Page 14 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
Yuchen bolted upright and scanned the console. The digital readouts flashed crazily as if hit by a power surge.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know!”
“Calm down. I have the stick,” Yuchen said as he took control of the aircraft. But something was wrong. The yoke fought against his powerful hands. “Systems check!”
The first officer’s face was bathed in sweat. His eyes and fingers ran over every gauge and switch.
“What have you found?” Yuchen demanded.
“Nothing—I don’t understand.”
Suddenly, the yoke jerked in Yuchen’s hands, the flight controls beneath his feet gave way, and the engines roared into full throttle.
“Help me,” Yuchen said. The first officer snatched his yoke, but it was too late. The plane rolled over one hundred eighty degrees, its nose pointed at the ground. Cups, pens, hats, manuals—everything tumbled through the cabin like in a clothes dryer. He heard the muffled cries of the security guards in the holds below.
The seat belt restraints cut into Yuchen’s torso as the blood drained from his face. His copilot’s fingers punched the radio controls to call in an emergency, but it was dead.
The altimeter was shot, but there was no doubt in Yuchen’s mind they were only seconds away from impact. He glanced at the picture of his daughter.
He found no peace.
But he kept his eyes fixed on her until his plane crashed into the ice in a fiery explosion.
8
Aboard theOregon
TheOregon’s operations center was located far belowdecks and tiered like an ancient Greek theater. The high-tech wonder was all glass, steel, and video displays. Computer stations and monitors were located on each tier. Every function of the ship was controlled from the op center including communications, sensors, weapons, and helm.
Overlooking the op center was the Kirk Chair, so named because it resembled Captain Kirk’s command chair in the originalStar Trektelevision series. The Kirk Chair provided Juan Cabrillo a commanding view of the op center and, more important, everything he needed for total control of theOregon.It was a leather-cushioned, miniaturized version of the op center itself. Weapons, engines, comms—everything was available at the touch of a virtual toggle switch.
The op center’s bulkheads were fitted with floor-to-ceiling LCD panels displaying live images from the 4K cameras distributed around the ship. Though deep inside theOregon, the double-duty panels provided a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the world surrounding the ship—almost as if standing on the alternate bridge high atop the superstructure.
Max stood at Juan’s elbow, his weathered eyes scanning the readouts of speed, direction, and time overlaid on the big view screens, like heads-up displays on a fighter’s bubble canopy. He had been moredevoted to theOregonthan to any of his three ex-wives. As far as he was concerned, she was more reliable and more worthy of his affections.
Cabrillo noted the time. They were still four hours away from the rendezvous spot, where they hoped to intercept a known arms-smuggling vessel heading for the Pacific coast of Mexico. TheOregonwas pacing at a leisurely twenty-two knots, a fraction of her top end. But the spectacle of a five-hundred-ninety-foot break-bulk carrier rooster-tailing through the water like a speedboat would draw unwanted attention from eyes on or above the water.
Juan surveyed the crew at their stations. This was his A-team. Mark Murphy was at the weapons station, Eric Stone sat at helm, and Hali Kasim—his chief of communications—occupied the comms console. The other stations were crewed by trusted hands as well.
“Chairman, something odd here,” Murph said. “My targeting radar indicates multiple small contacts at five miles, bearing oh-eight-nine.”
“Birds?”
“Unclear. Intermittent hits. Could be artifacts of some kind.”
“Run a diagnostic on your radar.”
“Already did. The board’s green.”
“Put it on the big screen,” Cabrillo ordered.
Murph’s radar display flashed on one of the giant screens, giving everyone the same view. The radar hits were dozens of fuzzy blips swirling and flowing in synchronized waves like a flock of murmuring starlings.
“Sure looks like birds,” Max said.
“Too fast,” Stoney said. “Three miles and closing.”
