Scott listened in as his people came back with their questions and comments, fixing each in turn with an attentive and understanding gaze in those mismatched eyes, giving them the attention they deserved as he listened to each, and then replied.

"Are there any civilians using the International Airports? I do not want to accidentally attack civilian transports for obvious reasons, and I don't think any of us want to either."

After that, Mykhailo lifted his head up, letting his blue eyes glint with reflected light that also briefly lit up his platinum blond hair, before saying, "The enemy aircraft, however... They're as good as brought down; hopefully their pilots have parachutes."

"I mean," Mykhailo clarified, "I hope that I spare as many lives as possible while proving effective..."

"It's like the kid says." she piped up. "We're going to be dropping bits of fuselages and uncooked ammo over Tripoli, and then the Navy's rocking up to stick its foot up the collective ass of Libya. Do you know if we're doing a full-scale war?"

"Besides that, not much else. Seems like more of the same, right?"

"Libya has been closed to international commercial air traffic ever since the sanctions have been imposed on them by the N/UN when they started raiding convoys and commercial shipping in the area. As far as I'm aware through all the briefing and intelligence materials I've received and been briefed on from HQ, internal commercial flights have been restricted as well, and typically only fly limited times during daylight hours. They've also been engaged in limited armed conflict with their neighbouring countries and there have been other internal security issues, so air travel has been almost exclusively a military or at least government affair for months. Not much chance of encountering any stray airliners or civilian transports. As for collateral damage..." He grimaced and shook his head, shrugging.
"I don't have time to debate the ethics of our profession right now. And even if I did; I'm ill-equipped to do so. I'm a combat pilot and not a philosopher and my college major wasn't philosophy or politics. I'd hope the Libyan government has provided adequate shelters for its' citizens. Far as I'm concerned, they shouldn't have launched attacks on international shipping and aircraft if they weren't prepared to deal with the repercussions of it. Hopefully no civilians will be injured or killed by our actions, but we're contracted to take on this mission and operation, and carrying out is how we get paid. Not to mention, the N/UN Forces are relying on us doing our job to do theirs safely".
His eyes shifted more to Ximena as he considered her question about things launching into a full-scale war, and he grimaced.
"I haven't been briefed beyond our part in the operation, and as it relates to our current contract. But I'm imagining that if the N/UN forces are coming into the area in strength, they're hoping to carry out a decisive strike with air and naval power to disable the Libyans ability to threaten anyone else in the region, and force them to the negotiating table. I imagine they're prepared to back it up with boots on the ground, but that's outside my area of responsibility, honestly. But yes; more of the same as far as our part goes. Albeit, more dangerous since we're going to fight the enemy on their own turf, right where they live".

As Yuna agreed with Jefe's assessment of things, he nodded, letting his expression slip to another slight, reassuring smile to back her up.
"Nothing we can't handle, with what we've done so far".

She gave Scott a casual two-finger salute. “Gotcha. Flight lead. Ground targets. Loud entrance, messier exit. I’m tracking.” A faint smirk. “Try not to steal all the fun before I get there.”

"Oh, don't worry Stingray; I think there'll be plenty to go around for everyone... I'd be more suspicious if there wasn't, honestly. It feels like they've been holding back on their A-Tier stuff, and we're gonna run right into it".

“As for full-scale war?” Ayvee shrugged one shoulder. “Feels more like the prelude. The kind where everybody pretends it’s still a limited engagement right up until the carrier shows up and starts rearranging coastlines. If it goes loud after tonight, it won’t be because of us. We’re just opening the door for them,” she finished. At Yuna's comment, Ayvee shot her a finger gun. "Bingo, that's about what matters to us in the end."

She then raised her hand to get Scott's attention.

"One question. To confirm, we're heading right back to Malta after this, yeah? As I said earlier, we don't exactly have any bunks left here after I uh... renovated the place."

