Day of the Cheetah Read online

  the future of air combat-but JC. Powell didn't see it in his

  future.

  "It doesn't turn anyone into a robot," Patrick said. "You still

  have full control. I don't see what your problem is about AN-

  TARES. "

  "Full control? Of what? A computer tells him what to do,

  and he does it. "

  "It's still the pilot calling the shots,

  "Sure, he can pick up his own options out of a list the com-

  puter presents to him, or he can override everything and go his

  own way. I know that. But if a smart computer offers up a list

  of a hundred options, well, most guys will pick something out

  of that list." Powell spread his hands out across his lap. "Say

  you're at a fancy restaurant." He motioned an imaginary waiter

  to his table. "You've been to this restaurant before because they

  have the best steak in town, but Pierre hands you the menu.

  What do you do?" Powell opened his imaginary menu and pre-

  tended to read it. "You look at the menu. Why? Because it's

  there. So maybe you order the steak because that's what you

  always order, but you still look at the menu.

  "See, even with ANTARES it takes time to scan the menu.

  A real pilot will use that time to use his head and instincts to

  execute a real maneuver. In ANTARES there's no thought, anal-

  ysis, decision making . . . it's been done for you. And I call that

  programming.

  "But if it results in a better system?"

  "ANTARES hasn't been proved to be better than a human

  pilot .

  "We still use a human pilot, "

  "More or less, I guess," Powell said sarcastically, returning

  switches to their proper positions. "But in a significant way we

  don't-I say ANTARES can be beat."

  "Well," Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily, trying to mas-

  sage away the headache that usually happened when arguing with

  JC. Powell, "it's a moot point, at least for now. Like I said,

  we're not concerned with how well DreamStar fights, deploying

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 59

  her is still a ways off. We're here to test the aircraft and test the

  concept. "

  , slumping so far down in his seat Patrick 'ouldn't see

  him, said, "But all those generals and congressmen don't care

  about testing the concept. They all want to know the same

  thing-can she win dogfights?"

  "And you're saying she can't."

  "I'm saying that she can be beat. A pilot with the right combo

  of skill and balls can beat ANTARES. And if ANTARES is

  forced out of the combat loop, the pilot in DreamStar has to be

  able to take charge and fight on his own. DreamStar's not really

  set up for pilot-directed dogfighting. For me that's her weak-

  ness . . . And look what we're doing to our combat pilots"-

  motioned toward DreamStar-"Ken James is one of the

  best pilots in the Air Force. He's been a star ever since he grad-

  uated from the Zoo. So what have we done with him? We've

  trussed him up in a steel flight suit, a twenty-pound helmet and

  more damn electrodes than Frankenstein's monster. We're using

  his brain but not his mind. There's a big difference, I figure.

  Are all our best military pilots going to be used as protoplasmic

  circuit boards for ANTARES?"

  For a guy that was only thirty years old, Powell could be a

  real stick-in-the-mud sometimes. Patrick scanned the EEG read-

  outs. "Everything looks normal. It should be awhile before he

  radios in that he's ready. I'll let you know when he's coming

  around so we can crank engines."

  "Roger that. I'm gonna do another flight-control check."

  "Didn't you just do a computer self-test?

  "Having a computer check a computer to see if a computer

  is working is just looking for trouble. One of these days all those

  computers will get together and drive us into the ground. I wanna

  catch them before they do it. I'm doing the check manually. Let

  me know when you're ready to go."

  "Rog." Patrick was tired of arguing. Besides, had a

  point. He turned again to the EEG monitors.

  Theta-sine-alpha indicated that James was relaxed, but it was

  a much deeper level of relaxation, more neurological, much more

  than ordinary muscle relaxation. The ability to get to theta-sine-

  alpha had taken months of training. They called it biofeedback

  when psychologists would hook a patient up to a mini-EEG or

  polygraph that would beep whenever a beta wave would be de-

  60 DALE BROWN

  tected, indicating stress or irregular muscular or nervous activ-

  ity. The idea was to relax the body or control nerve Activity until

  the beeping stopped. James had to go far beyond such muscle

  relaxation-he had to relax his mind, open it, create a window

  into the subconscious.

  For Kenneth Francis James, the window to his mind did not

  open like a door or a window-it opened like a hot, rusty knife

  ripping through pink flesh. But that was the nature of the Ad-

  vanced Neural Transfer and Response System that linked the

  brain with a digital computer. James had gone far beyond Car-

  michael's lectures. This was the real thing, the link-up between

  the computer on the plane and his suit.

