The HTTYD franchise is the property of DreamWorks, Inc. This story was written for personal amusement.
This story is set in an alternate history universe. Unhistorical persons, technologies or events should be objects of merriment rather than cause for alarm.
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"Yea, though I walk though the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing."
Sign over the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base, Kadena, Japan.
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Chapter 1
Over The Himalayas
Astrid Hofferson scanned the horizon – a hazy pale blue line of thick soupy air, dwarfed utterly by the expanse of purple stratosphere and vault of night-black space that stretched above and beyond it. Without blinking an eye, she went into a wide turn, and shifted her gaze downward. 45,000 feet – fifteen kilometers! - below her beckoned the Himalayas, Roof of the World, an endless expanse of craggy, snowcapped peaks, rocky mountain passes, and dirty white glaciers.
She flinched as the harsh sunlight shone directly into her cockpit, raising her gloved hand to cover her helmet visor. In the distance, she caught a glimpse of her wingman, 2,000 feet below her.
Astrid checked her radar again. Nada. Zilch. "Longhouse, this is Nadder 1. I have lost contact with the bogies; repeat, I have no visual or radar contact."
"Nadder 1, this is Longhouse. They're right under you. Bogeys are at 15,000 feet and descending, heading due north at 0.7 mach… and… they're off our scopes. Prepare to go down."
Astrid cursed. Designed to intercept supersonic high-altitude bombers, the F-106A Delta Dart was a creature of the stratosphere, a fact which showed in the sleek interceptor's long, thin body, single tall tail, and huge triangle-shaped delta wing.
Unfortunately, the bogeys had hit the deck. The big radar in the large, pointed nose of the F-106, powerful as it was, could not track or engage targets near the horrendous clutter created by radar reflections off the ground. To allow her radar to pick up the bogeys, Astrid needed to catch her targets against a backdrop of empty sky – which meant either going astride or below them.
In the thick muck below, slower but more maneuverable fighters stood a better chance of outfighting Astrid's interceptor. But, even shorn of its high-altitude advantages, the Delta Dart could still be deadly if flown well.
Astrid was one of the best, and she knew it.
Her wingman was another matter. "Lieutenant, hang back and hold at angels 10. Watch my back, and kill 'em if they pop up. I'm going in."
"Got it, Captain. Nadder 2 out. Gonna be chillin at 10,000 feet, doin' overwatch."
"Copy." While Astrid would have preferred a more aggressive two-on-two fight, she was keenly aware of Tuffnut's limitations. Flying defensive was well within Nadder 2's abilities.
Astrid tipped her nose over, and plunged into the rocky crags of the Himalayas, punching through cloud layers as she went.
The F-106 shuddered as it broke the sound barrier, and the thick air seemed to shake her like a leaf. Astrid took a deep breath as the glaciers leapt towards her. "Okay, Stormfly. Hold together, old girl." She pulled hard on the stick, and the F-106 leveled out just under the mountain peaks.
Astrid banked hard to avoid a mountain. Tuffnut hollered on the radio. "Astrid, I see 'em! Your three o'clock high!"
The F-106's nose pitched briefly down, and Astrid got her first glimpse of her foes – a pair of pencil-thin jets with swept-back wings, a steeply raked tail and a sunken nose hiding a huge jet engine. Indian Air Force MiG-21s, flying low at barely 3,000 feet to avoid radar.
Astrid keyed her mic. "Longhouse, bandits sighted. Two MiG-21s, angels 3, 400 knots, 62/51 Bullseye. Getting under them."
Since breaking off diplomatic relations with the Joint Government of the Pacific two years prior, Communist India had become increasingly bellicose regarding the outstanding Pacifican-Indian border disputes. At the behest of Moscow, Indian penetration flights – flown by a mix of Indian pilots and Soviet "instructors" - were now violating Joint Government airspace on a weekly basis, often ranging far beyond the usual Indian claims and flying deep into Tibet and Yunnan.
Astrid gritted her teeth as she awaited the inevitable orders to observe the enemy.
"Hey Cap! Bet you're sorry you voted for Zhou and Eisenhower now, huh?"
