ON RWBY WINGS III: REAPER FLIGHT
Part III of "On RWBY Wings"
An Alternate Universe RWBY Fanfiction
By Sentinel 28II
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: It is the year 2001. The Battle of Beacon is over. Captain Ozpin is dead, as is Jaune Arc, Penny Polendina, and a dozen other pilots. Joint Base Beacon is in ruins, and the survivors pick up the pieces in a world divided. Yang Xiao Long is crippled, having lost an arm in the fighting. Weiss Schnee is isolated, practically imprisoned in her family mansion in Germany. Blake Belladonna is an emotional wreck, heading home to Menagerie to come to terms with the return of her former lover, the White Fang terrorist Adam Taurus.
Ruby Rose has joined with the remaining members of Juniper Flight—Lie Ren, Nora Valkyrie, and Pyrrha Nikos—in a mission to track down who was behind the infiltration of JRB Beacon and the Vytal Flag exercise. Now codenamed Reaper Flight, they are making their way to Japan, to meet with Leonardo Lionheart. It is the same route that Ruby's mother Summer took…before she disappeared. And Reaper Flight doesn't know who to trust, who their true enemies are, or even their friends…
Over the North Atlantic Ocean
23 May 2001
"Gambol Shroud, Roughneck Approach. Switch to button three, squawk 1200."
"Roger that," Captain Blake Belladonna replied, trying to relax as she switched over. It had been an easy enough flight from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, but it had been a long flight, and now the real challenge lay ahead of her. She squirmed in her seat, trying to get feeling back in her rear end. She smiled beneath the oxygen mask, remembering something Yang Xiao Long had said. The Bellabooty. Then that made her think of Yang, and Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee, and she didn't need those distractions right now.
She looked out of the bubble canopy of her F-14 Tomcat. Around her, the scattered clouds glowed orange in the setting sun. She had been in the air most of the day, flying from eastern Virginia, out over the Atlantic Ocean, paralleling the distant and shattered shore of the Eastern Seaboard Dead Zone. By instinct, Blake kept her head moving around. This far out to sea, GRIMM were rare, but not unknown, and she was alone. There was no F-15 or Yang Xiao Long out on her wing: Yang was a cripple and the F-15, Ember Celica, was a wreck somewhere in northern Wisconsin, near the still smoking remains of Joint Base Beacon.
Blake shook those thoughts off. Distractions got naval aviators killed.
"Gambol Shroud, Roughneck. You are at twelve miles. Continue descent."
"Roger." Blake watched her airspeed, and dropped her flaps. At eight miles, she lowered the landing gear and arresting tailhook, and heard the satisfying clunk of locked gears. At seven miles, she broke out of the clouds and was rewarded with an impressive sight.
Below and ahead of her was the battlegroup centered around the USS Ronald Reagan. There were around a dozen ships, mostly destroyers that shepherded the Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier, with a handful of cruisers. The setting sun, now behind Blake, cast shadows across the waters and reflected off the steel gray of the Navy ships. She noted the sea was fairly calm, with only a few whitecaps, which meant the wind was steady. Thank God, she thought.
"Gambol Shroud, call your needles."
Needles? Then Blake remembered. She looked at her glide slope indicator. The Reagan's approach radar sent out a signal that was picked up by her Tomcat, giving her a steer to the carrier. It made landing easier—as easy as carrier landings ever got. "Right and centered."
"Concur." That meant that she was on the glide slope.
Blake tightened her straps a little and tried to slow her breathing. She remembered reading a study done during one of the many wars since the Third World War. Naval aviators were hooked up to electrocardiograms to determine their heart rate on combat missions. Nothing, not even being shot at, sent the heart rate pounding like landing on the carrier. It made sense: a pilot was required to land a several-ton aircraft going nearly 150 miles an hour, if not more, onto a section of steel roughly the same area as a suburban house. Making matters worse was that the section of steel was moving—the carrier was sailing at thirty knots to keep a steady wind over the deck, and the motion of the ocean would cause that steel to move up and down. Blake counted herself lucky: the sea was mostly calm, and it was still light. Landing at night in bad weather—it had caused pilots better than her to get out of the aircraft, walk to their commanding officer, toss their wings of gold onto their desk, and quit flying altogether.
The problem was, Blake had not landed on a carrier in well over a year. People would tell her it was like riding a bicycle and not something she was likely to forget how to do. Blake would respond that she used to fall off her bike a lot.
