Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (23 page)

 
          
“Not
sure. I’ve got a lot of pain. Dr. Carmichael?”

 
          
“Right
here.”

 
          
“How
long did it take this time?”

 
          
“You
tell me.”

 
          
Patrick
tried to remember back through the interfacing period, through the waves of
rolling pain, through the fleeing mental images. “I felt out of control, it
must’ve taken another hour.”

 
          
“Try
nine seconds,” J. C. Powell said.

 
          
“Nine seconds?”

           
“Nine seconds on the dot from the
moment you went into theta-alpha,” Carmichael said happily. “Even faster than
Ken’s ever done it, although he doesn’t take two hours to get to theta-alpha.”

 
          
Patrick
tried to turn his head, but found it impossible—it was as if two red-hot hands
held his head cemented into place. “How can anyone function with all this pain?
I feel like I’m being microwaved, I can’t move a muscle.”

 
          
“All
I can say is that Ken James is different. He’s also been using the ANTARES
system for a long time. Don’t focus on the pain, and don’t worry about being
able to move around. Relax and try to enjoy the ride.”

 
          
A
moment later, Carmichael clicked the intercom back on. “We’ve repositioned the
simulator at thirty-five thousand feet and five hundred knots. Take the
aircraft when you’re ready, Colonel.”

 
          
Patrick
concentrated as hard as he could on the image of the instrument panel. He had
managed to slide the image of the intercom channel off to the left, but the
rest of the panel was blank. Like a television screen with nothing but snow
across it.

           
Okay. Aircraft attitude was
important. Maintain control. Keep the airplane flying.

 
          
Instantly
an oval drew itself on the upper half of the cockpit image. It was sitting
horizontal across the windscreen, a deep white line bisecting it, forming a
horizon. In the exact center of the oval was a wide T, representing the aircraft.

 
          
“Release
me,” McLanahan said.

 
          
The
T jumped up and to the right just as Carmichael said, “You’re moving.”

 
          
Patrick
concentrated on keeping the T in the center of the oval. Slowly the T moved
back in the center.

 
          
“Good
start at least, now where the hell am I going?”

 
          
The
oval disappeared, replaced by the image of a long ribbonlike street on the
upper portion of the screen. The street was straight for a distance, but
Patrick could see a few gentle twists and turns in the distance. At the bottom
of the screen was a tiny picture of a jet fighter plane—it appeared to be
resting right on the road.

 
          
“Hey,
I’ve got the flight-plan depiction.”

 
          
“Good,”
Carmichael said. “That’s a major flight image. Follow it as long as you can.
How’s the headache?”

 
          
“It
went to splitting migraine long ago, Doc, but as long as I keep my mind off the
pain it’ll be okay.”

 
          
Keeping
the simulator flying upright was more difficult without the artificial horizon,
but no amount of mental effort would bring it back, so Patrick used the visual
cues on the road itself— the recommended altitude was to surface on the road
itself, which also represented the proper pitch and bank to follow; as long as
he kept the little fighter model on the road he would be following the
computer’s recommended flight path. The road’s curbs represented the allowable
lateral flight corridor to follow, and tiny signposts represented planned
turn-points and recommended altitude-changeover points.

 
          
As
long as the “road” was straight and flat, the ride went well. But after a few
moments the road began to make small left and right turns, and the going got
much tougher. The tiny fighter icon penetrated through the road several times,
porpoising up and down through the recommended altitude block, and Patrick had to
apply harder and faster corrections to keep the plane steady.

 
          
“Stabilize,
Patrick,” he heard from J. C. Powell.

 
          
“I’m
trying.” The fighter icon slid through the right wall of the road, skidded
sideways, then entered an uncontrolled spin.

           
“Let the computer recover the
plane,” Powell said. “Don’t try to fight it.”

 
          
Patrick
forced himself to go along. He concentrated on the surface of the
computer-generated road without thinking about the aircraft control. Suddenly
he knew that ANTARES had placed both mission-adaptive wings in high-lift modes
and deployed both dorsal and ventral sets of rudders to maximize directional
control. The fighter icon dove through the right side of the flight path
depiction, but by rapid lift, power and drag changes under precise computerized
control, the fighter was soon out of its uncontrolled spin and stabilized in a
steep dive. A few moments later the fighter slowly leveled out and returned to
its desired flight path once again.

 
          
“Good
recovery,” Carmichael said. “ANTARES will always try to save the aircraft
whenever possible, but you still have to tell her where you want to go, even in
an uncontrolled situation.”

 
          
After
a few minutes of straight-and-level flight to get his confidence back, Patrick
accomplished a few turns, with bank angles and altitude changes mixed in. “I
think I’ve got the hang of it again,” Patrick said.

 
          
“Still
have those headaches?”

 
          
“Now
that you mention it, yes, but they seem to become less noticeable when I’m
concentrating on something else.”

 
          
“Good.
How about some formation flying? We can put up another fighter and let you fly
off his wing for a while.”

 
          
“No,
bring up a hostile.”