"Shut up, you pinko." Astrid seethed. Tuffnut just laughed.
For months, Portland had denied any and all requests to shoot down the intruding flights. What was the point, argued the strategists, of getting involved in a war in dirt-poor South Asia when the real prize – the one dangling before the jaws of a half-dozen Soviet tank armies – was wealthy, populous, and heavily industrialized Western Europe?
The logic was convincing in the faraway capital – it had to have been if the smart people in charge had been convinced - but the state of affairs was still heavily resented by the proud pilots of the JGAF Aerospace Defense Command.
Longhouse – ground control - came back in over the radio. "You are cleared to fire, Nadder 1."
Astrid did a double take."Roger."
Someone in Portland had apparently changed their mind.
Tuffnut almost squealed with excitement. "Cap, you're in range!" Astrid kept an eye on the bandits. While her radar could indeed lock on, Astrid knew the radar could see in a cone much wider than her missiles could reliably hit the maneuvering enemy jets. She needed to get the enemy into her killzone first.
With an eye on the radar, Astrid inched the Dart towards the ground, and Stormfly jigged as Astrid jockeyed for a good launch position. Not this time, you bastards. She turned on the radar, and the set beeped.
"Have tone! Fox one! Fox one!"
A pair of radar-guided AIM-4E Falcon missiles streaked from Astrid's jet towards the nearest MiG – which just sat there, seemingly oblivious to its impending doom.
So, bad radar warning receivers, then.
The two missiles closed the five kilometers in as many seconds, and the first to arrive blew the MiG out of the sky.
No parachute.
Huh. Usually, at least one of the missiles doesn't work properly.
The other MiG immediately performed a sharp roll to the deck, below Astrid's radar horizon. Astrid turned her radar off as it filled with ground clutter, switched to infrared, and was pressed into her seat as she gave chase.
The MiG ducked into a verdant valley, following the huge green wrinkle in the earth as it wound between imposing mountain peaks. Villages, streams, and hills flashed by Astrid's cockpit window at just under the speed of sound.
All of a sudden, the MiG crested a mountain, and the ground below her turned grey and white as Astrid turned to follow.
Astrid's head spun as she tried to reacquire the MiG. If you can't see the enemy, you're dead.
She looked down. There the MiG was, barely a hundred meters above the ground, barreling down the side of the mountain on full afterburner like a crazed skier.
We'll see who crazier. Astrid dove after the MiG.
Astrid held her fire. While her infrared AIM-4G Falcons (basically Falcons with infrared instead of radar seekers) might be able to track the hot afterburner, she (as before) needed to get the bandit into her engagement basket first.
The F-106 and the MiG scraped the tops of mountains, barreled above jagged mountain passes, and soared past glaciers in a mad chase as the MiG fled for safer skies.
"Captain! I've got the bandit on infrared! He's bringing you in a turn-around south! He's heading home! You wanna break off and make another run?" Tuffnut's was frantic.
Astrid kept her eyes on the MiG. "No. We're keeping up the pressure and bleeding him dry."
Fighter combat was all about energy management. In a fight, the higher and/or faster fighter had more energy to dive, turn, and run, allowing it to evade, disengage or engage at will - maneuvers which bled energy. By contrast, the lower, slower fighter, while sometimes capable of making tighter turns, was… more or less a sitting duck where missiles or gun passes were concerned. The goal of a fighter pilot was to set up a fight so that he or she preserved his/her own energy while exhausting the enemy's, allowing high-energy missile shots or easy gun runs to be made against a target without enough energy left to dodge.
Astrid kept one eye on her airspeed, and another on the MiG's. She was closing on the bastard… three klicks, and the liquid-nitrogen chilled infrared seekers of the AIM-4G Falcon missiles were nice and cool.
The MiG popped right in front of her infrared camera. On instinct, Astrid jammed hard on the trigger. "Fox two! Fox two!" One missile popped from Stormfly… and corkscrewed to the valley floor, courtesy of a malfunctioning rocket motor.