"Gambol Shroud, you're at three-quarters of a mile. Call the ball." It was a new voice, that of the Reagan's landing signals officer, or LSO. It was the LSO's job to guide aircraft into for a landing. The LSO was part of carrier aviation from the beginning, when they used brightly colored paddles to guide in pilots. Nowadays, the LSO used a series of colored lights on the port, or left side of the carrier, the Fresnel landing light system. The green lights would show her relative motion and speed to the carrier, and the white light in the center—the "ball"—would go up and down to tell her if she was too high or too low. Too high and she would miss the carrier entirely, and take a waveoff, to go around and try again. Too low and she would fly into the water, or even worse, into the back of the carrier; both results were usually fatal. Attached to the stern of the carrier was a single strand of white lights, the vertical drop line; she needed to stay above those lights. Ahead, the carrier was already lit up for flight operations, which made things a bit easier.
"Tomcat ball, 7.0," Blake responded. This confirmed to the carrier her aircraft type, that she could see the ball, and her fuel state—seven thousand pounds. Not a lot, but enough to go around a time or two if she needed to. This was blue-water operations, which meant there was no shore base to divert to. If she ran out of fuel, she'd have to eject to be rescued by one of the destroyers or the plane guard helicopter, orbiting well to her right.
"Low," called the LSO, and Blake saw she had dropped a little. She pulled back the stick and added some power to her engines. "Power." She added more; she'd gotten too slow, which risked a stall. "Too much power, high." Dammit, Blake thought, pulling back the throttle a little and easing forward the stick. The carrier was now beginning to fill her windscreen, and she could see the white-shirted LSO in his little shack on the port side, next to the landing lights. "Steady." The ball began to sink, and Blake resisted the urge to chase it, to dive for the deck. Besides being embarrassing, which no fighter pilot liked to do, a dive for the deck risked smashing into the steel and driving the landing gear into the aircraft, which was altogether bad.
A quick glance at the landing system—no waveoff lights—then the deck slid beneath her, a little too fast, but she didn't dare pull off any power. She could feel the F-14 hit the slipstream caused by the carrier's island structure, and then the landing gear hit the deck with a thump that jarred her teeth. She instantly slammed the throttles forward: if she missed all four wires, the F-14 would "bolter." As long as she had enough power, she could just go around and try again. Not enough power, and the Tomcat would sail off the angle deck into the water.
But then Blake was thrown forward into the straps hard as the Gambol Shroud's hook caught the number two wire. It was not a great landing—pilots aimed for the three-wire—but it was a landing. And just like that, she was aboard. The Tomcat deaccelerated almost instantly as the landing cable played out, and when she felt herself stop, she pulled the throttle back to nearly idle, raised the arresting hook, felt the cable let go, and began following the lead of a yellow-shirted crewmember to her parking spot, next to another F-14. She cycled the wings back and raised the flaps, and let the crew guide her to a stop. Blake sighed, leaned back in the seat, and relaxed. She'd made it.
She ran through the postflight as she raised the canopy; a brown-shirted crewmember, a plane captain, helped her unstrap and safetied the ejection seat. Somewhat shakily, Blake left the aircraft for the first time in seven hours and stood on the deck. It moved, and Blake nearly stumbled. Solid ground didn't move, but a carrier did on the waves. It was a little strange after so long ashore.
The plane captain pointed her to the island; the Reagan was getting to launch two other Tomcats on a night combat air patrol, so it was impossible to be heard. She nodded and walked towards the island, an apartment house sized slab of metal that contained the bridge, as well as various other command areas of the ship and the mainmast, which held a plethora of radars. She took a brief look around: the Reagan was going to be her home for the next week or so. Then she turned back and glanced at her Gambol Shroud.
It had survived the Battle of Beacon well enough. It was a F-14 Tomcat, and wasn't: unlike the two F-14Bs that rocketed off the bow catapults, hers was a single-seat aircraft, the advanced technology in the Gambol Shroud eliminating the need for a radar officer. It had other lumps and bumps the regular Tomcat did not have, and was painted a sinister black. While she had been at Beacon, it had carried no squadron markings, but during her time at Patuxent River, the red lightning bolts of VX-23 had been added to the twin tails. It gave it a little more character. She smiled a little: whoever had painted the tails had left her personal marking, a stylized white flame.
It felt so strange to be alone. Blake wondered what the others were doing. Especially Ruby, who at least was still flying. Yang faced long months of rehabilitation, and Weiss—there was no telling what Weiss was doing.
She reluctantly turned and entered the island. The noise died as a crewman dogged the hatch shut, and she took off her helmet. "Let me help you with that," the crewman said, and Blake looked up into the eyes of Sun Wukong.
