Nerve Center Read Free

panel. “On my mark, Daddy.”
    “ Don’t call me Daddy.”
    Bunker B, Dreamland
9 January, 1415
    THE FLIGHTHAWK AND F-16 SWIRLED IN THE SKY, CAT and dog locked in a ferocious match. Neither could gain enough of an advantage over the other to end the battle. Then the big screen at the front of the room flashed white and a loud pffffffff cracked the speakers—Captain Madrone had cut the feed.
    “I said, knock it off” Madrone stood back from the console, folding his arms in front of his chest. At five eight and perhaps 140 in a winter uniform with boots, thermals, and two sweaters, Madrone hardly cut an imposing figure. Even for an engineer he was considered shy and quiet, and most people at Dreamland who knew him even casually could mention several nervous habits, beginning with his nail-biting. But somewhere in the recesses of his personality lurked a young lieutenant who had faced down a pair of tanks in Iraq. The same ferocious snap that had led his team to wipe out the tanks with nothing more than hand grenades now brought the joint-services team that had been fighting the mock battle on a new simulation system to rapid attention.
    Except for the two men at the heart of the battle, that is.
    “You fucking cheated,” Zen told Mack, tossing off his Flighthawk control helmet. A control cable caught the custom-built device about a millimeter from the ground, just barely keeping it from turning into a bucket of ridiculously expensive but busted computer chips.
    “I didn’t cheat,” said Smith, standing from his station on Madrone’s left. “I just flew under the radar coverage. How is that cheating?”
    “You flew beyond the parameters of the plane,” said Zen. “You pulled over ten g’s twice. And besides, no way no how could you have gotten past the F-15’s at Mark Seven.”
    “The computer let me take the g’s,” said Mack. “As for the F-15’s, where were they?”
    “He got past us,” admitted Captain Paul Owens, who’d been handling the F-15 combat air sweep from one of the back benches. “The damn simulator has a hole in the radar coverage big enough to fly a 747 through. You can’t see anything under a thousand feet.”
    “Gentlemen, please.” Dr. Ray Rubeo, one of the scientists overseeing the simulation, leaned over the railing at the back of the room. His voice had the world-weary tone a kindergarten teacher would use at the end of a long week. “I believe we have our data for today. I suggest everyone take the afternoon off to play with their Tinkertoys. Live-fire exercise in the morning. Tomorrow, please, keep the WWF routine on the ground.”
    Rubeo turned and walked from the room, shuddering slightly at the doorway, as if shaking a great chill from his body.
    “Easier to walk away than fix the holes in the sim program,” muttered Zen.
    “I think he was right,” said Madrone. “We all pretty much know what we have to do tomorrow.”
    He turned to Captain Rosenstein and Lieutenant Garuthers, who were to pilot the actual helicopters they would test tomorrow. The Army commanders were here to test new helicopter upgrades and combat communications in something approaching real conditions; they cared little for what they called the “Hair Force testosterone show,” and were only too happy to knock off early.
    Knife and Zen, meanwhile, traded snipes across the floor.
    “You were lucky today,” said Zen. “Tomorrow we’re in real planes.”
    “Tomorrow I’m going to kick your ass all over town, you peahead loser,” promised Knife. “I can do things in the MiG that would tear an F-16 apart, even with Dreamland’s mods.”
    “1 can nail a MiG with my eyes closed,” said Zen.
    “We’ll see,” said Mack. He popped the CD that had recorded his part of the exercise out of the console near him and left the room, practically whistling.
    Zen wheeled toward his helmet, still shaking his head. He picked it up and handed it to Jennifer Gleason, one of the computer scientists on the