“Roger that,” said Zen. The information was fed in from the Megafortress, indicating two small boats — or possibly submarines — thirty miles directly to the west. “Kick — hop to it.”
“On it,” said the pilot.
While it was pitch black outside, the Flighthawk visor gave Kick a view as detailed as he would have if it were high noon. Synthesized from its radar as well as IR and optical feeds, the screen showed the sky as a light gray and the water a deep blue; if he wanted, Kick could choose any of a dozen preset schemes or even customize it with a 64,000-color palette.
A bit too much choice as far as he was concerned, but what the hell.
Kick pushed forward in his seat. It was difficult to square the movements of the Megafortress with the path of the plane he was controlling. Most of Kick’s airtime had been in the cockpit of A-10As. While the Hog — the popular, though unofficial nickname had been shortened from Warthog — wasn’t particularly fast, it was highly maneuverable, and a Hog driver got used to taking g’s real fast. But this was different, bizarre in a way — he pushed his stick left and slightly forward, and his stomach began to climb nearly straight up.
“I have a shadow on the surface,” he told McNamara, the Megafortress copilot. “Feeding you visual.”
The shadow lengthened into the thick thumb of a submarine. Upstairs on the flight deck, the copilot had taken the image and presented it to the onboard computers, which searched for identifying marks and then compared these to an onboard databank. In this case, the mast configuration, along with a small fin toward the bow of the craft and a rounded nub at the conning tower, told the computer the submarine was a Chinese diesel boat, a member of the Romeo class originally designed by the Russians in the late 1950s. Though competent, the sixty-man submarines were hardly technological marvels.
“Good work,” Zen told Kick. “Look for the other further west.”
“On it.”
“I have a patrol vessel approaching from the east,” said the copilot. “I’m handing off the information.”
Kick changed his view to IR, thinking he could pick up the thermal trail of the submarine. But the change in the screen disoriented him.
“Use preset two,” prompted Zen. “The IR takes the lower left window next to the sitrep and you still have your main view on top. Watch your altitude.”
“Right,” said Kick. He nudged upward and asked the computer for the proper screen configuration. As it came in he got a distance warning. He backed off the throttle slider so abruptly he nearly flamed the engines. Disoriented, he pulled up out of his search pattern, afraid he was going to stall the U/MF right into the waves.
“Go back again,” said Zen.
“Okay,” managed Kick.
“It’s all right. You did all right. Best thing to do sometimes is just take a deep breath. The system throws a lot of information at you and you have to learn to process it.”
“I’m all right,” insisted Kick. He immediately regretted the sharp tone in his voice, but there was no way to take it back; instead, he concentrated on getting himself back into position to resume the search.
Zen folded his arms in front of him, watching the Flighthawk screens with one eye and Kick with the other. The kid had just passed through a crisis, and how he handled himself now was key. If he got himself back on the horse — put the Flighthawk back into the search pattern, went after the other sub, didn’t fuck up worse — there’d be hope for him.
This was exactly the sort of experience that could be the making of him. You had to fail, Zen thought; you had to taste the bitterness of screwing up in your mouth, and then get beyond it. And it was infinitely better to fail in little ways, as Kick just had, than to wait for one big blowout failure to end all failures as Zen had.
There was no way to teach that, no way to simulate it in exercises. Kick — and Starship, for that matter — had to learn it for themselves. His job was to somehow get them to the point where they could.
“Team is recovered and heading back to the hotel,” reported Major Alou. “We can head back whenever you want.”
“Soon as Kick gets over that other contact, we can head back for the barn,” said Zen.
“Got it at two miles. It’s diving,” said the Flighthawk pilot.
The submarine was similar to the other one they had seen. Data recorded, Alou set a course for home.
“Keep your eye out for an unidentified aircraft firing flares over the city,” added the pilot.
“If we see it, you’ll be the first to know,” said Zen.
Rubeo stood back from the computer screen, rubbing his temple fiercely. They had taken all the inputs from Danny’s viewer and compiled them into a model, supplementing them with information from the Flight-hawk flyover and earlier satellite data.
“Problem, Doc?” asked Natalie Catsman.
“It’s not an airplane.”
Major Catsman looked at the three-dimensional mockup of Shed Building Two, which included legends showing items in the facility. The area next to the wall looked like a machine shop, with several stations set up that looked to contain presses and drills. Further back were large banks of some sort of computer equipment, though the Dreamland system could not render it with much precision.
“Recycling?” asked Catsman.
“You wouldn’t need computer-controlled machinery for recycling,” said Rubeo. “This material here. It’s a portable wall. It’s shielding.”
“Shielding what?”
“Yes,” said Rubeo. “This piece here came from a centrifuge. Or could have. They’re making bombs here. I believe they’re nuclear weapons.”
Catsman, still new to Dreamland and the high-tech gear at its disposal, frowned as if she were overwhelmed.
“We need more data,” said Rubeo. “But look at this.”
He pulled up another screen filled with a row of numbers.
“The lottery?” Catsman laughed.
“Readings from Captain Freah’s Geiger counter. They are above normal background levels. Material was taken through here, and there was an accidental spill. Small, but it contained minute traces of plutonium.”
“We have to tell Colonel Bastian about this right away,” said Catsman.
“Absolutely,” said the scientist.
Monitoring the operation from the Dream Command trailer, Dog watched the fuss over the flares at the site and the subsequent patrols. Taiwan and Mainland China might be on the verge of historic discussions, but tensions were still very high — the wrong match at the wrong time, and they could just as well be exchanging gunfire as greetings. And war wouldn’t be confined to the two Chinas. Units all across Asia had hiked their alert status.
Gradually, things ratcheted back down. As Dog waited for
“Colonel, the site that Captain Freah inspected today, we don’t believe there is a UAV there, or any aircraft. It’s only remotely possible that it’s ever been there,” said Catsman. “But—”
She stopped, turning around to someone in the situation room.
“But what?” said Dog.
“Shed Two appears to be a fabrication factory for bombs. Possibly nuclear,” said Catsman.
“Nuclear?”
“Dr. Rubeo has someone with him who can explain.”
Rubeo came on the screen, along with a physicist from one of Dreamland’s weapons labs. Together, they
