I've wanted to do something on this incredible series for a while, so I did.
Enjoy.
Wings of Treachery
Chapter One: Fly or Die
The bird rolled and banked before finally levelling as it fought to catch up to the rest of its flight. Seven F-16 aircraft flew in a flawless V formation a little way ahead of it, their metal frames glinting in the sunlight. It was a beautiful day, with only a light smattering of clouds with temperatures read at 24 degrees centigrade. Perfect beach weather, and once the training exercise was over, Warhawk Flight was taking a trip to the shoreline. Even the new guy – one Flying Officer Xander Black – was going.
From his cockpit in his own bird, Black had a panoramic view: the Spring Sea seemed to stretch out endlessly on one side, while the other offered a view of his homeland of Ratio that, a little more than a century before, only birds were treated to. All that time in flight school and the views he saw when he was up on high still took his breath awa–
'–rhawk Eight, you there? Helllloooo?'
Black blinked and shook his head. Embarrassment ran through him and his face flushed as he realised he'd been so captivated that he'd fallen even further out of formation. The knowledge that he had graduated top of his class and even managed to outfly some of his instructors in Basic and Advanced Fighter Manoeuvres didn't go very far with the experienced, accomplished pilots of Warhawk Squadron.
'Sorry sir,' Black said as he tuned into the squadron's private radio frequency, 'just got a little caught up admiring the view.'
'Perhaps 'Spartan' wasn't so suitable after all. Maybe 'Dreamboy' would fit better?' Another of his flight – the ever-humorous Warhawk Three – interjected before the Wing Commander could get a word in. Black heard a few sniggers over the comms, and even as he opened his mouth he knew he'd snagged the bait.
''Dreamboy' huh? Is that envy I'm hearing over there? It's not my fault I was blessed with ravishingly good looks while you were cursed with a butt-chin, Three.' Black riposted; grinning through his flight mask as full blown laughter crowded up the comms.
'All right that's enough clowning around Eight,' Warhawk One commanded, though Black smirked as he detected a note of humour in his otherwise rock-solid tone, 'get your arse back into formation pronto before I call home and find you something to do when we land.'
'Absolutely sir,' Black responded, dialling down the personality as he shifted his F-16 around so as to slide himself neatly back into formation with his squadron.
'It's not a butt-chin…' he heard Three mutter.
'Three, I said can the chatter!' Warhawk One demanded. 'We'll be resuming combat exercises as soon as the Smart Alec lagging behind graciously decides to rejoin us. Same drill as it was before: two flights, tone signifies a kill.'
There was a brief pause before Warhawk One spoke up again. 'The losing flight has to buy the first round of drinks when he hit the beach tonight.'
That brought a chorus of cheers and cat-calls among the pilots who made up Warhawk Squadron. Black smiled as he eased on the throttle, bringing his bird ever closer to the formation.
'Okay Eight, I'd say you're about close enough. Three, since you two seem so close, you can have the new kid mark your wing, Five and Six, you'll join them.' Black raised a brow but broke squelch once to indicate that he'd heard, understood and would carry out the order.
'Fantastic,' Three said, injecting a note of sarcasm into his voice before turning his attention to Black. 'Think you can keep up this time rookie?'
'I'll just follow the pilot with the enormous chin, can't miss it even from back here.' Black replied.
'What sort of grudge against my face did you wake up with this morning?' Three asked in an exasperated manner.
Black was about to reply with another crack when Warhawk One suddenly interrupted.
He didn't sound happy.
'All right, which one of you jokers decided it'd be funny to gain a lock on me before I gave–'
He was abruptly cut off when a missile suddenly streaked out from behind a cloud and slammed into the middle of his bird. The following explosion tore Warhawk One's plane in half and it fell to the sea in two burning, smoking halves.
The shockwave from the explosion buffeted the craft closest to him, and Warhawks Two and Three found themselves fighting for control even as their instruments screamed that someone out there had a missile lock on them. Warhawk Three managed to pull his plane back up and narrowly avoided the AMRAAM warhead that streaked towards him from the same vector the first missile had struck from.
Warhawk Two wasn't nearly as lucky.
Another AMRAAM missile burst from the passing cloud and exploded on the underside of Warhawk Two's plane, cooking off all six of his own missiles which then ignited the fuel.
The result was catastrophic.
Confusion reigned as the surviving Warhawks broke formation, each one shouting and yelling.
