Lt. Annabeth Chase, USAF
Annabeth was lying on the couch, her shoes parked on the backrest as she gently dozed away the afternoon in the alert fighter dormitory, listening to Creed on her Walkman. It was against regulation, but she had unzipped her flight suit down to her waist and had the top half casually hanging down. The connection tubes of the G suit over her overall hung loosely. It was early in January and, as such; she had a thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
The dormitory was a two-floor building with a roof terrace and birthing spaces for sleeping, a communications room with two sets of military radios, their ready room, and a downstairs locker room.
Luke Castellan, or Joker how everyone called him, her flight lead, was reading a book in an armchair on the other side of the living room table. Four additional flight mechanics, the annoying brothers Travis and Connor Stoll, and two new kids, only eighteen, called Hazel Levesque and Frank Zang were also casually lounging. Hazel, too, had wisely wrapped herself in a blanket.
Once every two hours, a weather update was faxed into their dormitory. It didn't change that much throughout the day, with some fog in the morning, but apart from that cold and clear. They expected heavier snowfall that night. Right now it was just over twenty degrees, but according to the forecast, they might just drop below fifteen after sunset Apart from that, they were completely cut off from the outside world. However, that isolation was intended. During the twenty-four hours in which they served as the Capital's sentinel, context was fairly irrelevant. All that mattered was that they flew as was needed and killed as NORAD required.
Most of these sorts of duties were tedious at the best of days, filled with a morning equipment check. Aircraft manuals, flight magazines, and the newest issue of playboy lay scattered across the living room table. Her last tour had been with an F16 squadron based out of Thule Air Force Base, where she had experienced the pleasure of posing for photoshoots for the crews of Soviet Bears.
The past four months hadn't gone her way. Right now, she should be two months into her marriage to one Percy Jackson. Unfortunately, her Seaweed Brain of a fiancée had gotten himself self sent off on the Enterprise to the Mediterranean, with his own respective squadron, VF-84. How had the Navy called it? Surprise Wargames?
Hour by hour slowly passed and through the open window, she could see the afternoon slowly yielding to the evening. By the time anything of interest happened, Annabeth had already fallen asleep, and the boys were playing pool.
Without warning, the gentle voice of a woman who Annabeth's squadron imagined being a southern belle suddenly cut through the silence from hidden speakers. "Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! I repeat! Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! Bogies inbound on airspace!" a moment later, a shrill bell began to chime.
Everyone jumped to their feet as if electrocuted, and Annabeth hastily slipped her arms back into the flight suit and zipped up.
A moment later they were sprinting down the stairs where Annabeth and Joker were helped into their Ejection Seat Torso Harnesses by their four compatriots. A moment later, they were sprinting out of the building and into the almost knee-deep snow. The icy wind bit into the exposed skin if her face and she noticed that the clear sky had given way to overcast. Heavy snowflakes were gently descending from the heavy clouds. As they burst out Hazel slipped on ice and almost fell hard, but Annabeth caught her just in time.
Just then the base's loud klaxons began to whine, alerting all personnel about the possible air raid.
The six of them sprinted towards a white van with a yellow light bar screwed on the roof and jumped inside. The crew Chief Travis was the one to take the wheel.
Once they had all jumped into the equally cold van, Travis started the engine, and flicked on the yellow light bar.
Travis quickly radioed in that they were ready for taxi and once the tower had ordered all other traffic on the airfield to halt and stop whatever they were currently doing they were speeding down the Ramp, past dozens of aircraft, most of which were half-buried under snow.
It was a quiet Saturday evening on Andrews AFB and apart from a C17 returning from Ramstein, was taxing back parking space. For the moment she was holding so they were the only moving vehicle on base. As they passed, the C17 flared up her landing lights in greeting.
Two minutes later, they reached a row of hardened hangars and came to a skidding halt next to the first hangar's rear entrance.
"Fuck it's cold," Annabeth complained as they hurried towards the protective aircraft shelter.
Luke threw the door open, and they hurried into the large, blissfully heated hangar.
