revert to a preprogrammed mode and fly back toward the mother ship. It happened just beyond twenty-five miles, depending on the flight conditions. Because the U/MFs were so maneuverable and the EB-52 was flying its own course, it could happen relatively easily in combat.
But loss of a connection was the ultimate spanking, and Starship meant to avoid it. He was currently fifteen miles ahead of
“Zen, they’re going to afterburners,” said Major Merce Alou, the
“Roger that. I think we can hold on course,” Zen told him. “We’re plotting an intercept.”
“Roger that. We’re monitoring them up here. They’re not targeting us at this time.”
“You get all that?” Zen asked Starship.
“Yup,” said Starship. He had the Flighthawk at 27,000 feet on a direct line toward the lead MiG; they were now closing to fifty miles. “If this were an F-15, I could take them out in sixty seconds.”
“Yeah, what’s a little court-martial for creating an international incident?” said Kick.
“What do you think of what the computer is suggesting?” asked Zen.
“It has me slashing down and getting that lead plane, then whipping back for the second in one swoop,” said Starship. “Awful optimistic with a cannon.”
“Yeah, especially for you,” said Kick.
“Hey, I’ve seen you on the range, Mr. Marksman,” snapped Starship. “They put you in a Hog so the bullets would be big enough that you couldn’t miss.”
“It is optimistic. The computer thinks it never misses. It’s almost right,” added Zen. “But the thing here is that it’s figuring that the MiGs will stay on course. You can tell it to anticipate what they’ll do, and it’ll give you more options.”
“I thought I shouldn’t do that because we’re not in attack mode,” said Starship. He also felt that he was a bit beyond taking combat cues from a computer. That was okay for Kick, whose cockpit time had been spent largely in a ground-attack plane. Starship’s entire training had been for air-to-air combat, and he’d flown against MiG-21s in numerous exercises.
Of course, he’d never gotten this close to
Not that the Vietnamese MiGs were the enemy. They had as much right to be here as he did.
Starship checked his airspeed and heading carefully, trying to will away the dry taste in his mouth. He could feel Kick hovering over his shoulder, waiting for the chance to jump in.
“They’re not acknowledging,” said Alou after he hailed them, first in English, then with the help of the translation module in the EB-52’s computer. He tried again, giving the MiGs his bearing and location, emphasizing that he was in international waters and on a peaceful mission.
The MiGs still didn’t respond.
“Let’s give them a Dreamland welcome,” Zen told Starship.
Starship took a breath, then flicked the control stick left. The U/MF tipped its wing and whipped downward, its speed ramping toward Mach 1.
The odd thing was the feel. Rather than having his stomach pushing against his rib cage, it stayed perfectly calm and centered in the middle of his body. The disjunction between the Flighthawk and the Megafortress was one of the hardest things for the pilot to get used to.
Zen had warned him about that.
“Flares,” said the Flighthawk pilot. He kicked out flares normally intended for deking heat-seeking missiles, making himself clearly visible to the Vietnamese fighters, who were now roughly two miles away.
The Vietnamese pilots reacted immediately, turning together to the north, possibly convinced they were seeing UFOs or the fiery manifestation of a Buddhist god.
“Stay on your game plan,” coached Zen.
Starship realized he’d started to pull up a little too sharply. He easily compensated, but he felt apprehensive nonetheless; Kick was standing behind him, after all, taking mental notes.
Even an F-15C Eagle would have had trouble climbing back and turning as tightly as Starship’s Flighthawk as he whipped his plane onto the tail of the opposing flight, aiming to paint the enemy cockpit with his shadow.
“How long do you want me to sit here?” he asked Zen.
“Break off once they turn,” said Zen. “There you go,” he added as the first MiG changed direction. “Come on back to
“Roger that.”
Professor Ai Hira Bai monitored the communist MiGs as they circled northward, away from the American Megafortress. The planes were more than one hundred miles from his own UAV, the
The ships involved in the exercise were testing links that allowed data from one ship to be shared among the entire task force over a wide area. Since Professor Ai had been able to tap into an Australian frigate’s communications system, he too had a full data set that included wide-ranging radar coverage courtesy of two Japanese Aegis-equipped destroyers.
Ai watched the screen with fascination. He was interested in the performance of the Flighthawk, though this was difficult to ascertain from the radar data, even as the robot plane passed almost directly overhead of one of the ships. The craft was clearly faster and more maneuverable than his own plane. Its data flow with the mother ship, of course, was extremely rich — he’d known that since their long-range intercepts of the signals. He would have given much to be able to decode the information that passed between them.
On the other hand, his own invention was not without its advantages. The buoy and satellite system that relayed its control signals allowed him to fly the aircraft far beyond its remote station — although in some circumstances there was a noticeable lag as the commands were transmitted. And his plane was not only stealthier, but its signal carrier included what he called a “mocking device” that could spit back bits of intercepted code to confuse a nearby Elint gatherer.
“Should we engage?” asked Kuo, who was helping fly the UAV.
“No,” said Professor Ai. “Not today. Let us simply observe and see what our friends do. We may have only one chance, and we must choose it wisely.”
Starship had just traded places with Kick when the pair of Chinese fighters appeared. These were Shenyang J-8IIs, more formidable than the ancient MiGs the Vietnamese had sent, but they too made a rather pedestrian and predictable approach, flying a routine intercept about fifty miles east of Guangdong.
“Same routine as Brother Starship,” Zen told Kick.
Starship tensed, even though he knew Zen meant it as a joke.
Kick started his move about six thousand feet above the interceptors, rolling into a banking turn that would take him across their course. But they broke before he went for his flares, apparently in response to the Megafortress pilot’s hail. Kick held on to his disposables and began to climb again, intending to circle back close to the Megafortress until it was clear what the Chinese were doing.
Conservative move, Starship thought. He would have tucked back toward them and hit the gas.
“They’re looking for you,” Zen told the two lieutenants. “They know the Megafortresses fly with U/MF escorts. They want to draw you out.”
“What should I do?” Kick asked.
“Give me the controls,” said Starship without missing a beat.
“Fuck off.”
“Wait until they come out of that turn,” said Zen. “They aren’t particularly maneuverable, and it’ll be obvious where they intend to go. You’ve got good position.”
One of the J-8s — in some respects it was a supersized J-7, itself a kind of new and improved MiG-21—swung