'Did you see that?!'
'Warhawk One's down!'
'I didn't see a chute! Did you?'
'Two's down! Christ above I think all his munitions went off at once!'
'Was that a missile? Who the hell fired a missile?!'
'What the hell is going on?'
It was Black – furthest away from the sudden, inexplicable carnage – who retained enough of his wits to answer the last, and arguably most vital, question.
'My radar's picked up unknown signatures, IFF's bouncing… holy shit how did they get this close without anyone seeing them?'
Black's radar displayed eight incoming unknowns, and if his gut instincts were on the money then they were behind the sudden murder of two of his fellow pilots. Then there was another blip, and another, and yet more appeared until there were no less than twenty-eight bandits on an intercept vector. Black's disbelief turned into gut-wrenching terror. Twenty-eight hostiles?!
A sharp warning blared into life, letting Black know that one or more of those incoming bandits had a lock on him. Warhawk Squadron was still reeling from the attack, and two missiles struck the frame of Warhawk Five's bird, blowing it to chunks. Black didn't see a chute and felt his heart sink as despair overtook him.
The despair, however, soon vanished, replaced by a blazing fury that threw off his indecision and had him turn sharply in the direction of the foe.
'Warhawk Eight, engaging,' he snarled as he snagged a radar lock on the closest of the bandits. In his rage he almost fired, but held off at the last second, realising that they would pass each other in moments and if he fired, the missile would only career aimlessly into the distance. He had two AIM-7 Sparrows on his wingtip hardpoints and six AIM-9 Sidewinders on the under-wing rails, and five-hundred and eleven rounds for the M61 Vulcan cannon. If he was cautious–
His train of thought was rudely interrupted by another missile alert warning, and Black threw his bird into a sharp dive, bracing himself against the G-Forces that assailed him on the sudden manoeuvre. The alert kept squawking though, and Black forced himself to deploy countermeasures.
'Deploying chaff,' he intoned through the comms, and sure enough, the alert ceased. He was now coming up behind an Su-34 which suddenly launched a warhead that streaked towards another Warhawk craft. Black bellowed in denial as the missile struck its target, impacting against the fuselage before detonating, sending another Warhawk screaming to the sea.
The rage that overtook him at the almost casual ease with which the enemy pilot had butchered his squadmate was so great that he forgot to indicate that he had fired a missile of his own. He got a tone on the Fullback fighter-bomber and launched a Sidewinder. The missile danced through the air and it was only at the last second that the Fullback jinked to evade, as if the pilot hadn't registered that he'd been spiked.
Too bad for him, Black thought maliciously as the warhead detonated almost directly on the other plane's tail, blowing both of its engines. The fighter-bomber dropped gracelessly earthwards, much to Black's satisfaction.
'Splash one,' he crowed as he began to think on his next victim, spotting a turning F-15 close enough for him to make out the colours painted on its wing. Rectan? The knowledge puzzled him. What on Earth are they doing here shooting down Ratian aircraft?
He pushed the knowledge to the back of his head. The brass could figure out the 'why' when he and what remained of his squadron were home safe. Even as he thought that though, another F-16 was pitched from the sky, its frame riddled by cannon fire.
'Switching to guns,' Black told no one in particular as he pitched himself into a turn that would, ideally, take him cutting across the intended flight path of the fighter. The scissoring manoeuvre worked like a charm; as Black pitched his bird into a sharp turn he saw the F-15 come racing into a turn of its own, it had spotted one of the few survivors of Warhawk trying to pull away from the frenzy.
'Gotcha, you son of a bitch,' he said with a grimace as the F-15 cut right across his flight path. Black opened fire, and the cannon stitched a jagged line of holes in the airframe. The craft juddered before sharply losing altitude and spiralling earthwards. Seconds later, the canopy popped and the pilot ejected.
No sooner had he downed the bandit when the alert blared into life, alerting him that someone had his number. Cursing his single-mindedness in pursuing the F-15 he pulled his F-16 into a daring loop that proved to be just enough to escape the missile. The alert dialled down in pitch and frequency, but it still remained, meaning he hadn't lost his pursuer just yet.
At that moment he had a thought. It was crazy and more than a little stupid, but if he could pull it off…
No, I will pull it off, he thought firmly. Fresh determination surged through him and he pulled his plane up and lit his afterburners. He shot up like a shell from a cannon, his altimeter was flying through numbers: 15,000 feet; 20,000; 25,000; 30,000.