 
          
“Getting
cocky now, aren’t we, sir?” Powell cut in. “Five minutes ago you couldn’t make
a ten-degree turn without going out of control. Now you want to do some
dogfighting.”

 
          
“That’s
what the damned simulators are for, J.C. Bring up a high-performance model,
too.”

 
          
“You
got it.”

 
          
There
was no change in the simulation after several long moments. He was going to ask
if they had put up a hostile when he remembered—none of his fighter’s offensive
or defensive systems had been activated—

 
          
But
that realization was enough. Immediately a computer- synthesized voice
announced, “
Attack radar activated
...
electronic countermeasures activated
. . .
tail warning systems activated.
”

           
And there it was, a laser-projected
image of a fighter in the upper right corner of the screen. Patrick immediately
commanded the simulator’s laser-tracking system to lock onto the hostile
aircraft, and deactivated the attack-radar as soon as the laser had illuminated
the target. But it wasn’t fast enough. Flight data on the hostile aircraft
showed that it had altered course and was on a head-on intercept course. The
hostile had detected Patrick’s brief radar emission and had turned to start the
fight.

 
          
As
the two aircraft merged into a nose-to-nose flight path, Patrick was suddenly
flooded with information. His laser-projection screen was filled with
electronic depictions of dozens of options, only a few of which included a full
head-on pass. There were so many options that he lost count. His headache had
come back full-force now. Beads of sweat obscured his vision, blood pounded in
his ears. He was conscious, his mind still sharp, but the pain, intermingled
with hundreds of bits of data predicting the outcome of dozens of maneuvers by
both aircraft soon overwhelmed him.

 
          
The
ANTARES simulator suddenly went inverted and pulled a heart-stopping eight-G
descent. The simulator had activated the all-aspect radar as it descended, and
Patrick could easily “see” his pursuer descend with him. But that was what
ANTARES had been expecting. The simulator continued its inverted loop, using
its high-lift canards to pull the nose up through the horizon. The throttle
went to max afterburner as he went through the vertical—and Patrick had no
doubt that he would have been squashed like a grape if he had been in a real
jet aircraft.

 
          
As
the nose dove through the horizon once again he found that the pursuer had
become the pursued. Whatever kind of aircraft they had put up against him, it
couldn’t keep up with ANTARES. Patrick found himself directly behind his
adversary, and ANTARES had already armed four laser-guided missiles and was
waiting for orders to fire. Patrick issued those orders a split second later.
Meanwhile, ANTARES had switched to the internal twenty-millimeter multibarrel
cannon and was waiting for orders to fire as the simulator closed in on the
hostile, but there was no need to open fire—all laser- guided hypervelocity
missiles had hit their target.

 
          
“Ground
position freeze,” Dr. Carmichael ordered. Patrick heard footsteps on the
catwalk around the simulator’s cockpit
 
as
the cockpit indicators and the deluge of information in his head abruptly
ceased. “Patrick, this is Alan Carmichael. Can you hear me?”

 
          
He
found himself frozen in his seat, unable to move a muscle and barely able to
move his lips . . . “Yes.”

 
          
“We’re
going to disconnect ANTARES. Hold on.”

 
          
Even
though the simulator had stopped, the pain inside Patrick’s head was steadily
increasing. He could feel the fighter doing some lazy rolls and spins but
didn’t have the strength to issue the orders to maintain straight and level
flight.

 
          
“I
. . . I’m losing it . . .”

 
          
“Let
it go, Patrick,” Carmichael said. “You’re off the simulation. Relax. Don’t
worry about the controls.”

 
          
It
was like telling a man hanging from a cliff to cut his lifeline. Slowly, using
every last ounce of strength he had, Patrick fought the urge to counteract the
spinning aircraft. But the more he let go, the more he was drawn to what was
happening. As the aircraft’s altitude began to decrease, he received the
aircraft altitude, “heard” ANTARES’ reports on terrain, engine performance,
structural loads. The closer the fighter got to earth, the faster the reports
came. When the fighter shot through five thousand feet above the ground,
ANTARES recommended it take over. Patrick did not respond. At three thousand
feet above ground, ANTARES issued the order to eject. Again, Patrick ignored
it.

 
          
He
just sat, transfixed, as he listened to ANTARES’ neural “screams.” The computer
was literally begging its human occupant to do something, anything, to save it.
The more the computer blasted McLanahan with pleas to issue an order to recover
the aircraft, the more the pain increased and the more Patrick was unable to do
anything. Carmichael was reaching to disconnect the superconducting helmet from
Patrick’s clavicle ring when the simulator slammed into the ground at nearly
two thousand miles per hour.

 
          
When
the helmet was finally lifted from McLanahan’s shoulders and Carmichael saw his
face, even he was shocked. McLanahan’s face was a mask of pain, as in a man
tortured to the very brink of tolerable agony.

 
          
“Patrick,
snap out of it, it’s over!” Carmichael was yelling at him. Technicians had
jumped up on the catwalk beside Carmichael, and others were unfastening the
shoulder harness and loosening the heavy connectors and relays on the metallic
flight suit. Carmichael looped an oxygen mask over Patrick’s face. “It’s over.
Wake up, dammit.”