Light Weapons

AN: I realized that I liked writing about the sub-to-sub combat in my story Enemy Below. Figured I'd do a nice little novella of sorts with the Raven interceptor in Enemy Unknown 2012.

The title "Light Weapons" comes from a chapter in "The Sky Road" by Ken MacLeod. The book is more politics and plot than sci-fi. It's OK-ish.

The Raven is not a great craft and the laser cannon is not a great craft gun. The Long War mod changes the later, increasing the range (really just making it so that the Raven flies up into laser cannon range instantly rather than gradually). The Vanilla laser cannon in Enemy Unknown is better than the one in UFO Defense, which travels about as far as a man with his legs hobbled, can piss. Both are better the gauss cannon from Terror From the Deep, which has all the problems of the Laser Cannon, but you have to manufacture ammo.

Holy crap, I am rambling again. Let's get into it.

[1]

"Allah has been generous." thought the pilot as he looked at his craft, not caring if the engineers around him heard. He thought it aloud, as he sometimes did, and he spoke with a smile on his face.

The fast-attack fighter, the F-24 "Raven" had literally just come into Den Mother just this morning. It'd spent the first half of its first day getting refueled, with an immense orange tube jammed up its bottom.

The other half of its first day was spent fitting the new craft weapon onto it.

"Allah had nothing to do with it partner." came a voice on his left, and he turned.
Dwayne Kent had thick goggles over his eyes, and slight brown stubble on his face. He wore the green sweat-shirt and gray denim pants of most XCOM personnel; but the man, like most of the engineers wore a hardhat. Peterson's was white instead of yellow, to show that he was the man in charge. To hear him say it, nobody could put a fucking gun on a fucking plane the way Kent could (and there was nothing Kent can't do).

A Southern Fried Genius. That's what the other base personnel thought of the guy. Harun actually knew what that meant too. The Engineer from that Team Fortress game was like that. His accent was beautiful and so was this man's.

The pilot, Harun Berna smiled indulgently at him.

"I'm serious partner." Dr. Kent said, and yes he did have a doctorate thank you very much. "That laser cannon all had been naught but a twinkle in my eyes two weeks ago."

"I believe that doctor." Harun said.

"That mouthy little prick Hector Price couldn't have thought up something like that. You wanna know that barrel of monkey spunk thought would make a good weapon for our ships."

Harun didn't even bother asking what. He just waited.

"The Phoenix Cannon." Kent said, and did a quaint little bow, and described the details of the weapon to him. It was capable of massive burst damage, but it had very short range. You'd have to be making love to the alien craft in front if you wanted any chance of hitting it at all.

"That sounds like…" Harun paused, wondering if Ken was leading him into some sort of trap. "Like just a regular cannon. Like what we've been using on planes since World War 2."

"Holy shit on a stick in my dick!" Kent laughed. "The man gets it!"

Harun laughed too.

[2]

It was May 14. XCOM soldiers from the main base in North America had stopped an alien abduction. Harun had watched the results from the barracks, nibbling his fingers as he stared at the small TV attached to his bunk. Petra's name hadn't shown up. That was good. But then his guts twisted inside of him as Richard White's name was bordered in red.

KIA.

"No." he whispered, burying his face in his hands. When he finally had the strength, he looked back at the screen to see.

The Mutons were becoming a fairly frequent enemy for the ground troops now.

He shook his head helplessly. Things were only going to get worse. A terror mission was on the horizon. The last one had been at the end of February, and everyone thought they were long overdue.

Alien craft were not appearing as often as people had thought they would, and Harun was pulled two ways on this. On one hand, it meant perhaps their air game wasn't that strong (or not strong enough); and that was good. It meant Harun wasn't needed. On the other hand…it meant Harun wasn't needed. It was a dark thought, a sinful thought for certain, but he wanted one UFO to at least show its face in this neck of the woods…so that he could remove said face from its shoulders.

And he got his wish the very next day.

[3]
May 15

The siren blared into life in the middle of the night. Harun had never known how restless or jittery a sleeper he was until that night. He'd practically gone flying out of his bunk. Of course, it was the top bunk; and he'd nearly hit his head on the ceiling on the way and collapsed on the floor.

