AUTHOR'S NOTES: By far one of the longest chapters I've ever submitted. Hopefully this will make up for all the recent "talky" chapters, because this time, there is a LOT of action. (More notes at the end.)
Schnee Manor North
Zagan, Republic of Poland
2 September 2001
"You want what." Ruby's voice was surprisingly flat, considering she was on her fourth cup of sugared coffee.
Rissa Arashikaze sat at the head of the long dining room table, her hands folded in front of her. "You heard me, Captain Rose. I want the Winter Maiden."
"But…why?" Penny Polendina held up her left wrist, where the Maiden bracelet was fastened. She had arrived a few minutes after Pietro, Maria and Arashikaze—she had been the one who had flown them down in a Blackhawk. "Don't you trust me?" Pietro was frowning, looking daggers at the DDI of the CIA.
"I don't," Arashikaze admitted. "Let me ask you a question, Penny: if you had to use the Maiden on a huge concentration of GRIMM, knowing that Ruby was down in the middle of them, but also knowing that, if you didn't, thousands of people would die…would you?" Penny opened her mouth, but then closed it, unsure of herself. "You hesitate. And that's your problem. Because, Penny, should it become time to use the Winter Maiden, you must not hesitate. Not if Ruby's down there, not even if your own father is down there. You have to use it."
"And you wouldn't hesitate," Pietro half-snarled.
"I wouldn't," Arashikaze said calmly. "Dr. Polendina, it is my job to make those kind of decisions. I have sent good men and women to their deaths, knowing I was sending them to their deaths, to save the lives of thousands and tens of thousands."
"You sound like Ironwood," Blake observed. Weiss had gone to bed, but Blake, now wide awake, stayed up past the dawn with Ruby.
"The general is doing the right thing the wrong way," Arashikaze said. "In the end, he may be right to abandon Poland. But I see no reason to skedaddle across the Oder…or order out some of his best fighter pilots." She tapped the table to make her point. "Ladies and gentleman, our objective is to stop Salem. If that means retreating into Germany to trade space for time, we do it. If it means ordering 'not one step back' here in Poland, we do it. If it means using the Winter Maiden, we do it. If I have to go behind Ironwood's back to talk to you, Captain Rose, or you, Captain Belladonna, then I do that. It means I have to ignore General Ironwood's stubborness and honor before reason, and I have to ignore your boneheaded, naïve idealism, Captain Rose. I have to get the job done." She tapped the table again, harder this time.
Ruby didn't like being called boneheaded or naïve, but stalking out of the room or taking a swing at Arashikaze wasn't going to help matters. "Okay, Miss Arashikaze, what about a counter-proposal?"
"I'm listening."
"You say our objective is to stop Salem. Killing her would do that." Ruby outlined her plan to use the GRIMM control signals to backtrack to Salem's headquarters, then destroying it. "We could certainly use the Maiden for that…but to be honest, and to risk what is left of my career…"
"We don't trust you either," Blake finished.
Arashikaze laughed. "Good. You're learning." She leaned back in the chair and was quiet for a few minutes. "It's not a bad idea. I have some RC-12K Guardrails that could do the work."
"They would never survive." Maria had been silent to this point, but now she spoke up. "Those are King Airs. Turboprops. GRIMM would eat them up."
"I'm quite aware of what they are," Arashikaze said frostily. "So your plan is to convert Miss Schnee's Gulfstream into an ELINT bird. That would take some time." She nodded. "It will take much less time if I help."
"And you want the Winter Maiden in exchange," Maria told her.
"Yes, but I'll do the modification anyway. I have a team in the UK that could be here in a few hours. If we can find Salem, I don't think it will take much convincing on my part for Miss Polendina to use the Maiden, will it?" Penny shook her head. "Good. I'll order my team here immediately. It should take about twelve hours to install the equipment."
Ruby and Blake looked at each other, stunned at how fast they had convinced Arashikaze to go along with the plan. "You're serious about this," Ruby said, the disbelief in her voice.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Arashikaze asked.
Grins broke out around the table. The CIA woman, however, was not wearing one. "Now that your problem is solved, Captain Rose, how do you propose getting Salem and the GRIMM to cooperate? GRIMM control signals for ground units are either preprogrammed or passed through several ground stations, which could be easily spoofed or lost in background noise for ELINT equipment. We learned that from the Nuckalevee you people destroyed on Sakhalin. Salem's not stupid; she must assume we would figure this out. Air GRIMM, on the other hand, we can assume, also are either preprogrammed, or use a line of sight controller—unless Salem is bouncing the signal off satellites by piggybacking on ours; we'd know it if she'd launched any. But aerial GRIMM would be much easier to intercept and backtrack."
"Why wasn't this thought of before?" Maria wanted to know. "All these years, Rissa, and we're just now thinking about it?"
"Don't you think we tried?" Arashikaze shot back. "My God, Maria, part of the reason I sent Summer Rose out was an attempt to backtrack the signals we had intercepted. And she wasn't the only one who disappeared over Russia, trying to find Salem." She glanced at Ruby. "Anyhow, that's none of your business, 'GRIMM Reaper.'" She said the words ironically. "So you need to get aerial GRIMM to start some trouble, the closer the better."
