Mach 10. Brooks Hammer, #5

Edwards AFB clocks the test vehicle at Mach 10.2 before the TIAN satellite network registers the heat signature and begins tracking. Jax Jagger has ninety seconds of fuel and a Chinese weapons platform locked onto the fastest object in the atmosphere. The B-75 Demon prototype was built to prove that hypersonic sustained flight is survivable. Jax proved it once and lost a nerve bundle in his cervical spine for the trouble.
Now the test has become an intercept, the intercept has become a chase, and the chase has attracted an orbital surveillance grid that was not supposed to exist. TIAN sees everything above Mach 6. Jax is the first human it has ever tracked in real time. The encounter transforms a speed trial into a first-contact problem: the network is not just watching. It is learning from the fastest thing it has ever seen.
Book five of the Brooks Hammer series.