War Gods

Chapter One.

T.J. Richards

The vehicle crouched like a stalking bird of prey in the long, yellowing grass that struggled to grow along the edges of the crumbling airfield runway. The ship’s black and iridescent green skin glistened in the early morning sun, water from the earlier rainfall still clinging to its long ovoid-shaped hull. Its engines hummed softly, like cicadas on a hot summer day, their song rising slowly and then falling into a low, deep rumble, causing the dirt and grass beneath the ship to vibrate from the bridled power. The four vectored-thrust nozzles, two at the rear and one on each side of the hull aft of the cockpit, remained pointed downwards, slight heat shimmers emanating from them.

The top portion of the hull forward of the tucked wings was all darkened glass, slightly blue gold in colour, made of faceted segments. Above and slightly behind the cockpit glass, a small egg-shaped dome slowly rotated a full 360 degrees, its six shrouded cameras peering out at the world.

The camera pod settled for a moment, its numerous camera eyes looking to the south.

There, a few miles distant, lay the Black River, running high and swift from the recent Spring rains, continuing more or less along the same path it had run when Americans still called this area home. The waters remained fouled with rusting debris and the toxic poisons from the dead towns and cities that lay rotting upstream. It would be many years before the waters ran pure, and longer still before wildlife returned in numbers to this part of the former New York State. In the years following the collapse of Federal and State governments, with the cessation of food deliveries, the region had been heavily hunted, wiping out species from house cats to wild deer. No animal had been spared the cook pot.

It spun again, snap-quick, peering to the north, along the boundary of what had been Fort Hood’s northern perimeter was dense, pre-war forest, a tangled growth of underbrush and older trees, shouldering each other for space and sun. Many of the forests in the State had burned in the aftermath of the initial strikes, darkening the skies for months. A quirk in local wind patterns had spared these woods, shielding them from fire and much of the radiation from the strikes that had taken out the eastern seaboard.

Then the camera pod moved on, sedately, machine-like indifference.

Westward of the vehicle’s position were the overgrown ruins of Fort Drum. The army base, home to the 10th Mountain Division, had been untouched in the nuclear strikes, but had eventually been looted and burned in the chaotic aftermath of the war. The heroes that had survived the conflict had fought bravely, attempting to protect the survivors that had flocked to the base for safety, but eventually, when food and uncontaminated water had run out, there was little that could be done. The people died, or moved on to follow rumors of other safe havens, leaving Fort Drum to the elements.

The runways of what had been Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field, east of Fort Drum proper, had faired far better than the base facilities. Though cracked and pitted, they were still managing to resist the encroaching forest even after almost fifty years. The buildings of the airfield had long since fallen into ruin, stripped of anything of value and then left to rot.

“Raptor Two,” the intership crackled to life. “Raptor Actual.”

“Raptor Two.”

“Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against our old adversary – boredom,” Raptor Actual stated, faking an atrocious blend of a Scottish-Russian accent. “Do you have anything to say?”

For about the tenth time that morning Zach wished they hadn’t all gotten together last night in the crew room to watch that pre-war digital, The Hunt for Red October. The digital had told the story of a Russian submarine captain and his officers attempting to reach the glorious freedom of America in the days preceding the war.

Raptor Actual, Serrano, had insisted it was a classic, one of Hollywood’s best. All morning, starting during the pre-mission brief, every single member of the team had been firing off quotes trying to outdo each other, in their memory of the film’s lines and in their reproducing atrocious Russian accents.

He knew that when the team leader started doing it all hope was lost.

“Well,” he responded in an imitation of her imitation accent, surrendering to the inevitabe. “Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.”

The intership channel erupted with laughter as everyone cheered his quote. Nobody had used that one yet, even if the context for it hadn’t fit. Zach smiled into his oxygen mask, listening as the other four members of the team launched into their own renditions of quotes from the movie.

“I would like to have seen Montana!” Torres quipped over the intership, an atrocious imitation of the character Vasili Borodin.

Baker and Decker instantly joined in, sounding varyingly like British flyers from the last classic movie they’d watched or actors with speech impediments. Singh launched into his accent, sounding more like someone from China who’d spent far too much time in Pakistan, which was funny to everyone since the man was of East Indian heritage. The accents were horrible but the quotes were accurate enough.

It happened every time they watched a classic movie, knowing that it could have been much worse. Zach cringed as he remembered the time they’d watched a musical, The Sound of Music. None of them sounded like Julie Andrews, not even close, but they’d all tried to imitate her voice. He wasn’t sure if it had been funny or closer to some form of new interrogation torture. The hills had not been alive with the sound of music that day, he chuckled to himself.

“Alright Team,” Serrano interrupted finally, obviously straining to keep her own laughter under control. “Play time is over. Back to business.”

Zach nodded, recognizing Serrano’s effort to reduce stress as the time for phase two of the operation neared. The team was loose, calm, and very well trained, but a little humour never hurt.

He touched a glass screen on the panel next to the left collective joystick with a black leather encased finger, bringing up the environmental display on his holographic Heads Up Display, the HUD. It was already 25 degrees Celsius, and only 1000 hrs. The Met guy had told them it was going to be a hot one, but typical weather for what had been New York State in early June. He’d warned there was a 20 percent chance that there might be some electrical disturbance from a storm passing through Pennsylvania but the weather in their part of the Wastelands would be pleasant enough. Or as pleasant as it ever got in a post-apocalyptic land fifty years after World War III, he thought with a wry chuckle.

“Looks like the Met guys got it right for once,” he said, opening a private channel to Serrano, transmitting his accumulated sensor data.

