“Streaker two, Streaker one is experiencing mechanical problems and needs to return to base. Proceed with solo intercept mission.”

“Roger, Streaker two.”

Their lead plane rolled to the right and peeled away from the formation. It appeared that they were experiencing problems with their flight computer and had decided to return to base.

“Guess we’re alone now huh?” Kang asked somewhat sarcastically.

“Can’t help it,” Lenn replied. “I bet the mechanics are gonna get a stern talking to after they get back.”

“They better!”

“Hey, be quiet,” Lenn said, raising his voice a tiny bit. Ying and Rei were both taking a nap in anticipation for the encounter with the enemy fighter.

“It’s about time to wake them up anyways. Less than twenty minutes from predicted intercept point.”

“Good point.”

Kang gently tapped Rei and Ying on their shoulder. When neither woke up he knocked on their arms slightly harder.

Rei sleepily raised his head and lifted up his visor to rub his eyes. Ying did the same, although with a yawn added.

“Man your stations, time to intercept is twenty minutes.” Lenn told his teammates who had just woken up. “Start scanning with the radar and IRST, we should find the bandit somewhere off our nose.”

Ying slapped her helmet a little to wake herself up and began searching the skies ahead of them using their radar and infrared camera. Lenn just barely managed to stop himself from chuckling at the sight of Ying’s adorable wake-up routine which seemed completely contradictory to her silent, stoney character.

Lenn looked around at his team, all sitting in their seats and manning their stations. The rumbling of the engines sounded merely like a dull hum through his helmet; the hum which he has gotten so used to hearing it was like a lullaby to him. Sitting there, in the cockpit of his fighter with the rest of his team, cruising thousands of meters above the ground at twice the speed of sound, he felt safe and at home.

He loved to fly, he loved to simply be in the sky with his team. He didn’t need the thrill of fighting for his country, nor the feeling of weightlessness during a dive. He just loved to soar high above the ground.

“Can’t find him,” Ying reported, snapping Lenn out of his chain of thought. “I don’t have anything on radar and infrared can’t seem to pick up any contrast.”

“Weird…” Lenn mumbled to himself. Normally an enemy fighter breaking the border is just doing it to keep them on edge, and would usually make themselves as detectable as possible, but turn away and run if they got too close. Either the enemy had gotten bored and had left already, or they had come with another goal in mind. “Do we have him on datalink?”

“Hard track was lost a few minutes ago, we’re using predicted position right now,” Kang answered him while clicking away at his display.

“I’m starting a sweeping dive towards the ground,” Lenn said, pushing the stick forward and pointing the nose down slightly. He banked his fighter slightly so that it was turning a wide circle, allowing the radar to sweep the entirety of the horizon.

They had gotten about halfway through their turn when a warbling alarm sounded in the cockpit.

“Missile, four O’clock low,” Ying said calmly.

“Defending,” Lenn responded, rolling their fighter on its side violently and pulled back hard on the stick.

“Seven clicks and closing. Defense matrix is ready. Missile is going mach two-point-five and slowing.”

“Where is this guy?” Lenn asked, keeping his cool as much as possible.

“Chasing on our six, can’t find him on infrared and it’s too dark for optical.” Ying replied.

There was an explosion behind their craft as the defense matrix engaged and destroyed the closing missile.

“Eighty-one percent energy remaining,” Rei reported.

Although the defense matrix is a miracle piece of technology, it ate up immense amounts of energy. So it was best to save it as much as possible. A slower approaching missile would take much less energy to destroy than a fast moving one, and no approaching missile would take no energy at all.

“No more missiles. I think we’re out of range.” Ying said.

“Engage all generators, I’m turning back in. Weapons free.” Lenn commanded, pulling a tight U-turn. The immense g-forces pressed him into his seat and he felt his suit contract around his body to press more blood into his head.

The generators sapped energy from the engines to feed into the onboard batteries. During cruise only one or two are engaged to provide sufficient power while not taking away too much thrust from the engines. When all eight generators are engaged the engine thrust is effectively cut down by almost twenty percent, but it allowed the batteries to charge much much faster.

Lenn suspects another missile to come at them as soon as they begin to turn, since the change in direction would put them within range of the pursuing aircraft.

They were taught this early in flight school. The range of a missile depended a lot on the closure rate between two aircraft. If the closure rate is high, the missile would get an extra boost at launch and also wouldn’t need to travel as far since the approaching aircraft is speeding towards it. Depending on how fast the closure rate is, a lot of the distance is covered by the approaching aircraft themselves and not the missile.

On the other hand, when the bandit it fleeing from you, the closure rate is effectively zero, meaning the missile would need to travel all of the distance by itself. And depending on how fast the aircrafts are flying, the missile would also need to fight a lot of aerodynamic drag, further reducing the range.

When going head on, their missiles can strike targets up to 200 kilometers away. But when in pursuit, their missiles can only go 20 or so kilometers maximum before it runs out of energy and falls out of the sky.

