An F-22 Raptor from the 90th Fighter Squadron on a training mission in Guam (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A sequel to Mirror to the Sky and Lost Kingdom
Winter mist is the most challenging of all. Every spec of moisture on every surface comes tinged with frost, and even the roar of jet engines can’t seem to shake the chill over our souls.
Today is the day. The warning order came down an hour ago. Every plane is being prepared for the most grueling battle of the war. I’m going up with my squadron in the third wave. The Federation’s capital has been under constant attack since this morning. Javelin squadron is part of the group tasked with preserving air superiority to support the ground invasion.
The commanding officer of the 501st Wing stands before us in a frigid airplane hangar to give the briefing. I always appreciate that the General did so in person for major operations.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the most dangerous situation you have ever found yourselves in. You are the tip of the spear, the vanguard. You will be the first strike of a protracted battle against the forces of the Federation. Above the skies of the capital, you will face off against the best of the best among Federation forces. You will hunt their attack aircraft in support of the ground advancements and face off against fighters piloted by fanatically loyal and extremely skilled adversaries. You must rise to meet their challenge, and you will prevail. Tear a hole through the sky into infinity. Keep your focus, rely on each other, and as always, dare the world and the world shall yield. Dismissed.”
One of the top ten speeches I’ve gotten since the start of this war, even if the content is somewhat standard, the delivery was top class. The General was heartfelt, serious, with total confidence in our abilities while expressing serious concern for the gauntlet we are about to undertake. It’s why I have appreciated being attached to his command for the duration of the war. I doubt he’s gotten much sleep in the last forty-eight hours.
It’s always a miracle to me how powerful these aircraft truly are. My model was never manufactured in massive numbers back in the day, a fraction of those which survived the war never made it out of mothball. Those that are still flying are the true kings of the skies, able to go toe-to-toe with the Federation’s best. And my machine, with the winter mist swirling and parting against its angles and curves, feels less like a fighter jet and more like a dragon of legend.
The 501st are the scourge of the Federation. We have handily beaten back their flyers every time we faced off against them. Climbing into my machine still sends electricity through my veins. I am weary of the war, but this is something I’m good at. And if doing my job means others get to go home at the end of the day, then I’m content putting flying on the knife’s edge. The engines burn away frost on the tarmac as they grumble to life.
When this war is over, I’m going to use my skills in the skies for good. Today, I will fell the enemy and bring an end to this damn war.
The flurry of radio communications as the ground and tower coordinates the massive flightline of fighters and attack aircraft rolling off the runway and into the snowy, gray blanket above. When it’s my turn, I roll onto the runway, confirm my takeoff approval, and push to full throttle. My plane thunders down the runway and I pull back on the stick. The earth falls away, and I climb to altitude and find my place in formation leading Javelin Squadron.
The war is coming to a close with an epic showdown over the enemy’s capital city. Electricity bolts between planes across the entire air wing as we draw nearer to the city. The newly promoted Kayla “Broadside” Crawford is still on my wing.
“How bad do you think we’re beating them?” My wingman asks.
“I don’t know, if the last few months are anything to go by, I doubt they have much left to hold the city.”
Since the satellite communication network went down four months ago, coordinating this invasion has been an absolute nightmare. Supply networks fell apart over night. Manufacturing on both sides has been unable to replace the planes, tanks, and ships being lost by the fighting. Our missiles have grown more rudimentary. Where dogfighting used to be preferred to save on munitions, it’s now mandatory because our missiles can’t track as easily nor can they fly as far.
“All right ramblers, let’s get rambling,” Sauron calls in on our approach to the area of operations. According to the briefings we received in advance of the General’s speech, fighting over the capital city has been going on periodically for roughly three days. My unit arrived at the front around the time the Alliance started gaining traction in the skies, and now that the ground invasion is underway, we have to protect our ground units from Federation attackers. Javelin squadron’s job is to knock out Federation fighters to clear the way for own attack aircraft, and our fighters hunting their attackers.
Just another day at the office.
“This is Javelin 1 punching in.” As our squadron’s exploits grew, so did our reputation. Whittled down to a handful of fighters, when we transferred over to the 501st Wing, we readjusted our naming scheme to simplify. Truth be told, we had so few planes that going by the tail numbers would have been more confusion at this point.
