Lenn
After some walking, they arrived near the supposed crash site. Because they weren’t allowed to use positioning devices, they had only a paper map with a big black dot scribbled over where the crash site was estimated to be.
“I’ve got visual on the wreckage,” Ying said softly, pointing through a gap in the undergrowth.
Lenn led his team towards the direction Ying was pointing towards and emerged into a little clearing in the middle of the woods, the trees cut down by the careening fighter.
Lenn wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or curse that the bodies of the crew were there. Because if they weren’t, then it means they had been taken away for questioning, and would probably die in the torture rooms of Europa.
At least, that’s what they were told would happen if one was shot down. All pilots are equipped with suicide pills, though it is unclear how many actually use them.
“Three bodies, commander is missing,” Kang reported, looking up over the edge of the cockpit. His small stature meant that he had to stand on tiptoes to be able to peer inside. “All are correctly identified according to our briefing.”
Lenn walked up to the shattered canopy of the cockpit, dried blood forming little rivulets that ran down the silvery skin of the fighter.
The commander's seat was empty, probably taken away for questioning and interrogation. The mission specialist and gunner both have horrific blunt-force injuries, likely a result of the crash.
The gunner had taken the worst of the impact with the ground, his neck twisted at a right angle, and his leg wedged into a crevice barely large enough to fit a hand. A huge gash was carved into his head, likely caused by his head hitting the control panel.
A missile appeared to have struck the right side of the fighter just behind the cockpit and sent a cloud of razor-sharp fragments through the thick acrylic canopy, taking out computer systems and the right half of the flight engineer’s head.
The mission specialist, however, had a clean projectile wound to the head. There was surprisingly little blood and gore considering the extent of the injury, which Lenn assumed was caused by the service pistol of an enemy pilot.
Lenn felt a little sad at the sight and a little scared because he too was piloting the same fighter as the dead bodies before him once did. But the many years of war had built a wall of steel around his heart. He had seen much worse back home in the slums when he was younger, some dead bodies aren’t that bad.
“Come on guys, let’s bring their tags back home and give them a proper burial,” Lenn said to the rest of his team. “Kang, can you set up the pulse generator and explosives?”
“Sure.”
Kang pulled out a water bottle-shaped metallic object from his bag, unlocked a little panel on the fuselage of the crashed fighter, and plugged the pulse generator into the circular interface port.
Then he walked around the wreckage, stuffing little bags of high-explosives into the key structural components of the fighter.
“Ready!” Kang shouted after he had set down all the explosives.
Ying walked up to Lenn with three shiny metallic tags hanging from her hand. “Here they are,” she whispered as she dropped them into the center of Lenn’s palm.
Lenn nodded gratefully, and Ying gave the tiniest of nods in response. Recovery missions always put the crew in a sad mood, but they always had seniors around them to cheer them up. This time, however, they were alone, deep in enemy territory, thousands of kilometers from home.
There was a time when the military had specialized branches for specialized missions. But as the war dragged on, there simply weren't enough resources to sustain that system. So, the military adopted a new doctrine; a doctrine where everyone can do everything. Now, production lines only needed to manufacture a few types of aircraft, and a few types of weapons.
“Stand back!” Lenn shouted, walking away from the wreckage. “Kang, whenever you want.”
Kang nodded, holding the detonator tight in his hand. When he saw everyone was far enough away, he gave the large red button a firm squeeze.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Then the wreckage shimmered and sparkled as the powerful electrical pulse flowed through it, frying all sensitive electronics and welding together any hinges or actuators.
Simultaneously, the explosives detonated, shredding the already damaged airframe and sending debris high into the air. The half-empty fuel tanks disintegrated, catching fire in a brilliant flash of orange. The flames engulfed the wreckage, scorching the dark grey metal into a coal-black color.
Perhaps it was military tradition, or maybe it was a resource-saving measure, but the bodies of downed pilots were never recovered, only left to be destroyed with their own aircraft. If they ejected they were often taken prisoner, never to be heard from again.
It seemed like an honorable, almost heroic death—to burn to ashes along with the machine to which you devoted your life. But the more Lenn thought about it, the more he realized it was simply because they didn’t want to risk losing top-secret technology to enemy hands.