When he turned and saw that it was indeed a terror mission, he thought about jumping back in bed. Terror missions were the obligation of ground troops. There was nothing any pilot in XCOM could do to shoot down the terror ships before they landed.

Then his eyes widened as these words went across the screen: ALIENS BOMBING SHIPS NEAR SOUTH AFRICA.

"Allah." Harun heard himself saying. But the voice was so frayed and hushed, it sounded like the voice of a stranger. "I ask for your protection against Satan the Exile."

"Staff Sergeant Harun Berna," went a calm female voice from the bed's speakers. "Please report to the hangar immediately."

He went.

Once his helmet was on, he was briefed by Major Simon Schwartz. According to the major, the bombing attack was barely fifteen minutes old and was still underway. The USS Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, both operating off the coast of Africa, had been targeted.

Both had been destroyed.

Now whatever had destroyed them was moving north, toward South Africa.

"A bombing ship." Harun said, too no one in particular.

The major nodded soberly. "When you get in your cockpit, we'll pull up some video feeds of the thing. Send them to you."

"Thank you sir." Harun said.

"No, Staff Sergeant." the major corrected. "Thank you."

Harun went through systems check. Fuel. Weapons. Radar. Comms. Electric and thermal countermeasures (of course, it was unknown effective they would be against whatever targeting systems the aliens used, but it was better than having none at all).
"Den this is Raven-Three. Systems check all green."

"Roger that Three." went Den really a man in his early 50s. "Stand by for catapult launch."

Oh boy. Harun thought nervously. He'd done this before, he just didn't like roller coasters. The catapult inclined until he was pointed up nearly 90 degrees, his thruster warming up the entire time.

"You have the sky Raven-Three." Den said.

"Copy that Den. My sky."

The rather dark cave of the Den Mother base in Africa gave way to the bright African sky, specifically that of Madagascar. There was one other base, Arab Spring it was called, that was over in Egypt. He was glad he wouldn't have to fly the plane completely across the entire continent. Spring's pilots would be doing just that if something happened to Harun and Estevez.

Behind him, another Raven from the base closed in. That was Raven-Two, Maria Estevez, or "Mars" as she liked to be called. Also a Staff Sergeant.

"You ready for this Mars?" he asked on comms.

"Hell yeah I'm ready." she growled, and it was a pleasant growl.

"Good to hear."

"You don't sound so eager." she said, getting into formation on his left.

"Because I'm not." Harun admitted.

It was just the two of them. Den Mother, just like all XCOM bases, had limited hangar space.

Another Raven appeared behind them. That was Airman First Class Ryan Palomo.

"I'm not excited either!" Palomo said.

"What a damn baby!" Mars shouted.

"Let's focus up people!" Harun said. His sharpness was born of worry. "Mars is your craft armed with a laser cannon?"

"Yessir!" she cried happily.

Turning his head around, Harun saw he need not have asked her. He could see the laser cannon shiny and red on the rightmost hardpoint of her gun. He'd expected to be more tubular in appearance, because of course comic books had lasers like that. But the laser cannon XCOM made was boxy in appearance, though damn if it didn't still look wonderful on the Raven.

"What about you Palomo?"

"I only have the Avalanche missiles." he stated. His Raven had come literally three hours ago. The Kent and the other engineers had barely managed to get it properly refueled. The Palomo had been certain he'd be sitting this fight out.

Glad he's here though, Harun thought and knew Mars would agree.

He contacted Den Mother, asked if they had a surveillance feed of the bomber. There'd been a Hawkeye recon craft in the area. Now there wasn't. Harun shook his head, sucking air through his teeth, reported the info to his team.

"Damn it!" Harun could a banging sound as Mars bunched the inside of the canopy.

All they could do now was go forward and hope.

And hope.

[4]

They were upon it and it was upon them.

They were off the cost of South Africa, themselves flanked by the air force response of the country: JAS 39 Gripen attack fighters of the SANDF. Two whole squadrons of the bastards…and intel said they were supposed to be some of the best.

The alien bomber was on the horizon.

