I’m amazed he’s actually letting me do it. I stride toward the Ravens, pick up Number 1, and turn on its motor. The plane vibrates in my steel hand as I draw my arm back, readying for the throw. Then I hurl the Raven at a sixty-degree angle and it shoots right up into the sky. I watch it climb for a few seconds, then turn to the other Pioneers and do a little bow, tilting my torso forward.
Marshall and Jenny just stand there, but Shannon and DeShawn applaud, their fingers clinking.
“Nice pass, Armstrong,” Shannon says. “But where’s your receiver?”
“I’m my own receiver. It’s every quarterback’s dream.” I glance at Hawke, who gives me a nod, and then I turn on my data transmitter.
I feel the weird stretching sensation again. It’s even more disorienting than when I transferred myself to the Humvee, because now I’m transmitting my data over a much greater distance. The radio waves from my antenna spread in all directions, sweeping across the floor of the basin and rising hundreds of feet into the air. In a millionth of a second they reach the antenna at the tail of my Raven, but the signal is weak. Because the waves have spread across such a huge area, it takes longer for all my data packets to reassemble in the Raven’s control unit. For nearly a minute I’m sprawled across the Colorado sky, my mind arcing dizzily above the Rocky Mountains.
And then I’m inside the Raven. I connect to the plane’s video camera and see the mountainous landscape below. The Raven also has an acoustic sensor, and when I link to it, I hear the buzz of the motor and the whistling of the wind. Last, I connect to the plane’s accelerometers, which monitor the four forces acting on me: gravity, lift, thrust, and drag. I’m perfectly balanced between these forces, and the feeling is incredible, like riding the world’s best roller coaster. I retrieve the instructions for the RQ-11 and switch the plane from remote-control flight to autonomous operation. Now I’m flying!
There are no flaps on the Raven’s wings, so I have to rely on the rudder and the elevator at the plane’s tail. First I test the rudder, turning the plane to the left and right. Then I angle the elevator upward, which lowers the tail and lifts the plane’s nose. An instant later I rev up the motor, and the Raven goes into a steep, thrilling climb. A strong wind from the west buffets and jostles me, but I tweak the controls and keep aiming for the clouds. I level out at two thousand feet above the ground, then point the video camera downward so I can get a good view of the countryside. The basin is directly below, a muddy brown bowl with a snow-white rim. All around it are the endless peaks of the Rockies.
Then I get an incoming radio signal, encrypted for security reasons. My circuits decode the message, which is a voice communication from General Hawke.
“You okay, Armstrong?”
Adjusting the lens of the plane’s camera, I zoom in on the general and the Pioneers. They look so tiny down there.
“Big affirmative, sir,” I reply, transmitting my synthesized voice over the radio channel. “This is the best day of my life.”
“Take it easy with the aerobatics. If you lose control at that altitude, you’ll hit the ground pretty hard.”
I focus the camera on the ridges surrounding the basin. Falling on the snow-covered ground probably wouldn’t be so bad, but there are also sections of exposed rock on the slopes. Then another worry occurs to me. “Sir, I think I’ve gone too high. I can see for miles around, and that means anyone down there can see me too.”
I expect Hawke to get angry, but his voice stays calm. “It’s a risk, but a small one. From this far away, you look like a bird. And we’ve restricted public access to the surrounding area.”
I start to descend anyway. Better safe than sorry. Lowering the elevator, I dip the plane’s nose and cut back on the motor. I see Zia’s Raven five hundred feet below me, flying in a wide circle. A quarter-mile to the west I spot a third plane climbing into the sky. From far away, they really do look like birds.
That’s when I get my first inkling of Hawke’s plan for attacking Sigma. I reopen the radio channel to the general. “Sir? What would the Ravens look like on a radar screen? They’d look more like birds than planes, wouldn’t they?”
There’s a pause of several seconds. When Hawke finally comes back on the radio, he sounds amused. “That’s another premature question, Armstrong.”
“But am I right, sir? Have I identified one of the Raven’s tactical advantages?”
“We’ll talk about it later. Now stop bothering me. I have to get three more Pioneers into the air.”
I continue descending. Turning the rudder to the right, I go into a slow, clockwise corkscrew. Over the next fifteen minutes the other Pioneers zoom up from the runway, one by one. Pretty soon we’re all circling the airspace over the basin. It’s an amazing sight.
I don’t want it to end, but the charge in my Raven’s battery will only last for another fifteen minutes. I descend below eight hundred feet, which is the height of the ridges around the basin, and now I can no longer see the mountains beyond. Then I get another radio message from General Hawke. He’s addressing all the Pioneers at once.
“So far, so good,” he says. “Now here comes the hard part. I want all of you to turn off your motors.”
After a few seconds of silence, Shannon’s synthesized voice comes over the radio. “Could you repeat that, sir? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”
“You heard me right, Gibbs. Shut down your motors.”
“But, sir?” This is DeShawn’s voice. “How will we—”
“You’re gonna glide the rest of the way down. All the necessary instructions are in your control units.”
He’s right. According to the instructions, the Raven’s design—long wings, sleek fuselage—makes it ideal for gliding. We can land the planes without power if we spiral down to the basin, using the rudder for steering and the elevator to control the descent. “Should we land on the runway, sir?” I ask.
“Negative. I want you to transfer back to your Pioneers while you’re still gliding. First you need to descend to about three hundred feet to get within radio range. Then you have to keep the Ravens circling in the air until you complete the data transfer. After that, the planes will revert back to remote-control operation and my men will steer them to the landing zone.”
“Excuse me, General?” This is Marshall’s voice, with its computer-generated British accent. “May I ask why we’re practicing this particular maneuver?”
“No, you may not. Are your circuits malfunctioning, Baxley? Didn’t you hear what I told Armstrong? No premature questions.”
“My apologies, sir. I didn’t—”
“All right, enough chatter. Cut your motors right now. I’ll give a nice, shiny medal to whoever makes it down first.”
For a moment I feel sorry for Marshall, but not because Hawke chewed him out. I feel sorry for him because he doesn’t see what’s obvious. The reason for today’s training exercise becomes absolutely clear as soon as I turn off my motor. The electric buzz ceases and the propeller stops spinning and the only sound my acoustic sensor picks up is the whistling of the wind. The Raven is flying silently now. If it were nighttime, the plane would be invisible and untrackable. It could glide right into a Russian missile base and no one would be the wiser.
Without the thrust from the propeller the Raven lurches earthward, but after a couple of seconds it settles into a glide path. I’m five hundred feet above the ground, and at this rate of descent I’ll be within radio range of my Pioneer in half a minute. But then I see another Raven streak past me. It’s Number 3, Zia’s plane, and it’s diving fast. She clearly wants to be the first Pioneer on the ground. She’s so hungry for General Hawke’s approval that she’ll risk smashing herself to pieces. Luckily, she pulls out of the dive at the last second and starts gliding in a wide corkscrew above her Pioneer.