Chapter 9

For the first time, I had trouble getting to sleep at night. AI had told me that my fighter plane would be ready in the morning for its first flight after all of the upgrades had been finished.

I pushed the women to hurry through breakfast or I was going to leave them to make my first flight without them. I could tell that they were a little annoyed with me for acting like a child on Christmas morning, but, dammit, that was pretty much the way I felt. At last they were ready, and it seemed to me like that had taken them hours, so I was a little gruff when we left on the tram for the hanger.

Well, it was my feeling that we had finally gotten there! I jumped off the tram and ran to the hanger. Oh, my God, I was flushed with awe when I saw the plane. The first thing I noticed was that it was painted orange with black trim. Jane remarked that it sure was gaudy, but I reminde her that it was painted like that to be easy to find in the air, something that was often difficult to do.

The next thing I noticed was how sleek the plane looked. I had feared that the turrets for the machine guns were going to be poking out from the plane’s surface several feet as had been the case with most of the early warplanes. However, these turrets barely rose from the surface of the plane more that about five inches. These were rotating turrets that also allowed the gun to point 100° from the surface of the plane. The gun in the tail was hardly visible at all. The gun in the front was nestled in the propeller spinner and was also almost invisible. There was a bubble canopy that would allow 360° vision horizontally and 180° vertically.

I climbed into the cockpit and found all of the instruments and other goodies that I had gotten used to in AF1. I was immediately in love! All this plane lacked was a name. Well, the name was obvious to me: Mustang 1 or M1. I was going to have M1 painted on the sides and wings as soon as I got home today, but I was going flying for now! Before taking off, though, I did tell AI how pleased I was with the beauty and effort so obviously put into my new pride and joy.

Karen and Jane were not as impressed with Mustang 1 as I was, but I was sure their attitude would change as soon as they had their own versions. If not, tough! I was happy, no matter what they thought. I had Karen taxi out and take off first because AF1 had been parked in my way. Once she was in the air, I headed out.

I raced down the runway and was airborne much more quickly than I had expected. I had automatically pushed the throttle to the maximum cruising position and went roaring away. This plane had all of the advances that AI had been able to glean from the memory of the original local AI, and those people had been able to accomplish miracles with propeller-driven aircraft. They had never bothered with jets, so every one of their planes was subsonic. At full power, the propeller tips were moving at supersonic speed, and the wear was phenomenal. That was why I had been careful not to rev the propeller up to full speed. I wouldn’t do that except for real need. Nevertheless, I expected that the propeller would have to be replaced every week.

Anyway, I pulled ahead of AF1 very easily, and I radioed to the women that I was going to try some fancy maneuvers. I asked them to watch, nominally so that they could see if I ran into trouble, but really so that I could impress them. Well, I did every maneuver that I could think of, and it was a good thing that I was firmly strapped into my seat, because I pulled some wild g forces as I twisted and turned through my aerobatics.

I was soaked with sweat when I finished my demonstration, and I was awestruck at what this plane could do, but I received a major deflation when I got a bored acknowledgment from the women. Oh, well, they just could not appreciate what a combat veteran could feel from a plane with this kind of performance. I throttled back and moved into cover position for AF1 while we headed for those tall hills.

Karen was really pushing the speed on AF1, so it only took us about 40 minutes to reach the hills we were looking for. It was my intention to hang back and let Karen do all of the fighting at first, but I hoped to get in a few shots of my own before we left for home. Things were quiet for the first 20 minutes or so, but then Karen’s radar announced the presence of a pterodactyl off to the left. The beast had already spotted AF1 and I am sure M1 also, but it was going after the larger of the two intruders.

The wingspan of AF1 was 58 feet and the wingspan of M1 was 39 feet, so it may have considered us to be a mother and child, and it was going after the adult first. Whatever the reason, it was moving at what had to be its maximum speed. Very sensibly, Karen did not speed up, and she let the pterodactyl close to around 1,000 feet. That was when she started shooting.

AI had rigged a red light on the canopy to show when Karen pushed the firing button. There was a blue light to show when the gun actually started shooting. The air was a little bumpy today, so the blue light was flashing on and off as the gun registered and then drifted off. Still, the blue light was on such a short time that I nearly missed seeing it.

The pterodactyl quickly fell out of the air, but Karen continued to retrace the path taken by the pterodactyl. That was logical because it might lead us to a pterodactyl nest. It took another nine minutes to approach what was easily recognized as a pterodactyl nest. There was an adult pterodactyl at the side of the nest and three infantile pterodactyls in the nest.

The adult pterodactyl immediately took off to attack AF1. Karen was too close to depend on the human eye to follow the creature, so she cut away from the nest and applied full power. That was an excellent tactic because the adult pterodactyl was heading for AF1 in what had to be ramming mode. The combination of Karen’s movements was just what was needed to keep the pterodactyl from ramming AF1.

Meanwhile, one of the women must have enabled the computer aimed and controlled guns because only moments later the adult pterodactyl was shot out of the air.

I asked Karen to fly a circular pattern while I tried an experiment. I turned around and aimed M1 in a strafing attack on the nest. My idea was to kill the chicks before they starved to death. Dammit, I couldn’t get my nose gun to fire. I tried three times with a total failure each time. “AI, what the hell is wrong? I can’t get my gun to fire at the pterodactyl nest.”

“We had agreed to set the computer so that it would not fire until it was registered on a flying pterodactyl. Those chicks in the nest are not flying, so the guns will not be allowed to shoot no matter how often you activate the guns.”

“Dammit, that sounds like a software bug, and I want it fixed yesterday, if not sooner. That sort of thing could get one of us killed, and we certainly will die of frustration. Reprogram my guns so that they will shoot whenever I pull the trigger. I’ll just have to be damned careful not to shoot in the direction of AF1 until we can work out a way to select targets during a fight.”

“Very well, Bill, I am making the change now ... Okay, that block is removed from your guns. You should now be able to fire into the pterodactyl nest.”

“Okay, thank you. Here I go. Yeah, the guns are firing now because I can see the hell being played with the contents of the nest. I got two of the chicks on that pass. I am circling around now to take care of the last chick ... Okay, that’s done. Jane, did you two hear that last exchange with AI?”