Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland) Read online

Turk cranked Old Girl around the range as the demonstration continued. The UAVs were now put through a series of maneuvers, flying a series of aerial acrobatics. They were air show quality, with the little aircraft darting in and out in close formation.

  “Impressive,” said Blackheart as the show continued. “Nice. Very nice.”

  Thank God, thought Turk to himself as the aircraft crisscrossed above their mother ship. The admiral seemed soothed and even enthusiastic. Breanna would be happy. And tomorrow he could get back to real work.

  BREANNA STOCKARD RESISTED THE URGE TO PACE behind the consoles of Control Area D4. As head of the Department of Defense Office of Special Technology and the DoD Whiplash director, she knew very well that pacing made the people around her nervous. This was especially true of project engineers. And those in Dreamland Control Bunker 50-4 were already wound tighter than twisted piano wire.

  Someone had started a rumor that the fate of the nano-UAV program they’d been working on for the past five years depended on whether the Navy bought in. To them, this meant their dreams and careers depended entirely on the tyrannical Admiral Blackheart.

  Breanna knew that the situation was considerably more complicated. In fact, today’s test had nothing to do with the long-term survival of the program already assured, thanks to earlier evaluations. But if anything, what was at stake today was several magnitudes more important.

  Not that she could mention that to anyone in the room.

  The demonstration was going well. The feed from the Phantom played across the large screen at the front of the command center, showing the V-winged Hydras cascading around their B-1 mother ship. The maneuvers were so precise, the image so crisp, it looked like an animation straight out of an updated version of Star Wars: snip off the fuselage, extend the wings a bit, and the nano-UAVs might even pass for black-dyed X-Wings.

  Almost.

  In any event, on-screen they looked more like animated toys than real aircraft. It was for precisely that reason that Breanna had insisted on putting the admiral in the Phantom—if he didn’t see it with his own eyes, the cynical bastard would surely think it was complete fiction.

  The bunker, part of the Dreamland facilities leased by the Office of Special Technology from the Air Force, was about four times too large for the small staff needed to run the demonstration. That seemed to be an intractable rule of high-tech development: despite the growing complexity of the systems developed here, the head count only went down. Soon, Breanna mused, she’d be running the entire show herself from her iPhone.

  Walking down to the UAV monitoring station, she checked on the large radar plot that showed where all the aircraft were on the range. Turk was doing a good job in the F-4. Flying the plane was the easy part; keeping his mouth free of wise-ass remarks was surely harder. But with the stakes high, she wanted a pilot familiar not only with the program but with combat in general, available to answer whatever question the admiral thought to ask.

  Unfortunately, Turk had seemed somewhat moody of late. There was no doubt about his flying abilities, or his adaptability—whether flying an F-22 Raptor, an F-16 Block 30, or the mostly automated Tigershark II, he handled himself with equal aplomb. A bit on the shy side, he lacked the outsized ego that hamstrung many up-and-coming officers; he might even be considered humble, at least for a test pilot. But like a good number of his peers, Turk had a tendency to snark first and think later.

  This tendency had increased since he returned from Africa, where he’d spent time as a substitute pilot with an A-10E squadron. Even though they’d been greatly upgraded since their original incarnation, the planes remained intense mudfighters at heart. Perhaps working the stick and rudder of the old-style aircraft in the middle of combat had woken something deep in Turk’s soul. He seemed frustrated by his taste of combat; Breanna sensed he wanted more.

  “Almost done,” said Teddy Armaz, looking up from his station. His right leg pumped up and down. Breanna wasn’t sure if this was a sign of nervousness or relief.

  “Good distribution on the computing,” said Sara Rheingold, working the console next to Armaz. Rheingold’s team had built the distributed intelligence system that flew the nano-UAVs. In essence a network of processors aboard the Hydras, it was the most advanced artificial intelligence flight system yet, an improvement over even the system used in the Air Force’s new Sabre UAVs, which were still undergoing field testing.

