The Final Flight by James Blatch (books to read in your 30s .TXT) 📗

in a rhythm directly linked to the aircraft’s proximity to the ground in feet.

Millie scrutinised the numbers.

The digits 307 flicked over to 312 and a moment later 305.

They had asked Guiding Light to fly the jet as close to, but not below, three hundred feet. It was doing a good job of the task.

Millie relaxed into his chair, but kept his eyes on the numbers.

He was still getting used to the marvel of it all. Somewhere behind the panel, electronics connected the laser’s range-finding data to the Vulcan autopilot.

Two pieces of technology in direct communication. Millie hoped they didn’t fall out with each other.

To Millie’s relief, the pilot Brian Hill interrupted Steve Bright’s football monologue with a clipped question over the intercom.

“How many more tapes?”

Millie pulled his oxygen mask over his face.

“That was the last one. I’m out now.”

“OK, we’ll stay at low-level until we get to the estuary as planned,” Hill replied.

With the recorder no longer capturing data from the laser, Millie wondered why they would continue at low-level. But he remained silent on the matter. It would only be a few minutes and he would continue to keep his human eyes on the orange digits.

Millie’s hand went up to a small black rotary dial beneath the main height readout. He rotated it, checking the distance to the ground at eleven pre-defined positions around the nose of the Vulcan.

In fact the system scanned twenty-seven separate positions sweeping from thirty degrees left and eighty degrees down all the way across to the same position on the right, taking in the view up to forty degrees above the nose.

The design engineer at DF Blackton once told him they began by mimicking how much a pilot’s eyes absorbed from the picture in front of him, and then worked to improve on that.

Millie noted the twelve hundred feet or so of space to their left and imagined the rocky side of a Welsh hill. He turned the dial back to the number one position, more or less straight down.

Two hundred and sixty-one feet to the unforgiving ground beneath them.

“Do you ever take your eyes off those numbers?”

Millie glanced across to Steve Bright and shrugged.

“Our lives in the hands of a stream of digits fed to a computer with this aircraft’s flaky electrical system? Yes, I like to keep an eye on them.”

Millie tried to be an amiable crewmate, but it was no secret he no longer enjoyed these trips. Squashed into a flying dungeon with the ever present threat of a sudden end to everything.

He looked back at Brighty; the nav looked bored. A consequence of his job being replaced by a flying computer.

“Hungry?”

Brighty perked up as Millie passed over a sandwich from his flight case.

He unlatched his seat, swivelled it around to face the empty middle position and stretched his legs. They ached from being squeezed under the workstation.

With his oxygen mask dangling under his chin, he muttered to himself, “This is a young man’s game.” But his words were lost in the perpetual roar as the jet thundered its way across Wales.

He looked up the short ladder to the cockpit, where Brian Hill craned his neck, looking down toward him.

“Getting ready for your afternoon nap, Millie?”

Millie smiled and pulled his mask across his face so his words would be heard on the intercom.

“Would be lovely. Try and fly smoothly.”

Hill laughed and turned back.

A third voice piped up on the loop. Rob May, the youngest among them.

“We’re not here for smoothness, my old friend.”

Millie noted the briskness of Rob’s words; the co-pilot was technically in command of the aircraft, although much of the decision making had been ceded to Guiding Light.

Hill drew the curtain back across to cut out the light glare from the windshield, allowing Millie and Bright to see their dials and displays clearly.

Millie turned his chair back to the workstation and again kept a close eye on the height data as it ticked over.

The numbers pulsed, updating every three quarters of a second. It was hypnotic and Millie had to fight the urge to close his eyes.

He tried to think of the technology behind the figures. He was told by a boffin at DF Blackton that the computer made decisions forty-seven times a second.

Forty-seven times a second.

That sounded like indecision to him.

Millie reached forward and turned the small black dial. Position two showed 1,021 feet, position three showed 314 feet. They were hugging a valley, just three hundred feet from one side.

The computer was showing them what good tactical flying looked like.

He rotated it back to position one. Nine hundred and fourteen feet directly below them.

Nine hundred and fourteen feet. Really?

Suddenly Millie was lifted in his seat.

He felt the aircraft plummeting.

Must be trying to get back to three hundred feet above the ground.

He called into the intercom. “Why are we so high?”

“We’re not,” Rob May’s clipped voice responded.

The aircraft continued down.

Millie grabbed the desk to steady himself.

“What?” he shouted, urgently needing clarification. If they weren’t really at nine hundred feet but the jet thought they were, it would try and descend into the…

“What’s happening, Rob?” Millie shouted. He glanced at Steve Bright, who also held on to the desk.

Millie’s eyes darted back to the range reading.

803.

“What’s going on, Rob? How high are we, for god’s sake?”

He needed to know what the picture looked like outside.

“Rob?”

Eventually, Rob replied. “About one hundred feet.”

Millie looked back at the reading.

749.

“Talk to me, Millie.”

“Christ, it’s gone wrong. Cancel. CANCEL.”

They were under instruction not to intervene with Guiding Light unless absolutely necessary. But surely they were about to die unless they took control?

Sweat dripped from Millie’s forehead. Why was Guiding Light suddenly blind? Why was the laser looking straight through solid rock?

In the back, they felt a lurch as the autopilot disengaged.

Millie sensed the angle change as the nose raised, but he knew the momentum of the heavy aircraft was still downward.

He looked over his shoulder and stared up into the cockpit; the curtain wasn’t fixed and in the g-force it rippled open.

Millie saw Brian