Ruby was about to volunteer, but it was Penny who spoke. "I'll go."
"Penny, no!" Pietro protested.
"I have to do this, Dad," Penny countered, without raising her voice. "If I go up, I can act as bait. They know I have the Winter Maiden. They know I fly the only B-1 in Europe. They'll send something up."
"Please don't," Pietro pleaded. He began to break down. "Not my little girl. Please, God, not again."
"Dad, there's a lot of other little girls who I might save by doing this. And I don't have a death wish or anything. I can defend myself, you know." Penny gave a reassuring smile and put a hand on her father's shoulder.
"And we'll escort you," Ruby added.
"Then I'm going to be on that Gulfstream," Pietro said, his voice hard. "Don't argue with me, Arashikaze! I know that equipment as well as anyone."
Arashikaze put up her hands. "All right, all right. Honestly, you're a much better choice than anyone I have at the moment." She looked at Maria sourly. "And I suppose you'll want to tag along."
Maria's grin got wider. "You bet your ass. I'll be copilot."
"Great, a half-blind copilot. I hope you don't end up in Sweden or something." Arashikaze gave another nod. "Very well. We modify the Gulfstream, and do this thing. I'll monitor from a ground station in Berlin-a place called the Summer Palace. It has the right equipment, but you'll need to be fairly high to transmit so the ground station can receive the transmission. The installation of the equipment will be done in 12 hours." She gave them a single nod. "Mission time will later today, if possible. All of you need to get some sleep—as soon as you have, I want you back on that Gulfstream and back at Swidwin. I can convince Robyn Hill to let my people on base, especially after what happened."
"Speaking of that," Ruby said, "what about Oscar?" She'd been wanting to ask from the moment Arashikaze had walked in the door.
"I heard about that." The short woman looked down. "It's obvious that Salem wants him so she can get the activation keys for JINN. We must destroy it when we destroy Salem—which is why I want to use the Maiden—"
"No!" Ruby shrilled. "You're going to kill him!"
"Yes, and the sooner the better, before he breaks," Arashikaze snapped. "I told you, Ruby Rose, I do not care about one man's life! I care about the tens of thousands, even millions, he will endanger when—not if—he breaks down and tells her everything. I'm sorry, but that's how it is."
"You unbelievable bitch!" Ruby shouted. She would have lunged across the table, if Blake hadn't grabbed her.
"Yes, I am!" Arashikaze agreed. "That is my job, Captain Rose, and I have to make that call because people like you won't!" Blake managed to get Ruby back in her seat. "I take no pleasure in it." Ruby buried her face in her hands as Blake hugged her.
"What about a rescue mission?" Maria said into the silence.
"If I knew where Salem was to launch a rescue mission," Arashikaze pointed out, "I wouldn't need the ELINT."
"Try this on for size." Maria leaned forward. "We find out where the Head Bitch of the Universe lives currently. We send in a rescue team, try to get Oscar out. If it works, great. If it fails, then we blast them with the Maiden." Ruby's head came up, her eyes puffy, in shock at Maria's words. "Better by the hand that loves him, Ruby," Maria said sadly.
"And what if he's out of range?" Arashikaze asked. Maria just shrugged. If Oscar Pine was out of range of rescue helicopters, he was a dead man already. The CIA woman looked around the table, especially at Ruby's pained face, and sighed. "Oh, dammit. I swear, you're like a puppy." She threw her hands in the air. "All right, Captain Rose. I'll make no guarantees. I'll even provide a few of my men. But you'll get one shot at this. One. And that's only if my men agree that the mission is feasible. Understand?"
"Yes," Ruby replied. "Thank you, Miss Arashikaze."
"Hm." Arashikaze got to her feet. She stared at them all. "Now get some sleep. My men will arrive in Swidwin in four hours, and I expect you to be on hand to greet them." She raised an eyebrow. "Unless you were planning to spend the war in this manor."
The Palace of Culture and Science
The Ruins of Warsaw, Republic of Poland
2 September 2001
"Say it!" the old woman shrilled.
"Without you I am nothing!" Cinder screamed, and screamed again as the cane hit her bare buttocks hard enough to leave a welt. She resisted the urge to straighten up, and stayed on all fours, even as the cane fell again and Cinder was made to repeat the phrase.
"Look," said one of her so-called stepsisters. "Face down, ass up. That's all she'll ever be good for." The other stepsister tittered.
"Silence!" the old woman ordered. "Or you're next!" Both stepsisters went silent; they had been bent over naked and beaten as well, though nowhere near to the extent Cinder was. She roughly grabbed Cinder by the chin. "Now you will not steal food from the pantry again. Those sweets are for guests, not gutter scum like you. Do you understand? Do you understand that the B-1 is in the air? Comrade Fall? Comrade Fall?"
"Comrade Fall?"
Cinder came awake with a gasp, nearly leaping out of the bed. She sat up, chest heaving, coated in sweat, her flight suit soaked in it. The lieutenant took a step back. "Comrade Fall?" he said softly. "I'm sorry to wake you, but you asked to be notified if the B-1 was in flight. We detected it taking off five minutes ago from Poznan."
