Ward swore, loud and unhelpful. Albert didn't move.
"Telemetry?" he asked.
Harker's fingers flew. "Dead. ADS—" he stopped himself; there was no ADS-B here. "Inertial feed's gone. Engine parameters—zero. I'm trying LOS fallback on the relay dish—"
"Keep it simple," Albert said. "Do we still have the bird?"
Harker stared at the screen that now showed only their own worried faces reflected in slick glass.
"No, sir," he said softly. "We don't."
The room exhaled in one long, bleak sound. Someone took off his headset and set it down as if it were suddenly very heavy.
The duty officer at the TOC door recovered first. "All stations, this net: Global Hawk loss-of-link. Mark time—ten forty-two. Freeze the recorders. Harker, dump the last thirty seconds to a protected drive."
