For those who are just joining us: The following is a continuation of my fanfic The Silver Bird. In summary, Dr Malone develops a means of travelling between worlds. Aided and abetted by a guy John Parry once rescued from almost certain death, a navy pilot by the name of David Marshall, she designs an aircraft to carry the Malone Dimensional Transition Drive: the Aurora Borealis. The first time they test this remarkable aircraft, our intrepid explorers -Will, Mary, Elaine Parry and Dave- are chased through Oxford by armed police [it practically goes without saying that they bump into Lyra along the way], cause a train wreck and get mixed up in an all-out war against the Magisterium. There is also a brief reapearance by Asriel, though the question of how he survived the abyss is neatly sidestepped by the author when he gets shot within three paragraphs of turning up.
We resume our tale some ten years post facto, with our heroes about to be plunged into their most desperate battle yeat...
"Your stepfather has a weirder imagination than my dad!" Flight Lt Jack McAllister laughed. His colleague, 'Mark Ransom', smiled faintly to himself. //If only you knew, Jack...//
"That's saying something," he said aloud. Jack was the son of the well-known science fiction/thriller/comedy writer Adam Samson, whose offbeat, cynical sense of humour was quite popular in certain circles. He claimed that the major influences on his style were Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin.
Jack exited Internet Explorer and shut down the Quick Reaction Alert messroom's only PC. "Knows his aircraft tech, though. Those diagrams look so convincing you could practically build the plane. He's ex-Fleet Air Arm too, so I suppose he should." 'Mark' smiled faintly again. "I'm not so sure about the parallel universe stuff though; it sounds a bit Isaac Asimov meets Gene Rodenberry, really."
"Yeah, that it does." //Even after I've seen it work, I might add, but I won't because the weather around Broadmoor at this time of year isn't very good.//
'Mark' headed for the coffee machine, and poured his third cup in as many hours. Sitting around waiting for enemy forces to attack you was dull enough in wartime -he'd done quite a lot of it during Argentina's second shot at retaking the Falkland islands- but in peacetime it was soul-rendingly, nut-crushingly boring beyond the limits of the English language to express; even Welsh probably didn't have a good enough word. Boredom encouraged sleep, and he wasn't allowed to do that until he was relieved in another three hours.
There were two crews each for three aircraft, working in six-on, six-off shifts on QRA, on a rota system. Of the four squadrons of fighters embarked on the nuclear carrier HMS Cunningham, only one was of F35 Joint Strike Fighters. Britain's version was two-seat rather than single for reasons that MoD no doubt felt good, and were qualified for some surface attack weapons, but were mostly used for the air defence of the carrier itself. The remaining three squadrons operated the Sea Typhoon, the naval version of the Eurofighter. The F22 proved to be too expensive to purchase in large quantities, so the Eurofighter was adapted to the task of all purpose carrier-borne fighter. It worked fine, with JSFs equipped with long-range missiles acting as distant cover whilst the Typhoons engaged surface targets, and doing a more than adequate job of dispatching any hostile aircraft the JSFs had missed. Only one Typhoon, armed mostly with anti-radar and other air to surface weaponry, was considered necessary for QRA.
The Typhoon's pilot was sitting on the other side of the room, reading a paperback romance; boredom will do that to a person. 'Elisabeth Silverton' was a well-regarded pilot, with eight sorties and three aerial kills to her name. Mark and she were generally considered the best two pilots in the group. That they were romantically linked was an open secret (officially such things are dead against the rules), and it was rumoured that the captain was keen for it to continue; "Think what a pilot their combined genes ould produce!" he had allegedly remarked.
'Mark' ran a hand through his dark brown hair, and reflected that it needed cutting. He'd been holding off until they were next in port -he'd had some bad experiences with the rating detailed to act as the ship's barber- but sooner or later the new and rather keen XO would notice and lecture him about it, even though the officious little tit knew perfectly well that the whole ship laughed at him behind his back every time he did.