“We should have brought a picnic lunch,” she joked as she began to review the data along with him.

He laughed for a number of reasons, picturing the team, dressed in full combat environment suits sitting down on the banks of the Black River dining on fried chicken and potato salad. It was funny because it took on average one hour for a single pilot to get out of a CE Suit, and pilots also didn’t wear anything under the CE Suit, so it became even more funny.

“You bring your bikini?”

“Fuck that,” she answered, her laugh musical and genuine. “If I’m going to take a swim in a radioactive and polluted river I’m doing t in the buff!”

“Well, you have my vote for the picnic now for sure!”

Zach cycled through the readings the computer was displaying on the environmental screen, taking note of elements that could impact flight performance, such as humidity. There were no problems with any of the readings, all were well in the green for mission operations.

The radiation was another matter though. The storm to their south was being driven by an easterly wind, that had been strong enough to pick up particles from the east coast nuke strikes. A casual glance at the exterior rad monitor showed a slight increase just in the hour that the team had been on the ground. Nothing to be worried about, he decided, at least not while they were in their Falcons. Even moving around unprotected outside wouldn’t be fatal, not immediately, but exposure to radiation, no matter how small the dose, was to be avoided if at all possible.

Tapping another App on the glass display brought up a detailed map of Fort Drum. With a few other manipulations he overlaid the positions of the rest of the team, prevailing wind conditions, radiation flow patterns, and Geiger readings. The overlay was presented in colours of green, yellow, and red. None of the team was in any danger.

“Serrano, all green,” he told her, again using the private channel. “Slight radiation readings in the area but nothing that will impact mission parameters.”

“Roger, I guess we have to call off the picnic,” she responded, chuckling, agreeing with his assessment. “Ok, phase one complete, stand by for orders.”

Zach had positioned his ship roughly in the center of the team’s circular dispersal area. Every member had an assigned task to complete during phase one, and his had been to check climatic conditions and environmental hazards that could impact the next phases of the mission.

His job done, he settled back to waste time until phase two of the mission began.

With another finger stroke on a glass touch screen he tied his visual display into the first of the ten drones they’d deployed over the airfield. Raptor Five, Decker’s ship, was the mothership for the drones, carried in internal bays of her ship and deployed when required. For her the down side was that she had fewer internal weapons stores, but the drones were essential so someone had to be the donkey. Serrano had full control over the drones, where they went and what they did, but every member of the team could access the digital feed.

Zach brought up the feed from all ten drones, little postage stamp boxes of moving images floating on the black visor that covered his face, though appearing as if they were hanging in the air in the ship’s cockpit.

Serrano had the drones running a standard interlocked pattern over the airfield, ranging ten kilometers outward and then returning to pass through a number of datum points over the runways. The drones were semi-autonomous and varied their tracks, their speed and altitudes, enough so that their courses could not be reasonably plotted or predicted. If switched to combat mode the drone brains would get very creative indeed, rendering them nearly impossible to take out.

Zach examined each digital feed in turn, watching for anything unusual. Each drone had a standard digital camera for real-time electro-optical video feed, but all-weather day/night systems including a Laser Indicated Distance and Range (LIDAR), an infra-red imaging camera, a Direction Range, and Distance (DRADIS) imaging system, and plain old fashioned radar. The drones were also armed with four Skyfires; tiny and fast missiles with vicious little brains, potent warheads, and nasty enough to ruin an enemy’s entire day.

Not that he expected to encounter any enemy forces, or any people for that matter, in this part of the wasteland. This part of what had been New York State was almost uninhabited, and had been for close to fifty years.

Zach recalled that the only targets hit in the initial phase of the nuclear war that the Russian-Chinese alliance had started had been the nuclear submarine base in Connecticut, and then New York City and Washington. The base and those two cities had been obliterated, and the radioactive fallout from the strikes had spread up and down the east coast and far inland causing tremendous casualties. The nukes had generated a sizeable electro-magnetic pulse, knocking out the power grid, every modern vehicle, and had knocked America’s 21st Century civilization back to the Middle Ages.

Zach knew that the war could have been much worse had not the brave American defenders, using superior technology and advanced computers, launched counter-attacks that had completely destroyed the enemy’s ability to mount any further attacks. Sadly, those ancient American heroes had not been able to defend against the treachery of the Russians and the Chinese who had secretly smuggled biological agents into the United States. As a final act of vengeance, as their country collapsed around them, their leaders released dozens of lethal viruses that had devastated the American population. By the time it was over almost 95 percent of the population of the United States had been murdered.

Zach subconsciously tapped his heart three times as he remembered the details of the war and the sacrifices the glorious United States military had made to preserve America’s freedom.

Every 24th of June, New America held remembrance ceremonies, to remember the war, the heroes who’d saved as much as they had, and the evil enemies of freedom and peace. Zach then ran his finger across the flight patch attached to the left arm of his black CE Suit. The stitched emblem was of an American eagle, rising from flames, with the motto, “My Life for Freedom,” emblazoned in gold letters beneath it.

He also wore the NewAm flag on the right arm, but it was not the same flag worn by the heroic defenders of the great nation lost in the war. NewAm’s flag had the familiar red and white stripes, but only a single solid white star on a blue background, representing the last remaining State, the last bastion of American civilization. In the spaces where once had rested forty nine other white stars were the ghostly outlines of stars, representing the lost States of the Union.

