Authors: Ken McConnell
Both Trogens were out on the ready line, leaving the base with about six other Swifts in the revetments. Two birds were undergoing phase maintenance in the main hanger. We had another couple hangar queens that were used as spare parts bins. One of them was the bird I drove into the beach, the other was cracked up before I got here and was now just a hollow frame.
The overcast skies left the air still and humid which kept many people inside where the air conditioners worked overtime to keep us comfortable. I downed my third bottle of water and thought I heard an engine winding up out on the flight line. There were no other scheduled flights until this afternoon, so I figured it was a ground crew putting some time on the meter. You had to run up these engines and let them circulate coolants and such on a regular basis or risk needless in-flight emergencies. Hearing a lone engine running on an airbase was perfectly normal. What got my attention was the second and third engines starting up. I casually flipped comm over to Control and listened for traffic. But the frequency was quiet. That was odd.
I got up and moved to the window to see what was going on. Two of the idle Swifts lifted off from their revetments and both Alert Trogens did the same.
There were no air raid sirens going off so where the hell were those birds going off to?
I grabbed the mic at my desk and queried Control.
“Control, this is Rocket One. Where are those fighters going?”
There was a long pause before the on-duty controller responded.
“Unscheduled maintenance flights. Four, Two, Seven and Five, Niner, Five are local flights.”
I double clicked the mic and sat back down.
Wait, what about the Alert birds?
“Control, Rocket One. What about the Alert birds, where are they going?”
“Rocket One, Control. The Alerts are going up to check out a false echo. Probably just a flight of birds.”
“Copy,” I replied and set the mic down. I looked up at the ready board and saw who was on the mission and who was around to fly. Something sounded fishy about the maintenance fight. One of the alert birds was piloted by Flame which all but nixed my suspicions and I quickly forgot about it.
Meanwhile, there were now twelve fighters airborne and only a few flyable ones left on base. How that didn’t send up alarms is beyond me. About an hour later I realized none of the maintenance flights or Alert birds had returned to base.
I opened the door of my office and saw only Hank sitting in Ops, going over the afternoon operation plan.
“Where the hell is everyone?” I asked, anger in my tone.
“Ma’am?”
“The Alert birds launched an hour ago along with two maintenance flights,” I explained, stepping out into the main room. Hank sat up and looked at the ready board. His eyes came back to me and were wide as plates.
“There aren't any scheduled maintenance flights today!”
I grabbed his arm and told him to follow me. We ran outside, jumped in the truck and sped out across the tarmac to where Control was located. The overcast skies had lifted and the sun was beating down in mid morning splendor.
I slammed on the brakes and the truck skidded into the sand next to Control. There were two enlisted kids on duty, they both had seen me coming and were standing at attention when I came inside their glass covered room.
“Where the hell are the Alert birds? And why haven’t the maintenance flights returned?”
The starman second class spoke first. “Commander, both of them changed course to intercept the morning sortie. Apparently they were in need of reinforcements.”
“Why the hell wasn’t I notified about that?”
The junior controller stuck her neck out and said, “We thought you knew about it.”
I damn near lost it right there and had me some ass for brunch. But decided it wouldn’t do any good. The real focus of my anger had already out foxed me and was probably executing the Red Ace Operational Plan. I grabbed the controller’s mic and boomed into it.
“Alpha Lead this is Control.”
No response. The Controllers went back to manning their screens.
“Alpha Lead this is Control, over!”
No response. Either they were too busy fighting or they were purposefully ignoring me. It didn’t matter which, I was beyond pissed. I grabbed Hank’s shoulder again and pulled him out of Control and back into the truck.
“We’re going up after them. Karvuk is going after the Red Ace, we have to stop her.”
I drove out to the nearest operational fighter and bailed out, handing the wheel over to Hank. I used the truck’s comm to call up a launch crew. They were startled by the request but scrambled some people anyway.
“Get us some flight gear and come back here fast,” I told Hank.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, driving off as fast as the truck could go.
