“Nice,” said the admiral.

Turk cranked Old Girl around the range as the demonstration continued. The UAVs were now put through a series of maneuvers, flying a series of aerial acrobatics. They were air show quality, with the little aircraft darting in and out in close formation.

“Impressive,” said Blackheart as the show continued. “Nice. Very nice.”

Thank God, thought Turk to himself as the aircraft crisscrossed above their mother ship. The admiral seemed soothed and even enthusiastic. Breanna would be happy. And tomorrow he could get back to real work.

BREANNA STOCKARD RESISTED THE URGE TO PACE behind the consoles of Control Area D4. As head of the Department of Defense Office of Special Technology and the DoD Whiplash director, she knew very well that pacing made the people around her nervous. This was especially true of project engineers. And those in Dreamland Control Bunker 50-4 were already wound tighter than twisted piano wire.

Someone had started a rumor that the fate of the nano-UAV program they’d been working on for the past five years depended on whether the Navy bought in. To them, this meant their dreams and careers depended entirely on the tyrannical Admiral Blackheart.

Breanna knew that the situation was considerably more complicated. In fact, today’s test had nothing to do with the long-term survival of the program already assured, thanks to earlier evaluations. But if anything, what was at stake today was several magnitudes more important.

Not that she could mention that to anyone in the room.

The demonstration was going well. The feed from the Phantom played across the large screen at the front of the command center, showing the V-winged Hydras cascading around their B-1 mother ship. The maneuvers were so precise, the image so crisp, it looked like an animation straight out of an updated version of Star Wars: snip off the fuselage, extend the wings a bit, and the nano-UAVs might even pass for black-dyed X-Wings.

Almost.

In any event, on-screen they looked more like animated toys than real aircraft. It was for precisely that reason that Breanna had insisted on putting the admiral in the Phantom—if he didn’t see it with his own eyes, the cynical bastard would surely think it was complete fiction.

The bunker, part of the Dreamland facilities leased by the Office of Special Technology from the Air Force, was about four times too large for the small staff needed to run the demonstration. That seemed to be an intractable rule of high-tech development: despite the growing complexity of the systems developed here, the head count only went down. Soon, Breanna mused, she’d be running the entire show herself from her iPhone.

Walking down to the UAV monitoring station, she checked on the large radar plot that showed where all the aircraft were on the range. Turk was doing a good job in the F-4. Flying the plane was the easy part; keeping his mouth free of wise-ass remarks was surely harder. But with the stakes high, she wanted a pilot familiar not only with the program but with combat in general, available to answer whatever question the admiral thought to ask.

Unfortunately, Turk had seemed somewhat moody of late. There was no doubt about his flying abilities, or his adaptability—whether flying an F-22 Raptor, an F-16 Block 30, or the mostly automated Tigershark II, he handled himself with equal aplomb. A bit on the shy side, he lacked the outsized ego that hamstrung many up-and-coming officers; he might even be considered humble, at least for a test pilot. But like a good number of his peers, Turk had a tendency to snark first and think later.

This tendency had increased since he returned from Africa, where he’d spent time as a substitute pilot with an A-10E squadron. Even though they’d been greatly upgraded since their original incarnation, the planes remained intense mudfighters at heart. Perhaps working the stick and rudder of the old-style aircraft in the middle of combat had woken something deep in Turk’s soul. He seemed frustrated by his taste of combat; Breanna sensed he wanted more.

“Almost done,” said Teddy Armaz, looking up from his station. His right leg pumped up and down. Breanna wasn’t sure if this was a sign of nervousness or relief.

“Good distribution on the computing,” said Sara Rheingold, working the console next to Armaz. Rheingold’s team had built the distributed intelligence system that flew the nano-UAVs. In essence a network of processors aboard the Hydras, it was the most advanced artificial intelligence flight system yet, an improvement over even the system used in the Air Force’s new Sabre UAVs, which were still undergoing field testing.

And which had so recently given Whiplash considerable difficulty in Africa.

The Hydras evidenced no such problems. Rheingold began talking about some of the performance specs, quickly losing Breanna in the minutiae. She nodded and tried to sound enthusiastic. Meanwhile, she noticed that the two men working the flight control board were punching their screens dramatically. A second later they called her forward to their station.

“They just had an event over on Weapons Testing Range Two,” said Paul Smith, acting flight liaison. His job was to coordinate with Dreamland control, monitoring what was going on elsewhere at the massive test center.

“Does it concern us?”

“It may,” interrupted Bob Stevenson, the flight controller. “It sent a magnetic pulse out across the range.”

“I have some anomalies,” reported Armaz behind her.

“Me, too,” said Rheingold. “The root connection to the mother ship is off-line.”

“Restore it,” said Breanna.

“Working on it,” said Armaz, hunching over his console and tapping his foot more violently than ever.

“KNOCK IT OFF! KNOCK IT OFF!”

The radio transmission came as a complete surprise. Turk steadied his hand on the stick of Old Girl, holding the plane on course at the eastern end of the test area.

“Knock it off,” repeated the B-1Q pilot. “I have a complete system failure. My control panel is blank. Repeat—I have no panel. Is anyone hearing me?”

The tower acknowledged, clearing the B-1Q to proceed to the main runway. But the malfunction aboard the B-1Q had an effect on the radio as well; the pilot could broadcast but not hear.

“Tower, this is Tech Observer,” said Turk, interrupting the hail. “I’m about three hundred meters behind Perpetrator, five thousand meters above him. He doesn’t seem to have any damage.”

“Roger, Observer. We copy. He’s not hearing our transmissions. Can you get close enough for a visual to the cockpit?”

“Attempting.”

Turk nudged his stick and throttle, putting Old Girl into a gentle dive, warily drawing closer to the bigger plane. He let the Phantom get ahead of the B-1Q’s cockpit, making sure the pilot of the bomber knew he was there before sliding close enough to signal him.

“Do you have eyes on pilot?” asked the tower.

“Working on it,” answered Turk.

Old Girl balked a bit as he slid closer. A buzzer sounded, and Bitching Betty began complaining that he was too close.

“What are we doing, Captain?” asked Admiral Blackheart.

“We’re going to lead him down,” said Turk. “But first I want to make sure he can land. His gear is— Shit!”

Turk pushed the Phantom onto her left wing as a black BB shot past his windscreen. For a moment he was back in Africa, ducking bullets from rebel aircraft.

That was easy compared to what happened next. As Turk came level, the nano-UAVs began buzzing Old Girl, flitting back and forth within inches not just of the plane but the canopy.

“Control, I need an override on the swarm,” said Turk. “They’re looking at me like I’m an intruder. They’re in Divert One. Get them out of it.”

Divert One was a preprogrammed strategy, where the nano-UAVs would force another aircraft down. The Hydras would continue to push him lower and in the direction of a runway designated by the mother ship. Given the B-1Q’s malfunctions, however, Turk couldn’t be sure where the aircraft thought they were going—and in any event, he had no intention of complying. He banked into a turn, aiming to get away.