Friday 9:31 A.M.
"One small step for man."
Vance felt his lungs curve around his backbone, his face melt into his
skull. He didn't know how many G's of acceleration they were
experiencing, but it felt like a shuttle launch. He gripped the straps
of the G-seat and watched the video feed from the landing-gear cameras,
which showed the tarmac flashing by in a stream of gray. The screen
above him had clicked up to 200 knots, and in what seemed only a second
the _Daedalus _was a full kilometer down the runway. Then the monitors
confirmed they were rotating to takeoff attitude, seven degrees.
They were airborne.
Next the screens reported a hard right-hand bank, five G's. The
altimeter had become a whirling blur as attitude increased to twenty
degrees, held just below stall-out by Petra's augmented control system.
When the airspeed captured 400 knots, the landing gear cameras showed
the wheels begin to fold forward, then rotate to lie flat in the
fuselage. Next the doors snapped closed behind them, swallowing them in
the underbelly and leaving the nose cameras as their only visual link
to the outside. The screens displayed nothing but gray storm clouds.
Landing gear up and locked, came Petra's disembodied voice.
"Acknowledge gear secure," Androv said, quieting a flashing message on
one of the screens.
No abort so far, Vance thought. Maybe we're about to get away with
this.
The airspeed had already passed 600 knots, accelerating a tenth of a
Mach number, about 60 knots, every five seconds.
That's when he noticed they were still receiving wideband video
transmissions from the Flight Center. The screen showing Tanzan Mino
remained clear and crisp. Surely not for much longer, but now at least
the uplink was intact. And the CEO was returning the favor, monitoring
their lift-off via a screen of his own. Vance watched as he turned to
some of the Soviet brass standing next to him and barked orders. What
was that about?
For now though the bigger question was, What do we do?
Androv was still busy talking to Petra, issuing commands. Vance
realized they were assuming a vector north by northeast, out over the
ocean. They also were probably going to stay on the deck to avoid radar
tracking, with only passive systems so that no EM emissions would
betray their heading.
He glanced up at the screens and realized he was half right. They were
over the ocean now, at a breathtaking altitude of only five hundred
meters, but Androv had just switched the phased-array radar altimeter
over to start hopping frequencies, using "squirt" emissions. Pure
Stealth technology. No conventional radar lock could track it.
"Dr. Vance, I am giving you one more opportunity to reconsider." Tanzan
Mino's voice sounded through the headphones. He was still standing at
the main Flight Control console, though his image was finally starting
to roll and break up. "You must return to base. The consequences of
this folly could well be incalculable."
"Why don't you take that up with the pilot?" Vance answered into his
helmet mike.
"His receiver has been turned off. It's impossible to communicate with
him. He's clearly gone mad. I will give you another sixty seconds
before I order the on-board guidance computer switched over to the AI
mode. Flight Control here will override the on-board systems and just
bring the vehicle back and land it."
Again Vance wondered if he really could.
Then a screen flashed, an emergency strobe, and Petra was speaking. The
Russian was simple enough he could decipher it.
Systems advisory. You are too low. Pull up. Acknowledge. Pull up.
Androv tapped the sidestick lightly and boosted their altitude a
hundred meters.
"Michael," the voice was Eva's coming through his headphones. "She--it--
whoever, said--"
"I figured it out. But did you hear the other news? Mino-san just
advised he's going to override Petra. We're about to find out who's
really flying this baby."
"No." Androv was raising his flight helmet and gesturing, his wounded
arm urging at something in his right pocket. "Please take. Do it
quickly. And then . . ."
Vance unstrapped his G-seat harness, rose, and moved over to the
central console. Androv had raised his hydraulic helmet all the way up
now and was trying to unzip the right side of his flight suit. Vance
reached down and helped him, not sure exactly what he needed.
"There." Yuri was trying to point. "The radio. Please, you must . . ."
The English began to fail him again.
"What's this?" Vance took out the transmitter, the size and shape of a
small calculator.
The answer was in Russian, complex and garbled. Something about
computer.
"He's wired something into the on-board computer, Michael," Eva began
translating. "The radio will perform brain surgery on Petra, disabling
her AI functions. It's supposed to prevent Flight Control from
overriding . . . I didn't quite get it. But he wants you to help."
Vance glanced up at the line of video screens. _Daedalus _was now
skimming rapidly over the straits, banking in the direction of the
archipelago known as the Kurile Islands, and the image of Tanzan Mino
was breaking up, almost gone. Had he heard? Maybe it didn't matter. The
allotted sixty seconds was ticking away and he could just make out the
image of Tanzan Mino, holding a microphone, preparing to give orders.
By the clock on the screens he saw that forty-one seconds had already
passed.
"Dr. Vance, we are preparing to initiate total systems override." The
CEO's voice sounded through his headphones. "You have fifteen seconds
remaining to acknowledge."
"The code," Androv was saying. "It is one-nine-nine-nine."
Vance stared at the small device in his flight glove. It had a number
keypad and a liquid crystal display.
"You have ten seconds," Tanzan Mino said. The image was ghostly, but
the voice still rang loud and clear.
He began fumbling with the device, but the numbers kept eluding him,
slipping around the thick fingers of his gloves. Finally he caught the
1. Above him the screens were still scrolling. Eight seconds.