The squadrons leader, Jack Frost, came on the comms. "Port Elizabeth behind us has already been evacuated."

"Allah is great." Harun said, shakily. The words felt hollow in his mouth all of a sudden.

"Indeed." Frost said and Harun imagined he heard quite the tone of dryness.

The alien vessel was on the horizon. It was a large ship, like the assault carriers the aliens used for their terror missions.

"It looks like an egg carton!" Palomo said.

"Palomo are you stupid?"

"Quiet!" Harun shouted. He zoomed in. To his credit, Palomo wasn't really wrong. The top half of the UFO was boxy, save for the slightly rounded top. The "eggs" hanging from the bottom glowed with a faint blue light at their tips. Perhaps its payload, perhaps its targeting system.

"We have any data on the bombs? What kind they are? Dummy or smart? Effective range?"

As if to answer at least some of the questions, one of the eggs detached from the ship. Immediately, some propulsion systems kicked in. The egg oriented itself so the glowing tip faced toward Harun's incoming squadron. It came rushing at them.

"Shit!" Frost cried. "It's firing!"

"Everyone!" Harun roared. "Take evasive action!"

God, Harun thought. He was leading the squadron, and so he banked up. Palomo would bank right and Mars would go left.

As he went up, keeping the thrust near maximum so he would not stall out.

He pitched up until he was upside down and heading toward the coast. He could make out the egg, flying low and fast toward the port. When it hit, there was a searing flash of light. Harun turned his eyes away, feeling burning needles press through his suit, through his skin.

"Oh God." said Frost. "Oh shit…oh God. Oh God…oh shit."

Harun looked at the damage…and shockingly enough there wasn't much. He'd expected half of Port Elizabeth to be a burning crater right now. Instead, a shipyard had been turned into a twisted web of smoldering metal.

Harun swung the Raven around. The bomber hadn't fired another egg, and was just ambling toward the coast.

His radar started picking up more signatures. Smaller UFOs, coming from the south, where the bomber itself had come from. Perhaps they'd spawned from some hatch in the back of the bomber. Some hanger.

"Bandits. 10'o clock and 1'o clock high!"

"Are they scouts or fighters?" Palomo asked.

No way to know from this distance. Both small scouts and fighters had the same sleek "flying saucer" appearance.

"We'll know when they start shooting at us." Mars stated.

"Move in to engage. Those things are probably the bombers escorts. Keep your distance from the bomber anyways. It may have defensive weapons even if it needs to be escorted."

There were at least of dozen of them, and as they clashed in the air, Harun saw that they were indeed fighters and not scouts. Scouts had one light plasma cannon, that they knew of, while fighters had two. The twin plasma cut brilliantly through the sky. It was met with a tepid answer of the Stingray missiles of the Gripens.

Two of the SANDF fighters were immediately knocked out of the sky. They didn't spin out into the welcoming embrace of the ocean. They were blown up completely, given their pilots no time at all to eject.

"Damn it!" cried Frost. "Nickels and Jackson are down!"

"Keep it together comrades!" Harun cried. "Any confirmed kills?!"

Everyone answered in unison. "Negative!"

Then they did their dance in the air, picking out a target, banking to follow it, losing it, finding another target and banking to track that one, more missile fire, the Stingrays accurate enough thanks to their guidance system and propulsion, at some points cornering so abruptly they formed acute angles, and sometimes even that wasn't enough to catch an alien vessel, some of them shaking as they were struck, but only shaking as the Stingray missiles barely made a dent in their armor.

"I'm gaining on a bandit!" Palomo said suddenly, Harun looked for his Raven in the melee and saw that he could not.

A rush of hot plasma sailed at him, and alien fighter passed him on the right, into his 5 or 6 o'clock. Another sailed laterally from his 10 to his 2. Suddenly, a bright ray of red light met it in the air. The fighter did tremble. There was perhaps a small explosion, a part of the craft that glowed brighter than even the laser cannon warranted.

"Holy shit!" cried Frost. "What the hell was that?"

"Laser cannons." Harun reported. "Our newest weapons. Focus on engaging the escorts!"