Cinder took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. "Is it…is it alone?"
"No, Comrade Fall. It is accompanied by another aircraft, unknown type. Not as large as a B-1, but larger than a fighter."
"Direction?" She hated the fact that her voice was shaky.
"Course is north-northwest, towards Gdynia. The GRIMM have been pressuring the Danish Jutland Division heavily in that sector, so this is likely a bombing mission, Comrade Fall."
Cinder nodded, and got out of bed. "All…all right. Notify Emerald Sustrai, Neo Politan, and Mercury Black to meet me at the entrance in ten minutes, preferably less. We'll need a ride to the airfield."
"Of course, Comrade Fall, but Comrade Black is meeting with the Czarina at the moment, along with Comrade Callows."
Damn, Cinder thought. She couldn't get Mercury in the air without tipping Salem off that she was acting without orders. "When did Tyrian…er, Comrade Callows get back?"
"Just this morning, Comrade Fall. He had to evade through the lines to get back to us."
Cinder bit back a curse; she'd been hoping that Tyrian had either drowned or gotten the wrong end of a bullet by now. "Very well. It'll just be Emerald and Neo, then." She turned to the lieutenant. "This mission is very secret, Comrade Lieutenant. And I'm sure whatever the Czarina is doing, it doesn't merit disturbing her. I'll handle this."
"Yes, ma'am. Very good, ma'am." The lieutenant snapped to attention, then left. Cinder wiped her face, idly wondered why the lieutenant had suddenly called her ma'am rather than comrade, and stripped off the sweat-soaked flight suit for a fresh one.
The Baltic Coast
Near Gdynia, Republic of Poland
2 September 2001
Rissa Arashikaze had been wrong: it hadn't taken 12 hours to install the ELINT equipment aboard the Gulfstream; it had taken eight. Another hour to run a systems test, and the business jet was now an electronic warfare aircraft. Pietro Polendina looked at the inside and sighed; it was an engineer's nightmare of consoles stuffed into open spaces and cables. The plush interior had been literally torn out, leaving the pitiful remains of the once pristine carpet; the wet bar was now a systems station that Pietro sat behind—though he noticed that some of the liquor had been left. If the Gulfstream was hit and he needed to bail out, he would never make it, even if he still had his wheelchair. He accepted the risk, even welcomed it on some level: it was about time that he risked the few remaining years of his own life, just as Penny had been risking the few months of her own.
"How's it going back here?" Maria Calavera stuck her head around the corner. Pietro was alone in the cabin; Arashikaze's engineers had set up the electronics suite to his specifications.
"All systems go," Pietro responded. "Now we just need some GRIMM to show up."
"Shouldn't be too long. We crossed the FEBA two minutes ago. Penny's got her radar on; she's broadcasting. And that's assuming the GRIMM haven't picked up all of this." She waved a hand around the cabin. "We're at 20,000 feet and holding, about 70 miles off the coast. Should be out of range of any ground-based SAMs."
He nodded. "Having fun?"
Maria winked. "Damn right." She reached over the bar, grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels', and headed back into the cockpit. She plopped down into the copilot's seat. In the pilot's seat sat one of Arashikaze's people, a blond-haired young man who had been strictly professional when he'd come aboard, aside from a look of horror at what had been done to the cabin. He'd given Maria another look when he noticed her eyepatch and glasses, but he clearly had been ordered to let her stay aboard as copilot. The pilot had relaxed some after takeoff, as Maria had called out the speed and rotation time accurately, even if she had to lean forward to see the instrument panel. Maria took the wrapper off the bottle top. "Want some?" she offered the tow-headed man.
"No, thank you." He smiled, the first time Maria had seen him do so. "But when and if we get back, Colonel, I will be happy to drink with you."
Maria stuffed the bottle into the map pocket on the right side of the seat. "Good thinking." She put her earphones back on, relaxed and enjoyed the view. The sun was beginning to descend behind them as they flew over the Baltic; there was a strong headwind, and the waves below were whitecapped, even if the sky around them was clear. They had another three hours of daylight left, at least, so there was plenty of time.
Then her earphones crackled. "Penny to Echo Lima. Two bandits, bearing three-zero-one, range fifty, speed 800 closing."
"That's odd," Maria said aloud. "Only two?" She keyed her mike. "Ruby, Echo Lima. Did you get that?"
Twenty miles behind and well below the B-1 and the Gulfstream, Ruby and Weiss flew low over the ocean, using the radar return of the waves to hide them from GRIMM radar. The two larger aircraft were bait; Ruby's F-16 and Weiss' Typhoon were hunters. Blake was thirty miles behind them, flying in a racetrack pattern over the Baltic, slowly, with her decoys deployed: she was the reserve, and with any luck the GRIMM would assume that the F-14 was a tanker. Ruby knew that, if her fighters flew closer to the B-1, then Salem's forces might not take the bait, considering it too strong a force to take on. But by hiding her flight, they might lure in the GRIMM. "Roger, Ruby copies." She wiggled her wings at Weiss and began to acclerate and climb. It might only be two GRIMM, but they needed only one.
"Pietro, you got your music on?" Maria yelled over her shoulder, using fighter pilot terminology for ECM.
