Bravo Flight

I have not been keeping up with my blogging lately, mostly because I have become consumed by my planning next book. I am delving way out of my comfort zone to play fighter pilot in a sem-realistic future world. I have been doing a lot of reasearch not only on aviation and future aviation but on terms, structure, and other basic aspects of military life. I still have a lot more to do before I can come close to even beginning work on my first story draft, but to get a feel I wrote a small test chapter. I have included a portion of it in this post. I would very much appreciate any feedback or ideas people might have as I launch myself head first into the brand new and exciting project.

 

Picture courtesy of ~Lung2005
at Deviantart

"Look alive, squad. Hostiles, 400-k and closing, 9-low." The voice brought Mason out of his own thoughts. The targeting computer on the HUD in his flight helmet immediately registered the enemy aircraft as they came into sensors range, appearing as red triangles against a green background.

"9 o'clock?" responded a disembodied voice from the other end of his earpiece. "I don't get up before 11."

"Cut the talk, Seven," came the clipped British response. "Five, control your flight."

"Yes, sir," said Mason.

"Assigning targets."

Mason watched as a red circle flared to life around one of the small triangles on the HUD. Simultaneously a double red circle appeared on the main display of his helmet, outlining a firing corridor that led to his assigned hostile. He held down the confirm switch on his flight-stick and dub-blinked on the radar hit to set the lock. A satisfying deep baritone hum sang in his ear as the computer system acknowledged the lock. "Locked," he called out.

The phrase repeated seven more times across the board as the men and women in the formation around him found their own targets.

"Breach," the single word floated to him through his headset as if spoken by some voice of his own imagining.

For a sureal moment the most distant part of his mind registered that the speaker of the word was not American. Too much little emphasis was put on the "ea" sound of the word. Ever since he was a kid Mason had always been amazed how different people could look at even a single word and come up with so many different ways of saying it.

The more active part of his mind only registered the command and the implied action. "Fox 3," he called out as he slammed home the firing button on his stick. The cockpit below his feet rumbled as the missile doors opened. The delay between pressing the button and the rewarding ignition of the missile had always irked him. Realistically, he knew that his payload had to stay concealed below the airframe to maintain the craft's stealth profile, but instinctually Mason had always wanted more of a one-to-one response, like how it was in the video games he grew up playing. Maybe that's why pilots had joking come to call the delay Server Lag.

The time between trigger and ignition was in actuality less than a second of time, and finally Mason heard the AMRAAM roar to life. It streaked away trailing a brilliant blue jet of flame and joined a flock of its brethren as they too emerged from the bellys of the craft around him.

Their targets, Dragon-24 Hōshō aircraft, didn't stand a chance. They were more than ten years out of date, they could barely be called gen-7 fighters. Their SD sensors had no way of warning their pilots of the danger they were in until it was too late. Mason's own craft the FX-42 Archangel was top of the line gen-7 tech. It was never going to be a fair fight. You almost never saw a Hōshō in the air anymore, except in training simulations.

All eight hostiles scrambled. Their signals blurring momentarily on the HUD as the craft activated their SHIELD systems to try and fool the locks, but their pilots might as well have been trying to ward off the missiles with prayer. Five craft vaporized under the salvo, one was clipped but maintained and two managed to evade. Mason's own target was nothing but scrap and ash.

He wondered if the pilot had managed to eject. He always wondered that. Mason never thought of himself as a killer, but that was only because air combat was so impersonal. It was easy to blow up a piece of technology, it was hard to remember that there was a person inside it. He hoped that the pilot had managed to bail, he always did.

The three remaining hostiles turned tail and dodged out, one limping away on only one engine.

"Locked," said a voice in his head.

"Stand down," Mason said. "Six, stand down."

"I'm not going to just let them get away." The voice was female and had a hard edge to it. He found no noticeable accent to her voice, most likely American. He could only barely place her face, with only a vague memory of dark long hair drawn tightly into a pony-tail.

"Stand-down, six." Mason put an edge to his own voice. He had been put in charge of Bravo Flight and he wasn't about to let some pilot's frantic ambition endanger the outlines of the mission parameters. He knew the commander was the listening. "You're not cleared to fire."

"Aye, sir." The response was terse, spoken through gritted teeth. He could almost hear her thumb ease up off the firing switch.

He let out a breath he had not known he was holding. The reprieve was brief.

His cockpit went wild as a screaming tone wailed inside his head. The HUD flashed red and the main display began a quick succession of calculations that ended in a growing red dot at the edge of his peripheral. Even as he turned his head to watch the small crimson pixel it grew in size, soon becoming a discernible circle against the blue backdrop of sky.

"I'm painted red!"

"Ghosts, bloody piss."

"Missile lock. Missile lock. "

"I'm red!"

The in-line channel was full of chatter.

The clipped British commands of the squadron leader were lost among the chaos of the other ILC transmissions. The words came so fast the calls began stepping on each other, like a frantic crowd of people clawing over one another to escape a fire, but there was no escape. So there was just panic.

"Scatter!" someone called, and Mason watched as the neat, orderly formation began to break up. Aircraft banked and dove, trying everything they could to shake the lock. It was every man for himself, every woman for herself. The terror was contagious and the more hysterical some pilots became the more the group as a whole began to feel the effects.