'Lizzie' never had that problem, he thought to himself. The XO was usually too busy looking at her cleavage to notice her hairstyle. //Well, Lt. Commander Thompson, all you can do is look. I get to be with the witty, intelligent woman you don't realise that Lyra is- not to mention the sex!//
'Lizzie' put down the book in frustration. "I picked it up out of desperation because I was bored, but I'm still bored after I've read the first three chapters," she complained.
"Yeah," 'Mark' admitted. "I'd watch one of Dave's Airwolf videos right now!"
"Come on, it's not THAT bad," Jack replied. "Hey! Leave the bloody coffee alone, will you? Much more and you won't need a bloody plane to get off the ground if the alert goes off. It's not healthy, mate."
"Hasn't killed me yet," 'Mark' snorted, but he left the machine alone. His bladder wasn't up to it, anyway.
He glared at Jack when he himself got one. "Hypocrite."
"I've had two cups of coffee in the last twenty four hours, you've had about twelve. Moderation in all things, that's the way!"
The remaining two flight crew wandered in from the small kitchenette (or is it galleyette at sea?), where they had been making sandwiches. Mitch Dawson was a tall, heavyset black man with the build of a rugby player. He was patient, thoughtful and taciturn, which along with his build led some people to think that he was a bit slow. Right up until he did better than all other viewers and most of the contestants on University Challenge from his armchair, that is. Carrie-Ann Hobson was Welsh, with flame-red hair and a matching temper. Jack had been trying without success to get off with her for some time now.
'Mark' bit into his rather lacklustre cheese roll without great enthusiasm; they'd run out of Branston again, and he was heartily sick of the selection of possible sandwich fillings on offer in any case. He was almost glad of the sudden distraction offered by a sudden booming explosion and a clattering sound, as of hundreds of pieces of metal hitting the sides of the ship. It was a sond with which he had become intimately familiar in the South Atlantic. Something quite large had just exploded outside.
"What in God's name-?" Jack tailed off as the tannoy sounded.
"All hands man your battle stations, all hands man your battle stations!" They stared at each other in horror.
"Let's go!" 'Mark' yelled, snapping out of it. Grabbing their helmets and frantically struggling into open-water survival suits, they made for the stairs to the flight deck.
The JSFs were parked close to the superstructure, with a single Typhoon nearby. They pelted for them. 'Mark's' plane captain checked that they were secure, and began closing the canopy. "What's going on?" Mitch asked him. The man simply shrugged helplessly.
"Christ knows!" he replied.
"All QRA aircraft, immediate launch!" the controller ordered. 'Mark' throttled up and swivelled the engine nozzle downwards, and the small fighter rose like a kestrel on a thermal. He glanced over to the launch catapault, wincing as the huge Typhoon was flung into the air. It dipped below the flight deck but came up, wobbling in a way that still made him nervous. //I'll never get used to that, never!//
"Okay," he said to himself. "Does anybody see what just blew up one of our escorts?"
"I've got a visual on a dozen or so aircraft, no IFF squack but their markings say they're land-based Typhoons. Wait a second..." Jack broke off as alarms began to go off in all three cockpits. "Jesus Christ, they just lit us up. They're firing on us!"
All three aircraft zigzagged wildly, narrowly avoiding the missiles. "Inter-service rivalry is REALLY geting out of hand, don't you think, skipper?"
"Not funny, Jack!" 'Mark' replied. He ducked as another missile hit the carrier amidships, sending a tremendous sheet of flame skywards. Debris pinged off his canopy.
"Here they come!" 'Lizzie' yelled. The two JSF pilots swung around to engage. The Typhoon soon joined them.
It's hard to describe the next few seconds for Lyra and Will. Pilot and machine were as one, instinct and reflex taking control and taking the mind beyond the limits of the body. Two minds acted without thought, dodging and twisting to avoid enemy fire one moment, then stabbing out and plucking an adversary from the sky the next.
Jack's jaw dropped as his wingman executed a full loop and rained cannon fire on a fleeing RAF aircraft, then loosed a Sidewinder that shattered another. The sole Navy Typhoon suddenly pulled up, airbrakes deploying, and shot up its pursuer as it overshot.
