CASCADIAN INDEPENDENCE FORCE - Operation FLASH HAZARD - Action MANTLE - Sicario Mercenary Corps, Hitman Team —
1829 LOCAL TIME
MISSION CLOCK: +00:59:32
Scheduled Operational Start: 1730 LOCAL
The sky would continue to get more and more orange every time she would glance out of the canopy of the Sk.25U that she had been sitting WSO for. Formally, she shouldn't have even been in this plane, the mission roster hadn't had her assigned as anything more than auxiliary mechanic for the F/E-18 that Monarch should've been flying today. Which meant that she could sleep in. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and instead she had been found dozing off by one of Ronin, and had been awoken by a kick to her bed, and a shout of "wake the fuck up, dammit."
Which was not a great way to start one's morning.
Although, she supposed that having a engine failure on the runway, when Sicario was somehow already running late to this mission, wasn't a great way for Monarch to start their morning either.
It is what it is, or so she told herself as she suited up for combat duty, and then had to practically sprint out to the flight-line in order to make sure that Monarch's missile compliment was loaded and balanced correctly, before she climbed the crew ladder to the Skira's cockpit, and slid into her Weapon-Systems Officer seat, running as fast as she could through checklists and procedures that needed to be done in order for the plane to be cleared for the mission.
Once that was done, and they were successfully in the air, did she have a chance to breathe, and to let the reality of her day set in.
She is currently sitting WSO in a Skira 25-U. An air-to-ground oriented airframe, something that Monarch kept on standby in case the situation warranted such a slow, ground-pounding bird. She was currently miffed to hell and back that she had been woken up on a day that ostensibly she should have been able to sleep in, and be able to relax for the day, instead of worrying about being aboard the Skira that was currently being driven by her Pilot towards a part of the continent that she had never been to before. She was more than kind of pissed about it, but there was nothing that she could particularly do, either. Although she was reminded just how uncomfortable a Sk.25's back seat was, compared to any of the other two-seat planes that Monarch was known to fly and she would be dragged along in.
Eventually, as the sky outside the canopy grew more and more orange in the latent cordium that was scattered throughout the troposphere in this area, scattering the light of the sun into oranges and reds that would remain as a permanent feature above this geographical landmark as the free cordium particulates would float skyward in the updrafts and the up-slope winds of this part of the continent. The skies weren't dense enough with cordium to worry about the planes themselves, but it did create a dramatic effect as they flew underneath the layer as they burned hot-and-heavy with plenty of live ordinance towards the Apodock Fracture.
Eventually, Galaxy radioed to all of them clearing them 'weapons hot', and Prez saw her pilot give her a hand signal signifying that she was clear to enable her master arm switch as well. It gave a satisfying click beneath her finger as she flicked it on.
"Hitman Team, you're clear to approach and attack the cordium facilities." Galaxy says through the radio, and Prez is pushed further back into her uncomfortable seating, as Monarch throttles forward following the radio call, meaning that its time to get to work. She flexes her fingers in her flight suit and gets ready for the deadly dance that Monarch is invariably going to get them into. Her panel lights up with the indicators on the passive radar that the Skira has, and is being fed more information from the data-link to Galaxy, some thousands of feet above and miles behind their flight as they burn even faster towards the main cordium processing facilities. Prez sees the target on the radar screen in front of her as Monarch selects it, and she cycles the triggering system to the anti-ground missiles. Eventually, as the missile's guidance system starts to emit a dinging sound into both her and Monarch's ears, her pilot presses the trigger on the control column, and the plane subtly lurches as Monarch pitches up and away from the target they had zeroed in on, letting the missile guide itself into its explosive collision with the target below them. Prez makes the call on the radio for the missile being launched as she's pushed down and back into her seat as Monarch guides the plane through the sky.
The Skira arcs through the orange sky, as it loops back around to line up another series of missiles against the ground targets, and even targeting a couple attack helicopters that are circling nearby. She watches her radar screen as the blip of one of the attack helicopters disappears off her radar screen in subsequent sweeps of the passive radar as she cycles through missile types for whatever Monarch needs.
"How's it looking, Galaxy?" Someone asks over the radio, but as Monarch guides the Skira through another gut-pulling maneuver, she can't tell as the blood rushes from her head temporarily, despite her bracing to the contrary.
"Well…" Galaxy starts, whether disappointment or confusion is in his voice, Prez cannot tell as Monarch performs another maneuver and unleashes a barrage of the Skira's main gun against a convoy of ground targets, sending it up like fireworks-gone-wrong. "Gunsel and Assassin are RTB. It's just you guys out here."
"Let's make it snappy, eh Dip?" Comic's transmission wasn't met with a signature quip from Diplomat in response, just a click of his microphone in acknowledgment that he heard her.
The Skira rattles around her, the radio crackles with transmissions, and Monarch continues to work away at the ground targets, all giving the impression of a job that's continuing to be done — but no indication that the end is in sight at all just yet. Just missile after missile, with occasional gun-bursts as Monarch hunts down the targets on the ground. Not once does the Radar-warning-receiver go off, indicating that there's any kind of lock against them.
"Hitman Team, Galaxy —" Galaxy starts his transmission after a minute or two of silence from him. "I've got a… Handful of signatures on Radar, Bearing one-eight-zero from waypoint Charlie-Alpha-One-One-Quebec."
Prez's ears rushed with the feeling of blood being pulled out from them as she depressed the push-to-talk button during the middle of another manuver. "Galaxy, say count?" She managed to force the words from her lungs with just enough strength to make them audible to anyone else on the radio.
