This is a repost of Planefag's Strike Witches Quest that run a loooong time ago – back in the heady days of the early 2010s, this is not uploaded with permission but considering how it's atleast been partly uploaded to other sites like the space battle forum I thought I'd upload it here for ease of reading – lot easier to read it here than swamp through half a hundred threads.
Warning: this was written in 2012 AND was first posted on 4chin, reader discretion to be advised I suppose.
Brilliant quicksilver radiance lights the night sky, reflecting well off the thick carpet of clouds that stretch out below you. The late winter sky is crystal clear, the Milky Way a stunning band of luminescence cutting across the sky. It's easy to forget the earth exists, on nights like this - staring into that vast expanse of sky, begging you to dive in.
And singing softly over the lambent-lit cloudscape, a gentle, hesitant, sweet melody... La la... la la la... la la la...
"Does this bitch ever shut UP?"
You smack your fist into your kneeboard in frustration.
"Seriously. Every fucking night, this tuneless 'la la la la' bullshit in my headphones. It drives me fucking nuts. Doesn't that bint know the goddamn WORDS?"
"It's a piano tune, you knuckle-dragging ape," Ian interjects languidly from his seat above and behind you. "Her father's a famous Russian composer. Piano tunes don't have words, so you have to-"
"La la la de fucking da all night long, righto, gotcha," Sean gripes. "Fantastic composing, that. Just the kind of pissweak elegance you'd expect from the Russkies."
Eyeing your watch (pardon, your FLIGHT CHRONOMETER,) you see it's time for the next leg of your patrol. You yank the stick back violently into the corner, slamming full right rudder as you do. The Black Widow trembles violently for a moment, then snaps into a vicious snap-roll. You let the plane twirl twice, then floor the throttles and exit in a gentle barrel roll, coming out on your new heading.
"Down-wind leg. Halfway home," you say, chipper.
Sean's voice sounds ragged over the intercom. "You asswipe." A second later. "Bogey on the scope, three miles out. Miss LaLa Kum-Bai-Ah is scooting towards it, sounds like."
"Scheduled," Ian says, bored. "Just a Junkers-"
"I remember the briefing," Sean interjects. "Sparkle Fantastic wing commanders on their way home. God help us if THEY start singing, too."
You work the angles in your head briefly. You could cross paths with the transport easily, if you wanted. You could even, say, cross paths in a screaming-fast high speed dive while whooping like a red injun...
... or you could provide top cover, like, you know, your own wing commander would expect. Responsibility and all that.
Wat do?
Suggestions:
Provide top cover, stay quiet
Politely introduce yourself, fly close escort
Bounce their asses like a pack of hyenas on a three-legged antelope
You remind yourself that you've got serious responsibilities, and this $200,000 twin-engined night fighter is not your personal toy.
That reminder amounts to diddly squat. You're twenty years old, you're a fighter pilot, you've got 4,000 horsepower at your fingertips and you're bored as hell.
You've already got some altitude on the Witches when you push the throttles forward past cruise settings to gain more. In a few minutes, you're a good fifteen hundred feet above them.
You feel that familiar itchy feeling on the back of your neck, the one that lets you know bandits are about. This time it's just worry that you'll be silloueted against the moon or the Milky Way as you creep up on your sparkly prey, but luck is with you. The Night Witch's soft singing has ceased for several seconds just as you reach your perch, and below you can see the Junkers, skimming the cloud-tops, with a tiny form that must be the witch flying alongside.
Perfect.
Nosing over, you put your massive P-61 into a steep power dive, screaming out of the heavens like a black brick of fury and thunder. Aiming a little behind the Junkers, you haul back on the stick, coming level six hundred yards behind them with almost 550 MPH on the speedometer.
You eat up the distance nigh instantly, thundering underneath the Junkers while bellowing into your radio.
"ALAKAZAM, MOTHERFUCKERS!"
Sean's breathless, helpless laughter from the rear radar gondola lets you know you've had the desired effect. "Oh shit... oh shit they're flopping around like a beached salmon, oh god..."
You dip into the clouds for cover until you get some distance. Several seconds later, a strong female voice kicks in your eardrums.
"PILOT! IDENTIFY YOURSELF!"
Do it?
Only squadron?
HELL NO
You decide to split the difference.
"Ah, Rog-er, Miss Saka-whatsit-san, this is Major Mickey Mouse of the 442nd Night Fighter squadron at your service, SAH!"
"I'll nail you to the wall for this, you piece of shit," snarls the voice of Saka-whatsit-san, whom you vaguely recall is in charge, or something, of the combined 502nd, who's witches you just executed a beautiful cold-six bounce on. She sounds incredibly pissed off, and the hair stands up on the back of your neck.
