Target Utopia by Dale Brown Page A

might be with a bigger engine—no pilot was ever satisfied—when Cowboy came back to the table with a tray of doughnuts.
    â€œHow’d you manage that?” asked Haydem.
    â€œMe and Slugs are friends from way back,” said Cowboy. “I appreciate his time in the kitchen. Help yourself.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œWait a few minutes and you can get some fresh coffee,” added Cowboy.
    â€œI don’t need any more caffeine. I won’t be able to sleep.”
    â€œYou aren’t going to sleep, are you?” asked Cowboy.
    â€œI was thinking about it.”
    â€œNo time. They’ll have us up for another mission ASAP.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œWhat do you think, this is the Air Force?”
    Turk laughed. “The Air Force was flying two and three missions a day in Libya when I was there.”
    â€œYou were in Libya?” asked Haydem.
    â€œI’ve been in a few places.” Turk took one of the doughnuts.
    â€œOur mysterious stranger,” said Cowboy. “Where do you keep your cape, Superman?”
    â€œHey, I wasn’t trying to brag.”
    â€œHe’s just a top secret man,” Haydem said. “He flies all sorts of things.”
    â€œFlying saucers?” asked Cowboy. “They have those at Dreamland, right? That’s where that UFO landed.”
    â€œBefore my time,” said Turk. “Where’s that fresh coffee at?”

4
    The Cube
    â€œA S YOU CAN see, the flight pattern is exactly the same as WX2-BC, an early evasion path for the Flighthawks.” Ray Rubeo paused the video, a simulation that showed the actual path taken by the unknown UAV and the preprogrammed Flighthawk path. “Captain Mako identified it correctly.”
    â€œCoincidence?” asked Jonathon Reid.
    â€œDoubtful.” Rubeo touched his right earlobe, an old habit when faced with a difficult question. The gold stud earring was well worn. “The pattern is precisely the same. Not only do you have the initial maneuver, but you have the acceleration and escape as well. Any of the Flighthawk family would have acted precisely the same way, assuming that they are in autonomous mode.”
    â€œIt’s certainly not a Flighthawk,” said Breanna.
    â€œNo,” said Rubeo. He’d managed to nap a bit before the meeting, but it hardly compensated for the hours and nights he’d missed over the last two weeks. “Smaller, and faster than series Two or Three. Nor have we intercepted control transmissions.”
    Rubeo flicked his hand in front of the screento change the slide. The fuselage that Danny had recovered a week earlier appeared.
    â€œAs you know, the electronics of the aircraft that Colonel Freah came back with had been destroyed. First fried—to use the vernacular of some of my assistants—and then blown up by a small explosive, which severed this portion of the aircraft from the rest. However, we were able to recover some small bits of one of the chips, which were embedded in this portion of the remains.”
    He flipped to a new slide, which showed what looked like a slag of brown dirt laced with silver tints.
    â€œTo give you an idea of scale, here is the chip, or what remains of it, with a dime.”
    The coin loomed over the tiny bit of silicone.
    â€œThe chip is a computing unit,” continued Rubeo. “It is quite sophisticated. It appears to make use of ten-nanometer chip technology. That is significant for a number of reasons, beginning with the fact—or I should say apparent fact—that it had to have been custom-fabricated. It is at the high end of the scale.”
    Rubeo continued, talking about how the technology allowed for massive processing power in a relatively small space. To give the others an idea, he mentioned that Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors—commonly used in high-end desk and laptop computers—contained in the area of 1.4 billion transistors (or actually