Code of Honor

55

Seamless coordinated communication through the E2-C Hawkeye between commanders on surface vessels, attack aircraft, and Special Operations war-fighters on the ground reduced the time involved in what was known as the “kill chain process.” Valuable minutes were saved in more quickly identifying a target, moving assets to a location of attack, ordering that attack, and finally destroying the target.

High-speed communication and the constant movement of military aircraft over USPACOM made Calliope’s jump to her next target a foregone conclusion. Replications of the same Calliope software made similar jumps, each working to reach the same target.

The copy of Calliope that was closest to target jumped from a command-and-control Hawkeye out of Point Mugu, hitching a ride via data-link handshake to her next host, a KC-135 from the 909th Air Refueling Squadron in Kadena Air Base, Japan. She deleted herself from the E2-C as she made the jump and settled in to explore the systems of the big fuel station flying miles above the Pacific Ocean.

Calliope had no guidance system of her own. She didn’t need one. Instead, she used the GPS aboard the KC-135 to plot her location. At this moment, she and the Stratotanker were 688 nautical miles northwest of the Federated States of Micronesia, equidistant between Guam and the coral atoll known as Wake Island, 35,016 feet above sea level. Capable of speeds up to nine-tenths the speed of sound, or roughly six hundred miles per hour, the massive tanker had slowed to a more manageable three hundred and twenty-five knots indicated air speed, or KIAS.

Onboard computers indicated that the refueling boom had been extended. The radios were active as the pilots of the tanker and the approaching aircraft communicated with each other but, unable to translate speech to text, Calliope paid no attention to that noise. She waited for the approaching aircraft to “handshake,” the integrated airborne computer-to-computer communication that Dexter & Reed had developed.

But this aircraft was an F-18 Super Hornet from a nearby aircraft carrier. Calliope was waiting for something else, an aircraft capable of launching from a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship — a Harrier or an F-35 Lightning II stealth strike fighter, or even a helicopter — anything that would get her aboard the USS Makin Island. The Stratotanker was two-thirds full of fuel, and still heading south, over the open ocean. Many more aircraft would crowd up to her fuel boom over the course of the next several hours. Statistics and odds said the F-35s would eventually show up and drink.

When one did, Calliope would jump.