The alien fighter did an evasive maneuver, rolling to its right. The follow up laser blast missed the craft by a narrow margin. Maria's third blast did not miss at all. The alien craft flew away as if punched; and yes there was an explosion, and half of the fighter was shattered in fire and the other half corkscrewed into the ocean.

"Good job Maria!"

"You know it Turk." she said. She was quieter now. Her voice was all blood and iron.

A bandit entered into Harun's 11. He turned with it. The targeting reticule was a thin circle surrounded by a thick one. The reticule was an advanced system: it didn't turn with his head, it turned with his eye.

The cursor glowed red.

The fighter seemed to get wise that he was on it, and banked all the way to the right before Harun even got a shot off. Damn but the things were above and beyond maneuverable. They didn't have to roll to one side and pitch up: all they had to do was just turn, as if they were driving a car.

As he lost it, the fighter was struck by another one, a missile. One of Palomo's Avalanches perhaps. The fighter wobbled from side to side, not turning or banking anymore but flying straight. Maybe the missile had knocked the senses out of whatever had been flying it.

Another explosion on the coast. The bomber had laid another egg.

Harun banked to follow the shaking craft and opened up with his cannon. He was worried the weapon would blind him. That it would wash out the entire canopy in red, along with his eyes. But the ray was thinner than he expected. Much thinner than Maria's had appeared.

It drilled into the alien fighter just as effectively. Harun saw the impact point becoming a boiling red. He fired again, not giving the fighter a chance to get out of the way. Strange, it didn't even try.

A pillar of smoke farted out from the rear of the fighter and it began to lose altitude. He hesitated, wondering if he should destroy it completely.

Then Palomo was on the comms. He had two bandits on his tail. Harun looked for him, saw a jet of plasma crash into another plane, sending it spinning.

The words went through him like a sharpened icicle: that's him.

But it was not, as Mars answered: "I'm on their 6. Just hang on."

In the spherical web of metal and alien alloys and green plasma fire there was a brilliant ray of red light. Another alien fighter fell.

Stupefy! Harun thought suddenly, and actually laughed.

Immediately, another red discharge, followed by another; and Mars earned her third kill. This craft fell down in an erratic pattern, catching the side of one unfortunate alien craft that was flying laterally to it. Harun saw the spark of one.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Palomo half-screamed. "Thanks Mars!"

"No prob Bob." she said, but immediately started taking fire from two enemy fighters.

"I've got them." Frost said, sounding calmer now. He fired a pair of Stingrays. Both hit, and fazed each fighter only a little. They split up before they could take further damage. One moved far too fast, rushing past Palomo, who instantly opened fire with his Avalanche. It struck and the fighter certainly seemed fazed by that.

One of the fighters climbed up and Frost chose to follow that one. The remaining enemy fighter drifted into Harun's sights. It was flying directly at him.

He fired once, knowing that once was all he would get. The fighter saw him and fired back.

Both hit their targets.

The laser cannon burned through the front of the fighter, where he thought the cockpit might have been. Where it should have been.

He felt a surge of triumphant joy.

"Holy shit!" Mars cried. "I saw that one! It went right through the fighter!"

On Harun's end was a great shudder in the cockpit, and the instruments and read outs turned off and turned back on. The reticule blinked out of existence for a second. Long enough for him to think it wouldn't come back at all.

Then it came back on and everything was fine. Well…everything was not fine. Engine 2 was working but Numero Uno was not. Weapons systems were fine: the laser cannon could still fire, and its turret could still and swing the cannon around without any noticeable hiccups.

The laser cannon was marked red in the heads up display; but again, not because it was damaged. The thing was starting to overheating. Automatically, flaps opened up on the sides of the cannon and fresh Atlantic air strode in. It dropped down to green in a second r two.

"How many bandits left?" Harun asked.

"Ten of them." Mars said. A bright red light pulsed in the evening light, making the orange sky momentarily bronze. "Make that nine."

Good girl.

Palomo on the comms: "The bomber, it's firing again!"

Indeed it was. The third egg came faster than the others, or maybe that was just his imagination. The bomber was slow moving. It'd closed the gap from it to the shore by about one hundred meters, certainly no more than a hundred and fifty.