One of the missions of NewAm was to reclaim those lost States, to reform America, and to make it great again. That task would not be simple, or without cost, as the heroic conflict that had begun fifty years prior continued. Chinese and Russians, escaping their doomed nations, had crossed the Pacific Ocean in massive flotillas, naval and merchant ships, fishing boats, even cruise ships, to invade the Hawaiian Islands and to even set up colonies in California. Even now, despite the best efforts of NewAm, the despicable Chi-Rus armies infested America and were striving to wipe out freedom and peace.

NewAm had superior technology in weapons, but the Chi-Rus forces had superior biological technology. New America’s greatest fear was that its enemies would somehow infect the population with a lethal virus, killing the Free World’s last hope. Current procedures to prevent infections limited travel between NewAm communities. Anyone required to travel from one community to another first went through significant decontamination procedures and was then subjected to a lengthy quarantine period. Inter-community travel was limited. Fortunately, computer technology being what it was, almost all business and interactions could be conducted via digital and video-conferencing.

A necessary sacrifice to keep NewAm safe, but it was not an overly onerous one.

Zach had never seen the enemy but he’d seen more than enough Info-digitals issued by the Capitol to know they were an enemy that needed to be wiped out.

It’s them or us, he told himself with conviction. Freedom or death!

“Raptor Two,” Serrano called over the intership. “Raptor Actual.”

“Raptor Two,” he responded, dropping the drone feed and bringing up Serrano’s image, a black oxygen mask, black helmet and visor, fitted with various bulges and camera lenses all making her image seem like he was communicating with a predatory insect. The icon next to her image indicated they were on a private channel.

“Zach, I need you to redeploy,” she informed him. “Sending the coordinates to you now. You should get the MAGIC download soon, just prior to phase two implementation.”

He watched as the new coordinates were projected on his map of the local area. A digital image from the closest drone gave him a bird’s eye visual, revealing that the new location was in the ruins of a large aircraft hangar on the eastern edge of the airfield.

“Roger that, Serrano,” he replied professionally, his tone carefully neutral. As team lead she was privy to mission data before the rest of the team. It gave her a chance to assimilate it and consider it. It was rare for a team lead to overrule a MAGIC download, but it had happened. Sometimes conditions in the field changed before new orders could be transmitted. That was the whole reason for having a human team leader.

He laid his left hand on the collective and then slid his right hand over the cyclic, moving his feet to settle onto the pedals located beneath the center console. He moved each of the controls automatically, monitoring the main display and waiting while the onboard computer ran a quick diagnostic. All the controls were operating correctly. They’d been working perfectly an hour earlier when he’d first landed, but there was no such thing as being too cautious when flying.

The engines powered up, the hum generated by their power coming to him as a muted vibration through the hull of his ship. The HUD showed four bar displays, each bar green and growing larger as the pulse fans in the ship’s four engines growled to life.

A second graphic display popped up on the HUD, illustrating the four vectored-thrust nozzles alng an outline of his ship’s hull. Moving the throttle on the end of the collective Zach increased the power to the nozzles, watching as the green power bars and percentage indicators rose next to each nozzle, indicating even power flow and lift.

He moved the collective, slightly, changing the angle of attack of the nozzles, caressing the power settings to bring his ship about two meters off the ground. Applying pressure to the right side anti-torgue pedal he spun his ship a full 180 degrees and then simultaneously adjusted power to the nozzles and moved the cyclic control forward.

The side nozzles increased their power setting while the rear nozzles slowly shifted from a vertical to a more horizontal position. His ship rose gracefully into the air, moving forward as its altitude increased, its speed leaping from zero to over 100 miles per hour in seconds. The ship’s wings, small and highly flexible, extended from the hull as the ship’s speed increased, tiny flaperons along the trailing edge of each wing fluctuating to adjust for speed and altitude changes. He stayed low, just over 10 meters, heading for the new coordinates, his course shown by a glowing green line that danced and weaved, suspended on his visor display.

All across the hull of his ship were micro-cameras; all tied into the visual display cameras of his helmet. The view from these cameras were fed directly to his helmet, so that if he looked in a direction where normally his vision would be blocked by a part of his ship, the cameras would give him an unobstructed view, making the hull invisible, as if he was flying and there was no ship around him interfering with the view. No blind spots on this bird.

Zach heard a soft chime in his headset, drawing his attention to the screen that revealed Serrano was repositioning the drones. The first phase of the operation had them deployed close in to the airfield, conducting low level and detailed reconnaissance. Now, with the team moving into the second phase the drones were being given new tasks, moving to cover terrain out to fifty klics from the airfield and moving to higher altitude. They would provide detailed cover while the team was moving to new positions. These new positions were automatically plotted by his ship’s computer, based on data provided by MAGIC, onto Zach’s map layover.

Even as this was happening, Zach felt the familiar itching in the back of his skull as MAGIC trickled mission data and updates directly to the tech implants in his brain. Within seconds he knew his part in the plan, each of the team member’s responsibilities and every other aspect as if he’d drawn up the plan himself.

MAGIC – the Military Air-Ground Integrated Computer – had also communicated directly with his ship’s onboard systems, selecting and activating offensive and defensive systems and running full pre-combat diagnostics. Some pilots didn’t like the thought of the computer having that much control over their ship, but were willing to admit, grudgingly, that the computer was essential to the success of any mission.

Zach hated the emphasis on computer controls. He liked the technology in his ship but believed that a pilot should above all else be the one in total control of his ship. He believed he was better than any machine, perhaps not in reaction time, but certainly in instincts and reasoning.

“Raptor two, nearing assigned position,” he stated aloud for the benefit of his cockpit voice recorder.

