[STO] Somewhere over Colorado

"Gaspipe Four-Niner, you are at flight level six seven zero, ninety-five miles out".

This high up, it was always a few minutes before dawn. Blue haze dusted the separation between land and sky, or earth and space depending on how you looked at it. Down below it would be a crisp spring morning, dew on the grass and breath condensing in front of your face. Up here, there was nothing to breathe. Conroe liked that. Up here, isolated in a protective bubble and surrounded by a few billion dollars of deniable hardware, he had time to think. Time to take stock, as he looked out at the curving horizon. This was the best job in the world.

"Gaspipe Four-Niner copies, coming right one-five degrees and beginning descent." All too soon it would be over, and this high-altitude tranquility would be replaced by the terrestrial bustle and the drudgery of the mundane. Part of him wanted to take the old girl around the block once more, kick the throttles open and stay up here for just another half hour. He hated going back to his land legs.

Be careful what you wish for.

"Uh, Gaspipe Four-Niner, this is Peterson Control, authenticate alpha quebec romeo one seven?"

The hell? Conroe snapped out of reverie and flipped through the data on his kneeboard. "Peterson, Gaspipe Four-Niner authenticates, delta mike five. What's going on?"

"Major Conroe, NORAD has just logged an unidentified aircraft moving down to your flight level, no IFF at this time. We need you to activate your transponder and alert civilian traffic control to your location, then achieve visual identification of the bogey. Do you copy?"

"Gaspipe Four-Niner copies, activate transponder, log in with civilian ATC and perform mark one identification of unregistered craft. Peterson, who in the hell could be up here with me?"

"That's what we need to know, Gaspipe."

Conroe swore under his breath and punched in his transponder code to the IFF system. He imagined that in some dark air traffic control room, some nerd had just spat coffee all over his display as a supersonic blip appeared out of nowhere. He dialled into the civilian channels. Time to say hi.

"Colorado ATC, this is Gaspipe Four-Niner transmitting on Guard, I am a US Air Force reconaissance aircraft transiting your airspace at flight level six six zero. How copy, over?"

"Gaspipe Four-Niner, Colorado ATC, we have you on scope, be advised, traffic at your ten-o'clock, come right ten degrees and descent to flight level six zero zero."

"Negative, Colorado. I need you to steer me to visual range of other contact."

There was a pause, silence. Down there Conroe imagined it was probably bedlam. Up here, in the thin air and the darkness, with the muted roar of his own engines a counterpoint to the sound of his slow, controlled breathing, it was another day in the office.

Except it wasn't. There was something off about this. Why retask a high-altitude spyplane on landing approach to take a look-see at some random blip on the radar? This was either an exercise, or something was going very badly wrong.

"Gaspipe, Colorado ATC confirms, come left five degrees and stay on your current flight level, visual intercept in thirty-five seconds."

Time to open the eyes. Conroe flipped his screen controls to wide-angle, and suddenly rather than just the single display ahead feeding him exterior images those to his left and right hid their telemetry data and brought up more darkened sky. There was a moment of vertigo as for a second Conroe's brain lost track of where he was, before the familiarity came back. This was his office, sixty-odd thousand feet up and twice the speed of sound, his windows on the world camera feeds from the jet-black hull of his cutting-edge spyplane. Here he was, flying by the seat of his pants in the belly of this beast, halfway to being an astronaut. Conroe banked left, the controls smooth and responsive, an extension of his body. No longer was he a glorified photographer- the adrenaline of combat flying pumped into his system, sharpening his senses and reflexes to a razor's edge. This was what he lived for.

Visual interception in ten seconds. Conroe activated the camera systems, recording his intercept for posterity. He wondered if he could convince a copy out of the techs? With the resolution on these cameras, he could probably play it on an Imax screen. That'd be cool. If he could get the footage off-base.

Five seconds. Four. Three. Conroe squinted at the vapour trail delineating the horizon, hoping to beat the intercept timer to the punch. Two. One.

Conroe's eyes widened. Sound fell away. He tried to speak, to swear, to laugh, to cry, anything. Nothing. There was thunder in his ears, a drum tattoo echoing up from his chest as his heart soundtracked the moment.

Somewhere, miles below and distant, on a radar plot in a darkened room, a blip labelled 'Gaspipe' disappeared.