"Exactly; we're just the opening warmup. The real kickoff is coming with the regular forces. As for heading back to Malta, that's it exactly. We refuel on the way out, just enough to top our tanks off to get us back to the airport, where we turn in for the night. If there's any serious damage or mechanical issues, this airfield will be our emergency divert". He smirked at her mention of the lack of bunks and winked. "I'll make sure there's a tent set up if you need to land here, hmm?"

“As for civilians at the airports, this is a possibility, considering the heightened alert I can imagine much of the civilian air traffic would be either diverted or grounded, however I would not be surprised if one decided to Leeroy Jenkins it.”

"Exactly right. I doubt we'll encounter anything, but there's always the possibility. We'll all be on our toes as it is, so be sure to listen to the overview from Skywatch, they'll have a far better picture than we do, and be able to identify any civilian traffic that's out of place. Check your targets as much as possible, but trust your own judgement. If a target seems sketchy or wrong, don't take the shot or call it out to Skywatch and the rest of us".

“Well, First Malta, now Tripoli, you seem to take us to all the best places Colonel” She grinned at their CO.

Scott grinned back at Amelia and shot her finger-guns as he did, glad of the light-hearted moment.
"Hey, I'll try and swing us a contract on the French Riviera or in Las Vegas next time; somewhere we can really enjoy things".

That seemed like the right moment to end things on, and time was ticking by. There weren't any other questions to ask or answer, and he'd addressed all that had come up. Wolf and his people were standing ready, their work complete expertly and incredibly efficient time, and the squadron's planes stood ready and refuelled, gleaming under the lights and flickering flames. He looked back to his pilots, and nodded at all of them with a firm, resolute expression and a steel in his eyes.
"Let's go finish this thing. See you all in the air"

There wasn't more to say, and he crossed to the Harrier's side, exchanging a fist-bump with the crew chief, and throwing a thumbs up to Kat as their eyes met as she climbed into the A-10's cockpit.
The APU was already running for the V/STOL jet, and it was a simple enough task to get everything back into flying order, running through the abbreviated combat preflight checks, working his way around the instrument panel clockwise after he buckled in. Mask on, he cycled the canopy closed as one of the ground crew stowed the jets' ladder and pulled the chocks free, holding up a handful of disarming pins from the weapons mounted under the wings. A thumbs up, and he advanced the throttle, rolling for the runway.
"Heartbreak to all aircraft. Take off when ready. Join on my wing at five thousand and orbit the field until everyone is airborne and ready to depart, we'll drop to five hundred feet to ingress, over"
With that, he adjusted the control that swivelled the engine nozzles for the Harrier's unique Pegasus engine, putting them at 45 degrees, boosting his lift. The jet couldn't quite manage a vertical takeoff while fully loaded, but it could still reduce its' run.
Then the throttle crept forward and with a scream, the jet thundered down the runway and clawed into the skies, ascending rapidly under his expert hand, gear slipping away almost as soon as they parted from the concrete of the runway.



Kat had landed without incident, her A-10 undamaged and victorious. What weapons she hadn't expended had been made safe as the plane was rapidly refuelled and rearmed for their next sortie over hostile territory. She outwardly remained resolute, and she had nothing but faith in Scott and her fellow pilots. Inwardly though, she felt a stab of uncertainty and fear.
While they'd been in the face of hostile firepower on the last sortie, it had been mostly outdated systems, or at least ones they had the drop on, and advantage over, even if they had the potential to cause them damage.
This time though, they were bearding the dragon in its' lair. The Libyans had more capable systems and aircraft, and they were flying into the jaws of them. They'd already encountered enemy mercs as well, and who knows how many more of them might also be waiting to pounce on the squadron. She shook her head briefly, forcing her wandering thoughts back to the briefing and the questions and answers from her wingmates and from Scott.
His characteristic easy confidence and laid-back expertise was reassuring, and she found herself assuaged of at least some of her concerns. The rest was eased by the demeanour of her fellow pilots, displaying that same attitude. She had no doubt that they all knew they were at risk - but weren't they always? It was just part of the job, after all.
She didn't have anything to contribute on her own part, so she stood quietly by and listened in, a lurking presence in the huddle. As they were dismissed, she climbed the retractable ladder up the side of her mount, patting its' side as like a familiar horse as she swung over the side and settled into the always-uncomfortable ejector seat, her huge frame ill-suited for its' confines, but at home in them nonetheless. She glanced over to the Harrier as she accepted her helmet from the flight crewman who was alongside, catching Scott's eye and giving him a thumbs-up that he returned.
Then it was showtime, and she worked methodically through her preflight, the methodical routine a ritual that let her push thoughts aside as the vacuum-cleaner whine of the TF34 engines overwhelmed everything, rising into a howl as she shut the canopy and rolled after the ground crew gave her the thumbs-up, turning into her position in the gaggle of aircraft heading for the runway, like ducklings in a line behind Scott's Harrier.

