Nerve Center (45 page)

But how?

It sucked me out from inside you.

Christina?

It stole me. The computer stole me. It took me from your memory and destroyed you. That was their plan all along—to kill me by killing you.

Her eyes and mouth faded, leaving only the outline of her face. Lightning flashed behind him and he fell back in the tower. The last bits of his daughter disintegrated in front of him.

She was right. It wasn’t Livermore he had to destroy. It was ANTARES.

BREANNA PULLED BACK ON THE STICK AS THE PLANE began plummeting toward the mountain peaks. She had the yoke pressed against its stop, but the plane didn’t respond, its dive continuing.

Then, with a violent shudder, its nose began to jerk upward, and in the space of a few seconds it became a streaking roller coaster, whipping upward as the aerodynamic forces overpowered it.

Minerva was screaming next to her.

“Don’t let the plane go through ten thousand feet. No!”

Breanna grabbed the stick back, not sure if Kevin had let go or not. They whipped up to 8,500 feet, going through 8,600 and accelerating.

“Help me,” yelled Minerva. “We can’t go above ten thousand feet.”

“I have to override the flight computer,” lied Breanna, who now had control.

“Do it!”

“Computer: override course settings, override command settings. Lock out autopilot section. Authorization Rap One-One-Two.”

“Confirmed.”

“Navigation screen.” Breanna tapped the panel up and quickly hit the beacon code. In the meantime, she leveled off at 9,200 feet.

“What’s so special about ten thousand feet?” she asked after checking the plane’s systems.

Minerva didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to.

“We’re booby-trapped, aren’t we? Did you hear that, Kevin? Your lover wanted to blow you up.”

“I heard,” said Madrone.

And once more, even though locking out the autopilot should have isolated command at her console, Breanna felt the plane veer out of her control.

HE DIDN’T CARE ABOUT MINERVA ANYMORE. HE’D BEEN confused by ANTARES, the drugs, the computer, everything. Confused and tricked and used.

No more. Madrone eased back in the seat, in full control of the planes. Now that he knew what he had to do—now that his daughter had made it clear to him—he felt very calm and very strong.

He gave C3 and the Megafortress the new course, then pushed up his visor, looking across at Zen. His friend flailed at the control panel, trying to take command of the robot planes. He didn’t seem to understand that Madrone and ANTARES could override any of his commands.

Or maybe he did. Maybe he struggled to keep from feeling helpless.

“That’s enough, Jeff,” Kevin said finally. He pulled his pistol out.

“Shoot me,” said Zen.

“I don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” said Zen sarcastically.

“You’re right about ANTARES. I think you’re definitely right,” he said. “I’m going to fix it, once and for all.”

Aboard M-6
Near Dreamland
8 March, 0715

DOG WAS A HUNDRED MILES SOUTH OF DREAMLAND when one of the AWACS in the net announced that it had found Galatica.

It had had a little help—the Megafortress had turned its locator beam on.

A quartet of F-15Cs scrambled to intercept. The controllers began jockeying other elements around, lining up the defenses.

Two of the Eagles had to turn back because of fuel. A pair of Navy jets moved up to take their place. Dog pushed M-6 to accelerate, but they were at least a hundred miles from the action.

“Swinging back—shit—Rock Two has contact!” blurted out one of the F-15 pilots. “Shit! Shit! Tally at five hundred feet, two o’clock. Jesus.”

“Rock Two, clear to engage,” answered the controller calmly, authorizing the pilot to shoot down the Megafortress.

“Rock Three to support,” said the wingman, following his commander.

Dog closed his eyes.

“Break right! Break right!” shouted Rock Three. “Band—flare! God, oh, God!”

There was static.

Dog guessed that the F-15’s had just been jumped by one or both of the Flighthawks. The AWACS vectored the Navy interceptors toward the Megafortress, then announced it had lost the locator beam.

“Plot an intercept for San Francisco,” Dog told McAden softly. “Make sure it’s good.”

“Colonel, no. Stay on this course,” said Jennifer. “I have the C3 signal. They’re eighty miles dead ahead. They’re not going to San Francisco.”

Aboard Gal
8 March, 0723

MADRONE HAD TO REFUEL THE FLIGHTHAWKS. WHILE the computer told him he could make it to Dreamland from here, another encounter would push the U/MFs into their reserves, depriving him of his margin of error.