After the mission the CVR would be reviewed by the Operations staff. They would examine it for any divergence from MAGIC’s instructions, which he would be required to explain. In the event his ship was destroyed in combat, the CVR would send a burst transmission, a full data copy of everything that had happened up to the point that the ship was destroyed. Current training encouraged pilots to be as descriptive as possible during missions.

“Raptor two, is very impressed with the position selected for his part in this glorious and important operation,” he stated, again for the benefit of the CVR and the Ops weenies. He made sure his tone was the picture of sincerity and admiration. He had a feeling Ops weenies didn’t appreciate sarcasm. He also had a feeling they’d be stupid enough to believe what he’d just said.

Zach approached his new location fast, dropping rapidly, spinning his ship through 180 degrees when it was less than a meter above the ground and settling it effortlessly into his assigned position. His fingers danced over the glass displays, powering down engines and extending sensor booms. As per mission parameters for phase two he kept the engines at minimum power and his wings extended.

This phase of the mission placed him at the rear of the team formation, safely concealed in a partially collapsed hangar. His sensors would be aimed to cover the rear approaches to their position, providing a shield against any intruders, whether in the air or on the ground. The remainder of the team had advanced further to the west, taking up positions just outside the ruins of Watertown. The mission package had not yet divulged the purpose of this deployment, or what the objectives of the mission were. Operational Security was all important on most missions, with MAGIC only feeding relevant data to the operators as each phase of the mission was implemented. Human pilots could be tortured if captured, potentially revealing classified material that would help New America’s enemies. The computer systems were invulnerable to any form of intrusion. In theory.

Naturally he knew a little about the mission. Regardless of security, people tended to gossip, if for no other reason just to show how important they were as they knew something someone else didn’t. He knew they were waiting on station to take the handover of some sort of VIP flight coming in from the west. A team from the 405th Air Defence Wing was shepherding it in, taking one of five possible routes, the actual one decided upon by MAGIC at the point they received the handover from some unit whose identity had not been provided.

Zach checked the chronometer on the HUD, noting there would be a thirty minute wait before phase three was initiated. Until then, his time was his own.

He ran a last minute check of his systems, swung one of his sensor booms around to cover the area where the team was operating and raised a single self defence pod. He glanced over his shoulder, his helmet allowing him to see through the ship’s hull, watching as an egg-shaped pod rose, nestled between the two aft vertical stabilizers. The pod was pitted with slots, holes, and vents, some of which were sensors that would detect incoming threats, while others ports to deploy radar, infrared, or laser decoys that could be launched to deflect incoming missiles.

There were other defensive systems he could rely on, but at this stage of the mission the risk was low. No need to be paranoid, or have the after action analysts of his performance question his nerve. What he was doing was standard procedure.

“Raptor two, selecting a defensive level in accordance with the parameters set by the experienced Ops experts situated safely back at base,” he stated for the CVR in a most serious and sincere voice. It was fortunate there were no cameras in the cockpit recording the middle finger he’d extended as he spoke.

Satisfied with his current preparations and situation he pressed the glass screen on his wrist. He selected a playlist and fed the feed to his helmet speakers. He’d done a little tinkering with the onboard sysems to ensure this activity wasn’t recorded by the CVR or the onboard mission systems.

Music began to play, a classic song he’d found in the Base music database. He’d downloaded over five thousand songs from the immediate pre-war period, playing them whenever he could. There was something about the pre-war stuff, it was good, but also strangely innocent, and optimistic. He enjoyed music from the timeframe covering the 1960s birth of rock and roll all the way to the early 2020s, when the war ended any hope of optimism. It wasn’t something he shared with his team mates, but he preferred the classics to the current state sanctioned songs.

His head nodded to the beat, something Latin, by some guy named Enrique. The guy had been rich and famous before the war, but that hadn’t saved him. Zach didn’t know much about him, other than he’d been some sort of Latin singer and a sex symbol back in the day. He’d read data files that spoke about the hedonism of rockstars and pre-war celebrities, condemning them for their excesses.

Zach shrugged, pretty sure that if he’d been rich, famous, and a sex symbol, he’d have been doing the same things those celebrities had done. Live, enjoy every single minute, and suck in every opportunity for joy that he could.

Thinking of the billions of people that had died, miserably, when the war came made him sad. All those lives, all that potential for love, happiness, joy, all of it gone and in the worst ways possible.

Europe and South America had been hit pretty hard in the war. Radiation from the strikes against Russia had blanketed most of the countries in Eastern Europe, and Western Europe had been decimated by the chaos that followed. What the nukes hadn’t destroyed, societal breakdown brought about by starvation, disease, and violence had finished off. All that even before the Chi-Rus invented diseases hit.

Mainland Europe was almost completely depopulated now, with Spain and Portugal reported to be lifeless wastelands. South America had spawned a new variant of some virus named Zika, which didn’t kill adults but made it almost impossible for a woman to bring a baby to term. There might still be small pockets of life down there, but nobody was reproducing. The youngest of the living, what few there would be, would be in their late fifties now, childless and just waiting to die. It would be a long time before anyone lived there again. There’d be no more Latin music, Zach thought with considerable disappointment. Not from genuine Latinos at any rate.

He sipped some ice cold water from the nipple in his helmet. The water was infused with various vitamins, concentration enhancers, and nutritional supplements. On missions, once encased in a CE suit, there wasn’t time to remove a helmet and eat something solid.

