《The Amtrak Wars I : Cloud_Warrior》02

By the end of the fourth day, when all the flight times were in,
Carrol's hunch had been amply confirmed.

Brickman not only flew a faultless pattern, he completed it in a time
that was destined to become par for the course.

,and from the Snake Pit, he had gone on to rack up a perfect score on
all the other flight rigs.

Brickman also scored full marks in the test of his physical agility
over the gruelling assault course, on the firing range and general
weapon handling, and in the video question and answer sections on
general and technical subjects.  When the Adjudicators began processing
the results, it soon became clear that 8902 Brickman, S.R. with one
test to go, was within reach of an unbelievable double century.

'A-t.  en-SHUN?

Three hundred pairs of heels crashed together on the floor command of
the Cadet Squadron Leaders as CFI Carrol entered the main lecture hall
followed by Triggs, the senior Assistant Flight Instructor.

The cadets, whose turn it was to be in charge of the three units that
made up the senior year, about-faced, saluted and reeled off the usual
class report as the CFI mounted the dais.

'Condor Squadron present and ready, sahl' 'Hawk Squadron present and
ready, sa-h!"  'Eagle Squadron present and ready, sah!"  Carrol
responded with his famous fly-swipe and went to the lectern.  AFI
Triggs, a noted drill freak, positioned himself one pace back, and one
arm's length to Carrol's right, feet apart and angled symmetrically
outwards, stiff-fingered hands crossed in the small of his back with
thumbs overlapping on the joints.

'Be seated, gentlemen."

Three hundred butts slid smoothly into place.

'Okay,' said Carrol.  'I've seen the provisional results.  So far, so
good.  All that remains is your final, make-or-break flight test.  The
big one.  The real thing.  At 0700 hours tomorrow, you'll begin moving
up - a section at a time - to Level Ten for your first overground
solo."

Steve Brickman shared the surge of excitement and apprehension
generated by Carrol's announcement.

'You've all seen pictures of it,' continued Carrol.  'You've all been
briefed.  You know what to expect.  Right?"

'Yess-SIRR!"  chorussed the class.

'Wrong,' snapped Carrol.  'Everything you've experienced and everything
you've been taught up to now is totally useless.  Forget it.  Nothing
can prepare you for that moment when you lift off the ramp and catch
your first glimpse of the overground.  It's like entering a new
dimension.  The initial impact will overwhelm you, may even frighten
you.  That's okay.  When you fly your first patrol into Mute territory,
you're going to be scared too.

Anyone who isn't is an idiot.  The important thing is to stay in
control.  Of yourself and your aircraft.  Don't allow yourself to
become disoriented.  It's just like being in the free-flight dome only
bigger."

A lot bigger.  Vast.  Endless.  Terrifying ...

'Some of you are going to breeze through.  After the first few minutes,
you'll be flying hands off- wondering what all the fuss was about.  And
some of you are going to hate every minute of it.  You're going to want
to ball up in your seat and close your eyes and hope it goes away.  But
you're going to fight that feeling.  If you plan to graduate as wingmen
a week next Friday, you're going to fly that blown-up bedsheet every
inch of the way around the course that's been mapped out for you, and
you're going to bring it back in one piece.

And what's more, you're going to do it with a clean pair of pants."

This news raised a ripple of nervous laughter.

'No, don't laugh,' said Carrol.  'I'm not kidding.  Your flight
instructors are going to be on duty in the shower room.  Right?"

Mr Triggs nodded meanly.  'Right ..."

Carrol eyed his audience.  Remembering.  'Two of my classmates freaked
out when they cleared the ramp.  One of them just rolled over on his
back and went straight in from five hundred feet.  The other took one
look, made a one hundred and eighty degree turn and tried to fly back
inside.

Came in at full throttle.  Would have made it too but - he was in such
a hurry, he didn't wait for the ramp crew to open the door."

Brickman winced.  The Academy staffer who had briefed them on the
overground had mentioned that the outer ramp doors to the arid desert
above the Academy were colossal twelve foot-thick slabs of reinforced
concrete.