“Javelin 2, punching in,” Broadside calls in, followed by the remainder of our squadron. I grin beneath my oxygen mask.
“My IFFs overloaded with enemy contacts!” one of our younger pilots shrieks.
“Then clear it!” Sauron snaps, “All friendly units, engage at will.”
That’s all we need. Broadside and I rip through the skies toward Federation forces. Radar pings two hostile contacts, and we each let loose a semi-active radar homing missile, splashing two hostiles. On our turn, I line up another Federation fighter and shred it with my cannons. They’re getting desperate.
“Man, you’d think this would feel a little more climactic,” Broadside sighs, “I’m not even feeling challenged at all.”
“Well, you know, they left us for cleanup duty cause they knew we were too good to go up in the first wave,” I joke back.
“All units, be advised, friendly forces are moving into Wards 11, 14, 17, and 22 with minimal enemy resistance,” Sauron informs us. “Keep watch for any enemy aircraft which threaten our ground forces.”
Broadside and I turn over and drop in behind two more enemy fighters. With no time to evasively maneuver, they make easy pickings for our cannons and are sent tumbling towards the earth. I watch two parachutes deploy as the aircraft themselves gouge holes into apartments or office buildings below. I sure hope they were clear of civilians. Hell, I sure hope they were completely abandoned.
The number of enemy planes is not exactly what I would have expected from a final stand. And the radio communication from the ground indicates that our forces are facing far less opposition than intel led us to believe. Suspicion grows in the back of my mind, and I let myself get distracted by trying to figure out what is really going on. I pull my stick to bank and turn, but I’m sluggish. Part of me would rather just fly out over the bay and keep going. This is too easy, something isn’t right.
The sun appears outside of my cockpit.
Radiation alarms scream warnings a moment later, and the aircraft gets knocked out of level flight by a massive shockwave. Stay cool. I’m in a spin, losing altitude, and pitching up and down. The console is screaming “Radiation! Radiation!”
Stick up and down to maintain control over the nose. 11,000 feet. Spin still going, altitude still dropping. I battle gravity and my aircraft’s inertia to get the plane back under my control. 7,000 feet. Control is back in my hands. All control systems are in working order. Level out, pull back on the stick. 3000 feet to spare. I squelch the radiation alarms.
What the fuck was that?
Stupid question. I know what the fuck it was. Who the fuck launched it? Was it us? Was it the Federation? Where the fuck did it land? Focus, Max, focus. I orient myself in the quickly shifting shadows of a mushroom cloud and swing the nose back around to the city with enough altitude to give me a bird’s eye view.
It’s just gone.
Radar’s still rebooting itself from the shockwaves, and I’m running through various communications frequencies to get in touch with anyone still left alive. Static or cold silence are all that greet me until a familiar voice cuts through the noise.
Sauron is ordering all forces to report in. I call in that I am combat ready without radar. Dozens of other voices call in as well. Broadside finds me in the chaos and forms up on my wing. Seems like we shook out okay and based on all of the pilots reporting in, it seems that we got lucky. In the middle of one of the calls, a scream cuts in and then abrupt silence.
“It never stops with these guys, does it?” Broadside asks, pulling slightly ahead of me on my right.
I open my mouth to respond only to be interrupted by the sudden taste of metal. My right display screen flickers as the hair on my arms stands at full attention and I feel pure voltage in my veins. Kayla’s plane disintegrates right in front of me, shards of her cockpit glass pattering against my own as a thunderous boom rattles my teeth. I pull hard left and dive just in time to miss whatever tore her plane to pieces with insane speed.
“Sauron, this is Javelin 1. Javelin 2 is down, repeat, Javelin 2 is down! No chute, no chute!”
“Roger, Javelin 1. We register one hostile contact, you are free to engage. Smoke this bastard.”
I quickly calibrate my sensors and displays for maximum sensitivity. This guy is flying an experimental weapons platform which is doubtlessly more advanced than the standard Federation fighters, meaning I need every millisecond I can get when fighting him.
My screens flicker again, my hair stands up once more, and I feel like somebody is injecting a battery right into my veins. I pull hard left and hear the crackling report of a railgun as its shell flies by me again. The electromagnetic acceleration avenue must bleed out in front, giving whoever is in the firing path of the machine a warning so long as they’re as uncomfortable in their own skin as I am to notice when something is off.