There was a slight whine from the unit attached to his crotch, the waste system activating as he voided himself. He’d heard in the pre-war days fighter pilots had worn diapers for long flights or extended missions. It made sense, given the technology of those fighters but the idea seemed funny none the less. The mental image of a bad ass killer fighter jock, a scourge of the sky, soaring with the eagles, while wearing diapers made him chuckle.

“Raptor two is grateful for the technology that allows him to pee,” he said, again for the benefit of the CVR. He stifled a chuckle, wondering how many more comments he could get away with.

Screw it, he thought, it was worth of minor reprimand just to piss off the bloody Ops pukes.

They’d had the mission briefing at 0200 that morning, deep underground in the Squadron ready room. It had been a fairly standard briefing, with a few notable exceptions. Usually the Squadron Operations Officer would give the brief, informing them point by point how they were expected to conduct their mission. Following that lecture, the Intelligence Officer would fill them in on their best bet what the threats in the area of the operation would be. He’d finish his brief with all sorts of caveats to cover his ass if as was all too likely his intelligence was completely wrong.

This mission’s brief had been different. At this morning’s brief the Ops O hadn’t even attended, or the IntO, the entire brief being provided by some civilian from the Office of Strategic Operations.

The entire team had thought that was pretty impressive, meaning the mission was important. Teams liked getting important missions; it provided bragging rights over other teams. You couldn’t tell anyone what the mission was about, but the mission sounded that much more important when a pilot could tell another pilot the mission had been classified. Zach admitted to himself that pilots were like little kids in a lot of ways, every one of them thinking they were better, faster, smarter and more capable than anyone else and always looking for ways to prove it.

Of course, in my case, its true, he laughed to himself.

The civilian had quickly crushed that hope. He’d told them it was a pretty routine mission, a simple cargo transfer but one that OSO people wanted to manage themselves. He’d explained it was a training exercise for their civilian staff, teaching them in how to conduct joint operations with the military. Zach had instantly been disappointed, but then realized it didn’t change anything. He was still going to let slip his involvement in a classified OSO operation. Bragging rights were bragging rights after all.

“Raptor Two, Raptor Actual,” his intership crackled to life, instantly disconnecting the music feed.

“Raptor Two,” he responded.

“Picked up a fuzzy signal to the east, bearing 037 degrees,” Serrano informed him, the replay of what she’d seen appearing on his HUD. He looked carefully at the sensor return, zooming in on it while using his own signal enhancers in an attempt to clean up the image.

“A ghost signal?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowing as he considered the image. “Interference from that electrical storm Met reported would be passing south of us?”

“You’re closer to it than I am, did you detect anything?”

“Negative,” he said, though he did a quick rewind of his own data and studied the patch of sky where she’d detected the anomaly. “Nothing showed on my sensors.”

He knew that didn’t prove anything. Serrano was in an updated Falcon, the F-90 Model 8, which came with upgraded sensors and signal interpreters. His was the Model 7, which was slightly faster and carried slightly more ordnance, but didn’t have the same onboard computing power. It was a toss up which was the better bird.

“Yeah, my sensors are better,” she said before he could. “There isn’t supposed to be anything to the east of us. Keep an eye on that area.”

“Roger that,” he told her, adjusting a portion of a sensor boom to stare at that portion of the sky. It had likely been signal interference, maybe a glitch the programmers back at Base should look at. There’d be no reports of rebel activity in this region, and the last time they’d been seen anywhere near here was over two years prior, during Operation Thor’s Hammer, the campaign that had been designed to loosen their grip on this part of the country. The rebels were remnants of the American and Canadian military forces, based in Colorado Springs, which had refused the primacy of New America. They’d announced they were the rightful government of the United States and had opposed the NewAm government. Still were in fact, but their military might had been significantly reduced since Thor’s Hammer. That campaign had been a complete success, inflicting massive casualties on the rebels and significantly degrading their war fighting ability. It was inconceivable that the Colorado rebels could field a stealth aircraft capable of fooling a Mod 9’s sensors.

Even as he was switching sensor frequencies and running repeated scans of that part of the late morning sky he felt that familiar itch. MAGIC was downloading the phase three data. No sooner had the data been trickled into his head than his ship’s systems went to full alert, red bars flashing full combat alert along the sides of his main console.

Zach felt his body pressed into his crash chair as his Falcon leapt into the air, a screaming vertical leap that took him to two hundred meters in less than a second.

“All Raptors,” Serrano stated over intership, her voice calm, even, the model of professionalism. “Combat alert, now commencing phase three as per our briefing. Nothing to get excited about, we’re just getting ready for the handover.”

Zach took over control from the onboard computer, feeling very embarrassed. He’d left it in automatic when he’d deployed the self-defence pod, mistakenly assuming they weren’t likely to assume a combat alert for a simple escort handover. He’d been wrong and the computer had instantly taken his ship to an altitude where it could maneuver if required and address incoming threats when it received the phase three data download. That was a mistake he’d have to provide an answer for during the de-briefing he realized with a scowl. The Ops weenies loved catching mistakes made by pilots and rubbing it in when they did.

He considered using his get out of jail free card. Occasionally, though no pilot would ever admit to it, mistakes were made. The kind of mistakes a pilot didn’t want the Ops people to know about or to have on his record. At some point in the past, an unknown pilot who found himself with an embarrassing mistake he couldn’t easily explain, but who was acquainted with a well built and talented computer programmer, had arranged for the GOOJF, a complex program that could scramble a five minute portion of the mission data recording. Zach didn’t know how many pilots had a copy of the GOOJF, and had no idea why the Ops people hadn’t figured it out yet, but he had a copy of it, resting in his pocket. All he had to do was slip it into the nearest data port and his mistake would be gone, replaced with a momentary burst of unexplainable static.

