Chapter Forty One: Tora! Tora! Tora!
Arc Eleven: The Pacific
Opening: "Sarishinohara" - Rib
"Yō 9301-3, pull in a little, you're drifting out of formation."
"Confirmed, Yō Leader. Adjusting course now."
Air Captain Fumio Yoshimura kept a close eye out the left side of his cockpit as his Squadmate, Lieutenant Fuyuhiko Abe, banked over and began to drift back into a parallel flight path, as they sat between the clouds above and the sea far below.
"Excellent. Approaching target, beginning climb to 6000 meters, follow after on 80% throttle."
After announcing the move, Fumio pulled back on his Knightmare's controls, pitching up his elevator and bursting upwards, converting speed into altitude with terrifying efficiency. He levelled out above the clouds, restoring his airborne Frame to level flight as he waited for his colleagues to follow him up.
Unfortunately, they were wont to complain, as his other Squadmate, a Shinkiro Tamaki, moaned "Why can't we just attack them already?"
Fumio shook his head as he saw them rise to his flight altitude in his mirror. Tamaki was a former Black Knight, and like many of those brought into the military during Reconciliation, he didn't take well to the military's strict hierarchy and structure, having experienced extreme amounts of autonomy under Zero. Frustrated, Fumio answered "We need to wait for the all clear, should be a few minutes."
"We've got all this firepower, for the love of-"
"Tamaki, unless you have technical issues, keep this line clear."
Fumio shook his head again as he focused back on the task at hand. Keeping a hand on the central stick, he reset his text input, which received codes from the Ikaruga, an overhauled Black Knights floating airship that had proved one of the few upsides of Reconciliation that was providing support from the rear. After resetting, a message read out that finally gave Fumio something to smile about.
"Confirm strike. Target 1-4. 1400. Go for surprise attack immediately."
Returning to the radio, Fumio announced "We have our go to attack. Keep right on me until we see hostile air forces. Prepare to roll over and dive on my mark."
He heard a pair of quiet affirmations, before they all rotated their Knightmares onto their backs, facing their cockpits down towards the clouds before dipping back down, picking up huge speed as they swept down to survey the target, the Hawaii Naval base.
Hawaii was a ways into the Pacific Ocean, far further than many other Britannian Pacific bases that had been considered for a first strike. However, the Fleet Dock at Hawaii was chosen based on several factors. It's distance meant it was far less likely to be fortified compared to closer bases like Guam, as they would expect those to be attacked first, and it held a lucrative prize; the Third Pacific Fleet was repairing, with two Flying Battleships ripe for commandeering.
As they flew by, surveying the area as they boomed through, Fumio caught sight of the main target, two vast hulks of steel parked in the harbour. The plan was to provide air cover for the Ikaruga to deploy ground troops to seize the metal beasts. Given the military's supply situation, they couldn't afford to destroy such a potentially large source of firepower.
"Vision on target, level out and scan for hostiles."
With that order, the three pilots pulled back on their sticks and returned to level flight about 500 meters above sea level, having picked up so much energy in the dive that they were nearly supersonic.
It didn't take long for the enemy to find them.
"Contact, Lancelot above us!"
The callout came from Abe, and after briefly peeking in his mirrors, Fumio saw the white beast above and behind them, low on airspeed for having climbed so rapidly from its takeoff.
"Pulling left!" Fumio announced as he rolled over into his side and pulled down on the stick, pitching his Knightmare on a knife edge and turning it with the elevator. Holding the turn in spite of the immense G forces that came from such a sharp turn at high speed, Fumio began to spiral upwards behind the Lancelot as it began to dive down on Tamaki, who had simply kept his Knightmare on the deck and gunned the throttle, to gain both speed and a target.
"Aw, crap, he's on my tail!"
However, by the time the Britannian pilot had pulled up behind Tamaki, Fumio had completed his banking spiral climb, was now above and behind the two Knightmares and had excess speed to boot. It seemed neither a hard turn or a climb seemed to scrub much kinetic energy from the new Guren.
"I'm now coming up on him, hang on!"
Starting from a higher speed than the Lancelot had, Fumio's Guren displayed wicked acceleration in catching up to the chase, however as that rate of closing shrank, Fumio realised the Lancelot had a higher maximum speed, something Tamaki realised too, though he put it a bit more vociferously.
"Ahhhh no he's bloody catching me! He's gonna get me!"