  And which had so recently given Whiplash considerable difficulty in Africa.

  The Hydras evidenced no such problems. Rheingold began talking about some of the performance specs, quickly losing Breanna in the minutiae. She nodded and tried to sound enthusiastic. Meanwhile, she noticed that the two men working the flight control board were punching their screens dramatically. A second later they called her forward to their station.

  “They just had an event over on Weapons Testing Range Two,” said Paul Smith, acting flight liaison. His job was to coordinate with Dreamland control, monitoring what was going on elsewhere at the massive test center.

  “Does it concern us?”

  “It may,” interrupted Bob Stevenson, the flight controller. “It sent a magnetic pulse out across the range.”

  “I have some anomalies,” reported Armaz behind her.

  “Me, too,” said Rheingold. “The root connection to the mother ship is off-line.”

  “Restore it,” said Breanna.

  “Working on it,” said Armaz, hunching over his console and tapping his foot more violently than ever.

  “KNOCK IT OFF! KNOCK IT OFF!”

  The radio transmission came as a complete surprise. Turk steadied his hand on the stick of Old Girl, holding the plane on course at the eastern end of the test area.

  “Knock it off,” repeated the B-1Q pilot. “I have a complete system failure. My control panel is blank. Repeat—I have no panel. Is anyone hearing me?”

  The tower acknowledged, clearing the B-1Q to proceed to the main runway. But the malfunction aboard the B-1Q had an effect on the radio as well; the pilot could broadcast but not hear.

  “Tower, this is Tech Observer,” said Turk, interrupting the hail. “I’m about three hundred meters behind Perpetrator, five thousand meters above him. He doesn’t seem to have any damage.”

  “Roger, Observer. We copy. He’s not hearing our transmissions. Can you get close enough for a visual to the cockpit?”

  “Attempting.”

  Turk nudged his stick and throttle, putting Old Girl into a gentle dive, warily drawing closer to the bigger plane. He let the Phantom get ahead of the B-1Q’s cockpit, making sure the pilot of the bomber knew he was there before sliding close enough to signal him.

  “Do you have eyes on pilot?” asked the tower.

  “Working on it,” answered Turk.

  Old Girl balked a bit as he slid closer. A buzzer sounded, and Bitching Betty began complaining that he was too close.

  “What are we doing, Captain?” asked Admiral Blackheart.

  “We’re going to lead him down,” said Turk. “But first I want to make sure he can land. His gear is— Shit!”

  Turk pushed the Phantom onto her left wing as a black BB shot past his windscreen. For a moment he was back in Africa, ducking bullets from rebel aircraft.

  That was easy compared to what happened next. As Turk came level, the nano-UAVs began buzzing Old Girl, flitting back and forth within inches not just of the plane but the canopy.

  “Control, I need an override on the swarm,” said Turk. “They’re looking at me like I’m an intruder. They’re in Divert One. Get them out of it.”

  Divert One was a preprogrammed strategy, where the nano-UAVs would force another aircraft down. The Hydras would continue to push him lower and in the direction of a runway designated by the mother ship. Given the B-1Q’s malfunctions, however, Turk couldn’t be sure where the aircraft thought they were going�
��and in any event, he had no intention of complying. He banked into a turn, aiming to get away.

  The UAVs continued to buzz around him. Damn things were staying right with him—he saw a small orange burst from one; apparently they still had plenty of fuel aboard.

  “Tech Observer, state your intentions,” radioed Breanna Stockard from the control bunker.

  “I’m trying to lead Perpetrator in. The swarm seems to have a different idea.”

  “Negative, Whiplash. I want you to divert to Emergency Runway Three. We have two chase planes moving to escort Perpetrator home.”

  “Uh—”

  “Not a point for discussion, Captain.”

  “Acknowledged. But, ma’am, I have the swarm on me. They’re in Divert One and they want me to land.”

  “We copy.”

  “How’s their fuel?” he asked.

  “No less than three-quarters,” she told him.

