April 19, 2024
21:30

It was late at night at the Cavallia Air Force Base. For the past three or so hours, a single F-15EX Eagle II was idle in one of the parking areas. The pilots inside were supposed to be well on their way over to Gracemeria after their transfer request from San Loma got approved. Yet here there are, still in parking waiting for the ATC to give them clearance. Why? The pilots were given a non answer of 'various complications' with no further elaboration.

Which left the two pilots in the F-15 twiddling their thumbs, or to be more specific; the pilot of the aircraft was attempting to find anything on his phone to entertain himself with and the Weapon Systems Officer had decided to use this delay to take an extended nap. It helped that it was also raining which made the backseater doze off a lot quicker than usual.

"Checkmate One, you have clearance to take off. Taxi to runway when ready." The ATC suddenly radioed in.

"About fucking time, my god." The pilot groaned out. "Expulse you sloth! Wake up, we're going now."

The WSO, Expulse, who had a neck pillow on groaned as he slowly woke up. He attempted to rub his eyes to wake himself up but forgot the helmet mounted display on his helmet was in the way.

"God dammit." Expulse groaned out as he stretched his arms as much as he could within the confines of the cockpit. "Maven, did we finally get cleared to takeoff?"

"Yep, took them long enough." Maven replied as he throttled up just enough to get the jet rolling.

"Lovely, I'm assuming they still didn't tell us what the hold up was about?"

"Nope."

Expulse sighed. "Why am I not surprised yet still disappointed."

"It is what it is." Maven steered the plane onto the runway, making sure to line it up roughly with the middle of the runway. "At least it shouldn't be an issue once we move over to an actual air base."

"Here's hoping."

The ATC radioed the two once the plane was in a good position to take off.

"Checkmate one. The runway is clear, you are cleared for take off."

Maven held down the wheel brakes and throttled up the F-15.

"Maven, Expulse. This is where we part ways. I hope we meet again in different squadrons."

Expulse grumbled in the backseat. "I sure as hell don't…"

"I heard that Expulse."

"Eat my ass Kevin. I still don't forgive you for cheating in bloody UNO!"

"Keep complaining and I'll have you both back piloting F-35s"

Both Expulse and Maven shuddered at the threat. Neither of them were fond of that jet for reasons that neither of them felt like explaining. Moving past that Maven refocused back on taking off.

"Checkmate One, taking off." The pilot released the brakes and set the throttle fully forward, purple hot flames spewing out from the engines as Maven engaged the afterburners.

Once the F-15 had accelerated enough, Maven gently pulled back on the flight stick, making the aircraft climb at a steady rate. The pilot raised the landing gear and set the flaps lever to auto.

"Checkmate one airborne. Safe travels to you two." The ATC contacted them one last time before leaving the two pilots alone.

The aviators continued to climb until they broke through the cloud cover. It was a full moon out, giving the duo some nice eye candy to look at as they traveled. Maven already had a waypoint set for the Gracemeria Air Force base in the HSI, making it easy for him to set the flight control system on to autopilot.

"Man, as much as I loved the Strike Eagle, this fancy fly-by-wire system thing is pretty neat." Maven said mostly to himself out of boredom.

"I hear ya, you nerd." Expulse yawned in the backseat.

The backseater held the same sentiment as his flight lead, though he was more concerned with the upgraded displays. Having one large screen with multiple subdisplays was a lot more convenient than the four multifunction display setup that was present in the Strike Eagle. And the entire display was in color as opposed to only two of the multifuction displays having color, which made job a lot easier.

"But remind me why I have to be awake?" He groggily continued, wanting to return back to dream land.

Maven let out an exasperated sigh. "You know, in case someone has the bright idea of trying to shoot us down? We're armed for a reason."

The pilot pointed out that they were in fact armed with a multitude of armaments. Specifically they were carrying six AIM-120D radar guided missiles, two AIM-9X heatseakers, six GBU-12 laser guided bombs, six CBU-99 cluster bombs and three external fuel tanks. It was an odd loadout for what was supposed to a simple transfer to a new airbase, but due to the delays which meant they would be flying on their own, their superiors thought it would be best for them to have some means of self defense if needed.

"Yeah, but you can do that on your own no?"

Maven took a couple of seconds to process that. "What?"

"Hey come on, the demon lord of the round table didn't have a backseater and he was fine." Expulse shrugged.

"Then why are you here?"

"Uhh… moral support?"

Maven leaned to the side and turned his upper body around, silently staring at his backseater as he attempted to shoot lasers out of his eyes or something to that effect. Expulse sheepishly took out a miniature flag that had their emblem on it and waved it around using his wrist. A groan emanated out of Maven as he put his head into his hands.

"Just go back to sleep god dammit." He waved off his backseater, giving up on him actually being useful.

"Yes sirrr." Expulse gave a lazy salute before getting as comfortable as one can in a flight chair. "Wake me up when we land or something."

"Sure." Maven responded curtly, returning his focus back to the front seat. Until a stray thought just crossed his mind that is. "Hey wait where did you even get that flag from?"