Annoyed, Fumio unloaded a few speculative shots down range that amounted to very little, before he went back to thinking. The Lancelot could outpace them by virtue of thrust, but it was also heavy, and lost energy fast. He remembered the Lancelot after its initial climb, slow and out of kinetic energy. This gave him a plan.
"Tamaki, pull back on the stick and climb. He'll stall before you will, and I'll sweep him up."
Understanding the plan, the former rebel pitched his nose up towards the sky, baiting the Lancelot into a race to the sky. Fumio followed after, and grinned as the Lancelot shedded speed in the climb.
"Gotcha…" he whispered as he fired the dual 40mm anti-Knightmare cannons at the nearly stationary target, blowing it in two.
"Area clear."
Wanting to get a bit of altitude back, Fumio kept his Knightmare's vector pointed firmly upwards until his own stall warning came on, levelling out at 3000 meters.
With the brief lull in combat, Fumio was able to reevaluate the state of his Knightmare and the battle plan. Water temperature was nominal, engine temperature was in the amber, and fuel was fine. The Ikaruga was ten minutes away, and could have troops down in fifteen. Once the runways were taken, Britannian air superiority would crumble.
But not before.
"Two targets above me, about to engage me!"
With Fumio and Tamaki up at a moderate altitude, the callout came from Abe, who had kept his throttle open at sea level in the hopes of getting back some speed and therefore kinetic energy after the last engagement, however now he had isolated himself from the group.
Fumio watched carefully as the two Knightmares streaked across his windscreen as dots, roughly five kilometres away. These two had likely taken the time to get to altitude safely, unlike the first victim, and now held both speed and altitude over all three Japanese Knightmares. Well, they would have to do something about that, wouldn't they?
"Okay, okay. Abe, hold your speed and do a gentle climb in their direction. Once near enough, turn to either side. We need a deflection shot."
Understanding what was being asked of him, Abe turned his vehicle towards the two Knightmares, facing the enemy head on and picked up huge amounts of speed as he began a shallow burst climb. Wanting to get over to cover Abe as quickly as possible, Fumio switched up to War Emergency Power, running his engine at full capacity. Overheating could prove an issue, but he didn't have time to worry about that. Both of the enemy Knightmares, a Lancelot and an upgraded Sutherland, began a shallow dive in towards Abe, cannons aimed down his bowels, before Abe dipped down to throw off their aim and pulled as hard as he could to his left.
Fumio winced watching his friends Guren pulling impossible G forces, as the Britannians attempted to turn to their right, inside of Abe's own turning radius, still hoping to catch a slow moving target. The Britannians swooped past the lone Guren before pulling up, hoping to dive back down on their prey at the slowest point in their turn where such maneuvers are most efficient, having completed a right banking turn to follow after him.
However, Fumio and Tamaki had been closing fast, and the former managed to get a shot off as the Sutherland approached the slow top of its arc, the HEAK shell puncturing the relics leg.
"Confirmed hit, no damage." Fumio groaned as he rolled his Guren onto its back to invert and pulled down to chase the Britannians, who had now gained some speed in the dive and were chasing after Abe.
However Abe still had some tricks up his sleeve, deploying his waist high air brakes as he performed a wide arcing barrel roll, hoping that the manoeuvre would shed enough speed to cause the Britannians to speed past him. Fumio watched as the Sutherland did so, flying in front of Abe for being unable to slow down as quickly, however the second Knightmare, the Lancelot, turned away slightly and began to run, not fancying his odds in a close quarters turning fight.
Fumio smiled as he swept up from behind Abe to catch the Sutherland who had overshot his friend, who began to manoeuvre with his ailerons and elevator extremely aggressively, seeming to want to try an overshoot manoeuvre of his own. However, using the Guren's strong air brakes Fumio was able to arrest his speed and claim a second kill with a heavy salvo of 40mm rounds.
However, he was now at low speed, and needed to get his kinetic energy back up, which would require some time at high throttle. Having spent 30 seconds at War Emergency Power, his engine temperature gauge was now firmly in the red.
However, there was little time for this, as now threats were coming thick and fast. Tamaki was being engaged by another Sutherland, and there was a Lancelot carrying vicious speeds up in the mother of all burst climbs towards Fumio, who sat about 1000 meters above sea level. At least Abe was apparently heading out to pick up speed.
Out of instinct, Fumio pulled up, before his slow Knightmare began to wallow in the sky. Realising he was close to stalling, he decided to use it to his advantage and jerk his controls to one side, sending his Knightmare falling out of the sky in a completely different direction to the way his nose was pointed, throwing off the Lancelot's aim and sending him flying past.