The problem was, it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be used too often. Even once could bring an investigation. He shrugged, deciding his mistake was embarrassing, but not something that could result in a loss of flight status. He’d live with the humiliation.

He applied power and corkscrewed his ship from 200 meters to an altitude of 1000 meters, his sensors swiveling and scanning in all directions as he gained height.

“Raptor Two, Raptor Actual,” Serrano broadcast over the team channel. “I got a glimpse of that ghost again, same bearing but closer, maybe thirty klics out.”

“Still not detecting it, Actual,” Zach informed her, switching to eye guided control. Where his eyes went, he could then command any defensive or offensive system to respond. His eyes lingered over the sensor settings displayed on his HUD, bouncing his sensor focus outward by five klic increments. He switched to his Infra-Red Search and Track (IRST) system for Beyond Visual Range detection. All aircraft emanated heat to some degree, and the IRST system could detect that heat, compute the distance to the target and calculate altitude, rate of closure, and even provide identification of the target. His screen stayed clear, no threats.

He gave the computer full control of the sensors and allowed it to do a repeat scan and interpretation of the data. Again, negative.

“Keep an eye out,” she told him, for the first time sounding a little nervous. “Something not quite right here.”

Zach didn’t respond, chocking her nerves up to being in charge and being responsible for the successful completion of the mission. A team member could screw up, but it was the team leader that had to explain why it happened, and usually was the one that took the heat for it. Serrano was new to the job, still on probation, with only four operations to her credit. He thought she was a great boss, and would be even better with more experience.

“Well, will you look at that!” Baker exclaimed excitedly over the team channel. “It’s one of the new C-50s!”

Zach cast a quick glance at the drone feed, zooming in on the aircraft Baker had identified as it came into view of the farthest out drone. It was indeed one of the new C-50 Universe cargo jets, so new that only a handful of pilots had actually seen one. They were being built at a manufacturing community somewhere in Kansas. The bird was big, almost 20 percent larger than the older C-40 Goliaths, with six engines it could lift almost 350 tonnes of cargo. A massive beast, Zach whistled silently as he saw it cruising through the air.

“Stow it Raptor Four!” Serrano barked into the team channel. “Focus people, I don’t want any screw ups here!”

Zach smiled slightly, knowing Serrano was going to rip Baker a new asshole when they got back to base. The team channel went full quiet, and Zach noted Serrano had switched from the team channel and was contacting the team lead from the 405th to confirm our identity and our scheduled handover.

Zach had no idea how long the 405th had been in the air, but knew they still had to turn around and head for home. Briefing, flight prep, the actual mission, and then a debrief once back at base could make for a very long day. His was already eight hours old and he hadn’t even started the return trip home yet.

In less than a minute the six Falcons from the 405th were peeling off, banking around in wide turns that would put them on course for home. The massive C-50 continued on, its course steady at 10,000 meters.

“Greetings Team Raptor,” a melodic female voice came over intership, MAGIC providing her identification as Meghan, the pilot of the massive transport. “C-50 Universe Flight Tango-Five-Six appreciates the escort.”

“Roger that, Five-Six,” Serrano responded, her voice taking on its usual cheerfulness. The hard part of pulling off the handover was done, and she could relax a little bit now. The way home was supposed to be the easy part. “Team Falcon at your service.”

Zach continued his slow orbit at 8000 meters over the remains of Fort Drum, monitoring his assigned airspace and awaiting further instructions. It was unlikely they would take the same route to get home that they used to get here. The navigation instructions were in the phase four data-pack, something MAGIC should trickle to them in a moment. A weather update that had been included in the phase three data had shown that the storm down south was veering northward, intercepting the path they’d taken to get to Fort Drum. That meant it was almost certain that they’d fly a different route to get home.

A small yellow warning indicator appeared over the C-50’s icon on his air display. The transport was beginning to bank, initiating a holding pattern, the navigation data that had guided it to the handover now complete. It was also now waiting for a download from MAGIC that would provide it with the same course as the teams.

Zach raised an eyebrow, wondering what was taking MAGIC so long. The handover should have lead directly and almost immediately to a download and then a minor course correction for the C-50, followed by the team taking up its escort positions. That hadn’t happened.

Serrano was closing in on the C-50, intending to take up her usual position during escorts, and obviously acting without orders from MAGIC and using her own initiative as team leader. The rest of the team however were continuing the orbits provided by phase three’s pre-handover instructions. Unfortunately this was temporarily widening the gap between the C-50 and its escorts, as the transport and the team were headed in opposite directions.

“Team Falcon, I’m sending manual coordinates,” Serrano came on over the intership, sounding perplexed but not worried. “Let’s tighten up the formation while we wait for MAGIC. Center your pattern on the C-50 and form up in standard escort configuration. Falcon Two maintain your position.”

Zach nodded pointlessly, his respect for Serrano going up a notch. Quite a few team leads would have waited a lot longer before issuing orders. Quite a few wouldn’t have done anything at all, preferring to wait for MAGIC directives. Far too many pilots relied on MAGIC to the point they allowed it to almost do all their thinking for them. He knew she’d have some explaining to do once they got back to base, but she was at least taking charge.

Another thirty seconds went by. Nothing.

