[hider=The Future?!]
Bullets bored into the fuselage like railroad spikes being driven through ancient sleepers, the sound so loud that the shattering of the cockpit glass seemed like an afterthought. The rush of air and the roar of the engine crashed over them now that the dam was broken. Glass and timber rattled around the interior of the cockpit or was swept out into the warm tropical sky by the onrushing air. Opportunity threw the aircraft into a steep side slip, dropping the nose and sacrificing precious altitude for more speed. Her pursuers roared passed, the nondescript grey biplanes still spitting gunfire, though their pilots had, for the moment, lost their chance at a kill.

Below them the green profusion of the Belgian Congo spread as far as the eye could see, broken only by the tapering muddy strip of the mighty river itself as it wound its way to the horizon. Though they were only a few hundred miles from Kinshasa, it wouldn’t be long before the trees closed over the tanin laden waters, concealing it from the air. Steam rose from the jungle in long rivulets stretching towards the brilliantly blue january sky like the tendrils of some great unseen beast was questing for their aircraft.

[b]“Ms Knox,”[/b] came Alcander’s disapproving voice from the rearward passenger seat.

[b]“If you get any closer to the treetops we are going to wish we had hired a boat!”[/b] the archaeologist shouted over the roar of the slipstream. His tone was deliberately light but his stress was apparent from the way he bit off his words, and from the way the back of her seat creaked under his grip. Opportunity pulled her goggles down to shield her eyes from the wind rush, her auburn hair flew backwards like a snapping pennant as she craned her head to watch the enemy scouts curling around for another pass.

[b]“Can’t you outrun them or something?!”[/b] someone shouted from the passenger compartment. The treetops were nearly close enough to touch, streaking past in a green tide.

[b]“That’s really not how engines work!”[/b] Opportunity shouted. Their aircraft was a DH.50, an old mail plane that Jack Buchannan had scared up from God alone knew where. The enemy was, she thought, a pair of aging Avros, a great war surplus scout that the Belgian’s, the Dutch, the British and damn near everyone else still had in service. Though they bore the markings of the Belgian air force it was a fair bet that they were in the pay of the mysterious Germans. They curved around in a long arc and began to close to firing range. Unladen, the DH.50 might have been slightly faster, but weighed down with the expedition, its gear, extra fuel, and floats to allow it to land on water, it wasn't close.   The Arvo’s seemed to leap forward, orange flashes stabbing as their lewis guns spewed lines of tracer fire. Opportunity hauled back to the stick to lift them out of the hail of death. The heavy machine wallowed sickeningly as it shed airspeed and maneuverability. With a curse the young pilot slammed the mixture to full rich, averting a stall for a few heartbeats before she shoved the stick forward, yo-yoing the passengers with a chorus of shouted curses.

Both enemy scouts howled past, their guns falling silent as the shot was spoiled once again, though the DH’s airspeed was now dangerously  low and the trick wouldn’t work a second time. A treetop slapped the undercarriage and Opportunity yelped, climbing as quickly as she dared but resisting the urge to haul back on the stick and send them into a lethal stall. Behind her rifles cracked as Lucien or perhaps Jack opened fire, the rapid click click of the bolt actions lost in the howl of the now open cockpit.  Even the reports, normally painfully sharp, were washed out by the rushing air. It was a valiant effort, but the odds of a man in a bucking cockpit, moving at over a hundred miles an hour, scoring a hit at some critical point on another target moving away at the same rate were vanishingly slim.

The Arvos curved around in long graceful arcs lining up for the kill. Without speed or altitude the DH.50 was out of tricks and an easy target. The scouts closed quickly, holding their fire this time as they must be growing near to the end of their ammunition. Lucien and Jack continued their metronomic fusillade, the angle of attack made the shot a little easier when the enemy was closing, but not much.

[b]“There has got to be some bloody thing you can do!”[/b] Alcander shouted into her ear, but Opportunity wasn’t listening, her attention completely focused on the incoming Arvos. They were close enough now that she could make out the helmeted head of the pilots, their glasses catching the mid morning sun in erratic flashes.

[b]“For what we are about to receive,”[/b] she muttered inaudible and both enemy machines opened up within a heartbeat of each other. Bullets chewed into the fuselage like horde of angry woodpeckers and rounds spanged of the engine cowling like hail on a tin roof. Smoke fountained from the manifold, oily black, and reeking of burning castor oil, choking the passengers and pilot before being whipped away by the slip stream. The DH.50 staggered like a whipped horse and just when it seemed they must be torn apart by the bombardment, Opportunity threw the aircraft on its side and the slipped below the level of the trees, the tip of the left wing touching the muddy brown Congo river for a instant before she leveled off,  sliding into the few feet of clearance the vast flow carved through the jungle. One of the enemy machines, in an effort to keep its guns aligned, dipped too low. It’s undercarriage caught the canopy and, like an origami puppet, the machine vanished into the jungle with a booming crash of shattering timbers and rending metal. The second Arvo, realizing its peril, pulled up but too eagerly. The machine wallowed for a critical half second, offering an almost zero deflection shot to the rifle men in the rear of the compartment. Lucien shouted in triumph as the figure in the gunner’s seat of the second machine slumped sideways and tumbled from his cockpit, the body performing a slow half rotation before vanishing among the trees. The surviving fighter was gone in an eyeblink streaking away over the treetops, toothless and impotent.

[b]“We made it!”[/b] Alcander crowed in jubilant relief.

[b]“No we didn’t,”[/b] Opportunity shouted back, wiping a the oil that coated her face and goggles. Bright orange flames stuttered to life around the engine which had developed a jarring thumping note. Instinctively she cut the fuel line and dropped the nose, smothering the flames better to risk a crash than to burn. For a moment there was silence save for the whistling wind before a sheet of brown muddy spray obliterated the world.

[/hider]

Sound off if you are interested in continuing with a bit of a time skip. Also introducing a new character, fearless aviatrix, Opportunity Knox. Also I apologize to those whose characters I hijacked (Except [@POOHEAD189]) , this is just conceptual.