  Turk knew the nano-UAVs could touch roughly a thousand kilometers an hour if they went all out. While Old Girl had been around the block a few times since she was built, she could still push Mach 2, twice the speed of sound and approximately 1,236 kilometers an hour. But if he accelerated away, he would risk losing the robot planes over the range. And besides, they were more an annoyance than a threat.

  He tacked north, toward the airstrip. There was a possibility, he reasoned, that they might land with him.

  “What’s going on?” asked the admiral from the backseat.

  “I’m being directed to an emergency landing,” Turk said. “The B-1’s on its own.”

  “What’s with these aircraft?”

  “They’re following a program intended to make an intruder land if they’re in a restricted airspace.”

  “They’re awful damn close.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s their job.”

  “This isn’t part of the demonstration, is it?” asked the admiral.

  “Negative, sir.”

  BREANNA DROPPED TO HER HAUNCHES BETWEEN Armaz and Rheingold. “Can we get them back?”

  “The systems in the B-1Q are completely shut down,” said Armaz. “If I could communicate with them, I might be able to walk the mission specialist through a restart—it might be all we need. But at this point I’m getting no telemetry from them, let alone radio. That magnetic pulse knocked them out good.”

  Breanna glanced down at the controller. Dreamland Control had just declared a total range emergency, stopping all flight operations. The problem had originated in a weapon designed to fire small magnetic pulses at cruise missiles, destroying their electronics and therefore their targeting ability. It appeared to be more effective than its designers hoped.

  Breanna turned back to the computer station. “Jen, what do you think?”

  “Are you talking to me?” asked Sara Rheingold.

  “I’m sorry. Yes.” Breanna realized her mistake: Jen was Jennifer Gleason, who had held a similar position years before. It was a kind of Freudian slip she made only in times of stress, under exactly the kind of conditions that Jennifer had dealt with so effectively.

  Ancient history.

  “We may be able to take them back from the ground station,” she said. “I’m trying the overrides.”

  “We’ll take this in steps,” said Breanna. “Let’s get Old Girl down first, then we’ll work on the Hydras.”

  “Can Turk land with them buzzing around him?” asked Rheingold.

  “That’s why he gets the big bucks.”

  TURK HELD THE STICK STEADY AS THE SMALL AIRCRAFT buzzed around him. It was like flying with a swarm of angry bees in the cockpit. The tiny aircraft darted every which way in front of him. Even though he knew they were programmed to get no closer than a foot, the psychological effect was intense.

  “Control, the UAVs are still with me,” Turk radioed. “What’s their status?”

  “We’re working to recapture them,” the controller said.

  “Do you want me to land?”

  “Negative at this time. Stand by.”

  His altitude had dropped to 3,000 feet. He was lined up perfectly on the runway, a long, smooth strip marked out in the salt bed a few miles away.

  “Tech Observer, can you remain airborne for a while longer?” asked the controller when he came back.

  “Uh, affirmative—roger that. What’s the plan?”

  “Turk, we want the B-1 to land first,” said Breanna. “We have a chase plane guiding him in. We think we can take over the UAVs when he lands.”

  “Sure, but you know they’re still trying to force me down,” said Turk. “They’re pretty damn annoying.”

  “Do you need to land?”

  “Well, ‘need’ is a strong word. Negative on that.”

  “Your passenger?”

  Turk glanced behind over his shoulder, then selected the interphone.

  “Admiral, they want us to stay up for a while more. That OK?”

  “Do what you have to do, son. As long as these things don’t hit us.”

  “Yes, sir.” Turk went back to the radio. “We can stay up.”

  The B-1 was still without radio communications and, presumably, the bulk of its electronic gear. About half the nano-UAVs had stayed with it, flying behind the wings as it approached Dreamland’s main test runway. Turk caught a brief glimpse of it descending, wings spread, wheels down, as he began an orbit over Emergency Runway 3. He didn’t see much: the UAVs continued to pester him, buzzing in his path.

  “What are these damn things trying to do?” asked the admiral from the backseat.