"I do!" he yelled back. "But I'm not detecting anything!" He turned some knobs, trying to increase the gain. The GRIMM controlling radio waves—assuming they were being controlled and not preprogrammed—might be at a higher frequency. He leaned forward, pressing a hand to his earphone, then flipped a switch. He pulled the boom mike on his headset up to his lips. "Penny, Echo Lima! Those aren't GRIMM—they've got to be fighters! Manned fighters!"
"DUST, cancel order!" Penny snapped, a second after she'd ordered the B-1's online system to open the rear weapons bay doors. With only a smaller rotary launcher installed, she only had eight AMRAAMs. She intended to fire one or two at the GRIMM, but not lock on, trying to get the drones to move—or respond to orders. Now she hesitated. Anything from the southeast should be enemy, but Salem had not been using manned fighters.
Unless… Penny thought. "DUST, active radar search!" she ordered. "Identify aircraft, bearing three-zero-two!" She looked at her radar display; the range was now thirty-five miles and closing rapidly.
Unlike on Weiss' Typhoon, the DUST system aboard the bomber was equipped with a voice, a soft female one that was a little too breathy for Penny's comfort; the rumor she'd heard was that the Schnee Company had employed a pornographic actress to record the DUST system's voice. Penny wasn't exactly sure what that was, and was afraid to ask. "Aircraft are one Saab JAS 39 Gripen and one Dassault Mirage III. The Mirage appears to have an upgraded radar. Identification 80% accurate."
"Oh no," Penny said. "Cinder." She cleared her throat. "DUST, open rear bay, lock AMRAAM on Gripen. Fire when in range." She turned the B-1 to point at the incoming fighters.
"Warning," the DUST system reported, as calmly as if it was reading the weather. "DUST has detected a third bandit, range 6000 yards, climbing. Bandit appears to be one Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17."
Penny's eyes widened. "Where? Where is it?" She couldn't see out of the cockpit; the B-1 was not designed for this.
"Bandit is just below us."
She threw the B-1 into a hard break. "Echo Lima, Penny! Break right, break right!"
Maria realized that Arashikaze's pilot was not a fighter pilot, because he questioned the break order. "Say again, Penny?" he radioed. Maria didn't wait for a reply. She grabbed the control wheel and slammed it hard to the right.
Neo had done the same thing Ruby and Weiss had: hid her little MiG-17 in the ocean return, keeping both Penny's B-1 and the AWACS, far to the west over the German border, from detecting her. The MiG had no missiles, but that was fine with Neo: she pulled the trigger, firing both 23 millimeter cannon in the nose; the adjacent 37 millimeter cannon didn't have much ammunition, so she held fire with that. Against a Gulfstream, the 23mm would be more than enough. Neo had no idea why a business jet was accompanying the B-1, but figured it must be important enough to kill.
The hard break saved Maria's life, but not the pilot. Most of Neo's cannon shells just missed, skimming the left side of the Gulfstream, but three shells did hit. Two tore through the fuselage, only three feet from Pietro, going through the floor and through the ceiling, instantly depressurizing the aircraft. The second went through the floor of the cockpit, through the seat, through the pilot's body, exited out of the top of his skull, and through the ceiling. Blood and brains fountained over the instrument panel and across Maria's face as the pilot's body more or less came apart and his head disappeared. The MiG shot past in its climb a second later.
Pietro gasped as the oxygen was sucked from the cabin; an emergency mask dropped from the cabin roof, but he couldn't quite reach it. Maria spared a second to wipe blood and gore off her face, even as she shoved the wheel forward and dived. They had to get low, to breathable air, fast.
Neo hammerheaded the MiG downwards, and was rewarded with the sight of the Gulfstream going down, though it wasn't smoking. She quickly glanced in the direction of the B-1, but that was Cinder and Emerald's problem; the Gulfstream was easy meat, and it had been awhile since Neo had killed anything. She opened the throttle and dived after it: this time she would use the 37mm.
Then her RWR shrilled for her attention. Neo's eyes dropped to the threat display, and saw the white cone of a radar looking at her. She steepened her dive and began rollling, trying to break the lock. Fighting against the G forces, Neo saw a F-16 coming towards her.
"Get away from her, you bitch! Fox Two!" Ruby shouted, and fired a Sidewinder.
Blake heard Ruby's Fox call. She threw the switches to pull Gambol Shroud's decoys back into the Tomcat, even as she turned to the east and engaged her afterburners. The F-14 quickly passed through the Mach barrier, leaving a sonic boom in its wake. Blake switched on her radar and picked up the dogfight; she watched as the blips merged. "Shit," she breathed, her finger coming off the trigger; slung beneath Gambol Shroud were two Phoenix missiles, but she couldn't fire them into a melee like that. Then she noticed more returns from her radar, to the south of the furball.
"Haisla, Blake, four contacts at 60 miles, course zero-nine-zero, bearing relative one-nine-zero. Can you ID? Negative squawk." There was no friendly IFF from the new contacts, meaning they were probably enemy. The question was, Blake wondered, what were they?
"Blake, Haisla. Contacts are four Beowolves. Weapons free."