“Let’s go now, we’ve likely been detected already.” Rei beckoned. “Those explosions make a lot of noise.”
“You’re right… let’s go,” Lenn mumbled, gesturing for his team to follow. He turned away from the burning wreckage, where his fellow soldiers had just been laid to rest, and jogged into the trees.
As they approached the sandbank, a dark shadow swooped over them. Lenn instinctively looked up, searching the skies for the origin of that shadow.
A deafening sonic boom swept through the trees, sending Lenn to the ground.
“Hostile!” Kang, who had caught a glimpse of the aircraft, shouted.
“Yeah, we really gotta go!”
Lenn scrambled to his feet and began sprinting towards his fighter as fast as his legs could. It seemed that the enemy aircraft hadn’t spotted them yet, as the sound of engines was beginning to recede into the distance.
One by one they piled into the cockpit and buckled themselves in. The integrated G-tolerance suits extended out of the seat mountings, wrapping themselves around their legs and torso like some sort of mechanical octopus. Lenn reached straight for the engine start switch, and, even though the green text screamed “WAIT FOR WARMUP”, slammed the throttle forward violently.
“Hey slow down! I haven’t finished the checklist yet!” Rei shouted.
“No damn time!” Lenn shouted back as he looked around to search for missile smoke.
A small sandstorm blew up again as the powerful thrusters lifted the hulking fighter into the air. With a mechanical smoothness, they swiveled backward, propelling the craft skyward at immense speed.
“Just get the defense matrix and missile warning system online, everything else can wait,” Lenn ordered as he carefully maneuvered the plane into the river channel and sped off as fast as he dared.
“Contact, three o’clock high,” Ying said, marking out a tiny little dot in the sky on their linked helmet displays. “Permission for radar lock?”
It always amazed Lenn how gunners could pick out such tiny targets just with their eyes.
“Granted,” Lenn blurted.
Although switching on the radar would give away their position, it would also buy them valuable time by allowing them to make the first move. “Weapons free.”
“Copy,” Ying replied.
With the throw of a switch a loud beep sounded, and a bright green box appeared around the bandit in their helmet-mounted displays.
“Fox three,” she whispered.[1]
There was a slight shudder, and a radar-guided missile sprang off the rails, trailing a light cloud of smoke. Its trajectory swung upwards as it calculated an intercept point to hit its target.
Lenn watched as the bandit rolled over and dove for the ground, a deafening missile warning was probably sounding in that cockpit right now.
“Give them another one to keep them defensive,” Lenn told Ying. “Start searching for other bandits, I got the first one.”
“Copy. Fox three.” Ying said with a strange decisiveness, even though she was just whispering.
Another shudder, and another cloud of smoke. Lenn wanted to keep the bandit defensive so they couldn’t turn around and get a shot off on him. He pulled back on the stick, climbing away from the safety of the river channel to pursue the bandit.
The first missile closed in on the enemy fighter, but its defense matrix quickly identified the threat and zapped the missile out of the sky. Lenn saw the puff of smoke off the tail of the bandit, too far away to do any real damage.
He watched it roll and dive, the golden canopy of the F-51 swinging into view as its nose turned towards them. Then it rolled the other way, pulling hard in the opposite direction to outrun the incoming missile.
But the hard maneuvering came at the cost of airspeed, and Lenn’s fighter was now bearing down on it from above.
In mere seconds the bandit would be within range of the JF-200’s fearsome 37mm cannons.
Suddenly a warbling alarm sounded, indicating a missile launch against them. Lenn begrudgingly pushed the stick forward, diving for the protection of the hilly terrain.
“Found another…” reported Ying, leaning forward in her seat to see around and behind their plane. “Bandit six o’clock high, ten klicks out.”
“Give the first another missile, I’m turning around to engage this guy,” Lenn muttered, gasping for breath as he pulled back on the stick hard to swing the nose of his fighter around. “Start blinding his sensors with the lasers, I’ve got control of missiles.”
The second bandit fired another missile before diving for the ground. Lenn watched the flaming arrow get closer and closer, anxiety welling up inside him. But the defense matrix quickly identified the missile when it got close, and three beams of purple light converged upon the warhead, blowing it out of the air before it could reach them.
“Coming in for the merge!” Lenn called out as the bandit sped towards them head-on.