  The first mind-numbing phase of transition was activation of

  the system itself, which occurred automatically once ANTARES

  detected that James had entered theta-sine-alpha. In order to pick

  up the tiny changes in electrical activity in James' body, the

  metallic ANTARES flight suit itself had to be electrified. Even

  though the charge was very small it was applied to almost every

  part of the body, from the skull to the feet; it was like touching

  one's tongue to the terminals of a nine-volt battery and feeling

  the tiny current jolt the taste buds, except that James felt that

  sweet, tingling sensation in every part of his body. And through

  it all, he had to maintain theta-alpha . . .

  Enduring activation of the ANTARES system was only the

  first step; the now familiar slight physical pain was easy to block

  out. The next assault, however, was on the mind itself.

  Once ANTARES was open it would transmit a complex series

  of preprogrammed questions to various conscious and subcon-

  scious areas of James' mind. The questions, programmed months

  earlier by countless hours in a simulator-recording unit, would

  match the existing brainwave patterns of each level encountered.

  After scanning, recognizing and matching the patterns, AN-

  TARES would then overpower that particular neural function,

  force the original pattern to a compatible subconscious level and

  allow the ANTARES computer to control that level. It was like

  submitting a series of passwords to several levels of guards ex-

  cept each time ANTARES would reach a level it would hammer,

  not knock, on the door, demanding entry. Once admitted, it

  would first befriend, then overpower, the resident inside. The

  takeovers accomplished by ANTARES were sometimes painful,

  DAY OF THE_CHEETAH 61

  sometimes soothing. At times images would force their way out

 
of James' subconscious, long-stored memories of childhood that

  Maraklov had long forgotten.

  His conscious mind was now like a big living room that had

  just had all its furniture moved to different parts of the house.

  ANTARES had taken over control of most conscious activity,

  keeping only a few essential activities in the conscious fore-

  ground while relegating the rest to higher parts of the brain. Now

  ANTARES was ready to start remodeling.

  With the doors and windows to James' subconscious mind

  wide open, his mind was ready to receive and process vast

  amounts of information. Normally that information would come

  from the five senses, and even with ANTARES some still did,

  but now altogether new sources of information were open. AN-

  TARES could collect and transmit digital data signals to James'

  conscious mind, and James could receive that information as if

  it came from his own five senses. But James no longer had five

  senses-he had hundreds, thousands of them. The radar altime-

  ter was a sense. The radar was a sense. So was the laser range-

  finder. Dozens of thermometers, aneroids, gallium-arsenide

  memory chips, limit switches, logic circuits, photocells, volt-

  meters, chronometers-the list was endless and ever-changing.

  But it was an enormous shock to the system to find that the

  list of senses had grown from five to five thousand, and here

  ANTARES was no help at all; when the "room" was full it

  simply began cramming in more input sources. For James the

  new impulses weren't coherent or understandable. They were

  random flasNs of light or crashes of sound, battering his con-

  . d, all fighting for order and recognition. Put another

  scious min

  way, as he once had, it felt like a crushing wall of water, a wave

  of unbearable heat, and the swirling center of a thunderstorm all

  mixed up at once. And ANTARES was relentless. The instant

  Ise was set aside, a hundred more took its

  an image or an impu

  place. The computer only knew that so much had to be learned.

  It had no conception of rest, or defeat, or of insanity.

  Suddenly, then, the flood of input was gone. The tornado of

  data subsided, leaving only a room full of seemingly random

  bits of information lying scattered about. The furniture was over-

  turned-but it was all there, all intact. Now, like a benevolent

  relative or kindly neig hbor, ANTARES began sorting through

  the jungle of information, creating boxes to organize the infor-

  62 DAIE BROWN

  mation, placing boxes into boxes, organizing the mountains of

  data into neat, cohesive packages.

  The random series of images began to coalesce. Undecipher-

  able snaps of sound became long, staccato clicks; the clicks

  turned to a low whine; the whine turned into waves of sounds

  rising and falling; the waves became words, the words became

  sentences. Flashes of lights became numbers. And then the

  numbers disappeared, replaced by numbers that James wanted

  to "see. "

  The energy surges generated by ANTARES were still cours-

  ing through James' body, but now they were acting like am-

  phetamines, energizing and revitalizing his body. He was aware

  of DreamStar all around him, aware of its power waiting for

  release.

  James' eyes snapped open, like those of a man awaking from

  a nightmare. Swiveling his heavy helmet on its smooth Teflon

  bearings, he looked across at Cheetah's open canopy. Powell

  was busy in the forward cockpit; McLanahan was watching his

  instruments. But he must have read something in the instruments

  in Cheetah's aft cockpit, because just then McLanahan looked

  over toward him. He could see the DreamStar project director

  with his oxygen visor in place, apparently talking on the radios.

  Patrick was looking directly at him now-was he talking to

  him..... ?

  . . . And suddenly the energy was unbearable. It was as if

  DreamStar was a wild animal straining on a leash, hot with the

  scent of prey, demanding to be released.