The CFI concluded his cautionary tale with a grimace.  'I trust that I
can count on you all not to do anything in the next ten days that
might, in any way, spoil the centenary celebrations."

The class gazed at him silently.

'Good,' said Carrol.  He turned to the senior AFI.

'They're all yours, Mr Triggs."

Despite Carrol's dire warning, the fail rate on this crucial solo
flight was now almost zero.  Since the days when the CFI had been a
cadet, the psychological profile of the ideal wingman had been
carefully reconstructed and each applicant was subjected to rigorous
tests' during the selection process.

In theory, the psy-profile of successful candidates had to achieve a
seventy-five per cent match with the referent.  In practice, this was
not always possible.  In the thousand year history of the Federation,
as in the millennia preceding it, no one had yet found a way to endow
the art of applied psychology with the mathematical exactitude of the
physical sciences.

Which meant that, now and then, an aggressively normal bonehead would
soar off the ramp and, after a few minutes aloft, agoraphobia would set
in.  The fear of open spaces that afflicted the majority of Trackers.

The unlucky candidate would find that his hand on the control column
had become palsied, and that his intestines were doing the
shimmy-shake.

And while he might master his fear sufficiently to fly the allotted
course, it was the end of his career as a wingman.

For during the crucial solo flight, each cadet was wired up like
someone taking a lie detector test.  Sensors fixed to his body and
linked to a recorder monitored various functions that included such
giveaways as heartbeat, brain activity, skin temperature and
humidity.

The Flight Adjudicators from Grand Central did not need Mr Triggs on
standby in the shower room.  With the sophisticated telemetry at their
command, they knew when a student.pilot had been scared shitless.

Brickman, who had begun mapping out his career at the age of five, was
confident that he would pass this test - as he had all the others with
flying colours.

This is not to imply that success came easily to brickman.

It did not.  Apart from his inherent flying ability, he was by no means
the brightest or the strongest student in the senior year - but he was,
without doubt, the sharpest.  His intellectual and physical
achievements in course studies, track and match events, were the result
of endless hours of hard work and unrelenting concentration; a total
commitment to the ,task in hand.

Brickman's true talent lay in maximising his potential; making the most
of his natural assets.  Which included a tall, straight-limbed body, a
well-boned honest, dependable face, and a pleasant, engagingly shrewd
manner that was used, with good effect, to conceal a brain that
functioned as precisely and dispassionately as a silicon microchip.

Although the cadets assigned to Eagle Squadron traditionally regarded
themselves as innately superior to the rest of the Academy intake (the
Eagles had been overall champions in team events for fifteen out of the
past twenty years) it figured third in the organisationai listings.  As
a consequence, Brickman and his fellow cadets had a four-day wait
before being cleared to Level Ten for the final test flight.

On the fifth day, the long-awaited moment finally arrived.  Armed with
their movement orders, Brickman, Avery, and the eight other cadets that
made up the first section of A-Flight presented themselves at the Level
Superintendent's Office and rode the elevator to Level Five.

From there, they took the conveyor to the second Provo checkpoint on
Six, then entered another elevator for the ascent to the subsurface:
Level Ten.

It was the first time that Brickman had gone beyond Five.

Prior to joining the Academy, his whole life had been spent within the
Quad.  Levels One to Four.

The ground floor of Level One was fifteen hundred feet below the
surface of the overground.  Each level was one hundred and fifty feet
high, subdivided into ten floors, or galleries.  Thus, counting up from
the bottom, One-8 was the eighth floor of Level One, and Ten-10 was the
ramp access floor; the heavily defended interface between the
Federation and the overground.

For reasons of security, only a limited number of subdivisions went all
the way up to Level Ten.  Most of the Federation's bases were located
between Levels One and Four and linked with each other by interstate
shuttle.

Stepping out of the elevator on Ten-10 gave Brickman a strange
feeling.

At first glance, there was little to distinguish the ramp access floor
from those below it but Brickman could 'feel' the overground.  Even
though it was still, at that point, some fifty feet above his head, it
registered as an almost palpable presence.

