Lightning

Chapter One

A lone pilot sat at a table in his quarters, playing blackjack with a fellow pilot. He was in a base near Bear Mountain, in New York. To the public, he was a guardian of the controversial Indian Point Nuclear Powerplant. To anybody with a black level intelligence clearance, he was guarding a facility deep within the Adirondack Mountains. Literally, the facility was under a mountain. It was home to an experimental government device. The device, only seen by the scientists who worked on it, was an attempt to break the very laws of physics, nature, and anything else.

It was an experiment of teleportation.

The machine, code named Blacklight, was ready for an experiment in a bomb range in Nevada. Of course, it had to be transported there. That was why the two pilots in the base had jitters. They were assigned to provide an escort for the C-130 Hercules carrying Blacklight. Their four plane squad was the last line of defense for the most precious machine in the world. Apparently, the device had a very unstable core of who-knows-what that provides the massive amounts of energy required to operate the device. If all else fails, they were required to lay down their lives to destroy the device. It left in two hours.

(-)

The line of four pilots jogged to their jets, already breathing pure oxygen to rid their bodies of nitrogen. The four pilots had varying types of jets. A special-order Su-47 Berkut, an FA-18 Superhornet, a MiG Foxbat, and an F35 JSF were lined up, the latter belonging to the captain of the flight team. They reached their jets and climbed the "ladder", which was actually a set of boot-sized slots that led to the cockpit. In contrast to their earlier haste, the pilots slowly lowered themselves into the seats of the jet, taking care not to hit any buttons or switches. As soon as he was in the plane, the captain buckled himself in and switched on the Rolls-Royce jet engine. The engine roared to life as a heads-up display projected on the inside of his gold colored visor.

PLEASE WAIT...

IDENTITY CONFIRMED. CAPTAIN CRAIG JOHNSON.

LOADING HUD...

After that, his visor displayed all information that was useful to him. Ammunition count, fuel gauge, altimeter, fuel levels and a speedometer were all shown on the HUD. The small sensors in the helmet tracked eye movement, to navigate menus in the HUD, and to aim his weapons. Craig looked over to his squad, Storm Flight. There was the Su-47, the name displayed above it was TAILWIND. The Superhornet, STINGER. The MiG Foxbat, THUNDER. Craig already knew his code name, LIGHTNING. He liked his code name, and had put in a special request to have his friend's code name changed to THUNDER. Thunder and Lightning.

The friend in question was Annelise Nachter. She was an expert in oncoming interception, and so was the plane. It was sleek, yet large, and very fast. Tailwind was the main dogfighter. He was a mysterious Russian with seemingly no acquaintances on the base, and was seemingly untouchable in the backward-winged Su-47. The FA-18 belonged to a nerdy-looking young pilot. Since he was the only person smart enough to work the complicated software of Multi-Target missiles, he stalked around a dogfight and carefully removed the enemies with scalpel-sharp precision. All of the planes were equipped with similar electronics as Craig's jet, albeit specialized for the roles of the pilots.

The line of jets taxied to the runway. Taking off, they quickly gained altitude to meet the cargo plane in mid-flight. They reached a predetermined vector and met the C-130. Just to be safe, there would be radio silence until Storm Flight was replaced by another group over Kansas. This was going to be a long flight.

(-)

Craig, despite his training, was bored within two hours. He'd "accidentally" broken formation three times to attempt to look in the windows of the plane, but he was quickly caught on all of the tries. They had figured out what he was trying to do, and were covering the windows with cardboard. He started to attempt to navigate the more complicated parts of the HUD, and he eventually figured out how to activate autopilot. He also figured out how to use Quick Commands. It was a system in which he could project a message to the visors of the fellow pilots. Standard commands, like regroup, attack, and defend, were useless to him. He was trying to set up some sort of messaging system between him and Annelise when the cargo plane broke radio silence.

"We have a small group of small aircraft on our radar. They are not radio responsive, and they seem to be coming this way. This could be a UAV threat, so be careful." The escorts gladly broke formation to investigate. When they were a few miles away from the blips, they slowed to make contact with the unknown aircraft. Craig in the front of the V-shaped formation, they approached the aircraft. As soon as they were in range for weaponry, the aircraft accelerated impossibly quickly. Craig instantly recognized the behavior.

"CRUISE MISSILES! Take them down!" Storm Flight powered up their jets, matching the speed of the missiles, which were just out of target reach. The team watched in horror as the missiles impacted the cargo plane. Soon after, an impossibly loud explosion, followed by a large blue cloud, rocked the sky. Debris from the blast rained down in all directions. The remaining planes were pelted by smoking metal, most deflected by the thick armor.

One piece, colored dark blue, flew through the air. It was the device, designed for teleportation. The unstable fusion core, Matter Deconstruction Unit, and the other assorted parts were encased In a container meant for nuclear waste. It was virtually indestructible, but the explosion of the backup core was enough to throw it free from the wreckage. The surprisingly small size of the object allowed it to fly very far, but that was short lived. It collided with the glass dome of a jet.

"AAUUGH! What was that?"

Craig was hit on the stomach with a contraption the size of a cable box, and with similar dimensions. The object started to glow a light blue, and a stomach-shaking bass sound emitted from it. Craig wasn't a genius, but it didn't take one to figure out what was happening.

"Oh, sh-"

BOOM

(-)

Teleportation was not pleasant. It was similar to the feeling of being run over by a steam roller. Twice. Craig opened his eyes to a cracked visor and several alarms blaring. He realized that he was crashing, and he grabbed the controls as he tried to level out the limping jet. The controls responded only moderately, and Craig knew this was a one way street. He had to eject or die.

Craig pulled the cord above his shoulder as small rockets attached to his seat launched him several feet higher into the air. For a moment, it felt as if the parachute wouldn't open. Then a sudden jerk yanked him seemingly upwards. The parachute billowed as it deployed fully, gently lowering its cargo to the ground.

Craig watched as his jet plummeted towards the ground. It flew a good twenty miles before impacting the dirt. When it hit the ground, it shattered into seemingly a million pieces. It was painful to see an old friend die. Defeated, Craig took a look at his surroundings. He was over some sort of weird town. The buildings were from different eras. Old English, modern, tree,... Wait. These people live in trees? Now thoroughly confused, Craig was oblivious to a follower. A colorful tail poked out from behind a cloud. The owner of the tail was following the flying monkey. It looked dangerous, and she was going to stop it from hurting her friends, or her name wasn't Rainbow Dash.

Craig figured he was going to land in the center of the town. It was nighttime, so his black parachute was nearly invisible. There seemed to be some activity in the town. Looks like the locals are colorful pony breeders who let them walk around. Where there is civilization, there are people, so find a herder. Try as he might, Craig couldn't see any people, just more ponies. As he drifted even closer to the town, he could hear voices talking. Still no people in sight. The voices sounded worried.

Craig was now floating just above the rooftops, and all of the ponies were watching him with looks of... suspicion? Ponies weren't capable of suspicion... right?

Authors Note:

I am sorry for those readers of my other story, Vector Jump, but I am taking a short break to write this story. They WILL. NOT. CONNECT. I guarantee it. Anyway, I plan to post one chapter a week, and that will be split between the two stories. I have a lot of schoolwork to do this year, so I will be limited with speed, but hopefully not quality. Criticism and reviews always welcome.

~D-Rad