It was always the same dream.
“False target generator on, track breaker on, ECW pods set to jam-on-signal, adaptive countermeasures online. Maintain speed and heading. I’m gonna take a look.” Flt. Leader Melvin said, going down his mental checklist for both of the ships in the Skyfall formation he led. His F/A-300 sharply climbed a hundred feet higher and stabilized. There was a cluster of vehicles just over the approaching ridgeline. His threat receiver was going off like mad- search radars had found him.
“We’re beaconing.” Lt. Shannon said from Skyfall 7 as he detected her ECM and ECCM pods coming online. Their radiated signatures had just increased by several orders of magnitude. Her weapons bays were filled with wave-riding missiles designed to produce EMP effect.
So much to do- too much to keep track of. Melvin thought as he dropped altitude. His sensors had spotted three anti-air vehicles on the surface ahead. Octavia was a cold world with a thin atmosphere, covered with cratered lowlands rimmed by sharp mountains, a Mars-sized sphere bathed in the harsh glare of the binary whites, Procyon A and B.
“They got me in no-time flat with a continuous wave Doppler. There’s a mobile THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) battery camouflaged on the ridge.” Behind that topography he could see smoke pillars from a firefight drifting heavenward.
“Skyfall, can you hear me,” A voice called over tactical channel, shouting to be heard over the dull thump of explosions in the background. “This is Dagger. Come in, over.”
“This is Skyfall. We have you five-by-five, Dagger, over.” Melvin said and sipped water out of the soft tube pressing against his lips. Call sign Dagger was a special-forces outfit. He banked left and the flight ran parallel to the ridgeline.
“We walked into an ambush. We have nine men down and need a way out of this mess. The damned militia have us pinned, over.”
“That’s affirmative, Dagger. Upload your GPS coordinates, over." Melvin said and an instant later a new icon appeared on the Info-Link display projected inside his data-visor in glowing white.
“Upload complete. Say your ETA, over.” The Dagger major said as a particular loud explosion could be heard in the background followed by someone wailing grievously, then the popping sound of a small-arms weapon firing and someone near the open transmitter freaking out. Oh shit- oh shit- oh shit- oh shit.
Melvin programmed a course to give him minimal exposure to the THEL when he crossed the ridgeline. The laser it generated would burn through his F/A-300 with a minimum of resistance, but the laser was radar guided and thus was vulnerable.
“We’ll be there in five minutes. Just hang on, over.” Melvin said and keyed the voice link to Lt. Shannon. “Break off and circle around. In fifteen seconds I’m going over the ridge. Wait until I’m over and then go after that defense station. They’ll be focusing on me and you should have a clean shot.”
“Roger that.” Shannon said and fired her maneuvering thrusters to break out of formation. Melvin put the drinking tube to his lips and drew, but found that it had already been drained. His mouth suddenly seemed very dry as he turned toward the ridgeline.
He put the THEL battery out of his mind as best he could and got his thoughts into ground-attack mode. He had a cluster-bomb dispenser on the centerline hard-point, twelve attack missiles, and 8,000 pellets of HEPAC ammunition. A switch by his thumb set the mission profile from “Cruise” to “Ground Attack.” Servos whined as the F/A-300 changed shape, becoming wider and flatter to generate maximum lift, but with a corresponding loss of top speed. A familiar chime sounded in his helmet just before the data-feed coming into his visor flipped from air-to-air to air-to-ground mode.
“This is Dagger. Target designated, over.”
“Acknowledged, Dagger. Secure for EMP and keep your heads down. We’re coming in on the deck, over” Melvin said. “On the deck” was altitute near and, for the unwary pilot, often equal to surface level.
“I’m rolling hot,” Ajax said and locked the targeting piper on the largest cluster of targets ahead not squawking IFF. A militia armored vehicle had been designated as the impact point. “Seven, are you still with me?”
“Missile away,” Seven replied tersely. “Smleck! A THEL just got it but from where? Oh, God!”
His wingmate’s voice trailed off in fright. He pressed his thumb down on the payload release when the piper turned green. Chuff-chuff-chuff. Cluster-bombs ejected out from each side of the centerline dispenser. Ajax boosted to climb and banked slightly left, then turned his head to watch the ordinance land, twin rows of orange-black puffs in the garden of destruction. Back on the ridge he saw her bracketed by not one THEL battery, but a group of three, that had her caught in a kill basket of visible Laser. The transmitter clicked open once before her ship broke apart and fell to earth.
“Great drop, Skyfall! Give us another one just like that, over.” Dagger called in from planetside. His eyes followed her ship into the ground where another hate-flower blossomed.
“Skyfall to base. Seven is down,” He intoned numbly into his helmet transmitter. “I repeat, Skyfall down. I need search and rescue, over.”
“Negative Skyfall,” Base reported back. “Your area is too hot. We’ll try and contact ground units in the area, over.”
Melvin adjusted his course toward the THEL group. He marked their locations digitally as each vehicle shut down its laser in sequence. A touch called up the weapons display and he selected “attack/missile” from the list of options.
“Go to hell!” Melvin roared, not caring if his transmitter was open as he depressed the thumb trigger on the flight-control stick. The F/A-300 shuddered as a missile dropped out of the right payload bay. The rocket motor kicked off a second later and Melvin watched the plume heading for its target. A beam reached out and the missile exploded, creating an angry cloud of shrapnel pierced by a glowing ruby shaft.
“You think you’re smart, huh?” He muttered under his breath and set the rest of the missiles to “ripple-fire” on a single target. Lasers lanced into the sky again, concentrating on knocking down the swarm before they overwhelmed the lone THEL being concentrated on. All he had left were CBU’s and the HEPACs protruding from the blisters on each side of the canopy.
A THEL succumbed to a tactical missile and exploded, burning in the thin atmosphere, but Melvin was too occupied to notice. Boosting to gain airspeed, he brought the F/A-300 into the secondary line of attack, his path would take him over both remaining batteries.
“Skyfall, this is Dagger, please reply. We could use a little more of that good stuff down here, over.”
From the commo-tech’s gasping voice and the steady slap of footsteps in the background noise, Melvin guessed that the special forces group was running through the hole that he’d created with Charles Bravo. There was less ground fire then he’d heard before.
“Dagger, this is Skyfall. Just keep that designator handy,” Melvin said as the range-finder measuring the distance between him and THEL #2 closed rapidly toward 0.000 meters. “I’ll be with you again shortly, over.”
“That’s affirmative, Skyfall,” The commo-tech said without enthusiasm. “Just don’t wait too long, out.”
The air-to-ground sight turned green when he was still 1200 meters away. He thumb came down on the trigger and stayed down.
Chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff. He looked back in time to see the LASER emitter on THEL #3 tracking him before 5 CBU’s fell onto the generator vehicle and radar vehicle, destroying both.
“Skyfall, this is Dagger, come in,” A different male voice called out to him, one that sounded younger and scared. “Skyfall come in!”