"I've never seen the like in all my life!" Carrie-Anne said wonderingly. "They're like, like..." words failed her. Jack could only nod in mute agreement.
//Luke Skywalker would be proud of OH BLOODY HELL!// An enemy aircraft had finally got lucky and blasted 'Lizzie's' right engine. It instantly burst into flames, and the aircraft began to lose height.
"Bail out, Lizzie! Eject!" 'Mark' yelled at her.
"What a great idea!" she replied testily, and pulled the handle. "SHIIIIT!"
Ejection is not fun. First your canopy blows off with an earsplitting bang as the carefully placed explosives detonate uncomfortably close to your body -it is possible in most fighters to reach out and touch both sides of the canopy- and for a split second you are exposed to the full force of the wind; stick your head out the window of a TGV at full speed if you want to both discover what this feels like and earn a Darwin Award for self-elimination by extreme idiocy. Then you are hurled bodily from the aircraft by a small rocket motor six inches from your arse, fall for a short while, and are suddenly dragged to a near-halt by your parachute- this last is especially uncomfortable if one possesses testicles. Then, if you are exceptionally unlucky -as Lyra was this time around- you get dumped in the sea.
There was a crowded fifteen seconds that Lyra recalled mostly as a jumbled haze of spray, cold and that horrible squeaky noise that comes from trying to scramble over wet rubber, which set her teeth on edge. She lay in the bottom of the self-inflating survival raft, breathing deeply and cursing under her breath.
"Just when QRA had got as depressing as it possibly could, life dumps something worse on me," she groaned. "Is my karma really this bad?" Her life had flashed before her eyes when she'd pulled the eject handle, and she could have done without some of it being brought back to her. Most of the bits surrounding St Sophia's, for example. //Why couldn't I flash back to my 21st birthday? Or when Will and I borrowed Dave's motorbike and headed off into the Lake District for the weekend?//
Idly, she wondered why the RAF had apparently decided to turn against the Navy. Some sort of coup? Well, it was possible. The broadsheets had run a number of panic-stricken articles about BNP infiltration of the Forces recently, but she hadn't taken them seriously.
Then she saw a familiar silhouette appearing on the horizon. "Nice timing, Dave," she said to herself dryly, pulling the distress beacon from her gear.
She had a nasty feeling that this was going to be a very, very long week.
We resume our tale some ten years post facto, with our heroes about to be plunged into their most desperate battle yeat...
"Your stepfather has a weirder imagination than my dad!" Flight Lt Jack McAllister laughed. His colleague, 'Mark Ransom', smiled faintly to himself. //If only you knew, Jack...//
"That's saying something," he said aloud. Jack was the son of the well-known science fiction/thriller/comedy writer Adam Samson, whose offbeat, cynical sense of humour was quite popular in certain circles. He claimed that the major influences on his style were Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin.
Jack exited Internet Explorer and shut down the Quick Reaction Alert messroom's only PC. "Knows his aircraft tech, though. Those diagrams look so convincing you could practically build the plane. He's ex-Fleet Air Arm too, so I suppose he should." 'Mark' smiled faintly again. "I'm not so sure about the parallel universe stuff though; it sounds a bit Isaac Asimov meets Gene Rodenberry, really."
"Yeah, that it does." //Even after I've seen it work, I might add, but I won't because the weather around Broadmoor at this time of year isn't very good.//
'Mark' headed for the coffee machine, and poured his third cup in as many hours. Sitting around waiting for enemy forces to attack you was dull enough in wartime -he'd done quite a lot of it during Argentina's second shot at retaking the Falkland islands- but in peacetime it was soul-rendingly, nut-crushingly boring beyond the limits of the English language to express; even Welsh probably didn't have a good enough word. Boredom encouraged sleep, and he wasn't allowed to do that until he was relieved in another three hours.