Dreamland was barely two hundred miles from here. If he squinted just right, he’d probably see Las Vegas glowing at the edge of the desert.

He reduced throttle on the Megafortress, swinging Hawk Three up toward the tail even as the automated boomer lowered the straw.

It was sneaky of Breanna to turn the beacon on; he hadn’t understood what it was until the AWACS latched on. He couldn’t blame her, though. Under other circumstances, he might have done the same thing.

It didn’t matter now, not in the least. Dreamland’s point-defense MIM-23 I-Hawk SAMs wouldn’t pick up the stealthy Megafortress until it was approximately ten miles from the base. Even with the long missile beneath it, Hawk Three ought to be able to get to within five miles before the batteries detected it. By the time they locked and launched, he would already have pickled, ending ANTARES forever.

He nuzzled the U/MF into the boom and began working through the refuel.

Aboard M-6
8 March, 0740

“THEY’RE STILL COMING,” JENNIFER TOLD BASTIAN OVER the interphone. “Distance, approximately sixty miles.”

“You ready, Devin?” the colonel asked McAden.

“I’ll turn the radar on as soon as you give the signal,” answered the copilot. “Won’t take me ten seconds to target the Scorpion after that.”

The Scorpion AMRAAM-plus air-to-air missile had a one-hundred-pound warhead and a radar that could track multiple targets, rejecting all but the tastiest. Like the stock model that had been in use for roughly five years, Dreamland’s improved version moved at over four times the speed of sound and had a range of forty nautical miles—though in actual practice against a target as slippery as the Megafortress, the missile was best launched between ten and twenty miles away, or just beyond visual range. Assuming Gal stayed on course, and assuming McAden could get a lock, that would be three minutes from now.

Targeting the Flighthawks, which were considerably smaller than the Megafortress, was far more problematic. They’d be fairly close to M-6 by the time Gal was targeted. Jennifer would try to interfere with the C3 link to keep them at bay.

It was possible, though just barely, that she might be able to succeed and they wouldn’t have to splash Gal. Dog didn’t dare hope that was the way it would play.

Flying without radar and maintaining radio silence allowed Dog to sneak closer to Gal without being detected; it was, he figured, the only way he was going to get close enough to nail them. But it was a calculated risk—the main defenses were still to the west, concentrating on protecting San Francisco. If they missed, the sky was wide open.

“Still on course,” said Jennifer. “Two minutes.”

Aboard Galatica
8 March, 0753

JEFF FLOPPED HIS HEAD BACK AGAINST THE SEAT, exasperated. Any good fighter pilot keeps a checklist in his head to cover any contingency—engine out, do this, do that, do this. Gear jammed, do that, do this, do that.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t have a checklist.

No, it was the second time. The first time was after the accident that had left him paralyzed.

There had been a solution to that. Not exactly the solution he wanted, but a solution. He’d gotten out of the aircraft and lived.

And now?

If he’d had his legs, what would he do?

Leap out of the seat, throttle Madrone, disconnect ANTARES.

He turned his head toward Kevin. Madrone sat ramrod straight, his hands moving as he flew the planes. He was conducting an orchestra, not working controls.

The sitrep played on the main U/MF monitor, overlaid over a GPS map. They were about eleven minutes from Las Vegas, with Dreamland a breath beyond that.

If
he had his feet, he’d undo the restraints, leap out of the seat. He’d grab Kevin with his hand and pull.

He
did
have his feet. ANTARES wasn’t lying. Yes, it screwed up his head—yes, it made him paranoid. But there had to be something there. There had to be. ANTARES was a computer—it didn’t invent things, it worked with what was there.

So he could use his legs. All he had to do was trust them—trust ANTARES this one last time.

Otherwise they were all dead.

Carefully, stealthily, Jeff undid his restraints.

Aboard M-6
8 March, 0758

“SIXTY SECONDS BY MY WATCH,” BASTIAN TOLD Jennifer and the others. McAden jerked in his seat, rubbing his hands together.

Bastian had just missed combat over Vietnam, but he had flown missions in the Gulf and Bosnia; he had two probable kills and had ducked three different enemy missiles, including an SA-2 “telephone pole” that came within a meter of taking off his tail. By all rights, he was a grizzled veteran, and shouldn’t feel nervous.

