“Looking for a date, Jacky?” Bree shot back.
“Sorry, ma’am. Structure is looking very solid.”
“That’s what I figured you meant,” she said, continuing through the set of turns. Test complete, and passed, she began spiraling upwards, looking at the ground through the belly cam as she climbed.
Dreamland sprawled over a defunct lake in the desert wilderness north of Las Vegas. Its existence was so secret it appeared on no list of facilities or bases. No one was ever assigned here; instead, they were given “cover’ jobs or assignments, usually though not always at Edwards Air Force Base.
Until recently the heart of the Air Force High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Dreamland had involved a great deal over the past two years, more rapidly in the past two months. The command had lost some of its best military people and projects to the newly designated Brad Elliott Air Force Base, named in honor of the former general who had lost his life in the China conflict only a few months before. Nearby at Groom Lake, Elliott AFB was a high-profile and prestigious command, which, though structured along traditional lines, was to be task primarily with introducing new weapons into the Air Force mainstream. Meanwhile, Dreamland and its high-tech facilities would remain a cutting edge facility with a much more experimental bent — as well as its own combat team named “Whiplash,” which operated directly at the President’s command. In charge of Dreamland was a scrappy, forty-something lieutenant colonel who everyone outside of Dreamland knew was in way over his head — and everyone inside of Dreamland knew was about as can-do as any ten other officers in the service combined.
Breanna was just slightly prejudiced in favor of Dreamland’s director. She happened to be his daughter.
Her left leg began to cramp, and then spasmed. Trying to loosen te cramp, she knocked her knee against the lower edge of the front panel.
“Perfect coffin,” she grumbled.
Unlike everything else connected with the plane, the computer could not adjust the seat; it had to be fiddled with manually, a procedure that had at least as high a change of making things worse as better.
Breanna tried flexing her leg as she rose toward twenty thousand feet, stifling a curse as the muscles in her other leg started feeling sympathy pains. She banked again, then asked the computer for the environmental panel, deciding she felt cold.
The computer claimed the temperature in her coffin was a balmy seventy-two.
“My ass,” she told it.
“Captain?” said Fichera.
“Relax, Sam. I’m getting all sorts of leg cramps, that’s all.”
“Too hot in there?” asked Fichera.
“Negative. I doubt it’s really seventy-two, by the way. All right, I should be at angels twenty in one more turn.”
“We copy that,” answered the engineer.
Both the climb and the cramps continued in silence. Though much larger at about 170 feet in length, the aircraft handled a lot like an F-111 to about Mach 1.5 if the F-111 was being flown remote control.
“You’re looking really great,” said Fichera as the UMB hit into the orbit over Glass Mountain just a nudge under 25,000 feet.
“Looks good from here,” said McCourt from the chase plane. He was flying off her right wing, separated by about a half mile in the open sky.
“All right. Telemetry test ready?” Bree asked.
“Roger that,” said Fichera.
“Computer, begin scheduled test B-5-6A: photographic data flow. Smile for the cameras, Dreamland.”
“Begin scheduled test B-5-6A,” acknowledged the computer.
A panel in the fuselage slid open, permitting a camera array from a mini-KH satellite to see the earth. The camera sent a rapid succession of detailed photos back to Dreamland.
“Hey, Major, this stuff going to show up in the
“Hell, Art, we’re going straight to
“I thought I felt a draft.”
“Data flow under way,” said Breanna, her tone once again serious. The test was a fairly simple affair, sending back high-resolution optical photos to the ground. As the system was essentially the same used in Dreamland’s mini-KH-12 tactical satellites, it should pass without much difficulty.
Which it did. Breanna continued a long, lazy orbit around the Dreamland test ranges, slowly building her altitude until she was at 35,000 feet. The next series of tests were the meat of the day’s mission.
“Ready to test engine five,” Breanna told her team. Engine five was the restartable rocket motor.
“Roger that,” said Fichera. “We’re hot to start.”
“Three-second burn programmed,” she said, reading off the program screen. “Counting down.”
There was a slight hitch as the rocket ignited; the plane’s nose stuttered downward for a microsecond before the massive increase in thrust translated into upward momentum. This was a by-product of a glitch in the trimming program, which the team was still trying to fine-tune. Otherwise, the burn and plane worked perfectly; Breanna rode the B-5 up through fifty thousand feet. A soft tone in her helmet accompanied the visual cue that they had reached their intended altitude; she leveled off, then started a gentle bank. At the end of a complete circuit she nosed down, gathering momentum. As the plane hit Mach 2, she prepared for the next test sequence.
“Ready to test engines three and four,” she said, refering to the scramjets. “Counting down.”
The hydrogen-fueled scramjets lit as the plane touched Mach 2.3. By the end of the test sequence, Breanna was at Mach 3.4 and had climbed through 85,000 feet. She continued to climb, powered now only by the scramjets.
“Ready for engine five,” she told her team, leveling off for the next test sequence.
“Good. Temp in four slightly high.”
“Acknowledged.” She took q quick glance at the screen, making sure the temp was still in the green — it was by
about five degrees — then told the computer to light the rocket motor.
“Looking good,” she said as the speed built quickly.
“Aye, Captain,” Richera said, giving his best impression of Scotty, the engineering officer on the Starship
“Har-har,” said Breanna, whose leg began acting up again.
They touched Mach 5, but then began to slow inexplicably.
“Problem?” asked Fichera.
“Not sure,” said Breanna. The thrust on all three engines was steady, yet according to the instruments she was slowing.
Now if she’d been in the plane, she would have known exactly what the problem was. She’d felt it.
Really? Could you feel the difference at eighty-some-thousand feet and four or five times the speed of sound, with things rushing by? Or would you have to rely on the instruments anyway? How far would you be removed from the actual sensation of flight, lying in a specially canted seat wrapped in a special high-G suit?
Breanna pushed forward. Unencumbered by restraints or even a simple seat belt, she put her face nearly on the large glass panel as she had the computer run her through the vital signs on all the power plants. The speed had leveled off at Mach 4.3. They had reached the end of test sequence.
“Computer, cut engine five,” she said, referring to the hydro.
“Cut engine five.”
“I feel like I should be pushing buttons at least,” added Bree.
“Repeat command,” said the computer.
“I thought it wasn’t suppose to try to interpret anything without the word ‘computer’ in front of it,” Bree backed at Fichera.
“The computer expects you to either follow the original flight plan called for, or prepare a new course. Since you’re doing neither, it is confused.”
The snotty voice belonged to Ray Rubeo, Dreamland’s head scientist.