Near Twin Falls
Idaho, United States of Canada
30 May 2001
"Twin Falls to any aircraft. Help us!"
In the clear, Ruby Rose thought. That meant they were in trouble. "Twin Falls, Reaper Lead," she called out. "Just hold on. I'm supersonic; I'll be there in thirty seconds. Raid count."
"Reaper Lead, Twin Falls. Raid count is four Beowolves and one Ursa." The voice calmed down a little.
That didn't sound like much, Ruby mused. Then again, Twin Falls was lightly defended. It wouldn't take a lot of GRIMM to do a lot of damage. "Roger that."
She hated to do it, but Ruby switched on her radar. She was at 30,000 feet, above the GRIMM ceiling, but they would still detect her radar signature. Still, she needed to know where they were. She looked at the radar screen, set at eye level below the Heads-Up Display; Ruby smiled, because it was something else she liked about the new F-16C Crescent Rose; in her old aircraft, she would have to look down to see the radar, which took her eyes off the sky around her. "Bingo," she said aloud. The GRIMM were in line-abreast, four Beowolves across as they came in to strafe Twin Falls yet again. She didn't see the Ursa, so she adjusted the sweep. There. It was following about ten miles behind the Beowolves. That meant she'd get at least one free shot at the Beowolves, but she'd have to be fast.
Ruby's smile widened. Fast was her specialty.
She settled back in the F-16's inclined seat, ran her eyes across her instruments, and dropped back to subsonic speed. A quick button push selected one of the two AIM-9 Sidewinders on the wingtips of Crescent Rose. "Reaper Lead, tally-ho on four Beowolves," she called out. 25,000 feet below her were the four GRIMM. Dark-painted, they were hard to see against the background of the Idaho scrublands, but Ruby's eyesight was already legendary in the USAF. "Here we go!" She punched off the underfuselage external tank, pushed the stick to the left and down, while she lightly pressed the left rudder pedal.
The F-16 rolled and dived, trading altitude for speed. The Beowolves would notice the move, but they would also notice she was rolling away, and would concentrate on their strafing run. Thanks, Professor Port, Ruby thought, remembering the lessons given back at Beacon. Hold on, hold on, hold on—now!
Ruby suddenly rolled hard to the right, feeling the G-suit grab her around the middle and squeeze as it fought against six times the force of gravity to keep blood in her brain. Crescent Rose was now on the flank of the Beowulf formation, faster than their computer brains could react. A light pull of the trigger as the missile's seeker head growled in her helmet, and the Sidewinder snaked out and hit the first Beowolf just behind its bulbous head. The straight winged drone exploded and became a comet of flame. "Reaper, splash one!" Ruby yelled in triumph. It was short-lived triumph, because now she was still facing four more GRIMM, and she was alone. Even as she watched, the three remaining Beowolves broke off their run and turned into her.
Ruby opened the throttle and tapped a button with her thumb, dropping two flares behind her, just in case, waited a precious second, then once more pulled hard right, grabbing a bit of altitude in the process. This turn was tighter, and Ruby puffed, tightening her stomach muscles with the G-suit. If I ever have kids I'm going to be great at giving birth, she thought idly—the exercise was similar—and leveled out, now behind the GRIMM. A quick tap on the stick, and she selected a longer-ranged, self-guiding AIM-120 AMRAAM. "Reaper, Fox Three." She'd forgotten to give a Fox call earlier; not that it really mattered, since she was by herself. The AMRAAM shot off an underwing rail, immediately locked onto the second Beowolf, and a half-second later, there was another blossoming explosion. "Reaper, splash two!"
Once more, the GRIMM turned back into her, and once more, Ruby used the F-16's phenomenal turn rate to roll away, accelerate, then turn hard back into her foes. This time, however, the GRIMM weren't so easily fooled. The two remaining Beowolves had not followed her into her turn, but had reversed theirs. Now they were head to head. Ruby saw a flash of light, and her Radar Warning Reciever warned of a lockon. She pumped the countermeasures switch again, now sending both flares and aluminum foil chaff behind her, and the RWR switched off as the GRIMM's missile shot past, chasing a chaff ghost. Ruby went back to her last Sidewinder, and fired as the Beowolf grew in her windscreen. It hit the GRIMM head on and blew it apart. "Reaper, splash three!"