Apparently she's not in the mood for shit from males tonight. You gulp, and steepen your dive slightly, thanking the gods that nobody could have gotten a good look at your aircraft's markings.
A shrill warble sounds as your instrument panel accosts you - the miniature tail-warning radar set is screaming bloody blue murder, which means somebody is on your six o'clock. It's not lost on Sean. "Shit, I think we pissed them off. That night Witch is chasing us."
Oh, IS she?
Suggestions:
Dive and run for it - pushed your luck enough.
Try to shake her off - you can take her!
Give up the game, let her catch up?
Thousands of thoughts bolt through your young mind as you contemplate your situation from all angles. On one hand, they're Witches, and the old grizzled males in the traditional services have about as much respect for them as they do any 13-year old schoolgirl and her dollies. The last two years of war has soundly trounced that impression, but military pigheadedness is stolid and eternal. And the Army Air Corps is especially obtuse to the wails of the Witches, since Witches have traditionally been employed as gunfire/recon spotters in the Navy, supplementing catapult-launched floatplanes.
On the other hand, the multi-national alliance against the alien invaders is damn fragile, and Witches themselves are a political landmine... which, naturally, you just did a fucking dance upon. And now you've got the equivalent of a Major baying for your blood, which would be a section 15 for sure, if she really nails you.
If you're well and truly caught, you'll come quietly, officer... IF.
"Hang on to your asses," you grunt to your crew, and execute another snap-roll, leading into a barrel roll as before. This time you come out inverted and yank your huge fighter into a Split-S, still lost in clouds. Your crew grunts as the G-forces crush the air out of their lungs, and the airframe creaks a little in protest, but the solid machine takes the punishment easily.
"She's still on us!"
Of course she is. She IS a Witch, after all. You yank into a hard left turn, then roll to the right, trying to scissors. The tail warning radar chirps in intervals which grow ever shorter as the Night Witch socks into your six, closing the distance.
"Sakamoto-san, the Americans are still evading," you hear somebody almost whisper into your earpiece.
"Warn them, Sanya."
A burst of tracer fire floats past on your port-side, not terribly close, but not too far away, either.
"Sonofabitch!" Sean cries from the back. "You *really* pissed them off!"
"Approaching target," Sanya says softly, and the rear radar begins howling. No wonder she's confident - you've bled off most your speed with frantic, futile evasives, and your big plane is just wallowing around the sky.
Time for your move. The witches magic might mimic radar, which shows her where you are... but not how you're oriented. With the last of your airspeed, you roll the Black Widow inverted, and wait.
"I've got a visual," Sean says, voice heavy. "She'll have our numbers in a seeeEEEOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH-" he wails as you ram the stick forward. The spoilerons deploy and your Black Widow literally drops out of the sky like a stone. Nose pointed at the earth, you slam the throttles forward against the stops, and both massive Double-Wasp radials scream with primal fury as over four-thousand horsepower surge through the aircraft.
"YAAAAAHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo" you whoop like a red injun with a scalp in each hand as you thunder out of the sky. Ian, behind you, sounds interested for the first time in weeks when he interrupts you.
"Pull... UP..." he manages a placid grunt, a skill unique to him.
You decide to oblige him, reeling in the stick around 3,000 feet. The airframe groans in earnest this time, and your ass is crushed into your parachute with a vengeance this time, but you easily level out before passing 1,000 feet. You hear Ian and Sean emit flaky sighs.
"What were you approaching again, sweetheart? WOOHOO!" you howl in triumph. The moon can't press through the solid overcast and this low to the ground, even the Witch's magic will be greatly confused by ground clutter - or that's how Sean explained it, anyways. In the pitch-dark, near the ground, you're safe.
"Maybe you should fly a little higher," Ian grates from the backseat.
"Pussy. I know where we are, there's nothing above five-hundred feet from sea-level."
Return to base with a good excuse?
Finish your patrol at low-altitude?
Something else?
"Well," you say, "that was exciting!"
"That was stupid," Ian says.
"Hence, exciting."
"... yes," he admits, not sounding as apologetic as he might. None of you have been off base much recently.
"Oh man, how are we going to talk our way out of this?" Sean marvels. "There's only one ship assigned to that corridor, and that's us." He's silent for a minute, which you respect as the feat of phenomenal will it is - for Sean. "Yeah, can't see an excuse good enough to save us from Misses Super-Pissed. We're boned."
"You don't sound very worried," you grump.
"Probably because you're the pilot," Sean says cheerfully. "Which means you're boned. We're just victims of circumstance."
Sometimes you really, really want to put the Widow in a steep climb and let that asshole just fall right out the back. Alas, they fixed the imploding plexiglass problem months ago.
"We were never here," you decide. "We turned for home five minutes ago with engine trouble. Right there in my logbook."