A stream of cannon fire screamed over their cockpit as the bandit let loose with his gun. Ying depressed the trigger too, their plane vibrating gently as she sent a volley of shells back at the bandit.
The two fighters passed mere meters from each other, twisting through the air, shrouded by condensation vapor as they tried to bring their guns to bear.
Lenn rolled to the side and turned parallel to the ground, while the bandit pulled vertical. Their speed bled away rapidly as the sweeping wings of the JF-200 bulldozed through the air.
The flight computers of his plane prevented him from exceeding the structural limits of the airframe, but the g-forces were still more than enough to darken his vision.
The more agile F-51 turned the circle slightly faster than Lenn could, and let off another missile. But the lasers of Lenn’s fighter shone its beam into the seeker eye of the missile, blinding it and causing it to dive into the ground.
He craned his neck and watched as the bandit turned over slowly, its pointed nose slowly swinging in their direction as it dove down.
At the same time, their speed had slowed sufficiently for more aggressive maneuvers, and the swiveling thrusters of the JF-200 swung it sideways, tail-sliding through the air to meet the bandit.
The two planes passed each other again, canopy to canopy, too close for any weapons to be used.
Lenn stepped hard on the rudder pedals and yanked the stick back, the swiveling thrusters obeyed, kicking the tail of his fighter down.
They tumbled backward as the bandit passed overhead, balanced on the thrust of their engines.
Immediately his heat-seeking missiles’ tracker eyes locked onto the scorching hot exhaust plume of the bandit. A high-pitched tone sounded in his helmet, signaling an infrared lock.
“Fox two times two!" Lenn shouted as he squeezed off two heat-seeking missiles.
Even with active cooling, no plane can hide the heat signature of their superheated exhaust plumes. At such a close range, the defense matrix would not have enough time to shoot down two missiles one after another.
The first missile streaked toward the bandit, chasing it down in a fraction of a second.
It was zapped down by the defense matrix just meters from the tail, shrapnel barely grazing the enemy fighter.
But the second missile immediately followed, impacting the bandit with pinpoint accuracy.
The explosion shattered the tail of the F-51, the damaged engines self-destructing in two eerie plumes of blue fire.
As the bandit came into gimbal range of their cannons, Ying calmly let off a burst of cannon fire, sawing through the already flaming F-51.
The high-explosive shells ripped apart the thin fuselage, ruptured the fuel tanks, and ignited the atomized fuel in a brilliant explosion.
After the flames cleared, the F-51 was all but gone, reduced to smoldering fragments of metal.
“Splash!” Lenn shouted, disengaging and turning around to search for the other bandit.
“Nice one!” Kang cheered, raising his hand to fist-bump Lenn.
Rei reached around and fist-bumped Lenn too, then turned and fist-bumped Kang. Kang tapped Ying on the shoulder, who lifted her hand and reached it around to receive Kang’s fist-bump.
“First bandit is twenty klicks out and closing,” Ying reported.
The first bandit had already defeated the missile they fired earlier and turned around to come for them.
“We should start heading back, more fighters are probably on their way,” Rei said. “Fuel levels are also getting pretty low.”
“Understood,” Lenn answered, his voice trembling slightly from adrenaline.
He pushed the throttle levers forward, turned his plane around, and dropped back to treetop level. From there on, it would be a straight path back home. Even if the hostile fighter continued its chase, it would be too slow and too far to be of any danger.
Within minutes they had left hostile airspace and ascended to a higher altitude to conserve fuel.
Shortly before dusk, they spotted their city in the distance. Minutes later, they touched down softly in their hangar, their fuel tanks dry and pylons empty.
“Captain Yuki wants to talk with you,” the ground personnel informed them as they stepped out of their plane.
Lenn exchanged glances with his teammates. “Come on, let’s go,” he told them.
They walked away from their fighter, a confirmed kill under their belts.
He turned to look back at his fighter.
The setting sun’s rays poured through the open blast door and glinted off his plane's polished metal, encapsulating it in a golden halo. It truly is a beautiful beast.
How lucky they are to be blessed with wings of steel.
[1]: “Fox 3” is the commonly used military call-out for the launch of an active radar-guided air-to-air missile. The other being “fox 2” for an infrared-guided missile, and “fox 1” for a semi-active radar-guided missile.