Then the alert shrieked with increased intensity. Another missile.
I'd better pray this is enough.
Black deployed the air brakes and felt a sudden lurch as his speed dropped. As he slowed he canted his plane to the side. To anyone observing, it would have looked as though the fighter had been given a soft nudge from an invisible hand. The missile streaked past, avoiding Black by the narrowest of margins.
His pursuer, an F-14 Tomcat, blasted past him mere moments later, reacting far too slowly to stay on Black's tail. A burst of gunfire tore his engines to shreds; momentum, however, kept him climbing for a few scant metres before the fighter listed gracefully and began to plummet towards the sea. As with his last kill, Black saw the canopy blow and the pilot shoot out seconds later to escape the wrecked bird.
An F-16 flashed right in front of him; a Warhawk. The pilot – and Black didn't know which one of them it was – had pulled his fighter into a spin trying to shake off two bandits on his tail, another F-15 and a PAK FA T-50 with three snarling wolf's heads emblazoned on its tail. Black forced his own fighter into a tight turn in order to help out his squadmate, feeling the G-forces tug on him. He braced himself as much as he was able but even then he still felt like he was about to lose his lunch.
Finally though he settled into a pursuit vector, and his first shot, one of the Sidewinders, gained a lock on the F-15. He launched, but the enemy pilot deployed counter-measures and the heat-seeker dived in the direction of the flare shot out from Black's prey. Black kept his lock though, the pilot of the F-15 seeming unsure as to whether he wanted to shoot down the F-16 ahead of him or break away to attempt to avoid being roasted.
He eventually made the smart choice, but by then Black had pulled in close enough to unleash another barrage of gunfire that rent the frame of the fighter to scrap. Black didn't watch the stricken plane drop, he switched instantly to the T-50 pursuing his fellow pilot, who was doing his utmost to lose his foe but the stealth fighter was sticking on his tail like superglue.
Out of desperation, the F-16 attempted a feint to the left before powering to the right.
The T-50 wasn't fooled.
Even before the F-16 had started pulling into its evasive turn the T-50 was on him. An AA-11 Archer missile on its wing root fired and screamed towards the F-16. Black roared a warning through his comms to the Warhawk–
–but he was far too late.
The missile burst scant centimetres above the cockpit, shredding the front of the plane and the pilot inside. The rear end of the fighter flipped over and fell towards the sea. A thousand metres below him, the last remaining other pilot of Warhawk squadron was dashed from the sky as his plane collided with a circling F-14, killing both pilots and the weapons operator of the F-14. He scored two kills on the squadron of F-15s before physical exhaustion caused him to make the most costly mistake he'd ever make. The act left Flying Officer Xander Black the only survivor of Warhawk Squadron.
Black, however, saw and knew none of this.
All he saw was the T-50 that had shot down one of his squadron with almost contemptuous ease. When he looked back on it, he'd realise that the sudden, single-minded hatred he held for the plane and the pilot inside was irrational, and could easily have cost him his life. At that moment though, he wanted nothing more than to see that fighter die, and he didn't much care how. All that mattered was that it burned.
Black lit his afterburners and screeched after the T-50 with murder in his eyes, he quickly gained a lock and launched a Sidewinder. The T-50 dived, the Sidewinder hot on his heels and gaining quickly. The pilot either didn't have any flares, or didn't think to use them. More fool him then, Black thought hungrily as the missile inched towards the diving fighter, which drew ever closer toward the waves of the Spring Sea.
Then, when the plane was barely a couple of hundred metres from dashing itself against the water, it suddenly slowed. Scant moments later its pilot threw it into a sudden, sharp twisting turn and fired its engines, launching it skyward.
The Sidewinder pulled up sharply but wasn't fast enough, and it sailed uselessly past the stealth fighter. The bird yawed to the right a fraction, lining the missile up in its sights, and opened up with its guns. Several bullets struck the missile and, incredibly, knocked the missile from the skies without detonating it. For a moment, Black's rage abated, and he was overcome by awe for the skill, the sheer audacity for not only avoiding the missile, but to shoot it down without killing himself.
The T-50 pulled up and away from Black, actually heading away. He blinked, and his bloodlust ebbed away as he realised he might have left himself completely exposed to attack in his pursuit of the Cerberus plane. Checking his radar, he was both relieved and confused to see that the mess of hostiles was beginning to pull away from the airspace, heading east, out into the sea.