"Roger that." Blake turned in that direction, and the Tomcat's AWG-9 fire control system instantly locked onto all four GRIMM, slaving two Phoenixes to fire on the leading two drones.
"Blake, Echo Lima!" Pietro gasped, both from the lack of oxygen—though that was becoming less of a problem, as Maria passed through 10,000 feet—and from the strain of the dive; the aircraft was audibly groaning over the whistle of air through the holes, and Pietro wondered if it would simply come apart if and when Maria decided to pull out. He held on for dear life, but even as he coughed, trying to get more air into his abused lungs, Pietro was reading the data. "Blake, hold fire! I'm getting GRIMM telemetry!" He spit blood onto the floor and grinned. "We're getting data! Maria! We're getting data!"
"Great!" Maria hauled the wheel back into her lap. She could barely see the instruments in any case, even if they weren't covered in blood, but she could certainly see the ocean getting uncomfortably close. She leveled off at barely a thousand feet.
Neo dodged the Sidewinder, leaving flares in her wake, pulled out of the dive, rolled hard to the right, and then dived again. Ruby let loose a flood of obscenities as she overshot. "Weiss, Ruby! The MiG's heading for Echo Lima!"
"Ruby, Weiss! I'm engaged!" Weiss lined up with the Mirage, which had broken away from the Gripen to take her on. Under normal circumstances, a Mirage would be no match for a Typhoon, almost two generations of fighters removed from the old French interceptor, but this one was upgraded—and the pilot had accelerated straight at her. Weiss ordered DUST to switch to IRIS heatseekers, but even that closing speed was too much, and she was forced to get Myrtenaster out of the way or be run over. The two aircraft passed canopy to canopy, and Weiss saw the Mirage pilot's green helmet—and hazily remembered seeing it before. "Emerald?"
"Echo Lima, Ruby! That MiG is dropping in behind you!"
Maria grinned. "And what the hell do you want," she murmured. She chanced getting even lower.
"Maria, we're losing telemetry!" Pietro warned. "We need to get higher!"
"We're about to lose our ass! Hold on!" Maria threw the Gulfstream into a flurry of maneuvers; she couldn't see the MiG from the narrow windows of the business jet, so she would have to fly by instinct—and since Maria couldn't see too well anyway, it was all instinct anyway. Pietro held on for dear life as he was nearly flung out of his seat, the seatbelt straining but somehow holding him in.
Instinct was enough. Neo growled as she tried to hold the gunsight on the Gulfstream, but it kept slipping out of it; she fired twice, but the shells simply kicked up water. It began to climb, and Neo laughed. "Got you!" But as soon as she pulled the trigger, her target dived, then climbed and turned again; Neo fought the MiG and barely avoided going into the sea. Who the hell is flying that fucking thing? she wondered. They're anticipating every move I make! And they can't even see me! It can't be that overendowed blonde—she's not this good!
Neo quickly checked behind her, and saw the F-16 diving down. She noticed the red trim for the first time. Her lips curled back in a snarl, and she instantly forgot the Gulfstream to turn back into Ruby Rose.
Penny and Cinder had also closed very fast, far too close for Penny's AMRAAMs. The B-1 didn't have a gun; the Gripen did. Penny dodged the tracers that reached for her aircraft, then the Gripen was past in a flash. She slammed the throttles forward and climbed hard. "DUST!" she yelled. "Lock onto Gripen—automatic fire!"
The modified B-1 had two radars—the nose mounted one, and one in the tailcone. The latter locked onto Cinder, even as she flung the Gripen after the bomber. The problem was, the missiles only fired to the front. Cinder switched to Sidewinders and easily locked onto the four glowing afterburners of the Lancer, only for Penny to suddenly roll and dive, using the kinetic energy of the dive to pull away from the single-engine Gripen. Cinder switched to her AMRAAMs and fired, but the missile, confused by both the B-1's stealth and the sheer amount of ECM noise the bomber was giving off, went stupid and flew merrily away. She fired a second one, and it chased a chaff cloud and exploded. Penny pulled out of the dive and began to climb again.
"Goddammit!" Cinder shouted. The bomber was far heavier than her little fighter, but Penny was using that weight to her advantage, along with the fact that the B-1 had three times the thrust as the Gripen. She could not afford to fight on the clone's terms. Cinder then noticed the Gulfstream's gyrations low against the Baltic. She smiled, turned, and headed for the business jet.
Penny, rolling out upside down, saw the Gripen swooping towards the Gulfstream. "Oh no!" she exclaimed, and went after her. "DUST, engage Gripen!"
"Negative," the female voice said evenly. "Probability of locking onto friendly aircraft too high."
"Dirty words!" Penny shouted.
Ruby saw the MiG turning towards her, which was fine: she only wanted to get the MiG off the Gulfstream's tail. Ruby fired her second Sidewinder, but it was out of parameter and she knew it would miss. She pitched upwards into a climb, staying two steps ahead of the enemy pilot: the MiG-17 was ancient, and was not good in the vertical. In a horizontal, turning fight, it could almost stay with a F-16, but it couldn't accelerate going straight up, like the Viper could. Ruby began to roll, to level off, and expected to see the MiG-17 returning to its run on the Gulfstream—and setting itself up for a perfect AMRAAM shot.