Soon enough, her turn to take to the skies came, and she throttled forward and nudged off the brakes, the straight-winged jet gaining lift and taking off quickly, rising into the darkness of the night sky with only the fag-ash glow of it's exhausts and the blinking of position lights marking it out as it rose into the night, joining the distant howl of engines orbiting the airfield that eventually died away into a rumble of distant thunder as they headed out over the sea toward the Libyan coast.

@Letter Bee, @Smike, @Finetales, @Damo021, @AvaP

Mykhailo Martinez

"So the people pay for their Government's actions," Mykhailo could not help but snap in his reply to Scott. "Same old, same old; I'll bring down their planes and hope for the best."

I am not going to get any satisfaction from this. I am either going to be an ace, or dead, and all I can hope for is to coast on my hatred for the enemy to avoid the latter. I need to control my emotions; I need to let go again, I need to not feel anger and pain or at least keep some distance from it.

Another voice rose within him, saying, Let go? Let go?! Of what? The delusion that this is a war where we can keep our hands clean? All we can hope for is that there are few to no civilians harmed or to blame someone else for this tragedy! Our glory will be forever tainted with the blood of innocents!

Mykhailo cut that voice off, opening his mouth in real life again to say, "We'll win this. Also, I won't lie; I'm doing this because I have to - Because we'll do more good if we win than if we don't."

But his eyes showed hurt, pain, and loss; loss of a child's self-righteousness and a youth's thirst for glory. At the end of the day, the part of him that cared about others had won, but at the cost of his innocence and naivete.

The young man walked towards his plane; at first, he tried to hide his feelings, but realizing that there was no shame in them, his shoulders loosened and his face scrunched up in disgust. The Pilots would catch another sentence from him as he got to the cockpit, "Fuck Glory; it's not all its cracked up to be."

He was still going to be an Ace. He was still going to clear the skies of enemy planes in conjunction with his squadron. But right now, he felt so alone; the others were indifferent to him when they did not dislike him. He had brought that on himself. His immature behavior had brought him his nemesis and it was all so unfair and not unfair in his favor.

Then as he turned on his plane, and prepared to take off, Mykhailo Martinez realized he did not have anything to prove: Not to others or himself. He didn't need to care about what others think: He will achieve his objective and save more lives than were lost.

Ace-hood? He'll use that to save more lives in the future, by intimidating the enemy with the reputation that came with it.

@Damo021@Smike@Rhona W@Finetales@AvaP

Ximena Huang

It all made sense to Ximena. Libya had been many things in the past few decades, but overly friendly with its neighbors? Not as far as she could tell. Non-essential civilian flights would have been cut down, if only to save on fuel and spare parts. She could fly without worrying about taking out some family of four waiting for their flight to the Caymans, and if there was collateral, well...

Shit happened. This wasn't some nice pitched battle where two evenly matched armies met to politely slaughter each other like gentlemen, this was a modern war fought in the modern battlespace: Everywhere. People tended to live in Everywhere, as expansive as it was, and unfortunately it wasn't always possible to send them a two week notice to clear out. Ximena didn't have the time or inclination to worry about every potential casualty; as long as she was good at what she did they would be kept to a minimum.