"Turk, we gotta go after that bomber!"

"Frost, status report!" Harun ordered, half-expecting no answer to come, for Lt. Jack Frost to be yet another body swallowed up by the Atlantic.

"Uh…at…at least half the squadron is down. Jefferson's plane's wounded and he had to bounce. Damn it, we should've focused on that fucking egg carton in the first place."

No, thought Harun. Frost's would've been a true enough statement in an old fashioned battle. Dogfights of World War II and that kind of thing; but not here, not with these alien fighters so powerful and so fast. Had they gone straight for the bomber, engaging and downing none of the alien fighters they would probably have been in even worse shape.

He hated to think it, but they might have to let the Port get bombed. As much as it sucked, Elizabeth could be rebuilt, although at a heavy debt, as was the case with all repairs. It was naïve to think that absolutely everyone had left the city, but at least the vast majority did. Perhaps only a homeless person or drifter or two (or three or four or a dozen) would be lost. The bombs, at far as he could tell, weren't exactly crossing whole continents.

Harun looked around, and saw that Frost's previous statement was one of panic and not reality. The two squadrons had been drastically reduced in size. Everyone else was in the ocean or heading back to base with a busted plane.

But the aliens weren't doing that much better. Or any better…really.

There were just five of the damn things left, and one of them drifted almost stupidly in front of Harun. It turned and flipped in order to dodge a missile, and then righted itself with a trembling jerk (he tried not to think of the g's acting on the alien body, surely the pilots had to be Mutons at least).

Just as he was about to fire not two…not three, but four Stingray missiles ran crashed into the fighters backside. They all seemed to hit it in the same instant. It didn't disintegrate the craft but it recoiled as if punched, somersaulting erratically into the ocean like a badly flipped quarter.

Allah be praised for the Gripens!

He looked at the hull integrity of his Raven. He still had plenty of fuel, just one of the engines was out.

Harun decided that they could go for the bomber now after all.

And off Harun Berna went, towards his strange and violent death.

[5]

"Mars. Palomo." he spoke into the comms. "Cover me!"

"Cover me?!" Palomo cried shrilly. "What does that mean?"

"Palomo shut the fuck up! We're with you Turk! I'm at your five. The last few Gripens are keeping the UFO fighters busy!"

"I'm at your seven!" Palomo said. "Mars! A UFO's tailing you!"

"No he isn't!" shouted Frost.

A seemingly distant sound of an explosion.

"Thanks Frost." Maria said serenely. "I owe you one."

"H-happy to help!" the man shouted back, sounding honestly embarrassed. Sounding like the way Palomo was most of the time.

"Are any of the UFO fighters breaking off from the dogfighting to engage us?"

"Uh…I can't see any." Frost said. "Remain on guard."

"You got that right!" Palomo piped up.

They closed in on the bomber. Got within 200 km. Then within 100. With the long range of his Avalanche torpedoes, Palomo was already able to start firing. There was a thick rushing sound, and off the payload went. Fire and forget, as in you best forget about whatever was on the receiving end of it.

As they raced toward the bomber, Harun had a sudden terrible thought: It'll be just like Independence Day. The UFO would have an energy shield around it. The aliens "on the receiving end" would probably perceive the explosions as slight turbulence. Maybe not even that.

But he was wrong, and there was no sudden wall of blue light, only a sudden ball of orange and yellow quickly overtaken by plumes of deeply black smoke. The first round hit the UFO on its relative nose (the bow above the large eggs) but of course that didn't mean the cockpit was damaged. The second round hit one of the UFO's eggs, and Harun winced, not knowing what would happen. For a moment, he thought that perhaps everything from the southern tip of Africa to the Antarctic would be a steaming hole. But no…the egg the Avalanche had struck didn't explode. It didn't even rattle in its hold.

"That's it." he said grimly. His voice was hoarse, as if he'd been not just shouting (they had all been shouting) but shrieking. Maybe they had been doing that too. "That's all the ammo I got."

"You got no cannon?"

"No Phoenix gun if that's what you mean. Ten Avalanches was all I had." Palomo stated. "Kent modded the Raven so it would have that instead of just six. Dunno how much it helped. They seemed to dodge my shots pretty well. Easier than they did the Stingrays."