I may be the only pilot here who can fight this guy.
Radar comes back online and acquires a bogey ahead of me amidst two dozen friendly aircraft. Two of the friendly pings drop off.
“ALCON, there is a hostile responsible for downing multiple allied aircraft. You are cleared to engage.” Sauron calls out the single greatest line ever, and sure enough, the bogey’s IFF lights up as hostile on my radar. He’s now a target.
“Javelin 1, merging,” I call out on our frequency, and adjust my vector to drop in behind this guy. At full burn, I get close enough to see the aircraft. If I shut my radar off, I’d be relying on visual tracking, but he may not know I’m here until it’s too late.
The sky reddens thanks to the radioactive cloud blotting out the sun.
I switch the radar off. This son of a bitch gets no quarter. Not when my the whole city is a crater and hundreds of thousands of innocents have just been atomized. He’s mine.
I close the distance and slide in right behind him. Without my radar pinging him, his RWR shouldn’t be warning him he’s about to get fucked. Just means my semi-actives can’t do shit right now. I arm my heatseekers.
“Javelin 1, Fox 2! Fox 2!”
One heatseeker away. It tears a hole through the sky between me and him. He’s fucked.
Reality proves me wrong in a second. He breaks hard right at the last possible moment, and the missiles flies far past the proximity fuse’s range. That was a seven g move and the guy just pulled it like it was nothing, what the fuck?
“Sauron, this is Javelin 1. I lost sight of hostile.”
“Rodger, Javelin 1. Hostile is bearing 207 from your current position, vectored away.”
He knows I’m out here now, no point in wasting my advantages. I flick my radar back on. It reacquires my target.
“Javelin 1, Fox 1.”
One of the semi-active missiles tears its way out of my weapons bay and through the sky. Try juking this, you son of a bitch.
“Your missiles are my dancing partners.”
The chill his voice in my cockpit radio sends up my spine is radically different than the kind his weapon subjects me to. It rings a vague bell, I know I’ve heard the same voice invade my radio before. My finger finally finds the spot I have been searching for with this voice for months. He was a pilot I faced some months after Kayla and I played interceptor with those two pilots over the bay.
My blood runs cold realizing that I’ve fought him before and he’s coming at me with a grudge this time. I’m going up against a guy who hates my guts with a superiority complex, and a superior airplane. I don’t know how long I can hang in here against him.
On top of that, I have a more pressing concern. If he can broadcast to us, then he can hear us. I need a response. Anything informative, and it’ll just feed him more. The panic in my current state cannot be permitted to show. Any question will just distract me while I worry about his answer. I can’t give him the satisfaction of rattling me. Project confidence.
“Too annoying for missiles, switching to guns.” Not my greatest one-liner, but I hope he knows I’m ready to play. I want his fucking head.
“You’re an excellent pilot. I thought so the last time we met, and I’m honored we get to meet again.”
So this is the guy I faced before. And he’s in a much better plane than he was those months ago, because it’s sliding out of my reach every time I almost reacquire him.
“ALCON, hostile forces are tuned to our frequencies. Communications are no longer secure. Say again, communications are no longer secure,” I call out. I don’t know if everyone else can hear him, so it needs to be said aloud. Sure enough, tactical information starts getting encoded on the fly, with shorthand specific to various squadrons. I know every AWACS in the area is panicking, but I don’t have the luxury.
He needs to die.
My nose keeps crossing him, but he continues swinging just out of my grasp. He will get blown apart once I can put my guns on him. The pull of gravity multiplied forces my breathing into labored. Can’t think, must act. Swing back right, try to sight him up. Squeeze off a quick burst, all wide.
“Having trouble keeping up?” He’s calm, cool, mocking. I want him dead. I will make him dead.
“Nah, I like the challenge.” I don’t sell it with the labored breathing.
MOTHER FUCKER. I roll over into a dive the moment his plane flips 180 degrees to charge straight at me. His tracers barely cut over my left tailfin. Son of a bitch has a toggle for his alpha limiter, and I’ll bet this prototype aircraft doesn’t use traditional jet fuel, but rather some fancy reactor. His engines can put out enough force to make up for the rapid change in direction without losing speed. While energy conservation isn’t a concern for him, it’s a rule I still have to play by.
