Strike Force

OVER THE HIGH TECHNOLOGY AEROSPACE

WEAPONS CENTER, ELLIOTT AIR FORCE

BASE, GROOM LAKE, NEVADA

WEEKS LATER

Boomer always thought that it felt like hitting the water on the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland, bumpy and noisy amidst the sudden shock of deceleration — except the feeling lasted eight minutes, not two seconds.

With a one-hundred-eighty-degree x-axis turn and a ninety-second burn from the Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System, the XR-A9 Black Stallion spaceplane slowed down to about five thousand miles per hour and immediately began its descent through the atmosphere. Once slowed down, Hunter Noble used the spaceplane’s maneuvering rockets to turn forward again, then lift the nose slightly to the proper altitude to expose the heat-proof carbon-carbon underside of the Black Stallion to the worst of the friction. He followed an electronic cueing system displayed on his primary multi-function display, similar to a terrestrial Instrument Landing System — as long as he kept the crosshairs perfectly centered in the middle of the display, he was on course and on glidepath for atmospheric reinsertion.

“Boomer, check your flight control computers, they’re not engaged,” the crew mission commander, First Lieutenant Dorothea Benneton, call-sign “Nano,” said from the forward compartment. Benneton was a high-energy, type-A personality, barely contained by an engineering degree and an Air Force commission — she liked to party and she liked being in control of every situation. She had to take a deep breath and force her words from her mouth through the high G loading during re-entry. “Did they pop off-line?”

“No, I just didn’t engage — I thought I’d hand-fly this re-entry,” Boomer replied, his voice shaky and hoarse as well.

“Don’t you screw with my test parameters, Boomer, or I’ll kick your butt,” Benneton warned only half-jokingly. “Stay on glidepath.”

During re-entry the air around the spacecraft got so hot that it ionized and disrupted normal radio communications, so the team normally used a laser radio system that bounced laser beams between satellites to communicate with the spaceplane. But the message they received was actually over the normal encrypted UHF radio channel: “Stud Two, this is Control, how do you hear?” radioed Air Force Colonel Martin Tehama, the commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, from his headquarters at Elliott Air Force Base.

“Three by, Control,” Boomer replied. He turned to Nano and gave her a wink. “Looks like your gadget is working, Dottie.” Enough heat was being sucked away from the skin to keep the air from ionizing, permitting regular radio communications.

“Why aren’t you on auto control, Two?” Tehama asked. “I show the flight control system in ‘STANDBY.’ Is there a problem?”

“Now I’m getting the nagging in stereo,” Boomer said. Reluctantly he switched on the autopilot, keeping his hands on the controls until he was sure the system was responding properly. “Everyone happy now?”

“Why do we bother writing up a test flight plan if you’re not going to follow it, Boomer?” the commander asked. To Benneton he said, “Nice job on the protection system upgrades, Lieutenant. Looks like it’s working pretty well.”

“Thank you, sir,” Nano responded, grunting through the G-forces. “I’ve still got some higher than expected temperatures in the cargo bay, but it looks like the temperature’s holding — Boomer hasn’t fried anything yet.”

As they continued their descent the aerodynamic flight controls took greater and greater effect, and soon they were executing some lazy-eights and steep-banked S-turns across the sky, which helped to slow and cool the spacecraft even more. With the outside thermal protection layer temperatures now below 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — the safe structural temperature limit for the spacecraft’s titanium-vanadium skeleton — Boomer was clear to maneuver as he pleased, and he headed straight for Elliott Air Force Base’s 23,000-foot long runway on Groom Lake in south-central Nevada.

It was not Hunter’s best landing. He turned toward the runway late and landed about three hundred feet short, on the overrun — fortunately the overrun, while not stressed as highly as the main runway, supported the Black Stallion’s weight adequately. He noticed fire and rescue trucks racing toward him as he zoomed down the runway, then slamming on the brakes and reversing direction as he zipped past the preplanned stopping point. He used almost every foot of the three-mile-long runway to stop, but he safely turned off before reaching the end and headed for the hangars.