  James looked down at the left MFD, the multi-function dis-

  play, on the forward instrument panel. He imagined the index

  finger of his left hand touching the icon labeled -VHF- 1. " Im-

  mediately the icon illuminated. Now, hovering right the in

  re

  front of his eyes, was a series of numerals representing the pre-

  programmed VHF radio channels-the image, transmitted from

  DreamStar's computers through ANTARES to his optic nervous

  system, was as clear and as real as every other visual image. He

  selected the proper ship-to-ship channel on the computer-

  generated icon and activated the radio. The whole process, from

  deciding to activate the radio to speaking the words, took less

  than a second.

  "Storm TWo ready for engine start," James reported. Al-

  though the ANTARES interface did not take away his ability to

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 63

  speak or hear, all traces of inflection or emotion usually were

  filtered out. So the voice that Patrick heard on the radio was

  eerie, alien.

  "Welcome back, Captain," Patrick said. "I saw you come

  out of theta-alpha. Ready to do some flying?"

  "Ready and waiting, Colonel."

  "Stand by." Patrick switched to a secondary radio. "Storm

  Control, this is Storm One."

  In the underground command post of the High Technology Ad-

  vanced Weapons Center a four-star Air Force general seated at

  a large cherry desk replaced a phone on its cradle, then looked

  down with disgust at his right leg. He reached down, took his

  right calf in both hands, straightened his leg, then raised himself

  out of his leather seat using the stiff right leg as a crutch. Once

  fully standing he unlocked the graphite and Teflon bearings in

  the prosthetic right knee joint, allowing it to move much like a

  regular leg.

  An aide held the office door open for General Bradley Elliott

  as the director of HAWC stepped out and down the short hallway

  to the command post. He used a keycard to open the outer door

  to the entrapment area. A bank of floodlights snapped on, filling

  the entrapment area with bright light, and the outer door auto-

  matically locked behind him.

  Two security guards armed with Uzi submachine guns came

  through the doors on either side of the area. They slowed when

  they recognized who it was but didn't alter their moves. While

  one guard quickly pat-searched Elliott and ran a small metal

  scanner over his body, the other stood with his Uzi at port arms,

  finger on the trigger. The metal detector beeped when passed

  over Elliott's right leg. Elliott tolerated it.

  The guards watched as Elliott signed in on a security roster

  and double-checked the new signature against other signature

  samples and the signature on Elliott's restricted-area, badge

  pinned to his shirt. Satisfied, the guards slipped away as quickly

  as they had appeared.

  A tall black security officer wearing a nine-millimeter Beretta


  automatic pistol on his waist walked quickly to the general of-

  ficer as he emerged from the entrapment area. "Sorry, sir,"

  Major Hal Briggs said, handing Elliott a cup of coffee. "New

  guy on the security console. Buzzed the sky cops when the metal

  64 DALE BROWN

  detector in the entrapment area went crazy. He's been briefed

  again on your ... special circumstances. "

  "He did right. You should have commended him. The re-

  sponse guards too."

  "Yes, sir, " was all Briggs had time to mutter as Elliott pushed

  on past him and entered the communications center. One of the

  controllers handed him a telephone.

  "Storm Control Alpha, go ahead."

  "Alpha, this is Storm One. Flight of two in the green and

  ready to taxi.-

  "Stand by," Elliott said. As he lowered the phone Briggs

  handed him a computer printout.

  "Latest from Lassen Mountain Space Tracking Center,"

  Briggs said. "Three Russian satellites will be in the area during

  the test-window: Cosmos 713 infrared surveillance satellite still

  on station over North America in geostationary orbit, but it's

  the other two we're concerned w ith. Cosmos 1145 and 1289 are

  the kickers. Cosmos 1145 is a low-altitude, high-resolution

  film-return photo-intelligence satellite. Cosmos 1289 is a radar-

  imaging film-return bird. We believe th@y're mainly ground-

  mapping satellites with limited ability to photograph aircraft in

  flight, but obviously they can be damaging. Both will be over

  the exercise area during the test throughout the day. Do you want

  to reschedule, sir?"

  "No," Elliott said. "I don't want to give the Russians the

  pleasure of thinking they can disrupt my schedule with a couple

  of old Brownies. Just make sure DreamStar and Cheetah stay in

  the bluff while they're overhead.

  He took a sip of coffee, scowled at it, then set the cup down

  with an exasperated thump. "Besides, it seems like they have

  all the information they need on DreamStar anyway. I could have

  dropped my teeth when I saw the DIA photo of the Ramenskoye 1

  Flight Test Facility in Moscow with the exact same short-takeoff-

  and-landing runway-test devices as ours here at Dreamland. The