There were two crews each for three aircraft, working in six-on, six-off shifts on QRA, on a rota system. Of the four squadrons of fighters embarked on the nuclear carrier HMS Cunningham, only one was of F35 Joint Strike Fighters. Britain's version was two-seat rather than single for reasons that MoD no doubt felt good, and were qualified for some surface attack weapons, but were mostly used for the air defence of the carrier itself. The remaining three squadrons operated the Sea Typhoon, the naval version of the Eurofighter. The F22 proved to be too expensive to purchase in large quantities, so the Eurofighter was adapted to the task of all purpose carrier-borne fighter. It worked fine, with JSFs equipped with long-range missiles acting as distant cover whilst the Typhoons engaged surface targets, and doing a more than adequate job of dispatching any hostile aircraft the JSFs had missed. Only one Typhoon, armed mostly with anti-radar and other air to surface weaponry, was considered necessary for QRA.
The Typhoon's pilot was sitting on the other side of the room, reading a paperback romance; boredom will do that to a person. 'Elisabeth Silverton' was a well-regarded pilot, with eight sorties and three aerial kills to her name. Mark and she were generally considered the best two pilots in the group. That they were romantically linked was an open secret (officially such things are dead against the rules), and it was rumoured that the captain was keen for it to continue; "Think what a pilot their combined genes ould produce!" he had allegedly remarked.
'Mark' ran a hand through his dark brown hair, and reflected that it needed cutting. He'd been holding off until they were next in port -he'd had some bad experiences with the rating detailed to act as the ship's barber- but sooner or later the new and rather keen XO would notice and lecture him about it, even though the officious little tit knew perfectly well that the whole ship laughed at him behind his back every time he did.
'Lizzie' never had that problem, he thought to himself. The XO was usually too busy looking at her cleavage to notice her hairstyle. //Well, Lt. Commander Thompson, all you can do is look. I get to be with the witty, intelligent woman you don't realise that Lyra is- not to mention the sex!//
'Lizzie' put down the book in frustration. "I picked it up out of desperation because I was bored, but I'm still bored after I've read the first three chapters," she complained.
"Yeah," 'Mark' admitted. "I'd watch one of Dave's Airwolf videos right now!"
"Come on, it's not THAT bad," Jack replied. "Hey! Leave the bloody coffee alone, will you? Much more and you won't need a bloody plane to get off the ground if the alert goes off. It's not healthy, mate."
"Hasn't killed me yet," 'Mark' snorted, but he left the machine alone. His bladder wasn't up to it, anyway.
He glared at Jack when he himself got one. "Hypocrite."
"I've had two cups of coffee in the last twenty four hours, you've had about twelve. Moderation in all things, that's the way!"
The remaining two flight crew wandered in from the small kitchenette (or is it galleyette at sea?), where they had been making sandwiches. Mitch Dawson was a tall, heavyset black man with the build of a rugby player. He was patient, thoughtful and taciturn, which along with his build led some people to think that he was a bit slow. Right up until he did better than all other viewers and most of the contestants on University Challenge from his armchair, that is. Carrie-Ann Hobson was Welsh, with flame-red hair and a matching temper. Jack had been trying without success to get off with her for some time now.
'Mark' bit into his rather lacklustre cheese roll without great enthusiasm; they'd run out of Branston again, and he was heartily sick of the selection of possible sandwich fillings on offer in any case. He was almost glad of the sudden distraction offered by a sudden booming explosion and a clattering sound, as of hundreds of pieces of metal hitting the sides of the ship. It was a sond with which he had become intimately familiar in the South Atlantic. Something quite large had just exploded outside.
"What in God's name-?" Jack tailed off as the tannoy sounded.
"All hands man your battle stations, all hands man your battle stations!" They stared at each other in horror.
"Let's go!" 'Mark' yelled, snapping out of it. Grabbing their helmets and frantically struggling into open-water survival suits, they made for the stairs to the flight deck.
The JSFs were parked close to the superstructure, with a single Typhoon nearby. They pelted for them. 'Mark's' plane captain checked that they were secure, and began closing the canopy. "What's going on?" Mitch asked him. The man simply shrugged helplessly.
