Turk Mako was used to flying planes that had come off the assembly line before he was born. This one had been
retired
two years before he was welcomed into the world.

It was an F-4 Phantom, a tough old bird conceived during the early Cold War era, when planes had more steel than plastic and a pilot’s muscles mattered nearly as much as his tactics in a high-g fur ball. So it wasn’t surprising that the retirement didn’t quite take. Within weeks of being tarped, Old Girl was rescued from the boneyard to run some data-gathering experiments at Nellis Air Force Base. She soon found her way to Dreamland, the top-secret development area still off limits in the desert and mountains north of Nellis.

In the years since, the F-4 had helped develop a wide range of systems, from simple missile-launch detectors to completely autonomous (meaning, no humans anywhere in the decision tree) flight computers. The sheer size of her airframe was an important asset, as was her stability in flight and dependability—the last as much a tribute to tender maintenance and constant small improvements in the systems as the original design. But in truth she was important these days as much for her second seat as anything else—Old Girl could easily accommodate engineers and scientists eager to see the results of their work.

She could also ferry VIPs eager to glimpse Dreamland’s latest high-tech toys in action. Which was the case today.

Captain Mako—universally called Turk—checked his altitude, precisely five thousand feet above ground level. He made sure of his location and heading, then gave a quick call to his backseater over the plane’s interphone.

“Admiral, how are you doing back there, sir?”

“Fine, son,” answered Vice Admiral Blackheart, his voice implying the exact opposite. “When the
hell
is this damn show starting?”

Turk ground his back teeth together, a habit some two hours old. Blackheart had been disagreeable from the moment they met for the preflight briefing. Turk strained to be polite, but he was a test pilot, not a stinking tour bus driver, and though he knew better than to sound off, he couldn’t help but wish for deliverance—he, too, wanted the exercise over ASAP.

“Well?” demanded Blackheart.

“Soon as the controller clears in the B-1R, sir. I believe they’re actually running exactly on schedule.”

“I don’t have all day. See if you can get them moving.”

“Yes, sir.” Turk had never met a man whose personality was better suited to his name. But he
had
to be polite. Blackheart wasn’t
just
a vice admiral—he happened to be in charge of Navy technology procurement. He was therefore a potential client of the Office of Special Technology, Turk’s military “employer.” Special Technology was a hybrid Department of Defense unit originally chartered to operate like a private company, winning contracts from the different service branches to supply them with new technology. Which meant Blackheart was potentially a critical client, and he had to suck up to him.

Or at least not offend him. Which, he had been warned repeatedly, was ridiculously easy to do.

Turk clicked his talk button, transmitting to the controller. “Tech Observer to Range Control One. Requesting approximate ETA of exercise.”

“Perpetrator is at the southern end of the range and preparing to initiate exercise,” said the controller, who was sitting in a bunker several miles to the south. He repeated some contact frequencies and general conditions, running down flight information Turk already had. By the time he finished, the B-1Q was in visual range, making a low-altitude run from the south at high speed. Turk nudged Old Girl’s stick, banking slightly to give his passenger a better view. The B-1Q was flying at two hundred feet above the flat sand of the glasslike desert range. Old Girl was about a half mile from its flight path, and would keep that distance for the duration of the demonstration.

Like Old Girl, the B-1Q was a flying test bed. She, too, had undergone extensive refurbishing, so much so that she now belonged to the future rather than the past. Having started life as a B-1B Lancer, the plane had been stripped to her skeleton and rebuilt. Her external appearance and performance were similar to the B-1R; like the updated Bone, she was capable of flying well over Mach 2 for a sustained period and carrying armloads of both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons. But the B-1Q’s electronics were very different than those in the B-1R model, and her internal bomb bay held something more advanced than any of the missiles other bombers could unleash.

Turk glanced at the B-1Q as the bomb bay door opened. A gray cloud spewed from it, as if she had been holding a miniature thunderstorm in her belly. The cloud grew black, boiling, then dissipating. Black hailstones appeared, rising and falling around the airplane, until it was enveloped in a loose black cocoon.

“That’s it?” said the admiral. “Looks like a net.”

“In a way. Sure,” said Turk. It was the least cantankerous comment the admiral had made all morning.

“Interesting.”

The admiral remained silent as the cloud and the B-1Q continued downrange. Turk tipped the Phantom into a bank, easing off his stick as he realized he should keep the g’s to a minimum for his VIP.

Old Girl bucked with a bit of unexpected turbulence as she moved through the turn. Even she seemed a bit fed up with tour bus duty this morning.

The B-1Q started an abrupt climb. As it did, the black cloud began to separate. Half of it stayed with the bomber. The rest continued forward, forming itself into a wedge.

“So that’s the swarm,” said the admiral. Not only was he not complaining, he sounded enthusiastic.

“Yes, sir,” said Turk.

“You’re going to follow it, aren’t you? Yes? You’re following it?”

“Yes, sir. I, uh, I have to keep at a set distance.”

“Get as close as you can.”