Pushing his nose down towards the sea, Fumio regained control of his Frame and built up speed. He had already witnessed the lacklustre turning abilities of the Lancelot, and used that too to his advantage. As the Britannian Lancelot pilot began to haul his heavy beast around to chase Fumio, he had a brief window to try to engage Tamaki's pursuer in the Sutherland, who was one kilometre ahead and closing fast.
"Hold on Tamaki." Fumio requested as he approached the chase from a slight angle, volleying a few rounds as he passed, however they did not converge on the target, forcing Fumio to turn in towards the chase, and bleed precious speed in a rough manoeuvre.
Still, now he was directly behind the pursuit, and fired several times up range to no success and increasing frustration. Hitting from the rear, against a target who only exposed their feet and heels, was an exercise in wasted time.
Time, unfortunately, was not a luxury Tamaki had, as the Sutherland unleaded its weaponry, a pair of laser cannons, on the former Black Knight. Though their impact damage was low, they maintained a constant firing, unlike the autocannon, allowing the Britannian pilot to target and break Tamaki's wing.
Fumio swore, but it was nothing compared to the string of expletives Tamaki unleashed onto the radio, ranging from "Aw, crap, it's always me dammit!" to more unfortunate comments about the Britannians mother.
However, as Fumio passed over the carcass of Tamaki's Guren, he saw the loud man's ejector seat fly off in a blur of red. It appeared all that had been injured was the man's pride, something that was apparently not an irregular occurrence.
"Chute confirmed, he'll live." Fumio sighed, as he returned his focus to the Sutherland in front of him.
Its pilot, evidently satisfied with a job well done, had now cleared for altitude and was booming out of the combat area, or so he thought.
In pulling up, the pilot had increased his profile relative to Fumio as he pitched upwards, presenting the Japanese Ace with a silhouette of the entire vehicle in vertical, rather than just the narrow rear diffuser.
Two squeezes of the trigger punished that mistake. Third kill.
"Caution: Engine Overheat Warning. Increase airspeed or decrease throttle."
As if on cue to ruin the good news, the automated warning presented a new problem. The Sakuradite Generator exposed incoming air to the pink ore, heating it rapidly and causing it to expand and leave the exhaust as thrust. The trouble was that such a system ran hot, requiring vast amounts of air per unit Sakuradite to be stable. At higher speeds, cool air rushed in so quickly and in such vast volumes that heating was not an issue, but at low speeds the Sakuradite began to melt itself in its casing.
And, with the Guren handling better at low speeds, and the Britannian Frames having generally higher top speeds, fighting at high speeds wasn't really a realistic possibility, especially now that the Lancelot he had dodged earlier had completed its turn, and had turned the wick up in chase.
Fumio now faced a decision. There was a sufficient gap to the Lancelot for him to be able to break out of combat range and cool his engine off, but then-
"All, this is I1. The Ikaruga is in range, ready to deploy Parachute Units!"
Fumio swore something vicious and foul. He had to protect the Ikaruga, at any and all costs.
"This is Yō Leader, copy I1! Abe, I could use a hand!"
"Sorry Fumio, I'm engaged right now!"
Fumio shook his head. He had to deal with this himself. The Lancelot had speed, and it had altitude. To win, Fumio would have to remove at least one of those from the equation. As the lasers began to whizz past his cockpit from the approaching Knightmare, he rolled over hard and tugged down, feeling the beginnings of a stall come over the tips of his control surfaces as he brought the Knightmare onto its belly and faced it down. It now accelerated rapidly towards the sea, before he levelled out just above the waves. He actually felt his Knightmare bottom out against the wake and rough air of the Ocean, but he had left himself just enough room.
The Lancelot, who had dived after him, was now carrying so much speed in that dive that he was forced to pull out and go for altitude, at the expense of getting a shot on Fumio. The Japanese pilot now had a few seconds to gain some speed before the Lancelot dove back down after shedding excess speed to prevent it flying straight into the ocean, unable to pull out of the dive.
Not needing a second opportunity, Fumio gunned the throttle and ignored the overheating warnings as the Lancelot reached the top of its climb, before it flopped back onto its nose in the stall and began to dive back down on Fumio. As soon as the Lancelot turned back down, Fumio's Guren pulled up harshly, nearly going vertical as the two Knightmares traded places in the sky like a carousel.