'What on earth…' Black murmured to himself. As far as he knew there was nothing out there, not even the Ratian Second Fleet which patrolled the Ratian coast almost religiously. Did they have a carrier out there somewhere? Black watched the Rectan planes fly away. A flight of four PAK FA T-50s, all with snarling Cerberus heads, led the formation, and Black felt a twinge of satisfaction in noting that, of the twenty-eight blips he'd picked up at the start of the melee, he could only make out eighteen planes moving away from the combat site. His squadron had given them a bloody nose at least.
The thought of the rest of Warhawk brought a chill to the young pilot; he hadn't heard so much as a peep from the rest of his squadron the entire time. He checked the radar but it showed nothing but the retreating blips of the Rectan birds. Frantic, he turned his F-16 into a turn and surveyed the airspace by sight, but he saw nothi– no, wait! There! Aircraft approaching at his Nine O'Clock! They didn't seem to be on an intercept vector so they had to be friendly, maybe it was the survivors of Warhawk. They must have slipped the net and come back for me, he thought joyously as the IFF confirmed that the oncoming craft were indeed allies.
His spirits were quickly and abruptly crushed, however, when he realised that, although the approaching aircraft were indeed friendly, there were far too many of them, and none of them were F-16s. His radio suddenly squawked into life and Black heard a clear, commanding voice on the other end of the line.
'This is Air Commodore Nigel Griswold, call sign 'Raven Eye' to the lone Warhawk pilot, what is your status, over?'
Lone Warhawk pilot…
Black felt numbness spread through him. His squadron was dead. He'd been a part of them for all of a week, but he felt the sudden loss of all seven of his squadron as keenly as if he'd known them all his life.
'I repeat: this is Air Commodore Nigel–'
'Sorry… I heard you,' Black responded morosely. He took a deep breath and realised that he felt exhausted now that the adrenaline was being flushed from his system. He took one last look at the retreating Rectan planes, and made a mental note to remember the flight of T-50s bearing the Cerberus heads. He wanted to pay them back for what they'd helped perpetrate… oh yes he did.
'This is Flying Officer Xander Black, call sign 'Spartan', flying as Warhawk Eight… I'm tired sir. And my squadron…'
'Ah, you're still in one piece… listen Warhawk, I'm sorry about your squadron and the fact that we're so late in getting here we couldn't even catch the tail end of this thing, but we're going to need you to pull yourself together.'
A flush of anger overtook him and before he could stop himself he was shouting down the microphone at a man who could easily drum him out of the air force if he so much as coughed the wrong way at him.
'What the hell was this?! This was supposed to be a training exercise and it turned into a bloody slaughter! The first warning we got was when missiles took out my flight lead and then…' he trailed off as a wave of emotion overtook him and he hitched a sob before he could stop it. Frustration at his own inability to help his squadron and guilt at being the only one to survive blended to create a cocktail of negativity.
To his credit, Raven Eye was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, he didn't seem at all ticked off at the attitude that Black had given him.
'I'm sorry Warhawk, but there was nothing we could do from our end. We only realised there was something going on out here when our radar installations picked up the radio spike that precluded the attack on your squadron. You have my most sincere condolences Warhawk, really, but there is no time to grieve.'
'Those were Rectan planes,' Black said, his voice weary. 'What are Rectan planes doing shooting down Ratian fighters? Just what the hell is going on?'
There was a deep breath on the other end, and Black knew that his bad day was about to get much, much worse.
'Just before your attack we received a communique from the capital… we have had no contact with any of our armed forces close to the border, and the nations of Ustio and Sapin have come under simultaneous assault. The official report followed shortly.
'As of an half an hour ago; we are at war.'
-X-
Precious little is known about the eastern end of the Osean continent (or at least I couldn't find all that much on it), so I figured setting it there would be a neat little way of putting my own spin on the Strangereal world. I'm going to model the Ratian air force after the British RAF (they even have the same acronym, how awesome is that?) albeit with some minor differences, and this decision stems mostly from a memory of reading a discussion somewhere that Ratio could be Strangereal's equivalent of Britain.
And for those of you who might be confused as to the protagonist's name; it's pronounced 'Zahn-der', as in 'Alexander' without the 'Ale'.