A Time for Patriots

The Skytrain floated across the numbers on Battle Mountain’s shortest runway, stopped within two thousand feet, and turned off at the first taxiway. Thanks to its advanced engines and mission-adaptive wing technology, with which tiny computer-controlled micro-actuators could make almost the entire fuselage and wing skin a lift or drag device, the huge aircraft could fly close to the speed of sound at gross weight, as well as half as slow as any other aircraft of its size. The massive plane taxied directly into an empty hangar, and the doors closed behind it as soon as the engines shut down. Patrick parked at his assigned spot on the ramp beside the hangar and waited inside at the Skytrain’s belly entry hatch.

“Patrick! Hey, long time no see!” Jonathan Masters exclaimed as he climbed down the entry ladder and emerged from the plane. Jon Masters was chief engineer of Sky Masters, Inc., a high-tech military-systems design firm that invented much of the technology used in the C-57. Just a few years younger than Patrick, Jon Masters still looked like a punkish twenty-year-old whiz kid — tall, skinny, with unkempt hair and gangly features. He shook hands with Patrick with the same limp “cold fish” handshake that always made Patrick smile — it was as if Jon purposely used that weak handshake just to make the other person uneasy, even a longtime associate. “How have you been, my friend?”

“Not bad, not bad,” Patrick said. “How’s the biz?”

“Believe it or not, hanging in there,” Jon said. “Bunch of canceled contracts, like everyone else, but we’re in negotiations on a few that might keep the company afloat.” He patted the C-57 on its smooth, seamless composite carbon-fiber side. “They gave us funds to finish building the two ‘Losers’ we had half assembled on the floor, and they might give us money to build a few more if we can demonstrate full mission capability of a few more mission modules.”

“Then it’s not a ‘Loser’ anymore, is it?” Patrick said. Jon had called the C-57 the Loser because it had lost the Air Force’s Next Generation Bomber competition, which was eventually canceled anyway. “It survived because it’s a good multimission design.”

“We could still use you down in Vegas, my friend,” Jon said. “You’d be flying, not sitting around on your ass in this dust bowl. This place is closing down in less than a year. The Air Force is actually talking about building bombers again, and I know you’re more than a little interested in those things. And I might even give you something you’ve probably had very little of in the past few years: something called money .”

Before Patrick could respond, another person exited the C-57, and Patrick turned to greet him. “Welcome to Battle Mountain, Colonel,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jason Richter responded, shaking Patrick’s hand with a surprised look on his face. Richter was a full head taller and twenty years younger than Patrick, trim and athletic, with dark good looks and an air of supreme confidence… and an attitude to match. “I wasn’t told you would be part of this project.”

“I’m not part of your project,” Patrick said, “but I’m granted access to the flight line when certain special air-mission aircraft come in, and the arrival of one of Jon’s monstrosities qualifies. Besides, the doc here and I go way back.”

“Patrick!” a female voice shouted happily. A young, lithe, strawberry-blond woman sprang out of the Skytrain’s belly and fairly leaped into Patrick’s arms. “Oh my God,

the pack is back! How lovely to see you again!”

“Same here, Charlie,” Patrick said. Charlie Turlock — her real first name, not a nickname — was Jason Richter’s longtime assistant design engineer in the Army’s Infantry Transformational Battlelab, designing high-tech infantry-soldier enhancements, mostly in the field of robotics. Charlie had left the Army to work with Jon Masters, but Jason had elected to stay in the Army. “Have a nice flight?”

“Very nice flight — until I wandered up to the cockpit and found no one flying the plane !” Charlie exclaimed. “A plane that size, with nobody flying it ? That’s insane! I need a little drinky-poo after that.”

“That’s the wave of the future, Charlie,” Patrick said. “Transport, reconnaissance, surveillance, air-defense suppression, resupply, long-range strategic strike — all unmanned. Half the planes that fly in and out of here these days are unmanned, and the military graduates more unmanned-aircraft pilots than manned-aircraft pilots these days. They can’t keep up with the demand for pilots and sensor operators, especially with all the military budget cutbacks. Jon has led the way in designing unmanned systems for years, but the pace is definitely accelerating. Any new ideas you come up with, get them into the system as fast as you can. If you don’t do it, someone else will.”