As they entered, Travis hit the light switches, revealing the two F16s.
As the designated Alert Fighters, the F16s were already fully armed, heavier than the SOP required.
With SOP required one set of medium-ranged, radar-guided, AIM-7 Sparrow on hardpoints nine and one, and one set of short-ranged, heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder on hardpoints eight and two. Their squadron had elected to add two additional Aim-7 to hard points seven and three. Hardpoints six and four held two large external fuel tanks.
As Annabeth and Travis hurried around Annabeth's viper Connor punched a heavy-duty red button. Orange alert lights began to blink and the hangar's front and aft blast doors slid open, exposing the pleasantly heated hangar to the wintery evening outside.
Hastily Annabeth and Joker rushed through the checklist, checking engine air intakes, removing the covers of the pedo tubes, and pulling the safety pins out of the weapons. The activity was mirrored on the hangar's other side, where Frank, Hazel, and Luke were rushing to get their bird ready.
Slightly over a minute later, Annabeth was climbing up the ladder hooked to the side of a cockpit, and finally, she was seated in her familiar, quite comfortable reclined ejection seat. The rush of activity didn't end there.
A moment later Travis appeared on her side. "You good, Catch?" he asked as she hooked her G-suit up to the plane and her Harness to the Ejection seat and finally pulled on her gloves.
Annabeth pulled on her helmet and gave a thumbs up. She had truly hoped that the nickname wouldn't stick which had certainly cemented that it would become her call-sign. Apparently, her first squadron had come up with Catch by deriving it from her own sir name Chase, because apparently, she was a Catch.
It was better than Wise Girl though, one of her fellow pilots had overheard Percy calling her that and had tried to establish it as her official callsign. Fortunately, they had respected another pilot's pet name for her.
"Thanks," she muttered.
"Good hunting up there," Travis said and climbed back down before finally releasing the ladder.
Travis and Conner took up a position at the left of her plane and snapped her a crisp salute, letting them know that they were clear. Annabeth swiftly returned the greeting, snapped down her visor, and finally lowered the canopy and locked it in place.
With practiced swiftness, she let her gaze sweep left to right, her hands brushing over buttons and switches.
The startup began on the lower left of her cockpit. Annabeth flicked the power switch from "Off" to "Main power". A heartbeat later she flicked on the engine starter and her cockpit filled with the familiar and exhilarating sound of a turbofan roaring to life.
Once the engine reached twenty RPM Annabeth unlocked the throttle into low idle, starting the fuel injection. After making sure that both the RPMs engine temperature were shooting up and the volume was drastically increasing she turned on the cockpit's internal lights.
With her consoles now glowing in a comforting green, Annabeth went straight back to work.
By the time the Pratt Whitney F100-PW-229 Turbofan engine had fully spooled up she had already switched on her cockpit's Oxygen system, RWR, and countermeasures were already switched on and readied.
Once the engine was running, she was continued bringing her other systems online. HUD, avionics, and so on were powered up and her displays came to life. She then proceeded to set the Information Navigation System to align and double-check sure that IFF was properly engaged.
Finally, she keyed her radio. "Dagger 2-1 Dagger 2-2, engine running, waiting for INS to align," she reported to her squadron head.
"Copy Dagger 2-2, calling Tower," he explained.
As she listened to the following traffic with one ear as she monitored the small screen to the right of her head-up for the status of her navigation system and snapped on her oxygen mask.
Finally, INS finished aligning and permission to taxi promptly received Annabeth turned off the parking breaks, switched on the Taxi lights, hull, and wing-mounted navigation lights, and the beacons on. Before finally gently easing the throttle out of idle she lastly turned on her nose wheel steering. Annabeth waited for Luke to turn right and pass by in front of her and they made the short trip to Runway 01R, listening to the weather report as they taxied. They taxied fast, faster than they normally would.
"Dagger-flight tower, approaching runway 01R. Requesting permission for takeoff?"
"Dagger flight, you are cleared for takeoff and climb to Angels ten. Come about starboard to heading zero nine zero and switch to designated Operations frequency, mind civilian traffic," the tower replied, and seconds later the two of them lined up on the runway.