The only response the pilot received were quiet snores.

"Useless prick." He muttered out.

And once again Maven was bored and had nothing to do, but someone had to make sure the flight control system and all of the fail-safes didn't nope out which would lead to a nose dive into some mountains or poor sod's house knowing his luck.

With nothing else better to do, the pilot pulled his phone out along with a pack of gum he kept on him. He would have also taken his earbuds out but not like he could wear them with his helmet. After popping one of the chewy rectangles into his mouth, Maven turned on his phone to engage with some 'cultured' activities, only to remember there was no wi-fi up here. Oh well today was a Tuesday so the servers were most likely under maintenance anyways he rationalized. Not that that helped his current predicament but it was something, or at least that's what he thought.

Maven could maybe do sight seeing, but there wasn't exactly much visible. It was mostly cloud cover below him so no pretty city lights for him. The sky was pretty barren as well save for the full moon that casted a nice glow onto the jet and the bright blue lights in the sky that looked like the Aurora Borealis which were oddly close to the plane.

Wait what was that last one?

"FLIGHT CONTROL. FLIGHT CONTROL."

The FCS alert system sounded off, startling Maven as all the warning and caution advisory lights rapidly turned on and off.

"Uhhh Expulse!? We're kinda in deep shit right now!"

"What's going on?" The backseater groaned as he woke up from his slumber, only to be almost blinded by the blue lights outside their jet. "The fuck is happening outside dude? Why is the plane having an aneurysm!?"

"I don't fucking know man!"

The F-15 started jittering heavily as if they were in the middle of a thunderstorm with the amount of turbulence the two were feeling. The array of blue light in the sky only intensified, not only hindering the aviators' visibility, but also seemed to further mess with the electronics in the plane.

Bright white filled the vision of the two, accompanied by a heavy stomach drop.

The rumbles of thunder followed soon after.

"SHIT! We were struck by lightning!" Expulse smacked the side of his display. "Equipment is fucked!"

Maven yanked back on the flight stick, attempting to pull out of the nose dive. The constant blaring of the warnings and master caution in the background wasn't doing him any favors as he tried to keep a level head.

"Come on you piece of shit!" Maven gritted his teeth as he fought with the F-15 for control.

The turbulence disappeared suddenly as if it were never there. The bright blue light also faded away, finally allowing the pilots to actually see what was going on outside their cockpit.

"Looks like we dropped in altitude." Expulse noted, quickly going back to his display. "Equipment seems to be back in working order."

"INS isn't working, shit." Maven swore as he checked their guidance page only to be greeted with an error. "Expulse, could you try radioing the ATC or anyone?"

"Uhh, on it. Give me a second." Expulse flipped through his kneeboard for the radio channels and promptly tuned the radio. "Checkmate One to Cavallia AFB, over."

Nothing but the sound of static air waves greeted the WSO back.

"Repeat, Checkmate one to Cavallia AFB, can you read us?"

Only more silence answered them back.

"Fuck, maybe the lightning messed with our radio?" Expulse pondered out loud.

"Yeah, well, doesn't matter what happened now." Maven said. "Just have it on an open channel for now."

"Well what now." Expulse tried looking out the cockpit but only clouds greeted him back. "I think we're in the clouds, we gonna go back up?"

Maven thought it over for a couple of seconds. "Not taking any chances with getting detected, going down."

The eagle broke from the cloud cover as they descended, finally allowing the pilots some actual visibility over where they are. They quickly realised that the surrounding terrain did not give them any ideas to where they are.

"Hey wait, wasn't it just night?" Maven pointed out.

Expulse fell into deep confusion with a hint of dread. "Something isn't right here Mav, I don't like it."

"I don't either." Maven replied. "Ready the targeting pod as well, just in case."

"On it." Expulse flipped the targeting pod to standby, letting the camera warm up for use.

The duo fell into silence as they went on high alert for any threat that might show up. Expulse brought up both the air and ground radar on two of the subdisplays on his screen as Maven focused on flying. The radar warning receiver started beeping as it detected that it was being locked on to. Maven glanced towards the right side caution lights, seeing that it was a ground unit of some sorts picking them up.

"Expulse we're being spiked-"

"EML SIGNATURE DEAD AHEAD! BREAK OFF! BREAK OFF!" Expulse yelled frantically.

On instinct Maven slammed the flight stick to the side and rolled off to the side. A moment soon after a bright light blue beam fired past where they just were a couple of seconds ago, with a thunder like rumble following suit.

"That sure as hell wasn't a regular railgun!" Expulse was very close to living up to his call sign. Maven didn't respond verbally, but underneath his helmet he was beginning to sweat.

Just a bit.

"Expulse, masks on and ID those targets." Maven ordered as he clipped his oxygen mask on.

"Yep, wilco."

The targeting pod was done warming up. Expulse brought up the pod camera on his display and used his HMD to roughly designate the pod to roughly point in the direction the laser was shot from.

