on, promising severe neck strain.
“There are four native modes to the viewer,” said Klondike, reaching to cinch the chin strap. “They select on the right, zoom and back out on the left. They toggle through in sequence. One is unenhanced. Two allows—wait, let’s kill the lights.”
Mode Two was infrared. Three was starlight-enhanced. Four actually did not work yet; they were perfecting a graphics Geiger counter, which would allow the unit to detect radioactive materials from twice the distance as the “sniffers” or portable Geiger counters Whiplash now packed on NBC missions. But the gear wasn’t quite ready.
“I’d trade it for making it lighter,” Danny said, fiddling with the helmet.
“Well, it won’t make it heavier, because we hope to press the functions into a pair of chips. I’m sorry, Captain. The weight comes from the LED panes and the carbon-boron sliver-plates at the side,” she added. “We’ve actually lightened it about a pound and a half since we began. Notice how the slide here is almost round?”
“Oh, yeah, first thing I noticed.”
Klondike turned the lights on. “The helmet can accept inputs from external sensor systems, assuming they meet MAT/ 7 standards. You’ll need an RCA plug, but once you plug in you’re slaved to a Pave Low’s infrared, assuming the helicopter’s gear has been modified for an additional output. The host thinks it’s the original screen. Adjustment’s easy; we’ll have it put on your C-17 the next time Quick-mover goes in for a lube.”
While she was talking, Klondike had approached the gun drawers. These were locked with an old-fashioned key, which she kept on a string around her neck. She bent to one and opened it, then removed an M-16.
“I prefer my MP-5,” Danny told her.
“Captain, please,” said Klondike. “With all due respect to my friends at Heckler-Koch, submachine guns are meant to be sprayed, even theirs. A fine weapon under certain circumstances, but hardly a one-bullet, one-kill solution. Now come on or I’m going to miss my soap opera—or worse, Jeopardy.”
The M-16A3’s laser sight had been replaced with a small, stubby bar that had only a small pinhole at the barrel end. Nudging a slider on the top of the gun activated a VSRT or Very-Short-Range FM Transmitter, which allowed the gun to communicate with the targeting screen. A pair of cursors appeared on the view screen; as the gun was aimed horizontally, the cursors merged. A tear-shaped ring appeared around the cursor, showing the probable trajectory if the shot deteriorated because of the wind or distance.
“The cursor is absolutely right on to two hundred yards in all conditions,” Annie told him after he’d put five bullets into the center of a target at three hundred feet. “But we haven’t been able to reliably compensate for weather conditions beyond that. Additionally, you can’t aim through water or glass as you can with the sniper rifle. But it’s an improvement over the laser dot, both in distance and detectability. And it has the added bonus of persuading men to keep their helmets on,” added Klondike, “no matter how heavy they may be.”
“Ready for field testing?” asked Danny.
“Didn’t you notice the helmet was formed for your head?” said Klondike.
“If I weren’t married already, Annie …” said Danny.
Klondike’s response was drowned out by the report of the rifle as he squeezed off the rest of the clip.
Dreamland, Aggressor Hangar
23 January, 0182