Reporting to Overground Flight Control, Brickman found he was listed
number one to go.  One of the ubiquitous Flight Adjudicators stood by
as two medics taped the sensors to his body and checked the screened
printout from a data recorder.  Brickman then stepped back into his
blue flight fatigues and fed the umbilical carrying the sensor wires
through the flap provided.

In the Chart Room, a second Flight Adjudicator handed him a map, a set
of course coordinates and the latest weather data.  'You have fifteen
minutes."

Gripped by rising excitement, Brickman choked back a smile that could
have cost him valuable marks, saluted smartly, and went to work on one
of the plotting desks.  He was finished in under ten minutes but spent
the extra time checking his calculations a third and then a fourth
time.

Flying one of six alternative courses, the other cadets in his section,
and the rest of the squadron, would be following him off the ramps at
quarter hourly intervals over the next two days.

From the Chart Room, Brickman was directed towards the North-West ramp;
one of four lying at right-angles to each other in the form of a giant
Maltese Cross.  Reaching the ramp access area, he found a Skyhawk
parked with its nose pointing towards the huge lead-lined doors.  The
delta wing was covered in a metallic blue fabric into which were woven
thousands of solar cells.  Brickman carried out the usual pre-flight
checks, then donned his dark-visored bone dome, strapped himself into
the cockpit, plugged his mike lead into the VHF set, and the umbilical
into the onboard transmitter.  From now until he stepped out of the
cockpit, the data from the sensors taped to his body would be displayed
on a monitor screen in Flight Control and recorded on tape providing an
indelible second-by-second record of his reactions.

The data transmitter was attached to the right-hand side of the cockpit
by his elbow.  Brickman reached across with his left hand and switched
it on.

Flight Control radioed back immediately.  'Easy X-Ray One, your data
link reads A-Okay."

Brickman acknowledged the Ramp Marshal's windup signal and hit the
button.  The electric motor behind his seat whined into life.  Brickman
checked the movement of the control surfaces, then moved forward under
the direction of the Ramp Marshal's batons until the nose of the
Skyhawk was a couple of feet from the innermost ramp door.

With a swishing noise that Brickman barely heard above the thrumming
engine, the fifty foot high wall in front of him slid downwards into
the floor.  Following the orange batons, Brickman taxied over it
towards the double outer doors, stopping on the parallel yellow line.

At this point, the ramp access tunnel was one hundred feet wide, its
sides sloping gently inwards towards the ceiling.  Brickman remembered
from the briefing that the inner pair of doors opened sideways; the
outer pair overlapped horizontally; the larger top section going into
the roof, the lower section into the floor.  This arrangement allowed
the ramp crew to adjust the aperture to the size of the object passing
through it.

Glancing in his rearview mirror, Brickman saw to his surprise that the
huge door behind him had risen noiselessly, cutting him off from the
Federation.

The voice of the controller came over his headset.  'Easy X-Ray One,
this is Ground Control.  Light balance will commence in five seconds.

The doors will open in ten.  Do not attempt to taxi through until you
see the green.  Once you cross the double yellow line, you are clear
for takeoff.

Transmit your callsign when you pass over the red, white and blue
beacon on your return leg.  Over."

'Easy X-Ray One, Roger."  Brickman's voice contained a tremor of
excitement.

'Good luck,' said the voice in his ear.

In the same instant, banks of neon tubes stretching along the walls
from floor to ceiling and across the ceiling itself rippled into life,
creating a glowing tunnel of light that grew progressively brighter
towards the ramp door to match the intensity of the daylight that lay
beyond.

Brickman lowered his visor.  Five seconds later, the twelve foot-thick
inner doors slid apart and the lower section of the outer door sank
level with the ramp presenting Brickman with a fifteen foot high slot
just wide enough for the Skyhawk to pass through.

Nosewheel on the centre line, Brickman taxied out on the green, passing
under the equally massive concrete curtain that formed the top section
of' the outer door.  Rolling clear of its threatening bulk, he paused
on the double yellow line that stretched from wall to wall and took
stock of his surroundings.

He saw that he was in a concrete canyon with sheer, unseamed, fifty
foot high walls.  Ahead of him, the ramp sloped gently upwards.