"Okay there's a bunch of ground units to our 2' o clock!" Expulse relayed what he was seeing through the FLIR imaging. "Looks most of them are already engaged with something else."

While the black and white limitations of the targeting pod usually didn't cause any issues for the backseater, he was questioning what exactly he was looking at right now. "There's uh… some kind of tanks with railguns? And uh, a lot of four-legged spider things…" Expulse zoomed in as much as he could to get a better visual. "They have some type of cannon as well, a lot smaller though."

Maven rose an eyebrow at the information his backseater was telling him. None of what was said sounded even remotely close to any ground unit he knew. He shook his head and refocused himself.

"Doesn't matter what they are, designate them as hostiles." Maven said as he brought up the weapons stores page on one of the remaining empty subdisplays and selected the CBU-99 cluster bombs.

"Alright, forwarding ID data to the HMD." A number of green hexagons appeared in front of Maven's eyes, showing where the enemies were, all labeled with a red TGT underneath.

"Okay, master arm on!" Maven flipped the master arm switch up to arm.

He throttled up to max, igniting the afterburners as Maven roughly lined up the impact line on his HUD with the ground targets.

"Bombs away!" Maven called out as he pressed the weapon release button on his stick, dropping a bomb.

The cluster bomb breaks open mid-air, spreading several bomblets over the ground enemies, covering a large area and made quick work of the low level grunts while noticeably damaging the larger targets.

"Good hit, good hit." Expulse says as he viewed the explosions through the FLIR. "Still got some stragglers though, mostly grunts and those big tanks-"

The radar warning kicked off again.

"EML AGAIN! BREAK, BREAK!" Expulse yelled out.

Maven broke into a tight turn while dumping some chaff in an attempt to break the radar lock. Another bright light blue beam strikes pass where the jet was a second ago followed by the same thunderous boom a moment after. The pilot turned the jet back around and did another fly over, dropping another cluster bomb onto the remaining ground forces.

"Good hit again! I think that should be it!" Expulse exclaimed, not seeing anymore enemies through the targeting pod.

Maven sighed in relief and unclipped the oxygen mask from his helmet. He replaced all the combat related pages on his display with navigational related screens and set the autopilot on.

The radio suddenly buzzed to life, startling the two aviators who had just calmed down from the adrenaline rush of combat.

"Hey, you up there! That was cool!" A female voice came through.

The two turned to each other, not sure what to say back.

"You dunce, give me that."

"H-Hey!"

The voice cleared her throat. "While we appreciate the support, this is restricted air space. I am going to have to ask that you follow us back to base or you will be shot down."

Maven quickly glanced at the fuel gauge. They were about to hit their bingo fuel mark, which didn't mean anything now that they had no idea where the closest air base was.

"Uh, Is your base nearby? We don't have much fuel left. Over."

"You're not too far out from it, head south and you should see it soon."

"Understood."

Maven vectored to the south as per the instructions of the radio, throttling down just a bit to save some fuel.

"…So are we not going to talk about how there's potentially a group of what sounds like teenage girls getting shot at by lasers and other shit?" Expulse asked, breaking the silence.

"I mean, what exactly is there to say other than it's mildly concerning?" Maven retorted.

"…fair point." Expulse grumbled out.

It didn't take long for the base to come into view on the horizon. Even from up here, the two could tell it had seen better days. The surroundings looked battle scarred, a bunch of shallow craters presumably left behind from explosives were around and some trees had fallen over.

The radio picked up a new signal. "Base to unidentified aircraft, you have clearance to land on the runway. You are to wait in parking until the commander comes."

Maven glanced outside at the airfield, noting with a skeptical expression that the runway wasn't exactly that long.

"Checkmate one copies, preparing to land."

Maven began descending towards the runway, lowering landing gear, setting the flaps down and extending their air brake. Even with following the the AoA indexer, the landing was a lot more rough than what was normal for an airfield. Maven constantly ruddered left and right while hitting the brakes to make sure they didn't drive off into the grass and crash into a stray fence or one of the buildings.

Thankfully he had managed to slow down to a safe taxi speed and steered the plane to what they assumed was the parking area since there were a couple of helicopters around. The aviators followed the shut down procedures and turned off the engines before exhaling and slumping back in their seats.

"What a ride today has been, huh?" Maven asked with a deprecating laugh.

"Uhh I don't think it's over Mav." Expulse said as he looked outside the cockpit. "Might wanna take a look out."

"What is it now-" Maven was greeted with the sight of various girls outside that could most likely pass for idols, especially with the questionable attire some of them had. All of them also had various firearms, ranging from normal modern weapons to wooden furniture bolt-actions.

"Oh god, what backwater crack den is this shit?" Maven said, exasperated as he tried to come up with a logical and rational explanation to why teenage girls playing dress-up had not only firearms, but firearms that were probably older than both him and Expulse combined.

"Mav, I don't think we're in Emmeria anymore." Expulse said offhandedly.

Maven buried his head in his hands.

"I'm not paid enough for this shit, man."