“Flaps. Optimum takeoff configuration. Go,” Breanna told the computer as she manually released the brakes. They started down the runway, quickly picking up speed.

“Seventy knots, eighty,” read the copilot.

The wings strained at the top of the plane, anxious to lift her into the sky. Breanna nudged her left rudder pedal ever so slightly, keeping the plane centered on the runway as she pulled back on the stick. Depending on its weight and configuration, a standard B-52 might get off the ground in three thousand meters or so; Fort Two lifted off cleanly at just over a thousand, not even breaking a sweat.

“Gear up,” Bree told the computer.

“Gear up and safe,” reported the computer as the giant wheel assemblies folded into the undercarriage.

Breanna checked her altitude, speed, and bearing in the HUD screen. The control system responded instantly to the optical-servers in the yoke housing as she entered a right bank. Whether flying at shoelace level or over fifty thousand feet, dodging enemy fighters or out for a pleasure cruise, the flight computer automatically trimmed the plane’s control surfaces for the most efficient flight regime, essentially reading the pilot’s mind—or rather, her hands and feet.

Breanna glanced back at Rubeo as the plane climbed easily upward. “Okay, Doc, change places with Chris.”

“Why?”

“Come on. You can’t see anything from there.”

“You’re not afraid of flying, are you, Ray?” asked the copilot.

Rubeo narrowed his eyes into a glare; he hated to be called Ray.

“Any monkey can fly,” he said as Chris eased out from behind the copilot’s station. Still, Rubeo hesitated, and Breanna realized that Chris was right. Rubeo was the senior scientist at the base, personally responsible for nearly fifty breakthroughs so secret they couldn’t be openly patented. His work on logic chips was critical not only for their flight computers, but for the actuators used by the Megafortress’s control surfaces. But it turned out he was petrified of flying.

Not that he would admit it. He frowned deeply as he sat down next to her.

“You might want to hitch up the restraints,” she suggested.

“I intend on it,” said Rubeo.

She noticed a definite green tint around his gills. Breanna hit the mike button, switching on the intercom circuit.

“Good morning, and thank you for choosing Dreamland Airlines,” she said. “I’m Captain Breanna ‘Rap for Rapture’ Stockard and I’ll be your tour guide this morning. I have to ask you to remain in your restraints at all times, and please, keep your hands inside the cars. We will be moving at close to the speed of sound, and I’d hate for anyone to lose their jewelry.”

“Yuk, yuk,” mouthed Rubeo.

“On a serious note,” Bree continued, “I would remind you that we are an experimental aircraft. Our systems are held together by bubble gum and duct tape. I do expect that you will remain strapped to your parachutes and snug your skull buckets. You too, Sergeant Parsons.”

“Don’t worry about me, Captain,” answered Greasy Hands.

“If you look out the port windows, you’ll see the Z27 test range, where our friends in the Army are testing their new pulse antimissile system.” Breanna tweaked the control stick, ducking the plane to its left. “Whoa,” she joked. “Don’t everybody look out the windows at once.”

“Very funny,” said Rubeo. His voice was an octave higher than before.

Breanna smirked, launching into a tour-guide dissertation on the history of the venerable B-52. Though she tried to make it sound spontaneous, it was a well-practiced speech; she had given it four times over the past few weeks to Air Force VIPs as part of the effort to keep the Megafortress program alive.

“The B-52 is sometimes called the BUFF—for big, ugly, fat uh, fella, shall we say?” Breanna chortled, knowing everyone would laugh at the obligatory joke. “As a matter of record, the base plane for Fort Two is older than—hell, it’s older than our copilot, Dr. Ray.”

Rubeo ignored her, staring straight out the front windscreen.

“In June 1946,” continued Breanna, “the U.S. government awarded the Boeing company a study contract for a long-range bomber. That seemingly innocuous event led to the design of a turboprop-powered behemoth superficially similar to the B-50, which had evolved from the B-29. You don’t have to have one of Dr. Ray’s four Ph.D.s to realize that a lumbering turboprop would have been no match for the interceptors under development at the time, let alone surface-to-air missiles. The problem was primarily the engines; even optimally engineered turboprops can only turn so fast, as our Communist friends found out with their Tu-95 Bear. But at the time, pure jet engines were equally unacceptable; they were thirsty things in the mid-1940’s, not very powerful and, as Greasy Hands might put it, ‘tarnation and hell’ to work on.”

“Damn straight,” said Greasy Hands.

Breanna thought he might be speaking from experience.

“It was just about that time when the wizards at Pratt & Whitney came up with the J57 jet engine. It was a V-8 for airplanes, capable of delivering 7,500 pounds of thrust without popping a gasket. An Air Force officer looked at the Boeing turboprop proposal one cold Thursday in October 1948 and declared it obsolete. Then he showed the team the specs for the P&Ws and sent them away. They called the next morning from their hotel and promised he’d have a design on his desk Monday. The engineers worked like demons, even building a balsa-wood model. When Monday rolled around, they had invented history’s longest flying bomber, arguably the most versatile and successful military aircraft ever conceived. Through 774 iterations, encompassing eight major families and an almost unfathomable number of alterations and updates, the B-52 has served for nearly fifty years as America’s primary manned strategic bomber.”

“Jeez, it is older than Dr. Ray,” said the staff sergeant sitting with Parsons below.

“Hardy, har, har,” answered Rubeo.

His response got a better laugh than the original line.

Breanna checked her flight position on the global positioning system—accurate to within half a centimeter—then did a quick scan of the vital information on the flight monitor on the right side of her dash before continuing with her historical narrative.

“Now where was I?” she said. “Oh, yes. I should probably note that our new power plants are derived from the engines used by the Boeing 767. They feature considerably more thrust, so much so that Fort Two is currently fitted with one at each engine root instead of the original pair. If my math is correct, that’s four instead of eight. Even so, Fort Two has broken the sound barrier in level flight at 55,000 feet.”

That was an incredibly impressive statistic, since it was impossible for even a “clean” B-52 with minimal load and stock power plants.

“We are, as you may know, testing several engine configurations for the Megafortress,” she continued. “Fort Two is presently the only one with the Xs. And one of our planes—Raven, which we’ve used for ECM tests and Flighthawk drops—still has the original P&Ws. Needless to say, these power plants are better, increasing the plane’s already prodigious range to slightly over ten thousand miles—though most of that’s downhill.”

No one laughed. Tough crowd.

“The B-52 was at least theoretically obsolete by the 1960’s,” said Breanna. “The sheer size of the plane, once dictated by the thirst of the engines, had become as much a liability as an asset. On the other hand, its large size meant we could keep piling equipment on, increasing its life as well as capability. The add-ons and alterations made a not particularly pretty plane one ugly MF, as the saying goes. But the BUFF was—is, I should say—one versatile airframe. You can’t hot-stick her—or at least, we’re not supposed to hot-stick her. But let me tell you something: If you’re beneath the bomb bay when it opens—well, fresh underwear is the least of your problems.”