"Hitman One-Two, Unknown. I'm getting an… Abnormal amount of interference from latent cordium in that direction. Picture shows upwards of eight planes, at a minimum four… Time to intercept…" Galaxy's transmission filled with static for a second, only being replaced by the clacking of a keyboard; "T-two minutes."
"You don't sound so sure of that." Comic says over the radio.
"I'll let you know if I get anything else to say about them, Hitman Three. Just keep plugging away."
Monarch let loose another flurry of bullets as they push the plane to strafe a line of cordium tanks that are perfectly lined up for them. "Monarch!" Prez strains as Monarch pulls them away, "We're running low on guns. We should focus the HVTs before we run out of missiles too." She says, without looking up from her Radar. Her pilot wouldn't give her acknowledgment one way or another anyways, why train her eyes elsewhere than her situation screen to try and see if there was one.
Ninety seconds pass in a rush of maneuvers and missile launches, even a few unguided bombs that the pilot drops as they strafe the larger processing facilities. Prez barely notices the time pass.
"Hitman, Galaxy — target update; contact group should be visual now, bearing one-nine-zero from Monarch, Radar indicating roughly three-thousand above." Prez cranks her head to look for the target, her helmet showing her where the bearing is, and then looking up, for some indication of where the contacts are, a shimmer, or something at all to indicate where those targets were.
Her heart raced, and her stomach turned as Monarch banked the plane, and she had to crane her neck again to keep looking.
The Radar-Warning-Receiver screamed in her ear.
"Hitman One, spiked!" She shouted into the radio, and Monarch jammed the throttle open, pulling the Skira into another deep maneuver that shook Prez's insides and made her clench her legs as best she could against g-loc.
"Hitman Team, emergency retreat!" Galaxy barked as the RWR's screams were brought down to just the indication of a Radar-lock, not a missile lock. There was panic in Galaxy's voice, unlike anything that Prez had ever heard from him. "Radar ID confirms it, those are Federation Peacekeepers. Turn three-six-zero, dump all munitions, and burn like hell! Move!" Galaxy ordered.
Prez felt the plane lurch again, and her fingers raced over the munitions jettison panel, doing her best despite the G's pushing on her chest and arms and even eyeballs, to force a jettison of the munitions. The RWR's low-trilling was replaced with a high screeching at the Monarch completed the turn, and dumped full after-burner into the engines, pushing Prez back into her seat as she managed to arm and then release all the remaining munitions on the hardpoints of the plane, the acceleration forces increasing even more with less mass to hinder the engines. She scanned her situation panel, and then started turning about in her seat, trying to get a glimpse of the missile that was invariably inbound. The system had seen the missile launch, but not its current location, just that it was inbound. She trained her head and eyes towards the part of the sky where the enemy plane was flying as best it could towards them. She got a glimpse of it. A glint of metal and a trailing smoke plume that was new, and arcing through the existing ones in a way that didn't look like leisurely strafes of the ground targets. An air-to-air missile.
"Eight-o'clock, High! Smoke in the air!" She shouted at her pilot, who jerked the controls and sent the Skira into an evasive maneuver, dumping chaff and flares as they did. Prez didn't see the launch of the second missile as the first one was evaded. Her eyesight had blacked out in the sudden, high-G motion that the plane underwent, and even her hearing was threatening to fade out.
There was a grunt from her pilot, and the plane twisted and lurched — her body snapping into its restraints in painful lines through her flight suit and combat gear. The engines had given out. The screaming of the RWR was joined by the panicked rining of several other systems' alarms setting themselves off as the plane had taken damage. Hydraulic pressure, fuel pressure, oil temperatures, fuel flow, all reading erroneous, or not at all. "We're hit!" She tried to call over the radio, unsure if it was even working. She couldn't tell if the plane was in a spin or not, just that it was still flying somehow.
If one was watching from the ground, they would see the arcing path that the plane took as it lost flight-controls, and started racing towards the ground using its conserved forward momentum to bee-line towards the ground as lift started to falter from the damaged wings, and gravity began to take over. Several people were watching, but Prez had no idea.
Prez's heart and mind were racing miles at a time, trying to figure out what to do next. She gave a panicked glance at her attitude indicator, rapidly turning brown-over-blue and then back again, the altimeter also rapidly dropping as she glanced over it. "Monarch we—" She began, but was cut off by the feeling of being lurched upwards.
The screaming of the alarms was silenced, and replaced instead by the roaring of the wind tearing through her helmet, threatening to claw away her entire being, as she was slammed into her chair, and rocketed away from her dead aircraft, and into the sky above.
Someone was watching all this unfold from the ground, and knew what the puff of smoke and consequent debris as the plane arced towards the ground meant, and was even more aware of what it meant when they saw the parachute automatically deploy. It was a shame they were too busy trying to keep the pipeline they were standing on from completely erupting to watch where the singular parachute landed.
"Crimson One, splash one bandit." Came the crystal-clear radio call, being sent over the Laser Communication System, rather than the outdated Very-High-Frequency radio system that all their planes had as backup just in case the LCS failed.
"A-affirmative Crimson One. Crimson Team, remaining bandits are retreating beyond your effective Radar and fuel range. RTB." He responded through his headset, eyes watching as the red, unidentified blips slowly disappeared near the top of his scope, away from where even the powerful radar mounted to the top of this airframe could see with all the cordium in the air at that altitude.
"Copy that Bloodsucker, Crimson Team is RTB." Came the response from Crimson One. There was barely any emotion detectable from Crimson Team's poster-child leader. But what he lacked in flying skills, Bloodsucker made up for in discerning the sub-tones of voices.
Was… Crimson One bored in the middle of a gunfight?