Then she noticed movement, and looked straight out of the canopy. Less than a hundred feet away, she stared into the mismatched, hate-filled eyes of Neo Politan. The MiG hadn't gone after Maria and Pietro—Neo had come after her, and the F-16's acceleration was about to become a fatal mistake: the MiG was falling behind, and Ruby knew she was seconds away from being ventilated by triple cannon fire.
Cinder kept her head moving, thinking in four dimensions—the normal three plus time—dividing her attention between the Gulfstream, which was leveling off and beginning to climb, and the B-1, which was hurtling towards her. Her RWR screamed, indicating that Penny was locked on, but there was no flash of a missile launch. Come on, come on, Cinder chanted silently. Come on, you stupid little doll—
Then she had what she wanted. Cinder pulled up from her shallow dive, breaking away from the Gulfstream and giving Penny the sight picture she'd wanted. Cinder waited a precious half-second, then threw the Gripen into a rolling break. The DUST had fired an AMRAAM as instructed, but it lost lock instantly, and as Penny slammed the throttles back, she knew she'd badly overshot her enemy. Cinder dropped in behind her, switched to guns, and opened fire.
Penny anticipated the shot, and broke away—a fraction too late, but enough that Cinder's shells at first just skipped across the B-1's left wing, so close to burn the paint, but then hit the number one engine. The engine exploded, but the titanium sheathing around it held. Oil lines to the number two engine were nicked and the black fluid shot backwards to ignite in the heat from the engines, but the engine kept running.
Penny's right hand moved in a blur, shutting off the number one engine, and pushing the number two engine to idle. The B-1 slewed to the left, towards the dead and dying engines, and she let it. Cinder was taken by surprise as the bomber suddenly filled her windscreen and screamed in terror, a flashback to when Ruby's F-16 had done the same a second before she had been rammed. Cinder managed to leapfrog the B-1, just barely clearing it.
Penny wrenched the B-1 back around, now on the Gripen's tail, but it was too close for missiles. For a moment, she thought Cinder might keep going, opening the range and giving her a shot, but even as she thought about it, the Gripen began to slow. Penny knew with depressing certainty what was going to happen next: Cinder would easily turn inside of her, close in, and finish her off.
Then Penny had one, desperate, last idea.
She pulled the B-1 into a left turn. "DUST, retract AMRAAM!" The computer dutifully retracted the rotary launcher back into its bay, losing the drag the launcher caused. "Stall imminent," the voice helpfully reminded her.
"Shut the fuck up!" Penny shouted. "I fucking know!" She curved through the sky, leaving a trail of smoke behind her. Cinder fell in behind her, into the sweet spot, below and behind the B-1.
Ruby rolled away from Neo, slamming the throttle into afterburner and disengaging. The F-16 shot away faster than the MiG could follow. Ruby looked behind her, then shut off the afterburner and turned back into the MiG. Neo opened fire at extreme range, and Ruby tried to ignore what looked like flaming tennis balls going beneath her nose. Okay, bitch, Ruby thought darkly, let's see if you do what I think you're going to do.
Ruby pulled the nose up and climbed away again, then rolled, looked upwards—and once more found herself looking at Neo. Ruby was amazed at the level of detail she noticed at that point: Neo's helmet was crisscrossed with pink and white pinstripes, the assassin's right index finger was on the trigger, her left hand had the throttle to the stops, and she'd tied her flight boots with pink laces. Ruby fought down the urge to give her nemesis the finger, but figuratively did it with her next action: her left hand slapped the throttle back to its stops, while her right left the stick for a second to deploy her speedbrakes. The little butterfly brakes opened on either side of Crescent Rose's engine as the Viper seemed to stop in midair. Ruby got a split-second impression of Neo's pink and brown eyes widening as the assassin realized she'd just fallen for the oldest trick in the fighter pilot book.
The MiG was in front of Ruby for only a moment, even as Neo fought the MiG's controls to get it out of its climb; the MiG-17 was sluggish. Ruby settled the pipper over her enemy's tailpipe and opened fire with the Vulcan cannon. The gun sawed the tail off the MiG-17, which separated and nearly hit Ruby as she pulled away. The forward section went into a flat spin, and Ruby watched as the canopy separated and Neo bailed out. A parachute blossomed a moment later.
Should I do it? Ruby asked herself, even as her finger tightened on the trigger. She put the gunsight on the tiny figure below the parachute. Neo's a horrible person. I should kill her. One pull, and she's going to fly apart. There'll be nothing left of the little slut but a pink mist…
Ruby's finger came off the trigger. No. I'm not like her. She settled for roaring past, and this time did flip Neo the finger.
Weiss had exchanged three head-on gun passes with Emerald, but even as she used the Typhoon's superior turning ability to get inside the Mirage, Emerald had accelerated away, then come back around. Both women could have easily used missiles, but some unspoken agreement made them hesitate: both were thinking about that long afternoon in the Sea of Japan, when Emerald had held a delirious Weiss' head above water. So they went to strictly guns instead; somehow both believed that such a gesture satisfied their own code of honor.