He didn’t. Which bothered the hell out him.

“They’re tracking us!” yelled McAden.

M-6’s RWR drowned out anything else he said.

“ECMs,” ordered Dog calmly. “Jenny, go for it. Can you get them?”

“Attempting.”

“Go to active radar. Target the Flighthawks too,” Dog said.

“Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” said McAden, his voice getting progressively higher.

“Just get Galatica,” Bastian ordered. “Open bay door.”

“Opening! They have their ECMs. We’re still being tracked! 1 can’t lock them up. Attempting.”

“Flighthawk approaching,” said Jennifer. “Hold this course.”

“We’re spiked!” said McAden. One of the radars hunting for them had managed to slip around the electronic noise and locked onto them.

Ordinarily, Dog would goose some chaff and zig through the air, complicating the radar’s job before it fired. But that would complicate Gleason’s job.

So would getting shot down.

“Break it,” said Dog.

“Trying.”

“Frontal attack! It’s a U/MF!” shouted McAden, but Dog had already seen the Flighthawk on his HUD. It grew from nothing to the size of a baseball, then flashed red, firing its cannon. Dog could see the tracer arching in the air toward his windscreen as he plunged M-6 toward the earth.

“Tracking! I have him,” said McAden.

“No! No!” said Jennifer. “Feedback initiated.”

“Fire the missile,” said Bastian steadily.

The Scorpion dropped off the rotating launcher in the rear bay. Dog clicked into the command frequency, giving their position and the fact that they were engaging Galatica and had already launched a radar homer.

In the twenty or so seconds it took for him to do all that, the Flighthawk had flown over the Megafortress, curled back, and dived for their tail. The Scorpion’s rocket motor ignited; the missile zipped ahead, then flipped back. But it was no match for the agile little plane with its vectored thrust and finely tuned airfoil. The Flghthawk flicked right and closed on M-6 as the AMRAAM-plus passed by.

“Air mines,” Bastian told McAden. The copilot was half a step ahead of him, and had the Stinger tail defenses already on his screen. The air mines were a twenty-first-century version of the tail gunners who had cleared the skies behind Flying Fortresses fifty years before—they literally peppered the air with exploding mines.

There was only one problem—their range was three miles, the same as the U/MF’s cannon.

“I have the Flighthawk circuit,” Jennifer said, her voice level. “I’m applying feedback. Leave it alone. Hold our course.”

“Acquiring target!” said the copilot.

“Fucking trust me on this, Dog. If I have one I can get the other. Fuck!”

Somehow, the word “Dog” didn’t sound right coming from her mouth.

As for “fuck”…

“Colonel?” asked McAden.

“Stand by. Have you found the other Flighthawk?” he asked him.

“Negative. Gal is now locked, but the ECMs may make the missile miss from this distance. We can close.”

Before Bastian said anything else, the U/MF behind them opened fire.

Aboard Galatica
8 March, 0809

SOMETHING FOUGHT HIM, SOMETHING HE’D NEVER FELT before. Images flashed before Kevin’s eyes, strange sensations—the tower, the jungle, the jaguar, the dark woman, all being strangled.

A snake wrapped itself around his neck, squeezing.

Madrone began to fall from Theta. He conjured his metaphor, then heard Geraldo call to him.

A woman in a flowing dress with long, strawberry hair stood before him.

Jennifer Gleason.

She morphed into a massive cobra, its large mouth looming.

Then her fangs grabbed him from the side.

*   *   *

JEFF LAUNCHED HIMSELF BY SLAMMING HIS ARMS against the rests, screaming as he flung his body sideways out of the seat.

His legs
would
work. They had to.

He hung suspended in the air, balanced perfectly between thought and action, between will and reality. He thought he could do it and he would; he willed his legs whole and they were.

But Zen’s legs were irretrievably paralyzed, and whatever he had felt while under ANTARES, whatever he wanted to feel now, he couldn’t make them cooperate. The distance between the two stations was too great to jump across, even for his well-developed arms and shoulders.

Jeff Stockard crumbled in the aisle, the long scream twisting into an agonized plea to his legs, to God, to any power that could make him whole. In that instant he would have made any bargain, paid any price, for the thinnest, poorest connection between his mind and his legs.