Tower, this is Bennett in the SR-9, he said into the radio. His voice calm and even, the voice of a man who had done this 10,000 times. Systems are green, requesting clearance for the demonstration profile. There was a pause on the radio, and then a voice came back, and it was not the tower controller. It was a woman's voice.
It was Evelyn Carter's voice because she had gone into the control room and taken the headset herself because she could not bear to watch this from a stage. Bennett, this is Carter. A pause. You're cleared. And Marcus, her voice caught, come home.
That's an order. Come home. Copy that, Marcus said. Coming home. And he lifted the SR-9 off the ground.
The time was 10:58 in the morning. The aircraft rose into the air smooth as a held breath, and a sound went through the crowd, a collective intake of 600 people watching an aircraft they'd been told might be unsafe, leave the earth with the grace of a bird. It hung in a perfect hover, 20 ft up, motionless steady, the rotors singing their dangerous song, and Marcus held it there with a delicacy that made the veteran pilots in the crowd lean forward because they knew they alone knew how hard it was to make something that hard look that easy. He's got it dead steady. Colonel Hollis breathed.
Look at that. Not a flicker. That's not flying, that's poetry. And then Marcus began the demonstration. He brought the nose forward and the aircraft accelerated transitioning from hover to forward flight, and Daniel's eyes were locked on the telemetry screen watching the RPM, watching it climb toward the ceiling as the rotor loaded up, 97, 98, and Daniel's heart was in his throat, and then Marcus eased the collective a hair, and the number stopped climbing at 99, and held there rock steady, a full percentage point below the node.
He's holding it. Daniel whispered. 99. He's holding it exactly where it needs to be. The aircraft swept across the sky in a long, powerful arc, fast and clean, and the government men were on their feet now, and one of them was nodding, and Marcus brought it into the first hard banking turn, and this was the moment.
This was where the RPM wanted to spike, and every eye that understood telemetry was locked on that number. It climbed. 99.2, 99.5, 99.8. Come on. Daniel breathed.
Come on. Stay under. 99.9, and then it stopped. And then it came back down. Because the man in the cockpit had felt the aircraft trying to climb into the killing zone, and he'd caught it with a touch so light it wouldn't have registered on any instrument.