Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi
The Ballad of Metal Angels: First Dance
Corporal Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 16
"The Red Death, Boney von Richthofen... where do I start? I honestly can't say who came up with the nicknames. All I know is that, some time in early 2158, the name started floating around, some boney ace in a red fighter who had shot down some damn good pilots.
"First time I flew against her was, hmm... that would be September, 2158. My squadron, the Vikings, were providing close air support for Operation Dark Symphony when her squadron came screaming down on us from above. I gotta tell you, she's good, one of the best pilots I've ever flown against, if not the best.
"Her squadron dove in on us from above. Air combat's not like space combat. In space, it's about acceleration, maneuverability, and effective weapon range, the raw specs of your mecha, but in atmo, it's all about potential energy, which you get from your engines but store as speed and altitude. That night, with our air support role, we were flying low and slow, pretty much the worst position start a dogfight in. We had an escort flying high above to intercept enemy fighters, but Tyune's squadron tore through them like tissue paper."
Flight Lieutenant Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"I remember that battle. When the humans started their push, our wing actually deployed from orbit from about half the continent away. We flew in along the jet stream, giving us a speed boost, and that let us jump the high altitude escorts before they even knew we were there. The other squadrons hung back to hunt down the survivors while Novus went after the close air support.
"When we dove in on the Vikings, they scattered. Some of them went to ground - literally - and joined the ground forces in battloid mode. Others pulled into a climb, trying get some altitude, and were cut down.
"Jack... Jack went to guardian mode, dove into the forest, and then came up throwing a tree at me."
Corporal Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 16
"In my defense, it worked. In mecha warfare, trees aren't useful for much beyond concealment, but get something that big moving fast enough, and it can trash an aircraft regardless of armor or shields, and more importantly, shooting it doesn't make it stop heading your way.
"Tyune had to evade, which, with the rest of her squadron pursuing the rest of the Vikings, gave me time to get some altitude."
Flight Lieutenant Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"I had to break off my attack run if I didn't want to eat wood. Next thing I knew, I had a battloid strafing my flank, so I pulled up and out."
Corporal Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 16
"It's been said before, boom and zoom is the only way a conventional fighter can take a VT, and Tyune knew it. Standard counter is to stay in battloid mode - where you don't care about the airspeed loss - and bracket them with your gun pod when they try another pass.
"Of course, standard doctrine didn't help anyone who had flown against her before, so I changed the game a little."
Flight Lieutenant Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"The crazy bastard actually decided to pursue me. No one had ever done that before, but a traditional dogfight is what the Mehrkuri was built for."
Corporal Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 16
"You try staying on a Mehrkuri's tail some time. Sure, a Baldur can outmaneuver it, but turian fighters always had the advantage when it came to raw speed. They've got FTL drives in them, for crying out loud!
"It didn't help that the Mehrkuri packs a (CENSORED) CIWS on its back."
Flight Lieutenant Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"The dorsal turret performed according to specs. Even I'm not privy to why General Gantorus insisted on it having such grossly over-engineered anti-missile capability, but it saved my life. With as many missiles as were coming after me, I had to pull some pretty risky maneuvers to give it time to do its job, but it must have shot down at least two dozen of them. Between it and the chaff, flares, and decoys, I managed to get out mostly unscathed."
Corporal Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 16
"Twenty-eight. That's how many missiles I had left by then, having already fired some in support of the ground troops earlier, and I launched them all at her. With her insane maneuvers, all the countermeasures she deployed, and that CIWS of hers, not a single one hit. There I was, with the infamous Boney von Richthofen - the Red Death herself! - in my sights, but no matter what I did, I just could not land a hit."
Flight Lieutenant Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"That's actually an exaggeration. I did take at least one missile up the tailpipe, but the Mehrk's shields were strong enough to take it, and he tagged me a few times with those wingtip lasers of his. When my port stabilizer started to flake out, I knew it was time to bail, so I pulled up and shifted all power in my eezo core to mass lightening. It's not quite an FTL jump - trying that in atmo would have been suicide - but that's mostly a difference in degree."
Corporal Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 16
"She pulled into a climb, giving me a beautiful top shot, but just as I was lining up the kill shot, bam! She was gone."
Codex: Relay War: Operation Dark Symphony
Operation Dark Symphony was a multi-pronged night offensive launched by human forces on Shanxi in an effort to destroy the ground side landing facility the turians had constructed earlier that year. It was preceded by weeks of daytime raids by veritech squadrons, which disrupted turian supply lines from the landing facility to their satellite encampments. These raids nibbled away at the turian perimeter, drawing reinforcements away from the main encampment.
Coordinating reinforcements from Space Station Freedom, the garrison troops, the CDMs, and the disparate resistance forces that had sprung up among the citizenry for a single operation was a monumental task, one which led General Augustus Williams to consider Operation Dark Symphony with no small amount of skepticism.
Operation Dark Symphony commenced at 0030 local time, September 17th, 2158 with a diversionary strike at a turian forward operating base. Forty minutes later, the remainder of the forces were committed, ambushing turian patrols or attacking turian encampments, mostly with veritech support. The primary assault force was built around the 42nd Heavy Armor Battalion's C company, freshly arrived from Space Station Freedom, with infantry support from the 89th Mobile Infantry Battalion's A and D companies and close air support provided by Viking, Queen, and Stallion Squadrons.
The initial stages of Operation Dark Symphony were successful, but while they did damage the landing facility - forcing General Arconis to suspend offensive operations for the next two months - they were unable to maintain the momentum of those early successes, and the unexpected arrival of turian air support forced the task force to withdraw.