Weiss came around again, but spotted Penny, with Cinder's Gripen coming in behind her. "Penny!" she shouted. "Bandit behind and below, break right!"
Penny felt herself smiling beneath her oxygen mask—Cinder had done what she had anticipated. "DUST!" she ordered. "Engage Gripen with laser! Priority override!" Without the last, the DUST system would petulantly ask why, since the laser was not designed to engage aerial targets.
In the forward bay door of the B-1 was the laser pod Penny had used on the Megagoliath. It rotated around, pointed its aperature at the Gripen, and fired.
It was not a science fiction laser: no green beam of death crossed the space between bomber and fighter to annihilate Cinder Fall, as much as Penny wished it would. The laser's beam was not even visible—except to Cinder, for a split second, as she was bathed in its green light. In that split-second, she felt curiously warm, a fraction of time before the laser blinded her remaining eye.
Cinder let loose a horrible scream, one hand reflexively going to her eye while the other got the Gripen away. She continued to scream in utter panic: she couldn't see. She leveled off, not caring if she was now a perfect target, as she rubbed her eye and tried to get her sight back. Fear seized her: if she was blind, she couldn't fly, and if she couldn't fly, she was useless.
I am nothing without you.
"Cinder!" Emerald yelled, as the scream filled their radio net. She immediately broke away from Weiss and headed to save her friend, the only other person in the world that had ever treated Emerald Sustrai with respect. "Cinder, Emerald, come in!"
"I can't see!" Cinder shrieked. "Oh God, I can't see!"
Emerald twisted around in her seat: Weiss was now coming after them in her Typhoon, and in the distance, she could see Ruby Rose's F-16 heading in their direction as well; there was no sign of the MiG-17, but the parachute floating down didn't fill Emerald with optimism. Her RWR display lit up as she was targeted by no less than three radars: the Typhoon's, the F-16's, and a third one from the west, which she guessed was either the F-14 or the F-23.
Emerald turned away from Cinder for a moment, and locked onto the Gulfstream. She then switched her radio to Guard, so she knew her enemies could hear her. "This is Emerald, to Ruby Flight. I know you're about to fire. If you do, I will launch on the Gulfstream. I will break lock if you do on me. And if we don't return home, if you shoot us down, then Oscar Pine dies. Understand? Oscar Pine dies." Emerald knew she was running a bluff, but all good thieves knew how to do that.
The three radar cones disappeared from her RWR. "Get the hell out of here," Emerald heard Ruby say.
Emerald waggled her wings. "Cinder, can you see?"
"No," Cinder moaned.
"Okay, stay level. Come left just a little…that's right…just like that." Emerald didn't know how a blinded Cinder would land, but they flew towards the shore all the same, unmolested.
The Gulfstream climbed, but Maria had to level off at 10,000 feet—she wanted to go a little higher, which she could, even with a depressurized aircraft, but Pietro might not be able to breathe with his damaged lungs. "Pietro, can we transmit at this altitude?" she shouted back.
"Yes, we can, but the antenna's stuck straight up. I think it got damaged when we got hit. I can't transmit to a ground station. We're line of sight to whatever's above us—way above us." He suddenly realized something. "Wait, are you flying? What happened to the guy—the pilot?"
"He's dead," Maria said flatly. It occurred to her that she'd never even known the pilot's name.
Pietro breathed a brief prayer for a man he'd never known. "Okay, okay…we've got the data, but I can't transmit it. We'll have to fly back to Swidwin."
"No can do," Maria sighed. "All that flying I did used up the fuel. This thing's a lot heavier than a normal Gulfstream. We're about out. Pretty sure I can ditch this thing okay, but no way in hell are we going to make it back to land. You a good swimmer?"
"Yeah." Pietro actually was a superb swimmer: after losing the use of his legs, he had mastered keeping himself afloat using his arms, and could actually outswim Penny.
"Okay. Let me try to get us as close as I can to shore."
Pietro slammed a fist into the bar top. "Dammit! Dammit to hell! We're going to lose all this data. All of this for nothing." He looked out the window and saw Penny's B-1. It was trailing smoke, but it was still flying. He grumbled a curse word and transmitted. "Penny, Echo Lima. We've lost the antenna. Cannot transmit. Maria says we're going to have to ditch." He closed his eyes. "Sorry, baby girl. I can get out okay—" I hope, he thought to himself; Pietro was a good swimmer, but he didn't know if he could swim out of a sinking aircraft "—but we're going to lose our data. The antenna's pointing straight up."
"Roger—wait!" Penny exclaimed. "Can you transmit to me? I can relay it to the Summer Palace!"
"I suppose so."
"Roger, Echo Lima! Prepare to transmit!" Pietro watched as the B-1 rose upwards.
Ruby had listened to the conversation. "Penny, Ruby, negative, negative! You're smoking. You need to RTB right now!" She checked her threat display. The four GRIMM were gone—two had been dispatched by Blake's two Phoenixes, and the other two had disengaged and fled. Even that act had provided Pietro with plenty of useful data, but that data was going to be lost if they didn't do something, but not what Penny was attempting. "I can relay, or Blake can—"
"Ruby, Penny. No, you can't. You're not set up for this. I can fix this."