Waves of electromagnetic energy washed over Mason's instruments, momentarily scrambling them, as one or two of his more panicked squadron mates began to prematurely activate their SHIELDs.

All the while the small circle of his own incoming missile had grown to the size of a shirt button. 300-k and closing. Mason fought to keep his own panic in check. The memory of a plan swimming up out of the murky depths of his mind. "Cease alarm." The insistent blaring tone instantly died.

"Bravo flight on me," he said switching from squadron channel to flight channel. He could do nothing for the full group, but calming three voices as opposed to eleven was a lot easier.

"On your six," came the immediate and surprisingly calm American female voice.

"On your wing," said another heavily accented voice Mason had not recalled hearing before.

"Hell, if we're going to die, we might as well do it as a family," said Seven, his faint Aussie accent suddenly clear. The last craft tucked itself almost effortlessly behind his right wing.

"We're not going to die," said Mason in a voice that radiated a calm he did not, in fact, feel. His own hand was shaking so hard on the flight stick it was a surprise that his craft wasn't swaying wildly back and forth.

200-k and closing fast. The circle was now the size of an egg. The details of the missile clear beneath it.

"Follow the leader," called Mason and swung his angel around, pulling hard on the yoke. For a moment the word was sideways, the growing red circle on his helmet appearing on the solid metal flooring of the cockpit. Slamming the stick forward he put his craft into a steep dive toward the deck, his fellow pilots only a few hundred meters behind him, the world was plummeting up to meet them.

He risked a quick glance at his HUD Radar. It showed all four missiles less bearing down at less than 100-k. All round him the blue marks that had once represented the other members of his squadron were winking out of existence, their cries of help silenced one by one on the squadron wide frequency. With his tail to the chaos he could only image the sight of their fiery defeat.

He put the images from his mind. "Climb and SHIELD, only on my mark." His voice strained from the G's pushing him back in his flight cushion. The inertial compensators were practically screaming, but he wasn't done yet.

The forests of the pacific northwest had filled the view of his cockpit, but a quick glance behind him showed that the red circle had grown to grapefruit proportions. It was less than 45-k and still closing. Mason waited only another second, daring not to hesitate any longer.

"Mark," he screamed and pulled up on the stick. His vision blurred only slightly before his flight suit constricted, stemming the blood loss from his head. The warning lights flared to life again. The angel's onboard smart computer was compensating his maneuver, easing the sudden jerking movement out over a softer arc to protect the integrity of the airframe, but even with the unwanted interference it was less than a second before blue sky had once again replaced his view of the deep green forest.

He locked his gaze at a switch in the forward controls of the cockpit. The flight stick was still fighting him, he couldn't risk removing his hands for even a second. Instead, his dub-blinked on the switch. It immediately lit up blue, as the computer acknowledge his selection. "Activate," he said, and the node when from turquoise to emerald.

Over the rushing sound of wind and air friction against his cockpit he never heard the SHIELD's electromagnetic pulse activate, but he felt its effects as they rocked his craft and sent static across his instruments. A countdown timer appeared on the side of his helmet. Thirty seconds, and the System to Hull Integrated Electromagnetic Lock Defense would shut down automatically. Any longer and a pilot ran the risk of frying his own circuitry along with any missile in a 600 meter area.

The electromagnetic burst was followed closely by three more as his flight had managed to mimic his maneuver almost perfectly. The missiles, on the other hand, had a harder time. Even against less sophisticated AMRAAMs activating a craft's SHIELD was no sure defense, but coupled with the hard maneuver and the force of gravity their pursuers stood little chance.

The missiles were nearly on top of them when the electromagnetic wave disrupted their systems and reset the SatNav guidance. Unfortunately a dead and targetless missile was a still a missile, and as the four long slender cylinders plummeted past Mason's angel two collided. The explosion fell away, but the shockwave rattled the airframe of his craft, to say nothing of the teeth in his head.

Not all his pilots were so lucky. At the tail end of the formation Six screamed as the explosion engulfed her. "Fuck... " The line died.

Mason turned his head just in time to see the trailing archangel lose altitude. It tumbled wildly, burnt and sheared. Blue flames poured from the now exposed engines. Then it was gone, blocked by cloud cover as the three remaining angels ascended back toward the ceiling.

"She's going to be spewing mad," said his Aussie wingman.

"Keep your head in the clouds," said Mason. "This isn't over." As if to illustrate his point the HUD picked up six new contacts closing on them fast. It was the ghosts. They had come into active sensors range, which only meant one thing, they'd depleted their long-range AMRAAMs and were coming in to finish off their kill.

Mason leveled off his aircraft and took a quick assessment of his situation. They were the only three angels still in the sky. The rest of the squadron was destroyed or had dodged out of the arena. They were facing two to one odds against craft they had not even know existed five minutes before. Running was out of the question. There was only one thing left ot do.

His angel roared as the afterburner kicked in, and even now a familiar thrill wrenched at his gut as the craft below him rocket forward. "Break formation and engage." He smiled despite himself. "Time for a little payback."