"And the radio chatter?" Ian says.
"Sure was some smart-mouthed Black Widow pilot. Boy, I'm glad I'm not him!"
Twenty minutes later, you put in at home plate, having carefully finagled the engines to use up roughly the right amount of fuel to make your horrid bullshit story stick. You review your lie swiftly even as the hydraulics crank your gear down, running it through your mind, tasting the manufactured engine troubles until they seem almost real. You crab in a bit on the landing with a little rudder, as if your starboard engine is -
"Number two losing manifold pressure," Ian says, shocked. You floor the throttle on One, and your plane tries to crab even harder until you stand on the rudder pedals. The Widow's got huge twin tails, and you put her down lightly on the barely-illuminated strip, the Instrument Landing System functioning flawlessly, as it always does when Sean's on the equipment, reminding you why you put up with him.
Shadowed figures with dim glow-sticks help guide you to a free hangar. With curiosity, you try to give Number Two engine the gas again, but it just sputters, and then unceremoniously stalls out.
As soon as the props are done turning, you make your hasty excuse to your crew chief and get the hell out of there. Somebody will come looking for your ass sooner or later - probably with a silver platter and a carving knife in hand - and you'd rather meet them later.
The post-adrenaline crash from the mock dogfight, plus the extremely unexpected, genuine power failure during landing have you quivering like a leaf. You feel too worked up to crash just now - besides, Luke will look for you in your bunk first thing after he gets the complaint. Best to be elsewhere.
Preferably elsewhere with multiple rear exists, in fact.
Officer's club?
Drink alone, in your "spot?"
Genuflect?
Contemplate the airbase fondly?
You are a young American night-fighter pilot who's just bounced a few Witches harder then a goddamn superball, and the best part is you're probably going to get away with it.
Because you aborted your patrol due to "engine trouble," it's only 4AM, so you've got a few hours to kill before you'll be tired enough to sleep. You mosey on down to the Officers Club, where booze and bangers are to be had - whatever the fuck a banger is. England is a strange nation. You carelessly barge through the door in your accustomed fashion, saunter over to the bar and drum on it with your palms. "Paddy! A pint!"
The bartender, who is neither named Paddy, nor remotely Irish, slams a heavy glass mug upon the bar and slings it towards you with all his might. You snatch it easily, your palm stinging from the hefty impact. It's an old game between you two, a warm, fuzzy mutual hate. If Paddy's arm gets any better, you'll have to scrounge up a catcher's mitt.
You chug down some of the low-quality draught, reviewing what you know of the 502nd Joint Fighter Wing:
1. They're Witches.
2. You owned them pretty hard.
3. At least one of them probably wants to gut you like a fish.
Considering point #3, some homework might be in order. On the other hand, you've got some moderately vague bragging to do.
The base is your oyster. What do?
What the hell. It's not every day those sparkle-fantastic bints are taken down a peg, is it?
You find a semi-populated table and insinuate yourself amongst them. To your delight, your exploits are already the topic of heated discussion - you recognize one man as a control-tower radio tech, which explains his knowledge.
"The officer sounded *pissed,* too," the man is extolling, waving his hands for emphasis. "I'm not sure what happened next, but she didn't like it one bit, because then there was just, you know, sputtering."
You nod sagely and sip at your mug. "So whoever it was got away? From a Witch?"
The radio operator nods, then regards you suspiciously. "Hey, aren't you supposed to be flying tonight?"
"Number Two took a shite on me," you explain. "Coughed her last just as I lowered my landing gear."
He snaps his fingers. "Oh, right, I was just getting off-shift when you came in. Close thing."
You shrug, as if the engine failure hadn't scared you (it did,) and ask for some elucidation of the current scuttlebutt. The men eagerly fill you in.
"Sounds like he bounced 'em. And he sounded American. A Mosquito could outrun a Witch, perhaps, but a P-61?" One of the other men at the table shakes his head. "He wasn't from the 442nd. Must've been a Mossie driver who's good with accents, feeding them a red herring so he didn't get his ass a court-martial."
You stroke your chin and look at the ceiling pensively. "Well... if a Black Widow dove for the deck, that 'Night Witch's' magic is as obscured by ground clutter as regular radar. And no little girl is going to match a Black Widow in a dive, either."
All the men at the table stare at you.
You sip your beer, a carefully neutral expression in place.
"In fact," you say, "I hear there was a Junkers flying a couple of their officers home tonight. And they've only got one Witch capable of night operations, so if she was slacking off, shooting the breeze with her friends when some bored Widow driver happened upon them..." you twirl your finger in the air to indicate that it's completely theoretical.
The men around you are hiding smirks in the foam of their beers.
