"C'mon!" JC shouted through the hangar. "Chop chop, make it snappy! We don't have much time. They'll be here in six hours. Move, move, move!"
The base had been swarmed with activity ever since the emergency briefing order had gone out, and Nicole didn't quite catch why. "What the fuck is going on?" She asked Jackal. "It's balls o'clock."
"Beats me," he replied, just as groggily as she was. There wasn't a cloud in the deep, dark blue of the night; the windows as they walked to the briefing room seemed like they were leeching light from the corridor.
JC took the podium, and sighed. "The Magadan offensive, as you all know, has been faltering for the last week. Well, faltering on a good day. They've been getting their asses kicked out there. Command has opted to abandon the offensive, and with the kind of air power that helped beat back our ground forces now turning their sights on us, well, we have our orders. I'm sorry, everybody. You're not going to like them."
The pilot watched from her cockpit as the vile taste and unholy amount of caffeine contained in a can of Wired!® one-two punched her into alertness. Maintenance crews ran around, carrying explosive charges on ordinance carts; burying them next to the tarmac at pre-spaced intervals. They slid palettes of missiles, food, spare parts, and any supplies they could find into the backs of C/T-17s. Bluejay's F/C-8, a new engine salvaged off the civilian cargo plane adorning the still badly-scorched wing, shot off down a runway.
"We have been ordered to evacuate and scuttle Armstrong Air Force Base to prevent it from falling into Federation hands." JC hung his head ever so slightly, a tinge of regret she couldn't help but notice. "Let's start with unit assignments. CIF-85 and -91, go back home. Your old bases are at capacity but they should be able to support a few more planes. CIF-77 and -28, you will be transferred to Forward Air Bases Constellation and Baker, respectively. They're not exactly… bases, but they're deeper in IF territory and decently close together, so you'll be overlapping CAP jurisdiction. Besides, dirt strip's better than a dirt nap. Bluejay, you're headed to Constellation, too. The makeshift airstrip there's large enough for your AWACS."
"A dirt strip." Dagger sighed over the radio as they taxied the planes out onto the runway. "A goddamn dirt strip."
"Great, that'll be fantastic for our planes. I'm sure the mechanics will love us. We'll still have mechanics, right? I don't know how to fix everything on this plane." Jackal chuckled nervously.
"Any questions?"
Dagger jumped to her feet. "Why don't we stay and fight? We can take them! Look at how much air power we have. The base is at capacity—"
"We have our orders, Lieutenant Ashido. And do you really want to try your luck with them?"
The projector screen flashed. A blurry picture. An F/S-15 with black striped wings.
No, please. God, no, please.
No, please. God, no, please. Her breath shook as she stood by, waiting for her orders to roll out onto the runway and punch the flaps down and the throttle to full. Not them. Not now.
She glanced side to side, looking at her four remaining squadmates. Four pilots whose most remarkable traits all were that they had survived this long. None of them had received the advanced training that even the least skilled Peacekeeper pilot had passed. They were, as JC had said, a bunch of patriots with planes and a pipe dream.
That won't be enough.
"Intel reports that Peacekeeper Squadron Black had been out of country since briefly before the mercenaries' strike on Solana. Rotated out for psychological evaluation, most likely… you know how the Feds like their poster children. They think even a relatively unimportant Peacekeeper squadron losing a pilot to defection could have triggered a significant panic in the Federation structure, but that's just spook speculation. Who knows?" JC shrugged.
"Dagger," Nicole whispered to her squadmate, still standing and ready to reply to the gauntlet the Lieutenant Colonel had thrown. "Dagger!" She tugged at Ashido's arm.
"What, Spook?" Her tone was as loud as a whisper could be, frustrated and snappy.
"Trust me. We won't be enough."
We barely got out against that experimental squadron alive. We lost one to their barrier CAP... She shook, her hands trembling against the controls. What makes any of us think we have a chance of surviving this war?
"Polaris Six," the voice of Armstrong Tower broke into the echoing prison of her thoughts. "Taxi to runway 320A. Good hunting."
She steadied her breathing long enough to acknowledge. There's no turning back. But there's never been. Not since I left them.
She took a deep breath, turned the Hornet down the center of the runway, and took to the skies.