ordered them all to report to the front door of Hangar 13 at 1200. Then he left the cafeteria without another word.
* * *
All of the members of the G-Force team, including Colonel Krupp and Dr. Birchwood, were assembled in front of Hangar 13 fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.
None of them had ever been inside 13, the largest hangar at Nellis Air Force Base. It was so large that it could comfortably house a B52 bomber.
Nellis AFB was close to an area of the Nevada desert commonly known as Dreamland, because so many strange aircraft were designed and tested there. Much of the base had been abandoned in the mid-nineties when the Pentagon realized that the activities at the top-secret base were no longer much of a secret.
The place was so famous that it had even passed into modern myth and legend. According to UFOlogists, Nellis was one of the possible locations of the infamous "Hangar 18," where the Air Force stashed the dead aliens they recovered from the Roswell "UFO" crash of 1947.
Indeed, when she first arrived, Lori was familiar with the stories, and she was disappointed to learn that there were only sixteen hangars at Dreamland!
When G-Force was established by a joint decree of Congress and the president, the Air Force dumped the program - called Project Valkyrie to hide its true purpose - at Nellis. By the late 1990s, even the UFOlogists had stopped hanging around.
As they stood in the hot Nevada sun, Kip noticed that Toby and Pierce both seemed to be bursting with excitement. Even the usually taciturn Colonel Krupp was smiling. Tia, Martin, and Kip all shared meaningful glances as the purpose of their visit became obvious.
There was a rumble of heavy machinery, and the huge hangar doors began to grind open. A hush fell over the group as they faced the Raptor.
Raptor-One had been designed on the same principles as the Bell/Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. But the Raptor was twice as large, with a wingspan of 175 feet and length of over 100 feet.
Like the Osprey, the Raptor's wings seemed short for the thickness of the fuselage, and the huge turboshaft engines were mounted at the very tips of the wings. The two engines were topped with four-bladed propellers that were fifty feet long.
The Raptor lifted off the ground with the propellers in the horizontal position. Then computer-assisted controls tilted the engines forward until the propellers were vertical. The engines could be adjusted at various angles, allowing the aircraft to slow, speed forward, or hover like a conventional helicopter.
From the side, the stubby fuselage of the Raptor was thick in the front, with a mass of windows making up the entire nose of the aircraft, but tapered in the back. Like the Osprey, the Raptor had twin vertical tail stabilizers, but they were mounted on the fuselage - not on the swept-back rear horizontal wings.
The Raptor was a propeller-driven airplane, so it was not as fast as more conventional jet aircraft. But it didn't have to be. It was designed to battle Godzilla, not high-tech fighters. Its top cruising speed of 250 miles per hour was just right, because the real magic of the Raptor lay in its defensive and offensive capabilities.
Behind the cockpit, which was filled with the most advanced avionics, targeting, communications, and radar equipment, the Raptor was not much more than a huge ammunition bay. Its heavy-lifting capabilities enabled it to carry a wide variety of anti- kaiju weapons - from dozens of cadmium missiles to thousands of rounds of 50mm armor-piercing uranium shells for the four Avenger cannons that ran along its fuselage.
The wing pylons were designed to carry two standard cruise missiles - one per wing - and an array of smaller missiles. The cadmium missiles, Maverick air-to-surface missiles, and laser-guided smart bombs were all in armored bays in the wings themselves.
As a defense against Godzilla's radioactive breath, Raptor-One was almost completely coated with a lightweight
* * *
All of the members of the G-Force team, including Colonel Krupp and Dr. Birchwood, were assembled in front of Hangar 13 fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.
None of them had ever been inside 13, the largest hangar at Nellis Air Force Base. It was so large that it could comfortably house a B52 bomber.
Nellis AFB was close to an area of the Nevada desert commonly known as Dreamland, because so many strange aircraft were designed and tested there. Much of the base had been abandoned in the mid-nineties when the Pentagon realized that the activities at the top-secret base were no longer much of a secret.
The place was so famous that it had even passed into modern myth and legend. According to UFOlogists, Nellis was one of the possible locations of the infamous "Hangar 18," where the Air Force stashed the dead aliens they recovered from the Roswell "UFO" crash of 1947.
Indeed, when she first arrived, Lori was familiar with the stories, and she was disappointed to learn that there were only sixteen hangars at Dreamland!
When G-Force was established by a joint decree of Congress and the president, the Air Force dumped the program - called Project Valkyrie to hide its true purpose - at Nellis. By the late 1990s, even the UFOlogists had stopped hanging around.
As they stood in the hot Nevada sun, Kip noticed that Toby and Pierce both seemed to be bursting with excitement. Even the usually taciturn Colonel Krupp was smiling. Tia, Martin, and Kip all shared meaningful glances as the purpose of their visit became obvious.
There was a rumble of heavy machinery, and the huge hangar doors began to grind open. A hush fell over the group as they faced the Raptor.
Raptor-One had been designed on the same principles as the Bell/Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. But the Raptor was twice as large, with a wingspan of 175 feet and length of over 100 feet.
Like the Osprey, the Raptor's wings seemed short for the thickness of the fuselage, and the huge turboshaft engines were mounted at the very tips of the wings. The two engines were topped with four-bladed propellers that were fifty feet long.
The Raptor lifted off the ground with the propellers in the horizontal position. Then computer-assisted controls tilted the engines forward until the propellers were vertical. The engines could be adjusted at various angles, allowing the aircraft to slow, speed forward, or hover like a conventional helicopter.
From the side, the stubby fuselage of the Raptor was thick in the front, with a mass of windows making up the entire nose of the aircraft, but tapered in the back. Like the Osprey, the Raptor had twin vertical tail stabilizers, but they were mounted on the fuselage - not on the swept-back rear horizontal wings.
The Raptor was a propeller-driven airplane, so it was not as fast as more conventional jet aircraft. But it didn't have to be. It was designed to battle Godzilla, not high-tech fighters. Its top cruising speed of 250 miles per hour was just right, because the real magic of the Raptor lay in its defensive and offensive capabilities.
Behind the cockpit, which was filled with the most advanced avionics, targeting, communications, and radar equipment, the Raptor was not much more than a huge ammunition bay. Its heavy-lifting capabilities enabled it to carry a wide variety of anti- kaiju weapons - from dozens of cadmium missiles to thousands of rounds of 50mm armor-piercing uranium shells for the four Avenger cannons that ran along its fuselage.
The wing pylons were designed to carry two standard cruise missiles - one per wing - and an array of smaller missiles. The cadmium missiles, Maverick air-to-surface missiles, and laser-guided smart bombs were all in armored bays in the wings themselves.
As a defense against Godzilla's radioactive breath, Raptor-One was almost completely coated with a lightweight
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