You shrug noncommittally. "I mean, that's what probably happened. Hard to believe that the phenomenal power of a little girl singing "la-la-la" all fucking night long-" there's some muted snickers at this - "-can't match old fashioned skill, but..."
The man across from you suddenly widens his eyes, and seems to shake his head the tiniest bit.
You forge ahead, missing the hint. "And not being able to out-maneuver a beast like a Black Widow? With a Striker Unit?" You sigh with mock sadness. "I have no idea what those girls are thinking."
The man across from you frantically blows bubbles in his beer. You wonder what the hell he could be trying to hint at, and tilt your head back to drain your mug -
- and keep on tilting, your chair following, until the back of your skull meets the wooden floorboards. Through the glass bottom of your mug, you can make out an extremely pissed-off man hovering over you.
Fight?
Item?
Run?
You're a 21 year old fighter pilot with alcohol in his system, still coming down from an adrenaline dump.
What happens next is as reflexive as breathing. You hurl the heavy glass mug up at your assailant, grab his ankles while he's busy dodging, and yank him off his feet. Rolling to one side, you seize your chair and swing it sideways across the floor into the bastard.
The man simply rolls out of the way and lashes out with a boot, catching you in the ribs. Pain explodes in your chest, and in a blind rage you lurch off the floor around the same time he does. You lunge for him, hands reaching outward, and he decks you hard, sending you sprawling over the table.
You finally get a moment to look at the man, and recognize him through the red haze of rage. As he seizes you by the shirt-front, you drunkenly salute.
"Major Lhook, sah!"
Major Frank Luke, your squadron's commanding officer, hauls you upright and sticks his face in yours. "What a SWELL story you were just telling," he growls. "Care to tell me a little more?"
Yes
No
Fake a concussion
"What? Why are there three of you?"
"That'd be me, my bad attitude, and my LAST OUNCE OF FUCKING PATIENCE," Luke bellows, shaking you by the shirt. "Bounce the Navy, bounce the Limeys, Bounce the fucking MARTIANS once in a while, like you're supposed too, you layabout FUCK, but for FUCKS SAKE, never, ever, EVER bounce a WITCH!" The Major punctuates each statement with a vigorous shake that rattles your brain around your skull quite nicely. "It's a political landmine, and when all that shit comes back to earth, guess who's fucking desk it lands on!?"
He's silent.
You stare at him, disoriented, until you realize he wants an answer.
"Yo-"
"YOURS, MOTHERFUCKER," he roars with impressive volume, two inches from your nose. "BECAUSE YOU'LL BE MY FUCKING FILE CLERK AND FLY A FUCKING TYPEWRITER FOR THE REST OF THIS WAR if you ever get caught doing that, you hear me, asshole?"
"If I'm caught?" you echo innocently, catching the key phrase. Frank Luke is the subject-matter expert on the "get caught" clause, but you wisely refrain from mentioning that. "I turned back halfway through my patrol with a funky engine, sir."
Luke drops you on the table unceremoniously. "I just had an engineer take a look at that engine," he says coldly.
Oh shit oh fuck oh doom on you, he knows.
HE KNOWS.
"I don't know how you did it," Luke growls. "Your crew chief said that engine was overhauled not two days ago. Either you can make engines fail on command or you're the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on earth. Get to your goddamn quarters, I'm putting you on the dawn patrol."
There's a slight "whoosh" of air as the ten tons of DOOM you were imagining falling on you vanish. A few seconds later, your heart remembers it should be beating.
The tower radio tech emits a brittle laugh. "Nice work. You a wizard, mate?"
"Pet Gremlin," you reply shakily. Retrieving your mug, you limp over to the bar for another pint. Now you *really* have something to celebrate.
Wat do? Suggestions:
Do as you're told
Talk to your crew chief
Catch up on your reading
OONTS OONTS OONTS OONTS
Your last pint of the night screams over the polished bartop, leaving a moisture trail behind it as it punches through the atmosphere. With the speed of a striking snake, you seize a nearby chair and slam it into the bar, letting the wood take the crushing impact instead of your hand. The mug impacts with a wooden CCRACK! and beer gushes so high it splatters on the ceiling.
With a look of weary triumph, you pick up the cracked mug and chug what remains in one go, then slam it into the bar. Shooting Paddy the Evil Eye, you turn and leave the officer's club.
Curiosity gets the best of you, and you detour past the hangars on your way to your barracks. The crew chief of your plane stalks towards you, a big wrench in his hand.
"Hey, Marv."
"Fuck you, asshole," he growls, his hand flexing on the haft of the wrench.
"Uh." You retreat, holding your palms up. "I didn't do shit."
"I just fixed this, and you go and fuck it up."
"... what?"
Marv shows you what. Leading you into the hangar, he shows you a few cracked gaskets in the fuel line and carburetor.