“Yes, sir. Working on it.” Turk was already as close as the exercise rules allowed, and wasn’t about to violate them—hot shit pilot or not, that would get him grounded quicker than pissing off the admiral. He tilted the aircraft just enough to placate the admiral, who remained silent as the Phantom followed the black wedge.

The wedge—aka “swarm”—was a flight of twenty nano-UAVs, officially known as XP–38UVNs. Barely the size of a cheap desk calculator, the small aircraft looked like a cross between lawn darts and studies for a video game. With V-shaped delta wings, they were powered by small engines that burned Teflon as fuel. The engines were primarily for maneuvering; most of their flight momentum came from their initial launch and gravity: designed to be “fired” from space, they could complete complicated maneuvers by altering the shape and bulges of their airfoil. Though their electronic brains were triumphs of nanotechnology and engineering, the real breakthroughs that made them possible were in the tiny motors, switches, and actuators that brought the skeleton to life.

Dubbed “Hydra,” the nano-UAVs stood on the threshold of a new era of flight, one where robots did the thinking as well as the doing. They could be preprogrammed for a mission; their collaborative “brains” could deal with practically all contingencies, with humans in the loop only for emergencies. It was a brave new world . . . one that Turk didn’t particularly care for, even if as a test pilot he’d been an important cog in its creation.

Cog being the operative word, as far as he was concerned.

The nano-UAVs headed for a simulated radar complex—a vanlike truck with a dish and a set of antennas transmitting a signal that mimicked Russia’s Protivnik-GE mobile 3D L-Band radar. The L-Band radar was generally effective against smallish stealthy aircraft, including the F-35. The exercise today mimicked a deep-penetration mission, where a B-1Q and its swarm would cut past enemy defenses, clearing the way for attack planes to follow.

As a general rule, L-Band radars could detect conventional UAVs, even the RQ-170 Sentinel, because their airframes weren’t large enough to create the proper scatter to confuse the long wavelength of the radar. But the Hydras were
so
small and could fly so low, they were dismissed by the radar as clutter. Once past the calculated danger zone, the individual members of the swarm suddenly bolted together, becoming a literal fist in the sky as they pushed directly over the trailer housing the radar’s control unit.

“Looks like an air show,” said the admiral. “Or a school of fish.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So they scored a direct hit on that antenna, by the rules of the encounter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the van?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Narrow target, that antenna.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hard to hit from the air?”

“Well, um . . .”

Actually, taking out a radar antenna or van was child’s play with even the most primitive bomb, and a heck of a lot cheaper: the nano-UAVs cost about roughly $250,000 per unit; a half dozen would have been used to take down the antenna and another half dozen the van—a $3 million pop. In contrast, a five-hundred-pound Paveway II bomb, unpowered and outmoded but incredibly accurate under most circumstances, cost under $20,000.

On the other hand, as air vehicles went, the individual units were relatively cheap and extremely versatile. Mass produce the suckers and the cost might come down tenfold—practically to the price of a bomb.

Hell of a lot cheaper than a pilot, Turk knew.

The flock that had attacked the radar climbed and reformed around the B-1 as it neared the end of the range. The big bomber and its escorts banked and passed the Phantom on the left; Turk held Old Girl steady and slow, giving his passenger an eyeful. Having exhausted a good portion of their initial flight energy, the Hydras now used their tiny motors to climb in the wake of the B-1, using a wave pattern that maximized their fuel as they rose. The pattern was so complicated that Turk, who had controlled the UAVs during some early testing, would never have been able to fully master it without the aid of the nano-UAVs’ flight computers. As one techie put it, the pattern looked like snowflakes dancing in a thundershower.

As the Hydras closed around the B-1Q, Turk did a quick twist back, putting the Phantom on track as the second part of the demonstration began—two F-35s flew at the bomber, preparing to engage. When they were about twenty miles apart, the F-35s each fired a single AMRAAM-plus2, the latest version of the venerable medium range antiaircraft radar missile. The missiles were detected on launch by the B-1Q; a second later a dozen UAVs peeled off, forming a long wedge above the mother ship. As they continued flying straight ahead, the B-1Q rolled right and tucked toward the earth.

“Missiles will be at two o’clock,” said Turk. “Watch the swarm and you’ll see them come in.”

The electronics aboard the UAVs were marvels of nanoengineering, but even so, space aboard the tiny craft was at a premium. This meant that not every plane could be equipped with the full array of sensors even Old Girl took for granted. One might have a full radar setup, another optical sensors. The different information gathered could then be shared communally, with the interlinked computers deciding how to proceed.

All of the units contained small radar detectors, and while their power was limited, the size of the swarm allowed them to detect the radar at a fair distance. Thus, the UAVs knew that they had been locked on even before the antiaircraft missiles were fired. They remained in formation as the missiles approached, in effect fooling the AMRAAMs into thinking they were the B-1. Then, just as it looked as if the AMRAAMs would hit the swarm, the Hydras dispersed and the missiles flew on through them.

The radio buzzed with a signal meant to simulate the warheads exploding in frustration.

“Nice,” said the admiral.

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.

B
REANNA
S
T
OCKARD 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.

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