Author's note: The following chapter was written in collaboration with my friend Firebrand. We hope you enjoy it!
The flight to Yellowstone was annoyingly long.
She had flown longer to missions before, but there was something, and she couldn't put her finger on what, that was uniquely annoying about this flight.
"Are we there yet?" A suavely irritating man spoke over the comms. "Are we there yet?"
Jackal's voice crackled over the radio. "Polaris 1, Polaris 3 requesting permission to speak freely."
BASH responded quickly. "Permission granted. Go ahead, Jackal."
"Dude," Jackal said, irate. "You're our goddamn AWACS. You of all people should know if we're there."
"...Point taken, Captain."
IRIS sighed. At least the pestering was better than storytime.
"We've still got a ways to go," Bluejay droned in that silky-smooth 'I'm an AWACS operator!' voice. "The midair refuel was our halfway point. We're about three-quarters there. We've got plenty of miles left to go… So, how about a story from your ol' buddy Bluejay?"
The comms lit up with a flurry of groans.
"So, right, I was running from the cops in Presidia- this was after the fishing thing, by the way..."
As the ground below them turned to charred rock and the orange-toned glow of lava lit up the sky in the distance, Bluejay was only just finishing his story. "...And I was standing there in court, right, defending myself, all lawyer-like. Suit and tie and everything."
"Do you even own a suit, Bluejay?" Dagger raised an eyebrow.
"...Okay, fine. One of those suit and tie t-shirts. Anyway," he paused, and IRIS took the time to snicker to herself. Now that, she thought, I'd pay to see.
"You know most people who defend themselves go to prison, right?" Zip sighed. "Bluejay, you dumbass."
"...You remember where I was before the CIF picked me up, right? In the good ol' slammer. Bluejay. A jailbird. What a travesty that was. So they were prosecuting me on drug trafficking charges, because they couldn't get me for the shrimp boat thing-"
IRIS decided to join in. "Yeah. Because the fishing story never happened, Bluejay."
"Did too!" The AWACS answered in an indignant tone. "But they made up these drug trafficking charges that were like, totally untrue, right? And I fought them off! All, like, 'Objection!' and all that legal shit."
"So why did you get thrown into prison?" Burn sounded skeptical.
"...Turns out you actually gotta have a grounds for objecti- hold on, we're here. Time to cut the chatter, sorry y'all."
The squadron sighed in relief.
"Alright, Cygnus Squadron, you'll be going in first. Head for the hillside airfield and begin reconnaissance mission. Get some good pictures- really make some memories, guys." The AWACS turned his attention to the other squadron. "Polaris, break and establish a perimeter CAP around the target site. Doesn't look like there's any fighters scrambling, so looks like you'll be sitting on your hands today."
"You wanna tell me I sat through your yakkin' and I don't even get a fight, Bluejay?" Dagger grumbled.
"Looks like it," BASH said. "No use complaining. No bandits means no losses."
"Well, except to SAMs-"
"Can it, Zip. Don't jinx us."
"If anybody jinxed us," Zip fired back, "It was you, Major. No bandits? Any second now, one of them'll come outta nowhere in some crazy Icarus Armories plane and blast us all to bits."
The Major huffed.
"Polaris, be advised," The AWACS gave the following silence a rude interruption. "She jinxed ya. Bogeys, launching from… Wait, am I getting this right? What the hell?"
"AWACS Bluejay, Polaris 1. Repeat your last."
"Polaris, they're launching from inside the hillside about five miles south." Bluejay shook his head. "Tally four bogeys, F/C-16s all. They've been using the maintenance tunnels from the cordium refinery to hide alert fighters, dammit!"
No wonder, then, that the airfield had seemed so ramshackle, barely fit for half a squadron to belly-land on; the Federation squadrons were operating out of the camouflage-netted tunnels in the hillsides far below, concealed from thermals until their igniting engines lit like a sudden swarm of fireflies on sensors.
It was as if in the space of a moment, the rolling, barren ground had spurred itself into life, as the first white-clouded contrails cut across the sky in the distance.
"ALCON, ALCON, reading missile locks from ground-based defenses and interceptors- tally six F/C-16 now. Break, break!" Bluejay shouted over comms. "And dammit Tom, where's my tape deck! You know I can't focus without music. Yeah, the tape marked PW! That good sh-" The AWACS realized his talk button was held down, and let it go.
What's the airfield for, then? The thought hung in IRIS' mind as she punched the stick sideways, rolling to break off and engage the inbound fighters. The Tomcats from Cygnus Squadron broke their formation, too.
"Polaris 1, Cygnus 1." A voice came over the radio. "We're beginning our bombing runs to neutralize enemy SAMs and triple-A. We're trusting you to keep those Vipers off our ass, alright? Good hunting."
The Major responded in a brisk, professional tone. "Cygnus 1, Polaris 1. Understood. Good hunting."
The distant contrails seemed so ineffectual at this range- as if one could reach out of the cockpit with a hand and brush them away, specks of white against the blue. Then, the AWACS' words were proved prophetic; six contrails split into eighteen, the smaller sparks spinning by the evading Tomcats as if their seeker warheads were still hunting for prey. All missed, one slipping close enough to the cockpit of a diving aircraft that its motor, still furiously burning, glowed like a sun before falling away and impacting into the roughened ground below.
One star blinked out to be replaced by another, and the Vipers were still coming. The ephemeral suddenly became real, each of the six true trails now spear-tipped to the naked eye by a fighter in dusky Federation camouflage.