"And we just replaced all of those two days ago," he grumbles. "Every fucking gasket, every grease fitting, every spark plug. They don't dry out that fast, even when one of you knuckleheads push it for the extra ten pounds of boost-pressure. It just doesn't happen."
You reach out to feel the steel around the gaskets. "Shouldn't it have started a fire?"
Marv snorts. "Quite likely. Instead, the fuel line just shut down." He shakes his head slightly and gives you a wary look, like you might sprout horns or something. "You don't got a witch in 'yer pocket, do you?"
You manage to drift off to sleep after skimming the London Times, which is full of bad news, as usual. The Graf Spee and the Indianapolis are still out-of-contact after entering the Med, Fighter Command has suspended all recon flights over the Normandy Coast following devastating losses, and sugar prices are going up again.
You're hustled out of bed at 6AM, dragged through the cold night half-asleep, and are soon lurching up a ladder with a biscuit in one hand and a thermos in the other. After stumbling into your pilot's seat, you discover the thermos is filled with tea.
Better then nothing. As you bring it to your lips, you discover it's almost as cold as the morning, and when the caffeine hits your system, your eyes unblur enough to make out thick fog and jack-shit visibility right outside your canopy.
"I hate this fucking country," you mutter.
With much cursing and fussing, the four aircraft of your flight line up on the ramp and are soon sent roaring off into the darkness. Peering at your kneeboard, you see you've pulled the coast patrol.
"Fuck me," you comment.
"What?"
"Coast patrol."
"Oh, that lousy rotten bastard," Sean bitches via intercom from the radar compartment. "Dawn, too. Shit duty if there ever was."
Daytime attacks usually consist of those fucking steam-sleds (or whatever flavor-of-the-week the little green men pick,) dropping in from high orbit, right onto population centers like London. A pilot tooling about at 30,000 feet has a decent chance of scoring a kill on one, if he spots it early enough to match speeds in a dive.
Coast patrol, however, is -
"-cleaning up the Witches sloppy seconds," Sean bitches, "if we're incredibly lucky."
"What, you want to get into a real fight in this clunker?" Ian marvels from the back-seat. "More power to the girls, I say."
Your crew didn't get their asses kicked last night, so they're a bit more talkative then you. An hour later, you're feeling a little more awake, and you've gained about 20,000 feet of altitude by the time you reach the cliffs of Kent.
"The channel sure is pretty in the morning," Ian says as you wheel North for the first leg of your patrol. Sean announces his intention to get some sleep, and leans back - Ian and you both have 20/10 vision, and with the morning fog burned away by the rising sun, there's little call for the radar.
"There's Sparkle City," you say, nodding at the little spit of an island off your nose, where the 501st Witches squadron is based.
"It's got a proper name, you know," Ian scolds you. "That's one of the most ancient and fabled castles in all of England, you lout."
You lean forward in your seat, peering intently at something a little nearer. It looks like gnats at twenty paces on a hot summer day - just the hint of a cloud of tiny things, darting about swiftly. "You see that?"
"I do," Ian says.
You push the nose down and nudge your huge fighter's throttle above cruise power. "Sean. SEAN! Wake up, you shithead."
Sean snarls and swears as he wakes up. "What, what?"
"We've got some kind of dance going on out there."
"Planes or Strikers?"
"Not planes; too small."
"Training exercise, then," Sean says, but you see the electrical bus power gauge bounce as Sean warms up the radar set. Any chance of action is worth looking into, especially for the inglorious and forgotten night fighter crews. "I'll take a sniff," he says, meaning he'll use the radar dish as a passive "ear" to see what, if anything, is radiating.
"YES!" his hefty Irish voice kicks you in the head through the intercom. "Martian gobbledeegook, we've got aliums!"
You and Ian both whoop with exhilaration as you push the throttle to military power and nose down a little more to reach the area. You key your mike to report the contact, but with the proximity to the shore radar installations, you know it'd be pointless. Especially with the proximity to the Witches. Better to keep quiet - the Martians have a funny talent for triangulating transmissions, and you don't want to tip your hand just yet.
A long minute later, your sharp eyes start to recognize the movement patterns of the battle. "Oh, shit."
's Witches all right, and they're up to their scantily-clad asses in aliens. You're close enough now to see the tracers of the Witch's small arms floating across the sky, and the sinister smoke-contrails of Martian rocket-bombs.
You gently roll the P-61 inverted to get a better look through the top of the canopy. "Fuck me, they've got a little of everything today." And they do - the little green men were intent on covering their bases today.
And there's a lot of them. You go to key your mike - the Witches are probably being jammed, but several thousand feet above them, your much bigger set might punch through.