However Fumio did not stay in this state for long. Rather than see his climb through as far as the engine would allow it, he cut back on the throttle and deployed his air brakes. This killed valuable kinetic energy that wasn't exactly in abundance, but it caused his Knightmare to shed speed rapidly, sending it into an aggressive stall that forced his nose down far faster. This allowed him to turn deeply inside the Lancelot's arc, and have a brief shot on target, however the angle was less than ideal, and the shot went wide by quite an embarrassing margin.
The Lancelot pilot brought his Knightmare up into a reverse Immelmann manoeuvre as Fumio fell downwards, aggressively turning back upwards to follow the Lancelot in its climb. As the Lancelot rose, it rapidly lost speed, and that had the potential to make him overshoot and fly in front of the Gurens cannons. As well, turning back up into him had the potential to make the Britannian pilot panic and turn away, rather than completing his climb away.
The gambit brought Fumio's speed to nearly nothing, but it worked, as the Lancelot began to wing over to the left and begin a wide arcing roll around Fumio in an attempt to fall in behind him, however the manoeuvre had killed any speed the Britannian had had and the Lancelot was visibly stalling, white streaks forming on the wing tips.
The Guren, with a lower stall speed, simply had to keep its air brake open to stay on the tail of the Lancelot. The Lancelot couldn't physically go any slower, or it would fall into the drink, it couldn't accelerate at low speed like the Guren, and the massive stalling of both wings meant he had little control over his craft.
It was a simple matter for Fumio to claim a fourth kill.
And that was when a streak of red ran across the back of Fumio's Guren, damaging it from head to toe.
Fumio didn't understand what had happened until the culprit flew past; another Lancelot, one of the last ones left, had tried to come to the aid of his comrade, attacking while Fumio was low on speed and distracted. While he had not come in time, he had successfully crippled Fumio's Frame, and was now booming out of the area.
"Ground forces have taken the base! Repeat, ground forces have taken the base!"
And there was the reason why. What with Japanese forces gaining control of his ground support, the pilot wouldn't have wanted to stick around any longer than he had to.
After checking, Fumio realised that while could still perform a sort of glide, sustained flight wasn't really an option for very long, and he would have to ditch the Guren. Fumio chuckled. He was frustrated being taken out, but he'd done well enough, protected the Ikaruga, had taken four kills, and would live to fight another day. It seemed fair; it was his fault for being careless, and he'd learn from it.
He was still chuckling as he pulled on his escape pod lever.
"Caution: Metal fused due to heat damage. Cannot deploy pod."
That shut him up in a real hurry. He still had some engine power, but he was rapidly decelerating and had no real kinetic energy for a sustained glide back to any runway or platform.
He swore. It couldn't have been the Lancelot who had fired and fled that did it; their lasers punctured, they didn't weld. It would surely have passed straight through.
It took him some time to realise what had killed him, as it announced itself with no sense of irony.
"Caution: Engine shutting down. Heat death."
The Sakuradite in his engine had run so hot that it had conducted its heat through the metal frame and welded the canopy to the escape pod, trapping him. In his own persistence, he had forged his own tomb.
Fumio swore again, loudly and furiously, again and again into his five foot steel box, kicking against its sides and punching its window. He had stayed to help the Ikaruga, and was now paying the price for his decision.
He was not stupid. He had joined the Knightmare Corps after completing a Bachelors in Engineering to pay for a Masters in Aerodynamics, a degree he'd never complete, and he knew the Knightmare that came home could be used again, and was infinitely more valuable than the one that was sacrificed for the tactical moment. And yet he had stayed, watched his fate in slow motion.
He was a fool. He wondered how many people in this fight were fools, and how many of those fools were leading this fight. By his guess, too many.
As the ocean drew near, his altitude gauge now reading in moments to death, and he felt so damn hot, even though people always said death was cold, and he wondered if his cat would be okay, because she was alone now and he had left her with-
Welcome to the Pacific.
This Chapter was very much two halves, which is a bit unfair as one half is only about 10% of the actual Chapters length. The 90% was really fun to write, was engaging and new, and allowed me to incorporate elements of combat I'm actually comfortable working with, rather than the Jeremiah vs Suzaku and Nu vs Lelouch/Ohgi nightmare I put you through.
Then there was the 10%, an unpleasant, unnecessary gut punch that takes all the stuff given to it by the 90% and squanders it.
I feel like there's a metaphor here.
In any case, I hope I eased you all into the atmosphere and environment I'm going for in this arc, and that you'll join me for Chapter 42, Victory At Sea. Until then, rate, review, be safe, remember to keep an eye on hot materials, and I'll see you soon.
~Eth0