Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (54 page)

 
          
“Magnification
on mini-KH Eye?” asked Jennifer. She couldn’t dupe the optical feed on her
screen yet—she had to get the feedback through Dreamland’s circuit—but she
didn’t have a control window with the raw numbers showing whether it was
focused.

 
          
Rubeo
was cursing over the Dreamland circuit, using words she’d never heard from his
mouth before.

 
          
“Ray?”

 
          
“I’ve
lost the visual feed, the synthetic radar, everything. Damn it, we’re blind
here.”

 
          
“I
can see,” said Zen.

 
          
“Well,
we can’t,” insisted Rubeo. “Jennifer, kill the program now.”

 
          
“Hold
on,” said Colonel Bastian over the circuit. “Major Stockard, do you have
control of the aircraft?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.”

 
          
“I
can override it here,” said Rubeo.

 
          
“Jeff,
we’ll back you up, but you’re the one I want on the line.”

 
          
“Colonel,
I don’t believe that’s necessary,” said Rubeo.

 
          
“I
want a pilot in the plane,” said Colonel Bastian. Jennifer recognized the
words—they were the Colonel’s mantra in his debates with Rubeo over the future
of air warfare.

 
          
“He’s
not in the plane,” said Rubeo.

 
          
“Close
enough,” said Dog.

 
          
Somewhere
in the South China Sea

 
          
Time
and date unknown

 
          
The
blur coalesced into lumps of reality, like the precipitate in a test-tube
solution. The lumps had shiny edges, crystalline pieces—her head pounding in
her helmet, a body pulling off the side of the raft, the waves turning from
black to an opaque green.

 
          
Breanna’s
flight suit felt both sodden and stiff. She pushed her hands down, felt the
ocean giving way beneath her—she was on a raft, a survival raft.

 
          
They
were in the ocean. The storm was passing beyond them.

 
          
Were
they alive?

 
          
Slowly,
she reached to take off her helmet. Her fingers groped for several seconds
before she realized she’d pulled it off earlier.

 
          
Breanna
managed to sit up. The air felt like salt in her lungs, but she breathed deeply
anyway.

 
          
Chris
Ferris lay curled against the sides of the raft. She leaned toward him, felt
something heavy fall against her back—Stoner was sprawled against her, legs
trailing into the water.

 
          
She
pulled at Stoner’s thigh, trying to haul them up over the side. She got one,
but not the other, finally decided that would have to do.

 
          
A
PRC-90 emergency radio lay beneath Stoner’s calf. As Breanna reached for it,
she felt something spring in her back, a muscle tearing. Pain shot from her
spine to her fingers, but she managed to pick up the radio. She stared at it,
her eyes barely focusing. It took a moment to remember how to use voice—even
though it was only a matter of turning a small, well-marked switch—then held it
to her head.

 
          
“Captain
Breanna Stockard of Dreamland Quicksilver looking for any aircraft,” she said.
“Looking for any aircraft—any ship. We’re on the ocean.”

 
          
She
let go of the talk button, listening for an answer. There wasn’t even static.

 
          
The
earphone?

 
          
Long
gone. Was there even one?

 
          
A
Walkman she’d had as a child.

 
          
Breanna
held the PRC-90 down in her hand, staring at the controls, trying to make the
radio into a familiar thing. On the right side there was a small dial switch,
with the setting marked by a very obvious white arrow. There were only four
settings; the top, a voice channel, was clearly selected. The volume slider, at
the opposite side of the face, was at the top.

 
          
Madonna
was singing. She was twelve.

 
          
Snoop
Doggy Dog. Her very first boyfriend liked that.

 
          
Breanna
broadcast again. Nothing.

 
          
Switching
to the bottom voice channel, she tried again. This time too she heard nothing.

 
          
Shouldn’t
she hear static at least?

 
          
The
spins—they’d listen for her at a specific time

 
          
The
hour on the hour or five past or ten past or twelve and a half past?

 
          
She
couldn’t remember when she was supposed to broadcast. She couldn’t think. The
salt had gotten into her brain and screwed it up.

 
          
Just
use the damn thing.

 
          
Breanna
pushed the dial to beacon mode, then propped the radio against Stoner so that
the antenna was pointing nearly straight up.

 
          
Was
the radio dead? She shook it, still not completely comprehending. She picked it
back up. Flipped to talk mode, transmitted, listened.

 
          
Nothing.

 
          
“Chris,
Chris,” she said, turning back to her copilot. “Hey—you all right?”

 
          
“Mama,”
he said.

