The computer continued, giving him a rundown of the weather conditions. They were basically the same as they always were at Brown Lake: clear skies, unlimited visibility.
“Engines, military power,” said Turk, powering up from soft idle. The power plants—there were actually four of them, though they worked as an integrated unit—came on with a soft thud. The aircraft immediately began to shake. Turk worked his control surfaces quickly, getting green status lights on the right side of his visor. He could choose to use the LED screens on the aircraft—there was no glass canopy—but generally left that as a backup. His smart helmet could do everything the computer-controlled screen could, and was connected directly to the plane.
Turk checked through his instruments for his last takeoff checklist, meticulously looking at each indicator even though the computer would have alerted him if anything was out of spec. Then he took a long, deep breath, slowly emptying his lungs.
“Let’s go,” he told the plane, simultaneously reaching for the throttle.
And they were off.
All airplanes are built to fly. Engines on full and left completely on their own, their wings would gladly propel themselves through the air, straight and level, forever. Or at least until their fuel ran out.
The Tigershark didn’t just love to fly. It loved to accelerate. Its engines supplied more lift per pound than any other aircraft in the American inventory, which meant any other aircraft in the world. If the Tigershark were a person, it would be an Olympic-class sprinter—the Carl Lewis of the skies.
Speed is lift. Turk’s job was basically to manage that lift, using it to get from Point A to Point B and back again. To do that in the Tigershark, he had to think not just of Point A and B and all the subpoints in between, but Point C and D, and a little bit of E and F on either side of the wings. Because living at Mach 2.3, the aircraft’s normal cruise speed, entailed certain responsibilities.
Things happened relatively fast at that speed—more than twice as fast as they happened in most fighters. Turk had advanced radar and avionics systems that helped show him what else was around and likely to happen on any given vector, but as good as the computer was, it couldn’t really predict the future.
Not that he could, of course. But he did have a certain feel for it.
It wasn’t that the Tigershark couldn’t fly below the speed of sound. But the high-speed maneuvers it was capable of—the aircraft was designed to withstand over 18 g’s, a force that would crush its pilot in an old-style g-suit—required enormous flight energy.
It was a trade: the Tigershark gave the god of flight velocity and lift, and in return the god of flight let it make a 150-degree turn in the space a Piper would have used at something like a hundredth of the speed.
But the god of flight did not take IOUs—if the Tigershark was a few knots short, she was severely punished. High-speed stalls and spins were a fact of life in the Tigershark. Even after a year’s worth of flying it, Turk was required to practice dealing with them in a flight simulator twice a week.
The sessions were far more grueling than anything he encountered in the air, which was the point. He was good: he could deal with even the most unusual flight blip—his term—nearly as quickly as the plane’s flight command computer. But he still found the workouts taxing.
Today’s flight, by contrast, was a piece of cake. All he had to do was practice a few loops and rolls for the dog and pony show they were hosting in a few days.
Low pass on the runway. Zip-zip. Climb. Turn at the top. Dive and recover.
Enter Sabres, stage right.
Though they looked nothing alike, in many ways the Sabres were smaller versions of the Tigershark, capable of making very sharp maneuvers at high rates of speed. They didn’t have anywhere near the Tigershark’s top end, however; they would accelerate to roughly Mach 3, but used a great deal of fuel getting there. What they could do better than the Tigershark was fly slowly, all the way down to 100 knots at their service ceiling, which was roughly 68,000 feet. The secret was their wings, which could be extended—rolled out was a more descriptive and accurate term—turning them into high-altitude gliders. With solar cells embedded in their skin, the aircraft could power down their engines and loiter over an area for hours.
There were trade-offs. For one, the extended wings made it easy for properly configured radar to spot them. But all things considered, the Sabres were the most capable unmanned air vehicles or UAVs ever produced. They bore the same relationship to the Flighthawks—their immediate predecessors—as their namesake, the F–86 Sabre, bore to the P–38 Lightning.
Turk rocked the Tigershark through the opening maneuvers of his display routine, cranking the plane straight up as four Sabres rocked in from opposite directions. The little planes came up around him, crisscrossing as he climbed. It was very impressive from the ground—the planes looked as if they were a reverse fountain of water. In the cockpit, it was more than a little on the boring side: all Turk did was fly straight up, putting the nose of the aircraft through a blue guide circle on his screen supplied by Medusa, which was interfacing with the Tigershark’s flight computer.
An indicator in the right-hand corner of his screen began counting down his next maneuver. When it hit zero, he pushed right, diving between two of the Sabres. As he sliced downward, the little planes followed, crisscrossing as they flew.
A few more acrobatics and it was on to the simulated missile run. The Sabres dropped precision-guided bombs—small warheads of high explosive. These were 38 and 67- pound bombs, designed to destroy targets without causing a lot of collateral damage. They could blow up anything smaller than a main battle tank without a problem—as they demonstrated on a helpless Bradley.
Mission complete, it was back to the runway for a coordinated landing.
“Ground to Tigershark One, you’re looking very good,” said Colonel Harvey “Rocks” Johnson, coming on the radio just as Turk was about to tell control he was ready to land. “What’s your situation?”
“Tigershark is about to head back to the barn, Colonel.”
“I wonder if you could take that crisscross over the review stand again. The Sabres were a little sluggish.”
The colonel phrased it as a request, but Turk knew that Rocks would make his life difficult if he didn’t burp precisely on command.
“Tigershark weighed fuel out pretty carefully, Colonel.”
“My gauge says you have enough for a pass.”
Turk checked. The Tigershark’s instruments were duplicated on the ground. There was enough for a pass—but only just.
“Yeah, roger that. We’re lining it up.” Turk clicked off the radio mike. “Computer, Sabre Control Section: Sabres, follow-on for prebriefed maneuver A–1. Devolve from that to landing pattern Baker. Acknowledge.”
“Sabre Commander: Sabres Acknowledge,” said the computer. The commands appeared in his HUD.
Turk slid back to the starting point for the fly-by. The Sabres came around and executed their part of the show perfectly—just as they had earlier. Turk banked, called in to the tower to land, and got into position without any more interference from Rocks Johnson. The Sabres lined up behind him, aiming to fly over and then land.
He was less than 1,000 meters from touchdown when a proximity warning sounded in the cockpit. One of the Sabres was moving toward his tail at 500 knots.
“Sabres, knock it off, knock it off,” said Turk. In that same second he pulled the throttle down, killing his speed. The aircraft flattened, losing altitude precipitously. But the unending runway was created just for such emergencies. He came in hard and fast, but had acres in front of him; the Sabres jetted harmlessly overhead.