Chandler Willard stretched, easing the cramps that were starting to form in his legs four hours into his Scramble Hold. He flicked frequencies on his Coms console and tuned back into the enemy broadcasts.

They were all over the sky.

He wasn't concerned. They were getting shot out of the sky left, right and centre at the moment by seventeen Interceptor squadrons who were having a field day. But still they came over, wave after wave, to be dashed against the jagged rock of The Barrier - Air Network 7, Northern Wing.

Easy meat, he thought, smiling to himself as he listened to enemy Commanders issuing vectors they thought could not be overheard.

Everything was heard, thanks to the sacrifice of the Black Ops guys who had died by the dozen before the Decoder was secretly duplicated; duplicated right in the heart of the Graven Research Centre and then smuggled out and over the Roof of the World by Bravo Team in a climb that cost them dearly. Four by sniper fire and three by climbing accident - 'More Haste - More Death!' Is the motto on that greatest of mountains.

The sacrifice had been worth it, for without the Decoder they'd all be either dead or slaves to the Gravens by now; but they weren't, not today, anyway, for the Gravens knew 'something' had been stolen but they didn't know what.

Chandler ran through his checks again, as he had done every five minutes since Scramble Hold had begun four hours ago with engine start. 'ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL', flashed the onboard diagnostics package.

Auxiliary fuel supply kept the engines at Idle to preserve tanks while Chandler's mind issued, yet again, another request to the thought-controlled Central Processor: Battle Status?

The reply was instant and in the form of a calm female voice, synthesised to just the right level of sexy without overtones: 'Status - Scramble Hold.'

He sighed, itching to get out of the bunker and into the sky. 'Come on, come on! Where are you?'

He was waiting for a very special prey.

For the hundredth time he flicked his Head Up Display to Sensors and a holographic representation of the battle flashed on in front of him: 'Friendlies' in blue and 'Bandits' in red. It was a wasp's nest in swarm. Each 'contact' came with an Info Icon that could be accessed by thinking the three-digit Icon code. To pass the time he opened enemy Icons to read Flight Characteristics and fought them in simulated dogfights, gearing himself up for his entrance... if it came.

And then he saw them; entering the battle from the South at 60,000ft and at the same instant the female computer, this time with more deliberation, ordered: 'Scramble Blood Squadron!'

Ramp Launch! He thought and, in response, the CPU initiated Umbilical disconnect and, simultaneously, full Afterburn on the twin Tupovski rocket-motors.

He was squashed into the back of his seat by the force of the burn and as he stared out through the cockpit down Launchway 6-Tango the tunnel became a blur.

Strip lighting - red along the ceiling and green along the launchway - quickly merged into thin ribbons of 'Go', 'No go', areas and he concentrated on keeping his craft firmly anchored to the deck as his speed increased.

Now he was where he dreamt of being every moment he was away from it. Chandler Willard was flying and, just at this moment, he was flying towards the mouth of the tunnel with a 10g thrust at his back that shot him out of the mountain and into the sky.

The blue was blindingly bright after the gloom of the Scramble Pad. The armoured ReactaGlass of his cockpit compensated and gave him a sky he could see. He glanced left then right. All fifteen members of Blood Squadron were airborne, shot out of Mt. Draco at 16,000ft like bullets from a spraygun.

He checked the hologram and picked a target. Out of the thirty new contacts he focused on one and thought the Icon code: Delta-five-niner intercept. The contact began to flash as the CPU confirmed acquisition and his Dragon banked hard to starboard and into a slow climb.

Below him the peaks of the Northern Divide slowly shrank with the climb and then slipped behind him as he thundered South... leaving a sonic footprint booming in the ears of the massed armoured columns fighting in the foothills.

He relaxed and thought nothing. Until Intercept Range he had nothing to do. He didn't even worry as he hit 6,000 mph, still accelerating, when the rockets cut out and the Scramjet took over. As it kicked-in he was crushed by 14g but still it didn't cause him concern. He couldn't breathe but he knew he didn't have to.

His Dragon was keeping him from harm.

Incorporated into the CPU Combat Software was a full Life-Support system. Protruding from the legs of his g-suit were two tubes connected to his femoral arteries. His blood, draining out of his head and down into his legs during high-g manoeuvres, passed through these tubes and around the onboard oxygen pump that pumped it back up to his brain, oxygenated, via a network of finer tubes linked to skull sockets surgically implanted when he'd first entered Blood Squadron.

Blood Squadron could out-fly any pilot in the sky thanks to the blood pump.

But today they weren't after pilots. Today they were after highly manoeuvrable Drones.

..............................

Two hundred miles out from contact Delta-Five-Nine Chandler sent a thought to the other two members of his squad: Trident 3 Lock-In.