I slid my boots into the foot lifts and climbed up the side of the hot metal fighter to pop its canopy. Inside the cockpit it was hotter than a sauna and smelled like metal and sweat. I flipped some preflight switches and did what I could until the ground crew arrived. By that time I had Hank’s bird and mine open and ready for them.
It didn’t take them long to clear the Swifts for take off, arming the guns, pulling covers and boosting the engines to get them turned on and running idle. The Swift's Jaston-400 stardrives were loud as hell and without my helmet’s hearing protection, I was hurting. I didn’t see Hank return, but felt a helmet on my back as I was leaned over the side of my cockpit, checking the ejection system. I took the helmet and slid it on while he set my pressure suit on the cockpit wall and stepped off. As we both pulled on our pressure suits I watched Hank with a wary eye. Was he ready to be my wingman? Was he good enough? I knew deep inside that he wasn’t ready, I just hoped that I could keep him alive until he was. Where we were heading was bound to be crazy and I didn’t want to lose him prematurely. He nodded to me with youthful confidence when he was ready. I nodded back, giving him my tacit approval for riding my wing. His round face was happy as a kid with an ice cream. After a quick run up and system checks, we blasted into the blue sky and turned east towards the last known position of Alpha Flight.
* * *
My forward scanners were set to wide in an effort to make contact sooner rather than later as we steadily climbed to our normal combat altitude. The skies ahead of us were darkening with storm clouds. It virtually never rained on this planet. When it did rain, it tended to be epic in scale. I started fretting about the weather and told Hank to monitor the storm with his satellite imagery. Control neglected to inform us about the storm, which probably meant they didn’t know about it yet. It was beyond where our flights were supposed to be but by the look of it, was coming in our direction.
“Hank, I’ve got some bogeys ahead. Stay close back there and mind that storm. It’s going to get hairy up here, fast.”
Hank double clicked his mic and I saw his bird tighten up on my flank. Sometimes a Swift could look positively bad ass just riding your wing. I loved that starfighter.
I was only getting three friendly contacts on my threat system. But there were two enemy contacts, both of them Fivers. I didn’t know if the rest of my pilots had been splashed or if this was only the closest skirmish. Either way it meant there was at least one casualty as the number was uneven. As we got closer I started getting good telemetry. It was Karvuk, Double and Flame. No sign of the Trogens or the other flight members; Fingers, Dobber and Tibbs.
I opened the comm and broke the silence. “Alpha Lead this is Rocket One, report.”
There was no response. I called out again and this time got a reply.
“Copy Rocket One, kinda busy here,” Karvuk responded.
“Karvuk, we’re coming up on your starboard flank,” I informed her.
It was not like I could stop and chew her ass out for disobeying my orders. I had to respect the fight they were in and offer to help them. I started peering out my canopy for any signs of them, knowing full well they would blast past me in the blink of an eye.
“Hank, guns hot. Guns Hot. They’re coming right for us.”
“Copy Rocket One,” came his weak voice over the comm.
I lined up on the lead Fiver and locked in my canons and my guns. But before I could get off my shot, both Fivers opened up on me. I jiggled my fighter to the right and swore as Hank followed me. Luckily their shots missed him and we both banked hard to come around as they passed by us.
The lead Fiver was painted blood red. His wingman was painted in the standard KiV-5 scheme for Kew, light sea gray with dark gray fingertips on the wing edges. My eyes focused on the Red Ace as I pulled G’s in my turn. His ship was damaged but not critically. A few scorched grazes crossed his wings and fuselage. Our guns were clearly ineffective against their armor and shields.
“Stay on him Flame, I got the wingman,” Karvuk’s voice said over the comm. She sounded determined. Resolute. Like a woman on a mission.
Unfortunately, her “mission” had already cost me three pilots.
“Flame, Karvuk, this is Rocket One. Disengage. Repeat, disengage.”
It was a cardinal sin to break away from a fight. You immediately opened yourself up to being attacked as soon as you lost your ground behind your opponent. No fighter pilot worth her salt would obey that order. Neither woman responded to my order or altered her course.
“Stay tight on my six, Hank,” I said as I reacquired the red enemy fighter climbing up on Flame’s Swift. She was full throttle on the Red Ace’s six, her cannons bursting across his stern and being absorbed by his shielding.
