Chapter 128 - Remnants of the Old Command
Converting an autonomous stealth platform into a manned suicide run was an act of madness, but in the ruins of the modern world, madness was the only operational doctrine left.
For two hours, in the freezing gloom of the *Gettysburg’s* hangar bay, David and the surviving aviation techs worked with numb fingers. They tore out the redundant telemetry processors and the auxiliary synthetic aperture radar banks from the RQ-180's dorsal cavity, creating a space barely larger than a coffin. They lined the floor with thermal insulation stripped from downed fighter engines and rigged a manual flight-stick directly into the fly-by-wire hydraulic servos.
David sat in the narrow space, his knees pressed against his chest, an oxygen mask strapped tightly to his face.
Admiral Lawson stood on the maintenance ladder outside the improvised cockpit, his breath steaming in the yellow glow of the work light. In his hand, he held a hardened, military-grade data drive.
"Before the satellite links went completely black," Lawson said, his voice grave, "we intercepted a burst transmission from Raven Rock. It wasn't signed by the President or the Chairman. It was signed by the old man who pinned that medal on you. General Bradley."
David looked up through the scratched acrylic canopy they had bolted over the cavity. "Bradley is alive?"
"He's barricaded in the Shenandoah Command Complex with two hundred loyalist Rangers," Lawson said, passing the drive through the narrow emergency access port. "He has the sovereign launch codes—the original ones, from before your father rewrote the defense protocols. But he can't transmit them. The orbital dreadnoughts are frying every signal above thirty megahertz. He needs someone on the ground to manually link the command keys into the primary relay."
"Which is under Blackwood," David said, sliding the data drive into his tactical vest beside the Silver Star.
"If you go in there, Vance, you’re going into the mouth of the beast," Lawson warned. "Your father has had forty years to turn that mountain into an impenetrable fortress. His private security force isn't human anymore. They're augmented, just like that brother of yours."
"Arthur died on the ocean floor," David replied, his voice completely level. "My mother died beside him. Harrison is frozen on the ice outside. My father is running out of family, Admiral."
Lawson looked at the young captain for a long, silent moment. Then, slowly, he raised his hand to the brim of his flight cap in a crisp, formal salute. "Give them hell, Captain Vance. The United States Navy stands with you... even if we're locked in the ice."
"Clear the deck," David commanded through the oxygen mask.
The techs scrambled down the ladder. With the carrier's main catapults frozen solid, they had rigged the scramjet booster rockets with external solid-fuel bottles salvaged from air-to-air missiles.
The aircraft elevator groaned as it lifted the stealth wing to the freezing flight deck.
Above, the sky was a nightmare of crimson geometry. The Sovereign Grid was pulsing faster now, the interval between resonance waves shrinking from minutes to seconds. Across the horizon, the northern lights danced in violent, unnatural patterns of blood-red and sickly violet.
David initiated the pre-ignition sequence.
Inside the cramped avionics bay, the tactical display flickered to life. The rudimentary controls he had jury-rigged were responsive, but barely. He had no landing gear—once he was in the air, the only way down was an ejection or a crash.
"Ignition in three... two... one."
David slammed the primary thruster toggle forward.
The solid rocket boosters detonated with a concussive roar that shattered the remaining ice across the carrier's flight deck. The G-force slammed David’s head back against the titanium bulkhead, blacking out his vision for two terrifying seconds as the stealth wing hurtled down the canted deck, cleared the bow, and plummeted toward the frozen sea.
Fifty feet above the jagged ice ridges, the scramjet engine kicked in with a hypersonic scream.
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The craft surged upward, a black knife cutting through the freezing mist, climbing at an eighty-degree angle toward the crimson net of the stratosphere.
***