"Go home brother." Harun said softly. "You did well."

"Th-thank you sir." Palomo replied, sounding nervous. Sounding shy. Sounding like himself. He sped up so that he was nearly wing-to-wing with Harun. He favored the Staff Sergeant with a snappy salute, one that Harun returned.

He broke away from them.

"You know what we do now?" he asked.

"Hit it with everything we got sir."

"Allah be praised."

[6]
The effective firing range of the laser cannon he and Mars were using was 30 km. He'd learned sometime after the installation of it on his Raven that there'd been an older model, the Mark 1. It had a fairly terrible range of 20 km, about twice that of a regular Gatling cannon, and 50 percent more range than one of XCOM's Phoenix cannons. It'd been the Mark 1, and during its first test run it'd fried the UFO and forced it down fairly quickly. The problem had been the almost catastrophic damage done to that Raven in the process. It'd simply taken too long to get into range.

That interceptor had been scuttled, and replaced. The laser cannon had been put back into an operating lab. Adjustments were made here and there, and to the focusing lens in particular, to make a narrow beam that could travel further through the air without its light being bent by the molecules and particles as much.

When they opened fire on the bomber, in many ways it reminded Harun of artwork. In particular Islamic art, where you were not permitted to draw any kind of living form. It was a slight of sorts, to do such a thing, it's not like you could even make a person, or a plant, look better than Allah had conceived it. What was made instead, were geometrical patterns; a kind of abstract art.

The work that Harun and Mars did on the bomber was like this. Their laser cannons were not cannons at all, but pencils. His carved a series of sweeping arcs from the starboard of the bow all the way to its port. Mars followed behind him and follow his act. He glanced over his shoulder and saw he Mars wasn't firing in bursts. She was keeping the trigger held down and indeed the laser looked very much like a pencil carving out black lines on a flat surface.

Glory to Allah! No return fire! And he began smiling. If they could get this done, and quickly, the alien fighters would retreat. With their objective failed they would have no reason to stick it out and potentially take more losses.

No. There was no potentially about that. They would take losses as long as the two of them were up in the air.

He expected that at any second countless holes would open up on the sides of the alien fighter and shred him with plasma fire from heavy cannons. It didn't happen.

He expected that he'd be struck with the light plasma cannons as the alien fighters reengaged them, having dealt with the remaining Gripens. But that didn't happen either.

Harun went around to the starboard of the ship and made an equally long cut on that as well, from the top of the craft to the bottom.

The heat gauge monitoring his laser climbed steadily. It was already in the orange. He could hear the steam hissing from the cannon…or maybe that was his imagination. He felt that the cockpit was suddenly very hot…but maybe that was just in his head as well.

He pressed the button for the heat dump. The hissing was not loud but it was VERY LOUD. It was soft in his ears but coursed through his body like faint lighting.

The scars in the UFO smoked. The egg bombs especially did, but it came out in spurts and burps rather than a continuous breath. In between the coughs, Harun thought he could make out bolts of electricity in the wound of the eggs. He knew immediately it wasn't his imagination.

A chemical change happening, he thought, the fuse making contact with the payload.

That could've been a good thing. If it was unstable and took a direct blast…

Life isn't like a movie!

I at least have to try!

But you don't know what could happen.

Yes, that was true enough. He pressed the comm. button. "Maria? You read me?"

Her Raven fired twice, two red flash-bulbs in the night sky, and yes it was night time now. The sun was nothing but a sliver of a penny on the western horizon. "Yeah Turk! What is it?"

"I think I found a place I can concentrate my fire on! But it's dangerous! I need you to retreat!"

"Screw that I'm not leaving you!"

"That's an order!" Harun roared. "We're the same rank but I'm the squad leader and I'm ORDERING YOU TO RETREAT!"

Silence on the comms. Harun could hear nothing but the roar of his Raven's engines and even that seemed from far away.

Finally Maria spoke on the comms. with a tone of disappointment and unmistakable hurt. "Have it your way."

Not even a "have it your way sir." She was pissed but her safety was more than worth her anger, even if she was mad at him for a long time after today…and she would be.