IRIS had a realization. "Bluejay, Polaris 6. I've got an idea."
"Copy, Polaris 6. Go ahead."
"My plane's radio's still programmed with the Feddie encryption codes. Think we could listen in, pipe it through?"
"Damn, I didn't think of that. Go ahead, Spook. Let's do some listenin-in'. Listenin'? Listenin' in? Eh, you get the idea."
"The Spook's eavesdropping," Burn mused. "Who woulda' guessed."
"Cut the chatter, Polaris 5. If I want to hear you run your mouth I can any time. I care about what the Feds got to say." Bluejay replied.
The radio crackled, passing through the Federation comms on a second channel.
At first, the comms were only a low hiss of static echoing over the radio, then solidified into a young man's calm voice a moment later. "Ground, this is Morpho; we're engaging Cascadian forces now. No mercenary IFFs present. Is Gold on station?"
"Negative, Morpho Three. Continue engagement against Cascadian attackers; ignore the escorts. Will update on the sun."
"Confirm all, Ground."
The intercept formation suddenly narrowed - where it had split off, going wide to avoid MLAA locks and tie Polaris up in a half-dozen individual dogfights, now the Federation pilots moved with elegant skill into a single spearhead like the spread fingers of one hand closing into a clenched fist, as if they were aiming to punch straight through the Cascadians. Thermals flared suffocatingly bright as the Vipers, too close by half, kicked their afterburners on and accelerated.
The pilots of Polaris converged on the F/C-16s, almost to say, ignore us at your own risk. "Polaris, break and find a partner, we're running man-to-man today."
The pilots acknowledged the order.
"Polaris 6, engaging." IRIS picked the F/C-16 at the right edge of the formation, thumbing the selector switch to her dogfighting missiles, not that she intended to use them. Just in case.
The heatseeker growled as it found its target, the single engine of the Viper standing out against the background heat like a glowstick in a nightclub. She ignored it, the ravenous machine hungry to kill. No sense wasting it, she thought. Guns should do just fine.
The rest of the squadron seemed to have the same idea. She squeezed off a burst of the Hornet's Vulcan and watched as smoke trailed from the Viper off her nose. It broke off not of its own accord, losing control as an explosion rocked her view.
Her plane's missile alert system went wild. What? I thought Cygnus was supposed to be handling those? As she checked her radar, she realized that there were two planes missing from the eight-Tomcat flight. Oh. She pulled on the stick, dumping flares and chaff at predetermined intervals, and prayed to God the SAMs would take the bait.
The Federation ground defenses had chosen to take advantage of how occupied the escorts were; where the orange-phosphor tracers of AA guns had clawed the skies towards Cygnus as if aping the white contrails of the Fed interceptors, now their rounds burst into clouds of filthy shrapnel and smoke amongst Polaris's formation. Missile alerts whined high and shrill in IRIS' ears and across the radio as surface-to-air missiles fired in serried waves directly into the furball, as if forming a tunnel for the interceptors of Morpho Squadron to race through on their way towards their real targets; IRIS' countermeasures bought her breathing room, but the Cascadians suddenly had a choice to make between diving into the shroud of detonations and pre-set locks to catch the Federation fighters or trying to buy themselves more time.
Below, as that first Federation missile had impacted against the cordium-stained ground in a blossom of orange fire, so did one of the missing Tomcats. A Cascadian-marked wing spun away in slow motion, shedding fragments of skin, under one of the F/C-16s, as the interceptor pulled hard up and out of the furball towards Cygnus.
The other fighters of the squadron evaded and dove every which way, adding another shade of orange to the burnt auburn sky as they dumped flares in their wake. IRIS was too busy feeling her stomach shove itself into her lungs as she evaded to notice. Her missile warning died for a brief second, and she checked the radar. Let Cygnus handle the defenses, huh? she mused. Not actually all that reassuring when there's missiles on ya. There were only three more Vipers, it seemed. Unless one had magically gained stealth properties. With Icarus' toys, you never know.
A quick visual scan as she turned for a second run on the Vipers confirmed that, unless Icarus had developed invisibility fields as well, only half of the Viper squadron- Morpho, right? was still flying. A quick swoop in from Zip's Sk.27 further thinned the herd, and Jackal and Dagger's F/C-15s made quick work of the rest. Tracer fire ripped across Dagger's aft, and a glancing round tore a hole out of the tailfin.
"Bluejay, Polaris 4, I'm hit- Nothing critical, for now." Dagger's voice didn't convey the same confidence her words did. "I don't think I'll be turning sharp for a while, unless I'm looking for uncontrollable spin."
"Copy, Polaris 4. Good news, though. Scopes are clear from the air. Cygnus is finishing off the last of the SAMs now. And I heard they got some very nice snapshots. Might have to post 'em to the CIF socials."
As the last enemy contacts blinked off radar, the squadrons breathed a collective sigh of relief and began to talk amongst themselves. "How about that?" Burn smirked. "Major, you didn't get your mark. I made ace today."
The radio crackled. "Hold on," Bluejay said. "That's not our frequency… that's the intercept. ALCON, cut the chatter! Cut the chatter!" The CIF pilots went silent.
"Morpho Seven through Twelve, hold off on launch."
The roar of warming jet engines cut through the recipient's words, but they were still clear enough to understand through the confusion in tone and background— "Say again, Ground? Hold on launch?"
"Hold on launch. The sun is rising."
"Shit!" Bluejay shouted. "Five new contacts, approaching fast from the east! Polaris Squadron, engage!"