As you do so, you spot a girl in a Striker unit breaking away from the main melee, with a gaggle of Martians hot on her tail - quite literally. She's jinking for all she's worth, but as far as you know, Witches only turn tail when they're out of magic for those shields they conjure, which means that Witch is about to be in Hurt City.
WAT DO
Oh, yes. Fuck yes. Your breast swells with unholy glee, and you see red.
Time to kick some alien ass.
Still inverted, you haul the P-61 into a steep dive towards the fleeing Witch. Aiming slightly behind her, you let your reflector gunsight drift onto the biggest pursuing Martian, one of those pipe'n'jets affairs, the nasty ones with the spiral-y rockets.
You scream out of the sky like a jet-black avatar of death, and at the right moment, you thumb the firing stud. Four twenty-milimeter cannons and four .50 caliber guns roar, shaking the entire airframe, and the Martian disintegrates.
"FUKKINBULLSEYE!" you scream wildly, crushing yourself into the seat with four-gravities of force as you haul back on the stick. The massive fighter soaked up a ton of energy in the dive, which you burn in a zoom-climb, climbing two-thousand feet in only four or five seconds.
You finish the loop, coming out inverted again, but this time you're at a near-standstill and half the altitude. Still, that's enough. Some of the Witch's assailants are splitting off to turn towards you, but the rest are still driving her over the Channel, further and further from help.
Well, fuck that.
You roll upright and dive again. Several Martians throw their noses up at you, and Sean shouts over the intercom, "Masers!" A second later the small radar-scope in your instrument panel clicks on at Seans command. Usually used for terminal intercept in the dark, it now lights up brilliantly where the emitted radiation of a charging maser is detected. Thus guided, you put your big plane into a tight spiral, blowing right through the climbing Martians before a single one manages to discharge.
Through! You level off at the same altitude as the Witch and her pursuers, but you're still five-hundred yards distant. You unload the plane, sleeking for speed, and ride your extra airspeed for as long as possible. The Widow isn't the fastest plane, and you only close to about four-hundred yards when you sense your speed has matched - and is now slipping.
Good enough. "Tally-ho, you fucking freaks," you breathe, and press the firing stud.
The Hispano may be a finicky, difficult, unreliable pain-in-the ass, but when it works, sweet Jesus does it WORK. The four belly-mounted cannons have no convergence factor to worry about, and the huge, high-explosive/armor piercing shells tear through the four-hundred yards of intervening airspace like miniature missiles, the smoking tracer contrails looking like the spear-shafts of Apollo himself. You give one bandit a good hammering, then use the rudder to swish the gunsight over two others. The heavy BABABABABABABABABABAM~! of the huge cannons sends a stattaco vibration up through your seat mountings and through the base of your spine. One Martian explodes, another goes spinning into the Channel, missing a wing, and a third breaks off in a desperate dive, smoking badly.
"We've got company!" Sean hollers from the back.
Two kills and a probable isn't bad for one sortie, is it? On the other hand, the Witches are still outnumbered, and you've got the firepower of any four of them.
Wat do?
That itchy feeling on the back of your neck is back, and it's strong as hell. You're at co-altitude with much more maneuverable, much faster enemies, and you're flying a heavy, slow crate.
And taking one look at the numbers the Witches are up against, you realize you don't have much of a choice.
"Sean, Ian, turret!" you say, flipping the switch to unlock the top turret. There's a brief whine of servos as the remote-operated turret swings about, obeying commands from the remote aiming controls both Ian and Sean have mounted at their positions.
You take a deep breath and ram the throttles forward, snapping the thin wire stretched over the throttle channels, near the end.
The huge fighter lurches, raw power shocking through the airframe as the massive Double Wasp radials are unchained. Thirty-six cylinders bellow towards the redline as you push into War Emergency Power.
You'll need every ounce of that power. Flipping your Black Widow upside-down, you cut into a hard split-S (upside-down half-loop,) reversing direction towards your playmates. You open fire at 600 yards, betting on your range advantage to save you against the Martians broadsides.
Your long-range fire is less effective when the Martians can see it coming, but their evasives spoil their own shots. The sky before you fills with smoking rocket contrails, the shimmering heat-distortion of maser beams, and old-fashioned kinetic projectiles. A wall of bullet hell comes hurtling towards you.
You cut the left-engine throttle, stand on the pedals, adjust the mixture and prop pitch and pop the left spoilerons almost in the same motion, sending the heavy fighter into a vicious left-hand skid, neatly dodging the worst of the fire. Explosions and the screech of rent metal let you know you've been hit, but the instruments never waver and the powerful fighter plows through the storm resolutely.
You've moved your nose off-target evading, but Ian doesn't dissapoint. The quad-50s in the turret hammer loudly as the bandits blow past, and Ian grunts with satisfaction, apparently having scored.