The Combat Software in his craft initiated Scramjet shutdown on all three ships and then steered them into Trident formation. At the same time it closed the contacts on their Anti-Grav Relays, energising Main Drive Coils. When it had synchronised all three drive coils to the same frequency, the three Saucers of Trident 3 were locked together and flew as one ship.

The five other Trident Squads of Blood Squadron were engaged in an identical manoeuvre on their own specific contacts.

Chandler entered Picture Stream as his squad closed in on the Drone. Now, instead of relaying individual thoughts in a progression of separate orders, he sent his squad, via the CPU, the full-blown contents of his mind in 3-D Technicolor.

As squad leader he was the most qualified for this particular phase of the operation, having spent longer, and progressed farther, at Combat Synchronisation - COMSYNC.

With no thought of fear, or death, or failure, he purged his mind of all non-essential information and focused on the holographic projection that he'd fully entered, becoming part of that projection in a real sense.

The Drone hugged the floor of a twisting canyon at Mach 2 less than one hundred feet above the dried up riverbed.

In his mind, Chandler envisaged a Trident Lock and, in response, the CPU altered the flight path of all three disks, swooping them down from 10,000ft in a gut-wrenching series of turns that skimmed the canyon walls with only feet to spare.

The wall of rock was a blur of solid red either side of a green snake in the hologram as the squad pulled 15g turns left and right, slowly closing on the prey.

Satellite Map Topography built into the onboard software pinpointed in advance every single hazard to within three inches, while the CPU computed the ideal flight path and Engine Settings for the quickest, safest, most advantageous rendezvous with the Target.

Chandler dreamt the Kill Dream and the stream of consciousness that issued forth painted a simultaneous movie in the minds of his two Wingmen, Gregor Krelnikov and Anders Lofters.

Having received the Dream they locked into it and, without having to think about it, accepted it as their own and guided their ships into position - one above and one to port of the Target, while Chandler locked onto the tail.

Anders concentrated on staying with it, trying to anticipate in advance its next manoeuvre. He was close to Blackout constantly as the blood pump worked at Redline to keep him in the sky.

Metre by painful metre he closed the distance with every second lost a second closer to the detonation of the Battlefield Atomics that the Drones were armed with - Atomics that hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground were blissfully unaware of.

He imagined pulling one extra g on the next turn and, as he entered the tight right-hander, directly to port of his target, his ship vertical and flying on a knife-edge, his vision was transferred to Chandler to reinforce the scenario.

His body weight shot up to sixteen times its normal weight and his blood pump bleeped a warning as Tunnel Vision started to overtake him. Very quickly, the red zone of the canyon walls began to shrink on either side of his hologram to be replaced by a jet black, decreasing, circular frame. He ignored the bleep and concentrated on the green snake of safety in the centre of his vision, pulling up to within fifty feet off the Drone's port side.

Above him Gregor was experiencing the same forces but refused to succumb to a momentary thought of: This ain't working! That, momentarily, disengaged his Lock and almost shot him into the wall of the canyon. He fought back and regained the green snake of flight path as nervous sweat ran down into his eyes.

And then Trident 3 entered a slow left-hander that brought the g-forces back to just within the range of their blood pumps.

Chandler waited, and waited, close to the edge of unconsciousness, keeping the tail of the Drone firmly centred in his Gun Sight that, at this moment, was flashing: 'INACCURATE LOCK'

Divorced from emotion he held onto the flight path and, ignoring his pain, continued to send out the Kill Dream.

He was rewarded by the sight of Gregor's Icon obtaining the Vertical Lock on the enemy below him.

It took less than a second for the Aquisition Data from all three ships to be processed by a geosynchronous satellite and confirmation relayed back down of the 3-D Lock.

All three gun-sights flashed: 'FIRE!'

Chandler didn't think the word 'fire' - he imagined three streams of Uranium Tracers flashing into the target from above, from the left-hand side, and from his own, rearward, position and milliseconds later all three banks of cannon on the Disks of Trident 3 opened up.

The hologram blazed a dazzling orange from the impacts and he immediately transmitted the Delta V break-off sequence to his Wingmen, pulling up into a vertical 18g emergency break away manoeuvre that sent him into complete Blackout within two seconds.

His Dragon held the turn and kept it up until it had gone through a full 180-degree inside loop, then it turned a one-eighty barrel roll into Level Flight and initiated Rocket-Motor ignition while Chandler was still unconscious.

Ten seconds later he came back around and, after a further four seconds of disorientation, he switched the hologram back on - it having vanished along with his blackout.

He was immediately dazzled by the bright, blazing-white, light of the Drone's payload detonating in the canyon below him.