As the flight lead, Luke went first. His Jets afterburner flared up, breaks were released, and Annabeth watched as the F16 accelerated down the runway, kicking up a cloud of snow and ice as she went. The angry red glow of its afterburner fading off into the distance grew and a moment later Luke was airborne.
Annabeth disabled her nose wheel steering and then pushed her throttle forward to military power and then a second later into full afterburner and she was pressed back into the chair. With the rumbling roar of the afterburner in her ears, her own plane accelerated down the frozen runway. At one hundred forty she gently pulled the stick back. At one hundred sixty knots, she was finally airborne.
One she had a positive climb Annabeth pulled up the landing gear lever and eased her into a ten-degree climb.
By the time they reached the runway's end, Annabeth was already a good two hundred feet high and she eased the throttle back out of the afterburner into full-mill. After a few more moments she followed her lead and ascended into the low-hanging clouds. She glanced down, double-checking that her anti-icing systems were on, and then leaned back. and finally broke through into a beautiful pale winter sunset.
At nine thousand feet, she began to roll out of the climb, and at slightly over ten thousand, she leveled out again. After double-checking her airspeed, a solid three hundred twenty knots, she looked around for her flight lead and found him maybe two miles again.
Annabeth switched to the squadron's internal frequency and keyed in the microphone. "Coming up on your six, Dagger 2-1," she warned.
"Understood Catch, form up left."
Finally, the voice of an AWACS controller cut in. " Dagger flight, Overwatch. Snap zero-eight-five and climb to Angels thirty-two. Two bogies at Angels thirty-five, on westbound heading, one hundred fifty nautical miles out."
A small grin appeared on her face. This was starting to be fun.
She looked down at her left radar display and raised the display range to eighty nautical miles. As one would expect, the airspace ahead was cluttered with a considerable number of civilian airlines and other smaller aircraft. Her right screen was switched to her Horizontal Situation Display, only that one sent to one hundred and sixty miles range where both Luke's and the Overwatch's sensor feed would be summarized.
A few miles away she could see a Pan American B747 climbing through twenty-five thousand feet at her three o'clock, her engines drawing long contrails. To her left was a Boeing 727.
By the time she actually caught up with her flight lead, they were almost across Chesapeake Bay. Fortunately, they also quickly left the cloud banks behind them and they got one of those amazing views of the frozen world below them.
"So Dagger lead, what's the plan?"
"If we have to engage in BVR (Beyond Visual Range) you will take the left, and I will take the right. We break to lose formation at fifteen nautical miles, launch range at forty. If they want us to escort and observe, we will simply fall in behind them. Finger of the trigger until we get the "Weapons Hot" order. It went without saying that if they were shot at, all bets were off and they would respond in kind.
At this point, Annabeth was quite confident this was going to be some sort of exercise. Two bogies off Delaware at thirty-five thousand feet. Either two Cessna pilots were on cocaine or someone was playing aggressor, which she was completely fine with. That meant she got to stay in the air longer.
Of course, Ivan might be up to something again, she had seen a lot of that in Alaska, but here in DC she doubted it. DC was simply too far from any East Block airfield to be reached by anything but a Heavy bomber or ICBM.
About ten minutes later they ascended up to forty thousand feet and when the two bogies finally turned up on her radar her heartbeat sped up again.
"Dagger 2-1, Master Arm on," Luke ordered.
Annabeth flicked the switch up, arming her weapon systems for possible combat, and slewed her radar at the target readying herself for a Fox 1, it would stay that way.
"Separation, one thousand!" Luke ordered and Annabeth banked away left and increased the distance between them to roughly one thousand hundred feet.
So, next chapter will either be the encounter or what has happened so far, just from the other side's pov. Some fluff is inbound. Bear in mind while I am quite familiar with the Aircraft displayed here, I am not overly familiar with the USAF, or their communications procedures. This is an approximation of what something like this would look like.
Do Enjoy and leave a review.
Henry Locker over and out.