Now, at last, you key the mic. "WitchyPants I just saved, take my wing!" you cry out, trying to get the closest Witch to form a wing-pair with you. As long as you stay separated, you're easy meat.
"Tally one Witch, four-o'clock!" Sean cries. "Coming for our tail!"
You break hard right, hoping to set up a defensive weave with the Witch, but as you do you see your playmates finishing their own hard, flat turn to come about on you. Now you recognize them as heavy-hitters, what most pilots call "Steam-sleds" after their general appearance. They're usually used when the Martians want to hit like a freight train, and they generally do.
"Fuck *me,*" Sean breathes from the intercom, and you hear the turret guns go to work on something behind you. Naturally, the lighter, smaller Martians are already on your ass.
You take your Black Widow through another head-on exchange, but this time you keep your piper on-target longer, getting a good lick into an alien 'sled, which explodes and wheels out of the sky. Your own fighter bucks hard as a spiral-rocket explodes under your belly, kicking you in the ass and lifting the whole machine several feet.
"Where is she?" you cry out, hauling the Black Widow into another hard right-hand turn.
"Too- many!" Sean says, and your heart sinks. There's no way you'll be able to pair up with her - you're both too swamped. Which means all three of you will be dead in another few minutes of this.
The 'sleds come about again, turning back on you as you both describe a figure-eight in the air. You bank hard left, and wait. The sleds explode in smoke and fire as they begin firing well beyond effective range, trying to rattle you, but you hold steady...
Thank God, all four cannons are still operational. Hauling back on the stick, you sweep your fire over all the sleds, either bashing in their noses with high-explosive shells or forcing them to break off.
Something loud and ugly yanks your fighter to the left, and you see your Number One engine explode in flames.
"Well, shit," Ian observes.
Wat do?
Sir Not Appearing In This Dogfight
TO THE DEATH
A cold, chilly wrath spreads through your body, numbing your emotions and clarifying your thought.
You are about to die.
The cool, crisp simplicity of it is seductive, and you embrace it wholeheartedly. You enact the only go-to-hell plan you've ever had: if you're going to hell, you're taking the largest honor guard possible.
You wheel your badly-wounded fighter around for another go. Neither Ian or Sean speak, but you hear the top-turret swinging around for one more lick.
The Martian steam-sleds thunder towards you, huge billowing contrails of grey smoke billowing out behind them as they give it the gas. Just as they approach firing range, you shove the stick down and dive under them. They fire, but the extreme closure rate and sharp deflection angle spoil their aim, but, as always, your top-turret is not so limited, and the quad-fifties roar.
You know, without having to look, that the Martians have flipped inverted to turn back into you and follow your dive. Rolling your striken Widow, you make a sharp turn back the other way, still diving steeply, then roll again and turn back the other way, weaving left-right-left as you plummet from the sky. The left-hand engine vanishes in a cloud of white mist and thick black smoke as the extinguishers fire.
"They're still on u-" Sean begins to say, then his voice vanishes into the hideous sound of a hefty blast in the rear of your plane. The Widow bucks and tumbles, and you scream incoherently into your cockpit, knowing Sean is dead...
Fighting the sluggish controls, you take your downward weave and nudge it into a downward spiral. You unfeather the propeller on the dead #1 engine, letting it spiral freely, creating a ton of drag on your left wing, and drop your flaps. The Widow's handling deteriorates rapidly as you lose what speed you had, but the gamble pays off - the Martians don't notice your loss of speed until it's too late, and two of them zip out in front of you. Fighting the controls for every ounce of lift, you manage to put your gunsight on one of them and you feed the fucker several 20mm rounds, blowing big chunks of important-looking stuff off his ship and making him peel away, out of the fight. There's a sharp explosion above you, but you spare no time to look up, just nose down and steepen the dive again, spiraling a bit and looking up through the canopy to get a glimpse behind you, now that Sean isn't talking.
The altimeter spins wildly as your altitude unspools towards the cold, dark waters of the Channel. You've dragged the entire flight of 'sleds into the weeds, and effectively out of the fight with the Witches above. Mission accomplished.
Now you need to not die.
Through the melted and charred plexiglass you see the long runway of Castle Barin, the ancient Witches stronghold of the British Isles. The fight has carried you close enough you might attempt it.
Of course, you still have three 'sleds riding your ass, and perhaps some of the damn 'gnats, too. You need speed.
You pull your wounded P-61 out of the spiral at 500 feet altitude, and let go of the stick, unloading the control surfaces. Number Two engine is thundering violently, flames blasting from the exhaust stacks. You violently shove #2's cowling control all the way down, slamming the cooling flaps closed, sleeking the plane for speed and caging the intense heat of the redlined engine inside the carburetor.