Zach enlarged the view showing the team’s position relative to the C-50. Serrano had already taken up a position about five kilcs ahead of the massive transport, while Torres was closing to within ten klics off its starboard side, with Baker and Decker slipping into their assigned positions about two klics back and three klics to the side of the aircraft’s port side. Singh had been the farthest out when the rendezvous had taken place and was still closing from behind, a good ten klics back from the rest of the team. The C-50s course was still taking it in a giant loop away from his position and Zach was beginning to consider asking permission to regroup. He squelched the thought, convinced Serrano would still be concerned about the ghost detections she’d picked up.

It also wouldn’t be right to question the team leader. She’d tell him to move when she wanted him to move.

A sudden alarm sounded, harsh and demanding. Missiles were in the air. He took no defensive action as he knew from the type of alarm that the missiles were not locked onto him, and weren’t even close to him. His eyes widened when he scanned his threat screen, seeing four Diamondback missiles moving away from Baker’s aircraft, accelerating towards the C-50.

“What the fuck?” He asked himself, not believing what he was seeing.

Another alarm sounded and Zach watched in growing shock as four missiles were kicked out of the internal bay of Torres’ ship, burning hot and accelerating, two headed for the C-50 and two headed for Serrano’s ship.

The intership comms channel erupted, everyone screaming into their microphones, yelling in surprise and horror, their normal cool pilot professionalism ripped away.

“Break! Break!” Serrano grunted over intership, even as her aircraft flung itself towards the ground kicking flares and chaff in its wake. “Missile attack!”

Suddenly Zach’s ship’s alert system activated with a deep growl, rasping in his ear, warning him that someone had locked onto his aircraft. He slammed his ship hardover, rolling onto its back and diving towards the ground, kicking out a series of burning hot magnesium flares and a bundle of anti-radar aluminum chaff. Once the decoys were out he pulled up, righting himself, turning in a hard five G turn back to his left. His threat display showed nothing, no inbound tracks whatsoever. He swiveled his head, straining to look over each shoulder, upwards and downwards in the time it took for his heart to slam twice in his chest. His computer threat system was still bellowing an alert in his ears.

Then he saw it, coming up fast from behind him, sliding through the chaff cloud as if it wasn’t even there, intent on closing the distance to his ship. He kicked the anti-torgue pedals and slammed the engine nozzles into to a zero thrust position, spinning his ship in the air bringing the nose of his ship around 180 degrees. Using the ship’s own momentum and flying backwards now, he locked his gaze onto the incoming missile and activated his GAU-10A Vengence. This weapon was a 30 mm hydraulically driven seven-barrel Gatling-type autocannon, mounted along the ventral portion of the Falcon’s airframe. Normally the autocannon was only used against ground targets, but Zach knew he had no time to launch further decoys, and had some doubts as to whether they’d work, and at this point was relying more on instinct than training.

He depressed the trigger on the cyclic joystick, sending a fifty round salvo directly towards the incoming missile. The depleted uranium shells shredded the missile, breaking it into confetti even before the missile’s warhead and fuel detonated.

Zach applied power, rolled back into forward flight and clawed for altitude. The missile was destroyed but the shrapnel that was created when it exploded was still closing on his ship at tremendous speed. He slammed the power into after-burner, feeling himself kicked back into his crash chair. He cleared the shrapnel blossom, but just barely.

A quick glance showed him the C-50 diving for the ground, a single starboard engine on fire, smoke trailing from the rear cargo ramp, and a portion of the vertical stabilizer shredded away. Plumes of smoke appeared along the flanks of the upper passenger deck as the automatic ejection systems on the aircraft activated. The flight crew hadn’t ejected yet, still struggling to keep their dying bird in the air.

Far beyond the C-50 and slightly higher a fireball blossomed in the sky. One of the status lights for the team, the icon representing Baker’s ship, changed from green to red. He didn’t have time to worry, wonder, or mourn.

His ship’s missile warning screamed in his ear again, his threat display suddenly lighting up to reveal four more missiles inbound, the first of which was less than five klics away from him. Somehow the computer hadn’t detected the missiles while they were at extreme range, and only his automatic close-in defence system had activated to warn him. Perhaps too late.

“Fuck!” Zach swore, his voice surprisingly calm, sounding more angry than scared.

Pressing the defence pod repeatedly he ejected an entire sequence of flares, chaff and laser decoys, as he pushed hard on the controls, driving the ship into a vertical drive under full power. Straining, he pulled up mere meters from the cracked runway of the airfield dropping another spread of decoys that slammed explosively into the ground. The maneuver subjected his body to more than 12g, his field of view narrowing to a small pinprick of light as his CE Suit strained to take the force.

“Manual flight system activated,” the ship announced, sounding distant and fuzzy to Zach’s temporarily muddled brain. “Automatic computer systems not engaging.”

Why had the computer disengaged? He managed to ask himself as the g-force pressing his body into his chair lessened.

His ship screamed down the main runway at less than three meters, rooster tails of dust and gravel flying up behind him. A glance at the threat display showed that all four missiles had completely ignored the explosive impact of his decoys and were rapidly closing the gap.

“All Falcons! Go weapons cold!” Serrano’s voice screamed over the intership, her grunts and difficulty in speaking proof she was pulling heavy gees. Zach knew she must have had missiles on her ass and was amazed she could spare time to try and regain control of whatever disaster was unfolding and command her team. “Stand down from combat alert!”

“Missiles,” Torres grunted, her breathing fast and ragged. “Firing on their own!”

“Steer course 032 degrees, Torres!” Serrano yelled. “You have missiles on your six!”

The intership crackled, and then died. All the icons on his display went dark, indicating a total communications failure. The onboard computer was shutting down and taking his essential systems with it.