"Christ knows!" he replied.
"All QRA aircraft, immediate launch!" the controller ordered. 'Mark' throttled up and swivelled the engine nozzle downwards, and the small fighter rose like a kestrel on a thermal. He glanced over to the launch catapault, wincing as the huge Typhoon was flung into the air. It dipped below the flight deck but came up, wobbling in a way that still made him nervous. //I'll never get used to that, never!//
"Okay," he said to himself. "Does anybody see what just blew up one of our escorts?"
"I've got a visual on a dozen or so aircraft, no IFF squack but their markings say they're land-based Typhoons. Wait a second..." Jack broke off as alarms began to go off in all three cockpits. "Jesus Christ, they just lit us up. They're firing on us!"
All three aircraft zigzagged wildly, narrowly avoiding the missiles. "Inter-service rivalry is REALLY geting out of hand, don't you think, skipper?"
"Not funny, Jack!" 'Mark' replied. He ducked as another missile hit the carrier amidships, sending a tremendous sheet of flame skywards. Debris pinged off his canopy.
"Here they come!" 'Lizzie' yelled. The two JSF pilots swung around to engage. The Typhoon soon joined them.
It's hard to describe the next few seconds for Lyra and Will. Pilot and machine were as one, instinct and reflex taking control and taking the mind beyond the limits of the body. Two minds acted without thought, dodging and twisting to avoid enemy fire one moment, then stabbing out and plucking an adversary from the sky the next.
Jack's jaw dropped as his wingman executed a full loop and rained cannon fire on a fleeing RAF aircraft, then loosed a Sidewinder that shattered another. The sole Navy Typhoon suddenly pulled up, airbrakes deploying, and shot up its pursuer as it overshot.
"I've never seen the like in all my life!" Carrie-Anne said wonderingly. "They're like, like..." words failed her. Jack could only nod in mute agreement.
//Luke Skywalker would be proud of OH BLOODY HELL!// An enemy aircraft had finally got lucky and blasted 'Lizzie's' right engine. It instantly burst into flames, and the aircraft began to lose height.
"Bail out, Lizzie! Eject!" 'Mark' yelled at her.
"What a great idea!" she replied testily, and pulled the handle. "SHIIIIT!"
Ejection is not fun. First your canopy blows off with an earsplitting bang as the carefully placed explosives detonate uncomfortably close to your body -it is possible in most fighters to reach out and touch both sides of the canopy- and for a split second you are exposed to the full force of the wind; stick your head out the window of a TGV at full speed if you want to both discover what this feels like and earn a Darwin Award for self-elimination by extreme idiocy. Then you are hurled bodily from the aircraft by a small rocket motor six inches from your arse, fall for a short while, and are suddenly dragged to a near-halt by your parachute- this last is especially uncomfortable if one possesses testicles. Then, if you are exceptionally unlucky -as Lyra was this time around- you get dumped in the sea.
There was a crowded fifteen seconds that Lyra recalled mostly as a jumbled haze of spray, cold and that horrible squeaky noise that comes from trying to scramble over wet rubber, which set her teeth on edge. She lay in the bottom of the self-inflating survival raft, breathing deeply and cursing under her breath.
"Just when QRA had got as depressing as it possibly could, life dumps something worse on me," she groaned. "Is my karma really this bad?" Her life had flashed before her eyes when she'd pulled the eject handle, and she could have done without some of it being brought back to her. Most of the bits surrounding St Sophia's, for example. //Why couldn't I flash back to my 21st birthday? Or when Will and I borrowed Dave's motorbike and headed off into the Lake District for the weekend?//
Idly, she wondered why the RAF had apparently decided to turn against the Navy. Some sort of coup? Well, it was possible. The broadsheets had run a number of panic-stricken articles about BNP infiltration of the Forces recently, but she hadn't taken them seriously.
Then she saw a familiar silhouette appearing on the horizon. "Nice timing, Dave," she said to herself dryly, pulling the distress beacon from her gear.
She had a nasty feeling that this was going to be a very, very long week.