You frantically attack #1's panel, turning off the magnetos and shoving the mixture to full-rich to flood the engine with volatile fuel. Holding your breath, you flip the magnetos on and fire the remaining extinguisher again in the same breath.
The engine BANGS! to life, and fairly explodes in flame at the same moment - which is smothered by the CO2 from the last extinguisher bottle. With superhuman speed you lean the mixture fast enough for the turning engine to rattle weakly, then catch. It's still trailing the thick, vile black smoke of an oil fire, but it's running, and for the next thirty seconds that's all you need.
Sean might still be alive, wounded and bleeding out in the radar operator's compartment. You have to land this fucker.
"Castle Barin, Castle Barin, Romeo-Two on short final, clear the runway!" you wail into your radio.
"Romeo-Two, what are you flying?"
"Twin-engine! We-"
"Request denied, Romeo-Two," an extremely annoyed female voice informs you."Barin is a Strike Witches base and off-limits to male aircrew, and we've got an entire flight of Witches low on mojo to recover. Divert to Eddington Strip, it's almost on the beach."
How does this make you feel?
"Ooooh you duckfaced-shit-licking-cum-gargling-hog-humping-curtain-of-smelly-TWATMIST!" you thunder into your microphone as you shove #1 engine to half-throttle. "Go fuck yourself with a rabid badger you sparkle-fantastic fairy-dust-farting sack of triplecrank fizzle-bitch FUCKSLUMPS!" You don't even know what you're saying anymore, but it sounds hateful, fiery and violent, and that suits your current feel quite nicely. You can feel the old 'Widow losing inertia, and between the heavy combat damage and your critically low airspeed, you don't want the drag of the landing gear till the last second.
You dimly note the concussive hammerblows of the .50 cals smacking your eardrums every now and then - the top turret still speaks. The walls of Castle Barin grow ever larger before you, and all at once the island lights up with muzzle flashes and tracers, black clouds of ack-ack exploding about you.
Trigger-happy fucks are SHOOTING at you!? You thumb the firing stud again with pure rage, but the cannons click empty. Fuck it, you'll crash on them.
You're too low and too slow for a proper approach - not enough lift. Your wings must be shot up. The runway is looking awful flat; you've very little altitude. As the edge of the long runway approaches your nose, you hit the gear switch, letting the wheels fall out of the belly via gravity, and give the stick a sharp jerk backwards, praying that the little "snap" will be enough to ensure the wheels lock in.
The long runway is finally underneath you, and you hear the sweet, sweet sound of rubber smacking concrete at last. Now it seems the 'Widow is moving rather too fast, but you don't dare tap the breaks - ground-looping now would send you right over the edge and into the rocky shoals on either side of the runway.
It's a pretty fucking stupid runway, you know that?
The massive Black Widow keeps on barreling down the runway just like it barreled through all those Martian projectiles. Even with both engines cut, the Widow just rolls and rolls and rolls. As she slows, the nose slowly tilts downward as the front gear partially folds up, not having locked properly. The heavy Widow finally slows, and you want to stand on the brakes, but an old, ingrained instinct from flight training looms large in your mind - the repeated threats of severe beatings and/or unfortunate "accidents" promised to any pilot who damages the very expensive radar gear in the nose. Out of respect for the collapsing forward gear, you abstain from the brakes, and the Widow, moving slowly now, sedately rolls through the wide courtyard at the end of the long runway and through the wide doors of the hangar cut into the cliffside.
With a final squeak and rattle of tortured bearings, the wheels stop moving, and the nose-gear slowly collapses until the P-61's nose rests on the ground, as if taking a bow.
You violently kick at the trapdoor under your feet, which bangs into the tarmac, without the usual clearance to deploy the ladder. Swearing, you tug at the canopy release, only to find it slagged and jammed. Drawing your Colt .45, you smash the butt into the release and knock it free, bodily hurling the goddamn canopy away from your cockpit with your other hand. Leaping to the concrete, with everyone present staring at you, you thrust your finger at the closest person: a young woman with a brown jacket and no pants.
"YOU. ARE. SMALLTIME," you snarl.
Then you pass out.
You wake up naked in a hospital bed.
The golden rays of the late-evening sun slant in through the windows, which is more then enough light to make your head hurt like a motherfucker.
You're hungry as shit. Also, you're naked.
Things seem kind of fuzzy, you don't know why. Sean's around here somewhere. So is Ian, you're sure. Somebody broke your plane. Also, there's some Mouthy Bitch about, you want to punch her. You get that feeling a lot in your life, you've noticed.
Wat do?
Suggestins:
Loot useful items
Acquire garments
Acquire food
call for help
Defenstarate whatever that fucking beeping thing is