I jockeyed into position beside Flame’s Swift and added my firepower to her attack. A combined eight guns and four cannons eventually broke his stern shield and he dropped to the deck in a desperate attempt to get away from us.
“He’s heading back, disengage, Flame,” I shouted into my comm.
I could see her turn to look at my fighter.
“We can’t let him get away,” she pleaded.
“Disengage now, Karvuk needs our help.”
That must have done it. She broke off and gained altitude, heading for Karvuk’s one on one. I watched the red Fiver slip away across the glassy water towards the darkening skies. For half a second I actually considered going after him. But I took a gamble that he’d honor the free pass and leave. It was the second time I misjudged someone that day.
By the time Flame reached Karvuk’s position the battle was over. The Fiver was going down in smoke and Karvuk was following it putting extra shots into it as if out of spite. Not good. But then again, chivalry was long dead in this war.
Flame formed up on Karvuk as she pulled away from the Fiver’s death spiral. Wicked bolts of lightning from the approaching storm cracked the dark skies around our Swifts as Hank and I joined them.
“Are you two the only survivors?” I asked over ship to ship comm.
“Yes, but your plan to get the Red Ace worked. We bagged six of them today,” Karvuk replied defensively.
I went off, “At what price? Six of your own people are dead!”
There was silence from both Karvuk and Flame. Which was good, because I was just getting started.
“You two set me up about this whole operation, didn’t you, Flame?”
She double clicked her mic.
“It was my idea, Commander. I take full responsibility,” Karvuk responded.
“Both of your asses are mine when we get back. I’ll have you two booted right out of the Fleet. You’ll be lucky if the JAG doesn’t put you in the slammer for a long, long time.”
I was just getting going as we turned around and tried to outrun the storm back to base. “Karvuk, I can’t believe you’d risk the lives of your squadron mates just to take a shot at the Red Ace. That’s so disappointing to me on every level. Who the hell do you think you are?”
My rant was cut short when Flame’s starfighter blew up, lighting up Karvuk’s fighter and sending debris into all of our shields. The Red Ace’s Fiver screamed by seconds later from our six to twelve o’clock high. That bastard had circled back to us and come up from underneath and caught us all off guard.
And Flame was dead. That was seven so far on this mission.
Karvuk watched the red starfighter streak by and then rolled out of formation and climbed after him. I had no choice at that point but to follow her with Hank tailing after me. Together we stood a better chance of getting that bastard than if we each acted alone.
What followed was the craziest bit of flying I have ever seen. In retrospect, I may have been witness to the greatest aerial combat feat ever. But at the time, my pulse was racing and I didn’t honestly believe I would survive the ordeal. When time seems to slow down for you to watch, you know things are going too fast to control them.
The battle started about angels 3, that much I remember clearly. Don’t ask me how or why I remembered looking at the altimeter before we engaged the Ace, I just did. Probably because it was SOP to take stock of your instruments before you committed to a fight. Maybe it had something to do with me blocking the events that immediately followed, but I can still to this day, see everything in my mind’s eye as if it were happening again.
The blue exhaust flame of the Fiver burned brightly in the dark skies that were now all around us. Visibility was still good, but soon we would be forced to rely more on our scanners than our eyes.
The Ace started arching over and heading back down by the time we caught up to him. His engine was not powerful enough to out run us in our Swifts. We always had the advantage of speed against our enemy. We dove on him together, falling faster and gaining on him by the second.
Karvuk started shooting at him and quickly blew out his stern shields. That’s when Hank and I joined the party and began firing on him. He didn’t take it without a fight though. He kept twisting and spiraling around like a man on fire trying to extinguish flames. A dark cloud swallowed up his fighter as we were suddenly engulfed in a driving rain storm. We had fallen so quickly we were now under most of the massive thunderheads and about to pay the price for it.
Most starfighters rarely get bucked around by rain or even sleet, but the water drops in this massive storm must have been three times bigger than any storm I’ve ever been in. Our Swifts buckled and jerked us around in our harnesses as we continued chasing after his image on our scanners. It was one hell of a bumpy ride.