  “They want us to land. The controller thinks they’ll break off when the B-1 puts down.”

  “What do you think?”

  The question caught Turk by surprise. “Not really sure, Admiral.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “Oh, negative, sir. It’s annoying, but I’ve seen this dance before. They’re actually programmed to fly very close, twelve inches close, but they won’t actually hit us.”

  “This is a preprogrammed routine?”

  “The command is, yes.” Turk explained that while the nano-UAVs used distributed intelligence—in other words, they shared their “brains”—the individual planes could also rely on a library of commands and routines, which was happening then. The first versions of the Flighthawks—much larger combat UAVs originally launched and controlled from EB-52s—had made use of similar techniques.

  “So if it’s programmed, won’t the enemy be able to learn it and defeat it?” asked the admiral.

  “They can be programmed for the specific mission,” said Turk. “And this—it’s kind of like a football team calling signals. They know they have to keep a certain position and get a certain result, which they all react to.”

  “They seem angry,” said the admiral.

  “Oh yes, sir.” Turk straightened the aircraft. “Definitely pissed off.”

  The B-1 landed. If that had any effect on the UAVs, it wasn’t obvious.

  “Control, what’s our status?” Turk asked when five minutes had passed.

  “Still trying to get the connection broken, Whiplash.”

  “Maybe I can break it myself,” offered Turk. “I’ll point my nose up and go afterburners. We’ll stay over the range, so if they drop into Landing Three Preset, they’ll come back to you.”

  “Negative, Whiplash. Negative,” said Breanna sharply. “You have a passenger.”

  “Roger that.” Turk toyed with the idea of explaining the situation to the admiral and asking what he thought—he suspected Blackheart, who was undoubtedly listening in, would approve—but decided he’d better not.

  The controller guided him through a series of turns as they did whatever they were doing from the ground station, all to no avail.

  As he continued to circle, Turk guessed tha
t the engineers were trying to figure out what would happen when he landed—would the UAVs land with him, as they were programmed to do when landing with the B-1? Or would they reform and fly on their own? If that happened, there was no telling what they might do next.

  Which explained the flight of F-22s from nearby Nellis air base that were being vectored to the north side of the range. The radars that worked the Dreamland defense lasers were also tracking them.

  “Whiplash Observer, how much fuel do you have left?” asked the controller.

  “We’re good for another half hour or so,” he told the controller, looking at Old Girl’s gauges. The instruments were still old-school clock-style readouts. “Add twenty to that in reserve. You know. Give or take.”

  “Give it another ten minutes, then plan to land. The Hydras will be low on fuel by then.”

  “Gotcha.” Turk clicked off the mike, then remembered the admiral. “Roger that, Control. Copy and understood,” he added in his most official voice.

  “We’re landing?” asked the admiral.

  “Affirmative, sir. The swarm is just about out of fuel. Sir.”

  “You knock off all the sirs, Captain.” Blackheart’s voice sounded just a hint less gruff.

  “Thanks, Admiral.”

  Turk took a few more lazy turns, circling and finally lining up on the runway for his final approach. Emergency vehicles were waiting a respectful distance—nearby, but not so close as to imply they didn’t think he’d make it.

  BREANNA FOLDED HER ARMS, WATCHING THE LARGE screen as the Phantom made its way toward the long stretch of cement. They had switched the video feed to a ground camera mounted in an observation tower near the runway. From a distance, the F-4 seemed to have a black shroud above its body.

  “They should be staying at altitude, shouldn’t they?” Breanna asked Armaz. “Why are they descending with him?”

  “I’m not sure. They may not think it’s the right altitude.”

  “You still can’t get them back, Sara?”

  “I keep trying,” Rheingold said. “Short of sending another shock through the range, I don’t know what else to try.”

  “Bree—Dreamland Control wants us to keep Old Girl in the air,” said Paul Smith, turning from his console. He was practically yelling. “They want to recover their tankers first. They’re worried the nano-UAVs will attack them.”