Brickman knew from his study of the model that the walls which now
enclosed him angled out sharply, tapering down, as the ramp rose in the
shape of a giant fan, to meet the overground.

The canyon was roofed with a flat expanse of brilliant blue.

With a sudden shock of recognition, Brickman realised that he was not
looking at another illuminated ceiling - like those in the Federation's
central plazas - but at the sky.

The ceiling of the world.  'The wild blue yonder' - that heartsurging
phrase from the battle hymn of the Flight Academy that had fired
Brickman's imagination at the age of ten.  Not wrought by concealed
tubes of neon, but filled with a light of dazzling, almost
overpowering, intensity that bounced off the bleached concrete and cast
sharp, rich, dark shadows on the runway beneath the Skyhawk.  The light
of the sun; blazing down upon him so brightly that even his visored
eyes could not bear to look at it directly; its raying heat piercing
his body, making the marrow in his bones tingle with its warmth.

Willing himself to remain calm, Brickman took a deep breath of the
fresh oven-baked air, pushed the throttle wide open and aimed the
Skyhawk up the centreline of the ramp and at the sky beyond.  A wave of
reflected heat floated the lightweight craft into the air
unexpectedly.

Brickman quickly adjusted the Skyhawk's trim.  The enclosing walls fell
away and, as the ramp beneath him shrank into a shimmering slice of
concrete pie, Brickman caught his first glimpse of the overground.

And was engulfed by the vastness of the earth and sky.

For the past sixteen years and fifty-one weeks of Brickman's life, the
most distant object he had gazed upon had never been more than half a
mile away; the highest vaulted space, seven hundred and fifty feet
above his head.

He had seen video pictures of the recently completed John Wayne Plaza
at Grand Central; a marvel of engineering a mile wide and nearly half a
mile high.  But even that was rendered totally insignificant by the
vista that unfolded as the Skyhawk climbed higher.  For now, Brickman
could see for more than a hundred miles.  A mind-blowing, eye-popping,
heart-stopping panorama bounded by an impossibly distant, cloud-flecked
horizon under the fathomless blue bowl of the sky.

Brickman's response to the overground welled up from the innermost
depths of his being.  CFI Carrol had been right.  Nothing in his past
life could have possibly prepared him for this moment.  For years, he
had prided himself on his clinical detachment; his ability to control
his reaction to any situation; investing his words and actions with
exactly the required degree of emotion.  No more, no less.

But not today.

For one brief instant, Brickman let the mask slip; abandoning himself
to the raw sensations that made his scalp tingle and his heart pound;
that left him gasping for breath.  He lay back and let the essence, the
latent power, of the overground flood through his whole being; let its
seductive beauty embrace him (had he known the phrase and understood
its implications) like a long-lost lover.

Was reunited.

Heard voices.

Sensed danger.

Recovered.  Regained control.  Returned his being to the service of the
Federation; purging himself of all feeling; crushing his new found
sense of wonder beneath the iron heel of his Tracker psyche.

Outwardly restored, Brickman throttled back for the climb to altitude,
checked that he was on the correct course heading for the first leg of
his flight, and turned his attention to the land below.

The overground.  The despoiled birthright of the Trackers.  Overrun by
the shadowy, hostile Mutes.  The blue sky world which the First Family,
in the name of the Federation, had vowed to cleanse and repossess.

Brickman consulted his map.  The ramp above the Flight Academy from
which he had taken off was situated some five thousand feet above sea
level, and halfway between two pre-historic sites called Alamogordo and
Holloman AFB.

All that remained of Alamogordo was a few jagged walls sticking up out
of the ground in vague rectilinear patterns among the bright red
trees.

Holloman AFB, below his port wing, consisted of three enormous
overlapping craters partially filled with wind-blown sand.

Brickman turned his attention back to the giant cottonwoods.

Trees ...

Like the distant clouds, they were something else Brickman had only
seen pictures of.

At this point, Brickman's altitude was two and a half thousand feet and
climbing, above terrain that had been described by the Academy's Chart
Officer as 'high plains country'.  Over his right shoulder, beyond the
ramp, Brickman could see the towering summit of the Sierra Blanca, part
of the mountain range barring the way to the east.  Ahead, lay the San
Andreas range which he would cross between Black Top and Saunas Peak.