The other Falcon burned towards the MiG… which promptly turned and rolled away. The missile tried valiantly to follow – but the enemy pilot had timed his turn beautifully, and the missile simply failed to keep up with the turn, streaking uselessly past the MiG.
Astrid swore as Stormfly followed the MiG's turn into another canyon, bleeding energy in the process. Out of missiles time to disengage. The F-106 might have had better thrust than the MiG gun kills aren't worth it, but she was getting a little too slow for…
"Captain, he's leading you into a big gorge and…"
The MiG made a hard turn ahead of a mountain, and Astrid swore as she was forced to pull up – losing even more energy. In an instant, she was slow, high, and vulnerable. And the MiG was behind her.
Astrid put Stormfly into a huge, tilted vertical loop (a wingover), and as she approached the top – the apogee – of her loop, snapped her head back to track the white plume of death headed right for me oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap …
She hit apogee. Astrid's world went half-dark as blood rushed from her head, stymied only by the high-pressure pants of her g-suit. Stormfly seemed to hang in the air, too slow, too slow, her airspeed mortgaged for altitude by gravity, that indifferent bastard…
Now or never.
She yanked hard on the stick and rolled. Outside her window, the heatseeker rolled past her, her airspeed picked up as she shed altitude, and she began to pull out of her loop yes yes yes yes yes wait…
…and she yanked hard on the stick again, just in time to avoid a second heat-seeking missile. She wasn't the only one who could salvo-launch unreliable missiles.
Astrid completed her loop-de-loop, and she leveled off so close to the ground she could see individual boulders being carried along the glacier.
The MiG was still burning for home. But having lost energy in multiple desperate acrobatic maneuvers, it was low and slow. And, underpowered though the F-106 was in comparison to the newer F-4 Phantom, it still had more horses in it than the MiG.
Astrid kept her afterburner on full as she circled gently back, where the MiG was struggling to stay on the deck. She bore down on the hapless MiG.
Gotcha.
Her radio crackled to life. "Nadder 1, this is Longhouse. Advise disengage; we've got another asset in play."
Astrid frowned. "Screw it." Hands on the stick, she brought the target into her gunsights, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.
She led the target perfectly. The Gatling cannon, whining sharply as its six barrels spun, tore through the MiG, shredding it like tissue paper with explosive shells. She whooped as the MiG, a wing missing, went into a spin… and made a hard turn as her radar warning receiver flared to life.
For a third time in less than a minute, Astrid Hofferson's life froze as she watched a huge missile flare past her F-106… to smash onto the rocks below.
She pitched her nose up to a clear blue sky, and turned her radar on before she knew what she was doing.
A tiny dot, 70,000 feet above her, zipped past her display in less than thirty seconds.
Astrid thanked whichever egghead engineer had ever invented the IFF box.
"Cap! Did you see that?! Holy shit that was impressive! It came out of frickkin' nowhere!"
Holy crap I almost died back there how could I have been so stupid.
"Oh, and Cap? Does this mean we can use our guns next time?"
Astrid shook her head vigorously as she climbed back to saner altitudes. "No. Most of you can't shoot for crap – and you'll get yourself killed trying to score gun kills. Unless you aced the gun course, stick to missiles." Awe crept into her voice. "Although, by the looks of things, we aren't going to be prime-time for much longer."
The Blackbird had arrived at the Himalayas.
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Author's note:
Real world: In 1963, the prototype YF-12A Blackbird, an interceptor cousin of the SR-71, began flight testing. Possessing a stupendous combat radius of 2,400 kilometers and capable of similar performance as the SR-71, the F-12B (the production version of the experimental YF-12) would have been a formidable interceptor had it entered service. Three bases with F-12Bs would have been able to effectively defend all of North America from Soviet nuclear bombers. Contrary to popular belief, the YF-12 program was intended to produce actual warplanes, and was not a mere cover for the SR-71 spyplane. Orders were in fact placed for 93 aircraft, but the program was cancelled (when the production tooling was ordered destroyed by Robert McNamara, bypassing Congress) amidst controversy regarding the F-12B's cost-effectiveness.