As Lenn swung the nose of his aircraft around, a radar spike appeared on his display. A green box appeared on his helmet display, marking out the bandit which was too dark to be seen by the naked eye.

“Got him,” Ying called out. “Ten clicks and closing. Fox-three!” She said, signaling the launch of a radar guided missile.

In the darkness Lenn saw a faint puff of smoke as a bright dot shot out in front of him. It curved upwards, then down, then left, then down again and into the ground.

“Missed,” Ying said. “Target is behind terrain, I’ve lost him on radar.”

“Switch on active night vision,” Lenn ordered. The cloud cover was too thick to let in enough moon light for even the ground to be seen clearly. He feared he might unintentionally fly his aircraft into a mountainside, invisible against the pitch black backdrop.

“Roger,” Rei answered back, reaching for a switch to his side.

Immediately their surroundings became a ghostly monochrome black and white, with the ground a pale white and the sky a spotless black. The onboard computers processed the infrared returns emitted by the powerful infrared searchlight on their aircraft, and turned it into a simulated view out of the cockpit to aid with low level flying during the night. However, the huge amounts of infrared light emitted by the beacon also made them an easy target for any infrared guided missile.

But the infrared light also revealed something else; a large crest in the undulating hills standing directly in their path. And they were heading straight for it at close to the speed of sound.

“Terrain!” Kang and Ying shouted in unison. This was honestly the first time Lenn had heard Ying sound panicked, but in that moment he had little time to think about it.

With all his might he yanked back on the joystick and pulled the throttle back with such force it rattled the metal mountings.

They’re too fast, too low and too close. They weren’t going to make it, Lenn was sure of it.

The g-forces crushed Lenn down with such power that he was unable to lift his left hand off of the throttle lever. And despite his g-suit, a dark curtain began to fall over his vision.

He was blacking out. There was just enough blood going to his head to maintain consciousness but not enough to maintain vision.

His aircraft buffeted and shook violently. Sounds of popping and squealing resounding through the cockpit as structural components were stressed to their limit. White blankets of vapor formed over the wings as the incredibly low pressure zone above the wings literally sucked water out of the surrounding air.

Alarms and warnings went off, telling Lenn that he was stressing the airframe too much, and that the wings would soon fall off if he didn’t ease off the turn. But he was willing to take that risk to avoid becoming a human pancake against the side of a hill.

Even if he died because the wings of his airplane fell off and the airframe broke apart, it would be less embarrassing than having flown it into the side of a mountain.

The ground came closer and closer. The tops of the trees speeding towards them like the spears of a charging army. He was sure for a brief moment he saw the tops of the trees out the sides of their cockpit, and heard the distinctive slapping sound as they slashed against the belly of their fighter.

But then it was over. The ground stopped coming closer, the tree tops no longer flying past them. They had made it by the skin of their teeth.

“We got system failures,” Rei reported as they leveled out from their climb. “That was almost fifteen G’s which we just pulled. A few energy cells are down, some actuator damage and the centerline fuel tank is leaking slowly.”

“Roger,” Lenn muttered, still recovering from the massive g-forces. They were in a bad position, the enemy was probably already turning onto their six, and the hard maneuver had damaged their aircraft. “Switch off active night vision.”

“Cop…” Rei began to say, but Ying’s voice cut him off.

“Missile launched!” She shouted, pointing back and to the left of their aircraft.

Lenn turned his head to look, and sure enough, a spot of orange light darted through the sky towards them. The missile is still a few miles away, but that distance was being closed very very quickly. He followed the bright dot for a few seconds until the missile’s rocket motor burned out. At that point he lost the missile in the dark night, and could only wait for the defense matrix to shoot it down.

As expected, the lasers activated, converging apron a spot behind their tail.

But then the lasers shut off and there was no explosion; the damaged energy cells had failed to provide enough energy for the defense matrix.

Lenn saw the cold blue glint of their engine exhaust reflecting off the missile as it approached them.

He remembered the missile seemed to slow down as it got close. Then there was a deafening crack and the world went bright white.

Then just as quickly it went completely silent and the world became black. Completely black.

*****

“Splash one.” Two-six called out. The flash in the distance and the enemy fighter falling with a thick trail of smoke signaling that their missile had hit its mark.

One-six hoped that the missile had not damaged the enemy fighter too badly and that at least a few of the crew would survive. If not they would have a hard time explaining why two of their missiles had gone missing.

It appeared that the enemy fighter was still somewhat in controlled flight, but was losing altitude rapidly. He watched as it turned slowly to the left, flying parallel to the shallow valley to avoid hitting the mountains.

“There’s no ejection.” Two-six said.

“Come on…” One-six whispered to himself. Ejecting was much safer compared to a crash landing. The fighters are designed for air to air combat and not high speed collision with the ground. Especially with the thick tree cover it would be difficult to set the craft down without at least some sort of injury or even death.

The enemy fighter fell lower and lower, closer and closer to the trees. The powerful air currents produced by the fighter sweeping apart the tree tops in its wake.

And then it was gone; disappeared below the canopy of the forest.