He wanted to prove he was a great pilot. He wanted to prove…

That he was better than his daughter?

The idea shot into his head like the snap vector from an AWACS controller. Dog pushed up out of his seat, squeezing out of the Megafortress’s cockpit. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, especially himself, and definitely not Breanna. He had other things to do than fiddle around in the sky.

Cheshire met him on the ladder down to the lower deck. “Colonel,” she said. “You’re leaving?”

“Sergeant Gibbs will be waiting. What did you want to say?”

Cheshire leaned against the bulkhead and began talking about the Megafortress project, saying that the engine tests were taking much longer than anticipated. The mechanical delays were only part of the problem. She needed more engineers—a common and justified complaint. The decision to develop the Megafortress as a mother ship for the Flighthawks was also stretching her people and the planes to the max.

“We only have the three planes,” said Cheshire. “Raven, Bear Two, and Mo. Galatica, the AWACS tester, won’t be on board until at least next week.”

Bastian nodded.

“We need at least two planes to complete the engine tests. Bear Two is needed for static tests, and Galatica still has to go through the usual flight trials. We won’t have the others for at least three weeks. The tanker program is already on hold, and the backlog on the avionics tests is thicker than a phone book.”

“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.