I crane my neck upwards to spot him coming back around, trying to drop in behind me. I ignore him in favor of strategizing while I plunge down to the ground. Hug the mountains, and hope I’m faster at reacting than he is. The pressure on my chest when I pull up to level out feels like a truck pushing me against the wall until I actually get my aircraft leveled off.
This guy has a plane with massive energy reserves, thrust vectoring, and hyper-maneuverability. The only way I can beat him is to outthink him. I’ll get on his tail, bait him into flipping, and dive again. Every time. And once he knows what I’ll do, I’ll go to guns on him and waste the bastard.
He’s coming in on my five o’clock, diving like a bird of prey. I gun it, popping up over a mountain before inverting to dive into the valley below. On the far side of the mountain range, the landscape is mostly untouched by the fireball. The mountains provided a bulwark against the nuclear hellstorm which almost wiped out the city.
Allied aircraft are searching for survivors and trying to keep what’s left of the Federation Air Force off my back. I’ll need to take this guy out over the bay. A plume of smoke appears in my rearview mirrors, and I roll left, climbing and popping flares as I do to throw off the heatseeker. It works, but I bleed speed and the enemy races right past me. I throttle up to try and get on his tail.
As we climb, my gambit proves successful. He flips his plane and comes screaming towards me, only I drop away. As I turn 180 degrees, his increased thrust proves to be his undoing. He blew way out past me and I’m comfortably on his tail. I strain slightly while pulling my nose to aim at his plane and relax as I squeeze the trigger.
The burst of fire catches the edge of his wing and kills his maneuverability. He breaks off and tries to flee, but he’s obviously struggling to keep the plane together. He can’t move, he can’t fight, he can only try to run. And I know he won’t get very far.
“So this is how it ends.” He sounds like he’s at peace with his fate. A slight chuckle gives the sense that he’s feeling mild amusement. Truth be told, I never imagined the last moments of any of my other kills before. I wondered who they were on the ground, but never how they died. Were they scared? Were they angry? Did they curse my name or think of their families before they exploded? Did they cry when the ejection seat failed? I hadn’t ever thought about it this seriously before.
“You were good. Turns out I was better.” My usual bravado is gone. It’s a cold recitation of facts. I know whatever I say will be heard by everyone. I don’t care.
“The next generation will look to you as a hero. It won’t be the truth. You’ve got the blood of millions on your hands. This war is on your head.”
“I know exactly whose blood stains my hands. I never get to wash it off. But I never asked for this war, and I didn’t choose how you fought it.” My voice comes across slightly rattled. So many nights do I lie awake and think of the faces of those I’ve killed. Some of the ghosts wear faces I imagine. I never saw any of my victims, but there was a time when I was too gleeful to kill before I knew anything about the world.
That being said, I’ll sleep soundly once this bastard is in the ground.
“Doesn’t everyone always say that? Generations of bloodletting all excused by virtue of this being our nature? Nobody’s ever at fault? Do you really think death is the end? Do you really think anyone’s soul is pure?”
“Spare me the self-righteous lectures. You killed my friends.” I’ve had enough of him. The growl of my heat seeker gives me the okay to end this. “Javelin 1, Fox 2. Fox 2.”
“And blood spilled begets blood taken.”
The proximity fuse detonates and he goes up in a ball of fire. I level off and take a deep breath. I ask Sauron for a check on the survivors, and he gives me depressing numbers. I’m the last pilot of Javelin Squadron. Too few of us survived this ugly war. The city nestled between a bay and mountains barely has anything left. Whole blocks turned to sand. A city now dust and echoes.
I turn towards the return line. Officially it was the safe distance for disengagement and a return to base. Now, it’s damn near the only waypoint I can think to manage. I hope after all my maneuvering that I can make it back to the forward operating base. Not that I’m sure I want to.
The only logical conclusion I can draw is that the Federation destroyed its own capital rather than surrender it to the Alliance. Why would we wipe the city off the face of the earth? We were fighting to take it, why would we destroy it? Especially if the Federation really was as weak as they felt out here? This should be it; this damnable conflict should be over.
The cruelty of war is that it makes victories still taste of defeat.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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