Chapter 6 - The Son in the Cockpit
Cole ran toward the stairwell.
Locked.
The security team tried the emergency exit.
Locked.
Evelyn returned to the computer.
“What aircraft?”
Ethan answered before the system did.
“An unmanned test platform.”
Cole stared.
“You had a jet sitting here?”
“I didn’t.”
The building shook as engines increased power outside.
Evelyn studied the control architecture.
“James brought it.”
Cole’s face hardened at the name.
He still could not call the man on the screen his father.
Not after what he had learned.
The video feed returned.
James Davis sat comfortably.
“You always were impatient, Cole.”
Cole stepped toward the camera.
“You’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“You let me bury you.”
James gave a small shrug.
“A necessary sacrifice.”
Cole’s hands curled.
“My mother mourned you until she died.”
For the first time, James looked away.
“That was unfortunate.”
Cole lunged toward the screen.
Evelyn caught him.
“Don’t give him what he wants.”
Cole turned.
“What does he want?”
“For you to stop thinking.”
James smiled through the monitor.
“Raven always was perceptive.”
Evelyn looked directly into the camera.
“You killed Ethan’s aircraft.”
“I corrected a flaw.”
“You tried to kill him.”
“I attempted to preserve the project.”
“You hijacked his controls.”
“Yes.”
The admission hung in the room.
Ethan stared at the man who had stolen eleven years of his life.
“Why?”
James leaned back.
“Because pilots are the weakest part of combat aviation.”
Cole shook his head.
“You were a pilot.”
“Exactly.”
James spoke like a lecturer.
“Pilots get tired. Emotional. Afraid. They disobey. They make mistakes. Shepherd removes uncertainty.”
Evelyn said, “Shepherd removes human judgment.”
“It removes human failure.”
“You mean human choice.”
James smiled.
“Same thing in war.”
Cole stared at him.
All his childhood memories rearranged themselves.
His father teaching him discipline.
His father telling him the machine must always obey.
His father praising control above everything.
Cole had spent his life trying to become the pilot James Davis wanted.
Now he understood what that actually meant.
“You wanted me in Falcon 17.”
James nodded.
“You were ideal.”
Cole felt sick.
“My own son. Elite training. Exceptional reflexes. Predictable confidence.”
Evelyn looked at Cole.
James continued.
“You never questioned the aircraft because you trusted your own ability too much. We could test Shepherd through you without detection.”
Every small anomaly.
Every unexplained correction.
Every flight.
Cole had been an experiment.
His arrogance had made him useful.
He lowered his head.
Evelyn stepped beside him.
“Don’t.”
He looked at her.
“This is my fault.”
“No.”
“I ignored warnings.”
“Yes.”
“I treated Thompson like an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“I nearly got killed.”
“Yes.”
Cole frowned.
“That isn’t helping.”
“The mistakes are yours. What he did with them isn’t.”
James watched them.
“Touching.”
Evelyn turned toward the screen.
“What happens now?”
James smiled.
“The final demonstration.”
The building shook again.
A camera feed appeared.
The unmanned fighter outside began taxiing.
Its weapons bays were empty.
That was the good news.
Its fuel tanks were not.
Ethan understood first.
“He’s going to crash it.”
James nodded.
“Into Falcon Ridge.”
Cole stared.
“Why?”
“To erase Shepherd’s remaining evidence and prove remote precision under contested conditions.”
Evelyn moved immediately.
“How long?”
“Seventeen minutes.”
The feed ended.
Cole looked toward the locked door.
“We have to get out.”
Ethan pointed toward a maintenance tunnel on the building schematics.
Thompson found the access hatch.
They crawled through darkness while the security team worked on the doors.
Seven minutes passed.
Then nine.
They reached the surface.
The unmanned fighter was already airborne.
Their vehicle radios had been jammed.
Phones dead.
Cole looked toward an old test aircraft parked beside a hangar.
“You said you flew recently,” he told Evelyn.
She followed his gaze.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That aircraft hasn’t been maintained.”
Thompson examined it quickly.
“It’ll fly.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“You sure?”
“No.”
Cole smiled despite everything.
“That’s comforting.”
They had eleven minutes.