The other Beowolf broke off the attack and dived away. Ruby didn't follow it; the Ursa was still out there somewhere, and it had to be getting close, perhaps even now swinging in behind her. She didn't want to be the meat in a GRIMM sandwich, so Ruby turned again, noting idly that she was about a thousand feet above the burning city of Twin Falls below, and climbed away, back up to 30,000 feet. The GRIMM would probably try to follow, but for unknown reasons, their programming would not allow them higher than 25,000 feet. She looked to her left—and there was the Ursa. If Beowolves were the cannon fodder of the GRIMM, the Ursai were the shock troops, designed for ground attack, with a heavy cannon that could still shred a fighter, along with the standard two underwing missiles. They were also better armored, so she switched back to AMRAAMs; she was out of Sidewinders anyway.
Ruby's eyes narrowed. There was something not quite right about the Ursa. The Ursa was essentially an upscaled Beowolf, but this one was bigger, perhaps, and instead of straight wings, it had swept wings. Her eyes widened when she noticed it was climbing towards her, and it wasn't leveling off at 25,000 feet. Oh shit. That's that new GRIMM that was reported, she thought in shock. The Beringal.
Whatever it was, it was coming straight at her, so Ruby turned into it. The speed closed too fast for the AMRAAM, so she switched to guns. It would be a tough shot, down the throat, but Ruby was confident she could make the shot.
So was the Beringal. Just as Ruby's finger started to squeeze the trigger, red tracer reached out from under the nose as two cannon sent shells towards her. Ruby broke hard, but Crescent Rose shuddered from a hit, and the stick nearly jumped out of her hand. She stomped on the right rudder pedal to stay in the break, and climbed. A quick glance behind, and the Beringel was following. It could turn tighter than its straight-winged cousins. As she watched, it fired a missile at her. She dumped flares and broke left, then right again, breaking the lock, but the GRIMM was still on her, relentless. Ruby made a quick scan of the instrument panel: no fire lights, no warnings, gauges were where they were supposed to be. Whatever had been hit wasn't vital…she hoped.
Ruby looped and rolled, but the Beringal stayed on her tail as if it was welded to it. Twice its guns spoke, and twice she'd somehow dodged the fireball tracers. They lost altitude, and Ruby had an idea. She suddenly leveled, did a quick check of the ground below, waited until the Beringal closed, then suddenly pushed over and dived. A glance at the mirrors in the canopy bow showed the GRIMM following her in the dive. "Okay, Grimmy," Ruby said, "let's see if Salem programmed you with balls."
Ruby divided her attention between the Snake River rushing up at her and the ground to either side, and the Beringal diving after her. She prayed she'd timed the pullout right, and pulled back on the stick. Crescent Rose came out of the dive, and Ruby had the disconcerting sight of the ground rising above the canopy as she shot into the canyon, the F-16 blowing spray away from one of the falls that gave the town its name. Then there was a hard turn to keep from plowing into the canyon walls, and another glance at the mirrors. "Holy shit!" Ruby exclaimed. The Beringal was still following her.
Then almost as soon as she finished one turn, she had to make another. A steel bridge loomed in front of her, a graceful arch over the river. She sideslipped a little and ducked under it, then climbed out of the canyon, which was getting entirely too dangerous, even for her. Ruby looked behind her, and saw an explosion on one of the arch supports of the bridge. The Beringal had made its turn a fraction too late, hit the unyielding bridge, and was torn in half. Pieces skipped into the river.
"Whew," Ruby breathed, feeling the sweat tricking down her back. "Reaper, splash four." She began a circle over Twin Falls, to get her breath.
Then she remembered the last Beowolf. It was charging across the city towards her. She turned into it, but knew she was too late. Then the GRIMM broke off its attack and turned north. A second later, a tiny meteor streaked out of the sky, and there was one last explosion for the day.
"Reaper Two. Splash five." Ruby came out of her turn, and a second later, saw a F-22 Raptor come out of a shallow dive. Pyrrha Nikos rocked her wings as she went past.
"Thanks, Pyrrha," Ruby said. That had been a bit close. "Twin Falls, Reaper Lead. All GRIMM destroyed. You're clear."
"For now," the anonymous voice at the Twin Falls airport replied. It had been the third attack in two weeks. "Thanks, Reaper. Thank you so much. That was a hell of a show."
"Easy day, Twin Falls," Ruby said with more confidence than she felt. She turned east as Pyrrha slid into position on her right wing. "Sorry, Pyrrha," she called to her friend. "Didn't have time to wait."
"That's okay." Pyrrha was very understanding. "RTB?"
Ruby looked at her fuel gauge. "RTB. I'm bingo plus one." They had to return to base, or Ruby might not make it at all. Dogfights used a lot of fuel, and she was exhausted.
They headed for home.