"Dammit!" Ruby climbed after the B-1. The smoke was getting thicker from the number two engine, which meant that it was likely to fail within seconds. Penny continued to climb, passing through 30,000 feet. "Echo Lima, transmit!" she yelled.
Pietro typed in the command. The precious data streamed invisibly from the Gulfstream to the B-1. It took a few seconds, even as Penny leveled off. "Penny, Echo Lima. Transfer complete." Pietro wiped his brow, even as he heard Maria start calling out a Mayday.
Penny turned in her seat and tapped commands into a computer terminal set into the cockpit's left side, added there for test purposes. She then checked her altimeter. She could actually use the laser to transmit the files to Arashikaze at the Summer Palace, but she needed to go higher. "DUST. Lock laser to the following coordinates." She read off the numbers.
The laser turret swiveled around to the west. "Turret locked," the computer reported. "Altitude insufficient for transmit."
"Yeah, yeah," Penny grumbled. She had a feeling this was going to happen. She began climbing again. The number two engine coughed once and died, so she shut it off and pushed the throttles up on the remaining two. Engine temperature climbed alarmingly on both: the B-1 could fly on two engines, but she was pushing those two engines to the limit.
"Penny, Ruby, abort, abort!" Ruby's voice was filled with fear for her friend. "You're not going to be able to climb like that on two engines!"
"Ruby, Penny." Her voice actually sounded irritated. "It is our only option." Penny ignored Ruby's protests. The B-1 climbed through 45,000 feet. She knew at 65,000 feet, the laser was guaranteed a lock.
"Penny, stop!" Pietro didn't even bother using a callsign. "Don't do this! I lost you before. Do you want me to go through that again? I want the chance to watch you live your life, Penny!"
"But Dad," Penny replied, suddenly not caring if the entire world heard her, "I'm trying to." She watched the altimeter reach 60,000 feet—the B-1's operational ceiling—but teased it further, just a little more, as the sky turned black around her. The altimeter was pegged at 66,000 feet. "DUST, transmit now!"
"Transmitting." Penny watched the engine temperatures drop, but now the problem wasn't her engines burning up, but the lack of air. She felt the engines go into a compressor stall, the air too thin to keep the turbofans going. "Transmit complete. Data transferred." Penny looked out of the window in awe: below her, she could see the curvature of the earth, and stars out the window.
The B-1's engines died. Penny was suddenly plunged into darkness as the power went out. She reached out to deploy the RAM air generator even as the nose dropped and the bomber fell out of the air. The nose slewed to the left and the B-1 went into a flat spin. Penny was pressed back into her seat, unable to reach the switch. She could barely reach the throttles, and tried to push them forward into a restart. The altimeter unwound crazily as the earth spun around in the cockpit. The nose dropped further, and the earth tilted upwards.
Ruby had followed Penny as high as she could, leveling off at 60,000 feet, as high as the F-16 could go; even at this altitude, the fighter was straining. "Penny, get out of it! She's going over on her back!" If the B-1 flopped over on its back, it could not be recovered from a flat spin.
"Penny, what is happening?" Pietro was terrified. "Please, baby, say something!"
Penny let go of the throttle, tightened her straps. She closed her eyes. "I love you, Dad." Then she pulled the ejection handles. Unlike the previous Penny's Paladin B-1, this one still had an ejection seat. A cover blew off the top of the cockpit, and Penny rocketed free, even as the bomber rolled over into its terminal spin.
Penny separated from the seat, but didn't pull the parachute handle: at this altitude, the canopy would simply collapse from the thin air. She had to get lower. She put her hands to her side, put her feet together, ducked her head, and dived. As she did, Penny fumbled to reattach her mask to the emergency oxygen bottle on her parachute gear. She finally succeeded, but her fingers were almost frozen in the horrible cold, and she couldn't turn the green apple-shaped knob that would provide her oxygen. It was stuck, frozen.
Penny saw her vision dim; the rich colors of the earth began to darken. I love you, Dad, she repeated to herself, even as her fingers went slack. With that last thought, Penny smiled and her vision winked out.
AUTHOR'S OTHER NOTES: Penny needing to climb that high and the transmitting may seem contrived, but I wanted to keep it somewhat close to canon. Somewhat.
Ruby's duel with Neo is based loosely on the famous Randy Cunningham and Willie Driscoll vs. "Colonel Toon" dogfight of 10 May 1972, except it's a lot shorter. Cunningham was in a F-4 and Toon was in a MiG-17 (who didn't exist, but whoever actually was flying the MiG-17 was a superb pilot); Cunningham, one of the first graduates of Top Gun, did exactly what Ruby does. I've used that tactic before, because fighter pilots worldwide study such things-evidently Neo needs to brush up a little bit on her reading.
The part about Penny's DUST system sounding like an "adult film" actress is based on fact. Reportedly, the French Rafale uses a female voice for the computer, and the French Air Force actually did hire such an actress to record it-the French figuring that fighter pilots, male ones anyway, will listen to that kind of woman. (The USAF pioneered this in the B-58 Hustler, which also had a female voice for the autopilot, but they got a Hollywood actress to record it.)
Sorry about the extra day's wait, but it's been a long week doing a move. The next one won't be as late.