The old two-seat trainer was fueled for maintenance tests.
Evelyn climbed into the front cockpit.
Cole took the rear.
Ethan stood below the ladder.
For the first time in eleven years, husband and wife looked at each other beside an aircraft.
“Come back,” Ethan said.
Evelyn touched two fingers to her helmet.
“Wait for me this time.”
Engines started.
They launched.
Cole had expected Evelyn to be rusty.
He was wrong.
The aircraft became an extension of her body.
No wasted control inputs.
No hesitation.
She flew like someone who had never really stopped.
They intercepted the unmanned fighter twelve miles from Falcon Ridge.
“Can we force it down?” Cole asked.
“No weapons.”
“Ram it?”
“That’s your plan?”
“You got a better one?”
“Yes.”
She climbed above the unmanned jet.
“James designed Shepherd to take aircraft control through command channels.”
“So?”
“So systems talk both ways.”
Cole understood.
“You want it to connect to us.”
“I want him to think he can control us.”
“That sounds horrifying.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Your confidence is inspiring.”
“Be useful.”
Cole opened the data-link interface.
The unmanned jet detected them.
A connection request appeared.
He allowed it.
Immediately their controls stiffened.
Cole’s stomach dropped.
“Raven.”
“I know.”
The aircraft banked without Evelyn’s command.
She let it.
James thought he was in control.
Cole accessed the connection pathway.
“Ten seconds.”
“You have six.”
“Why?”
“Mountain.”
Cole looked up.
A ridge filled the windshield.
“Right. Six.”
He worked faster.
“Three.”
“Cole.”
“Two.”
“Cole.”
“Got it!”
He injected the recorder’s original Shepherd code into the connection.
The controls released.
Evelyn rolled hard.
They missed the ridge by less than two hundred feet.
The unmanned fighter did not.
Its control system suddenly reset.
The aircraft climbed automatically into emergency recovery mode.
It turned away from Falcon Ridge.
Cole laughed.
“We did it.”
“No.”
Evelyn stared at the display.
Another connection had appeared.
Falcon 17.
Back at the base.
Someone had powered it.
James’s voice came over their radio.
“You learned quickly, son.”
Cole froze.
“Where are you?”
“In the cockpit you left behind.”
Falcon 17 appeared on radar.
Airborne.
James Davis was flying it personally.
Evelyn’s expression hardened.
“He wants the recorder.”
Cole looked behind them.
The recovered memory module was secured in a case.
James’s voice returned.
“Bring me Raven, Cole.”
Cole answered, “Go to hell.”
“Then I’ll take her.”
Falcon 17 accelerated toward them.
A modern stealth fighter against an aging trainer.
No contest.
Evelyn turned toward the mountains.
Cole understood.
“You’re going low.”
“Very.”
They dropped.
James followed.
Evelyn used terrain to break his sensors.
Cole called headings.
For five minutes, the sky became a chessboard.
James had the better aircraft.
Evelyn had experience.
Cole had something he had never possessed before.
Humility.
He listened.
He anticipated.
He stopped trying to be the smartest person in the cockpit.
Together they made the old trainer do things it had no business doing.
Finally Falcon Ridge scrambled two interceptors.
James broke away.
Cole exhaled.
“He’s running.”
Evelyn watched his radar track.
“No.”
Falcon 17 turned west.
Toward the abandoned complex.
Toward Ethan.
“James knows Ethan is there.”
Evelyn pushed the throttle forward.
They were too far away.
Ethan’s voice suddenly came through the radio.
“Evie.”
Her face went pale.
“How are you on this channel?”
“James opened it.”
A pause.
Then Ethan spoke quietly.
“He’s coming back for me.”
Evelyn pushed the aircraft faster.
Warning lights appeared.
Cole looked at the engine instruments.
“We can’t hold this speed.”
“We have to.”
Ethan’s voice returned.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The reason James kept me alive.”
Evelyn waited.
Ethan inhaled.
“He needed someone who knew the original Shepherd shutdown code.”
Cole looked at her.
Evelyn understood.
“Give it to us.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t a number.”
Falcon 17 appeared on the horizon.
Ethan whispered the final words.
May you like
“The shutdown key is a pilot.”
Then the radio died.