 
          
She
laughed. Her ribs hurt and her eyes stung and all the muscles in her back went
spastic, but she laughed.

 
          
“Mama,”
he repeated.

 
          
“I
don’t think so,” Bree told him softly. She patted him gently. Chris moaned in
reply.

 
          
“Sleep,”
she said. “There’s no school today.”

 
          
Aboard Shiva in the South China Sea

 
          
The
storm and his enemy’s ineptness, as much as his skill and the crew’s
dedication, had saved them. Sitting below the cold layer of water just below
test depth, waiting forever, listening to the enemy vessels pass—Admiral
Balin
had known they would survive. They sat there
silently, packing their breaths, so quiet the sea gods themselves would surely
think they had disappeared. The admiral waited until they very last moment to
surface, remaining in the deep until the batteries were almost completely gone.
In the foul air he had begun to hallucinate, hearing voices; if they had not
been congratulating him for his glory, he might have thought they were real.

 
          
A
light rain fell; they were on the back end of the enormous storm. The waves
pushed the low-sitting submarine violently, but the weather that hid them was
welcome.

 
          
“Every
man a turn topsides,” he told Captain
Varja
.

 
          
Varja
nodded solemnly.

 
          
The
crew nodded to thoroughly inspect the vessel, but to Admiral
Balin’s
mind, no matter what they found, the damage was
minor. At worse, a few more vents on the tanks were out of order, he still had
his engines, propeller, and diving planes.

 
          
And
he still had two torpedoes.

 
          
There
was another carrier, and at least one large ship, a cruiser, several escorts.
He would pursue his enemies until all his weapons and energy were gone, even if
it meant death. For what was death but a promise of another rebirth? The next
life would strive even higher after this glorious triumph of the soul.

 
          
“We
will continue east, with our best speed,” he told the captain.

 
          
Varja
hesitated.

 
          
“Do
you disagree the enemy lies there?” asked
Balin
mildly.

 
          
The
question seemed to take the captain by surprise. He considered it for a second,
then shook his head. within moments, the submarine began to come about.

 
          
Aboard Iowa over the South China Sea

 
          
She
was there, somewhere there. Zen rolled his head around his neck, trying to
loosen his muscles. Flying the UMB was easier than flying the Flighthawk. In
truth, he wasn’t actually flying the aircraft. He was more like an overseer,
making sure the computer did what it was programmed to do.

 
          
And
it always did, precisely to the letter.

 
          
The
computer had a detailed and rather complicated three-dimensional flight plan
worked out for the search pattern. Starting at a peak of 180,000 feet—roughly
thirty-four miles high—the UMB spiraled downward across the search grid to
precisely sixty thousand feet above sea level. At that point, it ignited the
rocket motor and began to climb again, once more spiraling upward. Zen’s
primary concern was monitoring the speed, since as the UMB dropped it began to
lose some of its stability; it was hampered by its inability to use the scramjets
to maintain airspeed through the “low” supersonic flight regimes.

 
          
He
was the only one with real-time direct access to the plane’s native sensors;
Jennifer had spent the hours since their takeoff trying to work out the
problems in the link, but still didn’t have a solution. Rubeo had to content
himself with the slightly delayed KH feeds; he wasn’t particularly happy and
shared his displeasure freely.

 
          
They
had pinned down the point where the Megafortress went into the ocean, about 150
miles west of the Chinese task force. A close examination of the debris on the
water, while confirming it was Quicksilver, failed to turn up any survivors.

 
          
Or
bodies.

 
          
If
they’d gone out somewhere before the plane hit the water—and as far as Zen was
concerned, that was the only possibility—they should be somewhere between the
impact point and their last transmission location. They had now carefully
mapped the entire area, and even accounted for the effects of the wind and
stormy sea, but there was nothing there.

 
          
According
to the computer, there was enough fuel to continue the search for another six
hours. As far as Zen was concerned, he could sit here for a week.

 
          
But
what was the sense of going over and over the same territory? Obviously, they
were looking in the wrong place, but Zen wasn’t sure where the right place was.

 
          
Iowa,
meanwhile, rode a surveillance track to the east of the battered Chinese fleet.
The damaged carrier had sunk sometime during the night at the height of the
storm, two of the destroyers were tied up together, apparently to help repair
damage on one of the vessels. The Chinese were not in a good mood. Twice their
aircraft had warned off Alou in rather abrupt English, though she had come no
closer than thirty miles from the escort screen. In accordance with her orders,
she moved off as directed. Iowa’s position did not affect Zen or the UMB.

 
          
“How
are you doing?” Alou asked as Iowa reached the southernmost point of her patrol
area.