From here, his course lay in a straight line over the Jornada del
Muerto to the northern end of a large overground reservoir that formed
part of a giant river cutting deep into the bedrock of the land as it
snaked its way south.

The Rio Grande.

Despite all he had been told, Brickman found it hard to accept that
the overground could be as deadly as it was beautiful.  Yet he could
not deny the first-hand evidence provided by his guard-father who, as a
wingman, had put in a double-six up the line and was now a shrunken
shadow in a wheelchair; his body ravaged by the all-consuming sickness
that lay in wait for all those who survived the allotted number of
overground tours of duty.

The sky above, the land below, the crisp fresh air that now filled his
lungs, was charged with lethal radiation that, even on this first
sortie, had already begun its silent attack on his own unshielded
body.

Every square inch of ground, every cubic inch of sky harboured the kiss
of death.

It was this ever-present danger, lying across the world like an
invisible funeral shroud, which had caused the subterranean birth of
the Federation; had kept it, for nearly a thousand years, from assuming
its rightful place in the sun.  Anti-radiation top-suits did exist but
they were ungainly garments that were scorned by Trail-Blazers who,
like the pre-Holocaust American Green Berets and British Paras,
regarded themselves as lite shock-troops; the cream of Amtrak.  The
standard-issue closed helmet with its air filtration system and 'flak'
jacket were considered an acceptable form of protection; anti-radiation
top-suits did not even form part of a wagon train's inventory.  The
refusal to wear them was viewed by Grand Central not as a breach of
discipline, but as proof of the Blazer's readiness to die for the
Federation.

The cross-country course Brickman had been given to fly was in the
shape of a roughly equilateral triangle, and covered a total distance
of two hundred and twenty-five miles.  The first seventy-five mile leg
was angled northwest to the head of the Elephant Butte Reservoir; the
second almost due south, running parallel to the Rio Grande and
crossing it at another prehistoric ruin bearing the name of Hatch to
reach the peak of the Sierra de Las Uvas.  The return leg ran E.N.E,
skirting the eight thousand foot peak that marked the high point of the
San Andreas mountains, then across the dazzling, desolate expanse of
White Sands and back to the ramp.

Aware that the Adjudicators might possess the means to monitor his
flight pattern, Brickman flew a perfect course at he required cruising
altitude of eight thousand feet, at a ground speed of seventy-five
miles an hour.  He searched the sky around him but could see no sign of
any other craft.

Once clear of the mountains, he began losing altitude for his final
approach.  Ahead of him, he could see the thousand foot high,
pencil-slim red, white and blue striped beacon balanced on its point as
if by magic.  Below him, the white sand, wind-shaped into curving
lines, stretched away on all sides like a vast frozen sea.

The sea ...

Brickman had heard about it, but had never seen pictures of it.  He
only knew that it lay beyond the southern horizon.

He fought down a mad impulse to break away in search of it and
continued his slow descent towards the SouthWest ramp.  When he was
some two miles from touchdown, he saw a tiny, triangular speck of blue
rise from the takeoff ramp, becoming a flash of silver as it banked
round and caught the sun.  High in the sky to the south-east hung
another micro-dot.  Someone else on their way back in.

Brickman throttled right back and drifted down through the warm air
with the tranquil ease of a seabird, putting all three wheels on
the'ramp three hours after takeoff; matching - to the second - the
estimated time he had filed with Overground Flight Control.

A final, flawless performance.

As he taxied down the ramp, the converging walls seemed to leap
upwards, cutting him off from the overground; hemming him in;
suffocating him.  Within seconds, all that remained of the sky world
was a flat slab of blue visible through the clearview wing panels above
the cockpit.

The ramp doors slid open noiselessly as the Skyhawk reached the double
yellow line.  The green light signalled he was clear to taxi in.

Brickman knew that the brightly-lit tunnel beyond represented safety;
offered total protection against the dangers of the overground yet he
found himself momentarily paralysed; gripped by an inexplicable fear.

A fear of being buried alive.