Harun watched her fly off.

Then something happened. A voice came to his head: She….belongs…to us.

Harun blinked rapidly. What?

She belongs, the voice said, to us!

Harun's eyes went to Maria. When she'd pulled away from the bomber, her Raven had been flying steady. Now it was rolling violently through the air, like a big invisible hand was turning it.

"Mars!" he called out to her. "You alright?"

No answer.

Her Raven started to dive toward the water. Not a steep dive, but a noticeable one. She'd hit the water within 30 seconds or so.

"No!" Harun screamed, and banked his Raven toward the alien bomber. He couldn't say for sure what was happening, only knew that the Sectoids had some version of telepathy, and there were rumors of another kind that could control people, the way ghosts like Danny Phantom could take over people's bodies just by flying into them. They were just rumors but…

Us, groaned the voice again, and a glass knife pierced his brain. He winced, her teeth clenched so hard they began to ache. He felt the slow pain crawl all the way up to his nose. Tears formed in his eyes and all of the panels

No...please no.

He aimed the laser cannon and fired. Its red line was turned into fuzzy bangs by his tears, and wherever it touched on the immense grey flank in front of him was turned into a swelling tumor of fire;

(she)

and Harun thought of light reflecting off a shifting body of water, but only for a second or two. Red light flickered again and again in his blurred vision, and so did the cancerous fire.

(belongs)

Then he pressed down on the trigger and nothing at all happened. He blinked more tears away, but the instruments were still blurry when he looked at them. He groped around for the lever that would dump the heat, but couldn't find it. His hands came down on switch after button after display…but none of them made any sense.

(TO US)

More glass shards in his forehead. He thought he was turning the joystick but the Raven did not roll to either side.

No you aren't turning the joystick. You're keeping it straight.

By the time he realized that he would crash into one of the eggs, he was already seconds away from impact. Maybe even less.

Why am I doing this?

But he wasn't. He could feel the voice working inside him, trying to get him to push the stick forward. Sharply forward, so that he'd plummet into the ocean. He could feel another voice (the voice of his wife Isad and his family) trying to roll the plane in order to bank it. What he was doing, this keeping the craft straight toward certain dead…was a compromise.

"Allah is great!" Harun heard himself scream.

Now his vision did clear suddenly and the last thing he saw was one of the eggs, large and immense and swallowing up the entire view of the cockpit. The Raven's lasers had broken fresh holes in the egg. He could make out electrical cords jutting from the wound, crisscrossing and bending sharply like broken fingers. Out from the wound spurted a liquid chemical of some kind. Maybe the coolant, or a liquid fuse for the payload, or the bomber's fuel, or maybe it was all three.

"Allah is-" Harun said.

And then nothing after that.

[7]

Maria Estevez woke up with a headache. The world was bleary and her eyes hurt terribly. In fact her whole body hurt, in particular her head, which felt like King Kong had it in a chokehold and Kong was angry at the world.

The instruments in the cockpit were blurry and she blinked until her eyes could clear enough to make sense of them.

She remembered the mission. The alien fighter escorts. The massive bomber…

Harun.

She pushed the comms button and called out to him. No answer. Fear settled over her in a frigid grip. She pushed the button again, this time called out for Palomo. He wasn't there either, and that was just as much a shock. Then she remembered he'd bounced out after using his last Avalanche missile. She called out for the SANDF's air forces. For Jack Frost…which gave her jack shit.

Probably all dead, she thought, and the icy grip on her body tightened, making it hard to breathe.

She checked the readouts. She was heading north, the way she'd come, and was currently on the northern border of South Africa.

Maria thought about turning the Raven around, but a quick look at her fuel gauge told her that shit wasn't gonna happen without an Extender or similar plane to refuel this damn Raven in the air.

Plus, Mars wanted to be on the ground as soon as possible, and in a bed. She put the Raven on autopilot for home.

(she belongs to us)

Maria's body shook. It shook violently, trying to get warm. But the chill remained there in her body. Maria began sobbing again, not knowing (but feeling) that the chill was a demon and that for her it had already been let in forever.