Zach couldn’t spare the time to look at his team mates situation or worry about his computer. The missiles, what the computer was now identifying as a spread of Skyfires launched from their own drones, were closing. He knew his decoys were almost useless against these missiles. They were the latest generation with full target discriminators and able to completely ignore just about every countermeasure he had. They were actually built to lock onto the biological signature of the pilot, his body temperature, oxygen intake, and brain patterns.

He kicked his ship around, perfectly balancing the 180 degree spin while adjusting his thrust. In the blink of an eye he was travelling at 300 miles per hour, backwards, now at less than two meters above the runway. He let loose two one second bursts from his autocannon and then launched two air-to-air missiles setting them to detonate a mere one second after they left his internal bay.

He pushed engine power to maximum, flipped the ship upwards, rotating the thrust nozzles and kicking the hull into forward flight. The shock wave from the explosions shook his ship, and sudden alarms indicated he’d taken damage from the far too close explosions. He ignored the alarms, at this altitude and at this speed if the damage had been too serious he’d have been dead already.

That was what he told himself in the fraction of a second that he had to consider how bad the damage to his aircraft had been.

Seeing an opening directly ahead he killed his forward momentum, grunting as his body slammed into the harness, his eyes bulging outwards as his speed dropped from 300 mph to less than 50 in a heartbeat. He banked hard, diving beneath steel girders that had once been part of a three story administrative building located near the training facilities of Fort Drum. Proximity alarms screamed in his voice.

“Pull up! Pull up!” The ground proximity alarm advised him in a very calm female voice. “Pull up!”

“Missile proximity! Missile proximity!” A second voice, male and not nearly as cheerful, also screamed for his attention.

Zach dropped the ship a full meter, scraping beneath a partially collapsed archway, and blasting out of the building. A slight thud and vibration let him know he’d scraped the paint and likely knocked off a few important items. Damage alarms sounded from multiple systems, including the sensor egg just aft of the cockpit.

“OK,” he grunted as he accelerated and attempted to climb. “More than a few items.”

He managed a split second to focus on his visor display. That was enough time for him to see far more yellow and red warning indicators than the much preferred green. The major issue seemed to be with his onboard combat systems, the flight computer and communications.

Without the combat systems most of his more effective offensive and defensive systems were either useless or operating at such a low level as to be next to useless. Without the ability to detect or fight targets at a distance he’d be reduced to line of sight combat, which in this environment was like flying a First World War fighter going up against a 21st Century F-22 Raptor. The odds were not in his favour. Worse, the degradation of his flight controls meant that he couldn’t even run away effectively. His enemy could just stand off, out of visual range, unseen, launching missiles at him that he had no hope of avoiding. He concluded that his chances of surviving this were somewhere between zero and nil.

He slewed his fighter into a hard bank, his left wing so close to the ground it was obscured by the dust it was kicking up. He slid between two large ruined C-17 transport aircraft, vibrating the ancient airframes with the force of his passage. Even as he cleared them he flung his aircraft into a hard turn, pushing the power to his engines as far as he could. Rooster tails of dust and debris followed in his wake, stirred up by the screaming exhaust from his vectored-thrust nozzles.

There was a slim hope, very slim, that the incoming missiles would be hit by a large enough piece of debris to damage them.

Suddenly, directly in his path, a black aircraft rose up vertically from behind a ruined building, lights glistening beneath its manta-like wings as two missiles leapt towards him.

Swearing he pulled up hard, banking slightly, and narrowly avoiding the crumbled ruins of the collapsed building. His tracking systems were worthless now, forcing him to pivot his head from side to side and over his shoulder in an attempt to see where the missiles were. More alarms were sounding in his ear, most of the lights on his status board were now red, and for the first time he noticed the smoke beginning to billow into his cockpit.

Two things registered immediately. The two missiles were looping around in what must have been 25 G turns, locked on to his aircraft and closing. The second, far more alarming in some ways, were the twin red stars emblazoned on the black jet’s two vertical stabilizers. The red stars of Russia and China.

The Skyfire missiles that had been launched by his own drones screamed past the enemy fighter as if it wasn’t’ even here, continuing their traitorous pursuit of his aircraft.

His ship shuddered, its death throes becoming increasingly violent.

“Fire! Fire!” The alarm he really didn’t want to hear started advising him, almost cheerfully. “Fire!”

The dying onboard computer activated the fire suppression system, dousing the fire in the affected areas with retardant foam. The ship had picked up a very noticeable and quite alarming vibration and Zach noticed the controls weren’t responding correctly. With enemy missiles closing on his disintegrating fighter Zach knew the battle was over. It struck him that there never really had been a fight, at least not one that he’d stood any chance of winning.

“Engine fire! Engine fire!” The computer announced calmly.

He took the chance, lifted his hand from the controls and slapped the secondary system activation pad. The primary control systems were clearly failing, but there was a chance the secondary system would function as it didn’t share the same electronics or power systems. Unfortunately, if the secondary system was in worse shape that the primary, he’d have effectively killed himself.

“Missile proximity! Missi…” the computer didn’t finish its sentence.

He was barely aware when the rear portion of his ship separated. The engines stayed at full power, driving forward in a lunge with the reduce weight of the ship, forcing the cockpit portion of the ship upwards. It twisted, near vertical, spinning, slipping over the engine pod that was busily tearing itself apart.

“Ejecting! Ejecting!” The ship dutifully announced as its guts were ripped out, spewing flame and wreckage across the airfield.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two