Mykhalio, well, he seemed to be preoccupied with the risk. Perhaps he wasn't as good a dogfighter as he thought.

"Hey kid, the papers you signed might have been different than mine, but last I checked, our job was to blow things up as ordered and kill on command. she noted wryly. "If you've invented a bomb that can differentiate between Evil Enemy Troops and Poor Innocent Civilians you should probably go patent that. Leave the combat for-"

Fuka Nakano

"Huang, shut the fuck up. That's an order."

Fuka gave the command with all the anger of someone setting a flight schedule, simply stating what was required and expecting her subordinate to stick to it. Like a good dog, Jefe piped down. She was a type Fuka had seen many times before-smug enough to run her mouth, smart enough to shut it in self-preservation. She was a walking argument for corporal punishment, but failing that someone would just have to keep an eye on her lest she have too much fun with the high-strung baby of the group.

Oh what a joy it was to share a squadron with Jefe and Brightspark, what a joy indeed. A high-functioning alcoholic egomaniac who wished she were still flying for the ChiComs and an inflexible, overeager runt who was a hair away from shooting people he didn't like in the head. Those two, in combination with Kitten's traumatic past and Valkyrie's guilt over her previous career, made Peacenik feel like the second-in-command of a flying psych ward.

This was on her, to some extent. You didn't walk into a merc outfit expecting everyone to be perfectly squared away; in doing so she had demonstrated that she herself was mad-a hell of a Catch-22.

"We're taking off because it's our job, and once we're off we're fighting with everything we got because the enemy will be doing the same. Politics, ethics, morals, karma, all of that comes in distant second to the two rules: watch each other's backs, and don't die. If anyone has comments and concerns unrelated to those rules you can save them and then start a debate club back at base."

With the air cleared Fuka boarded her Black Bunny silently, slipping on her helmet and mask before tapping the cockpit controls. The glass came down as the engines warmed, the professional pilot stretching her fake fingers before grabbing the stick. She was airborne in minutes, pulling up alongside Scott as ordered.

"Alright, Cobalt 5, 8, 10-you're riding with me. Here's how we break down the approach. Brightspark, we're on Wild Weasel duty. We focus on their facilities on the ground, kill any radar and then hit their runways, fuel trucks, hangars, anything they can use to get planes into the sky. Calico, Sparrow, you're in the air superiority fighters so you do what comes naturally. Anything that sniffs at me or Spark, make it rethink its actions. Remember, air defenses are last on our hitlist. Focus on shredding the priority targets and then getting away clean."

She didn't enjoy flying with a bunch of missiles under her free to find a lock, but that's what flares were for.

"If I go down, Calico becomes flight lead. Do what she says unless Heartbreak says otherwise."

@Letter Bee @Finetales @Damo021

Yuna listened along as Scott addressed each question, nodding at his practical answer to Brightspark's question. As far as she was concerned, ethics were something you brought up on leave after a few too many drinks, not right before climbing into the cockpit. No time to think about that sort of stuff when you have a missile lock warning blaring at you.

"Hey, I'll try and swing us a contract on the French Riviera or in Las Vegas next time; somewhere we can really enjoy things".

Oh god, Yuna thought as Scott continued. This squadron in Vegas? I can't even imagine." She thought of Jefe and Brightspark especially...no telling what antics either of them would get up to in Sin City. But she hoped she'd get to find out.

With the briefing over, it was time to roll, and in short order she was back at her freshly refueled and rearmed Su-33. After exchanging a few words with her crew chief, she climbed into the cockpit. Checks and taxiing went by in a flash, and it was soon her turn to take off. Kat's A-10C had just left the tarmac, and seeing that beast of an aircraft always reminded Yuna just how diverse the aircraft in this squadron were. That's how she liked it...something different to look at, everywhere you looked.

One uneventful takeoff later, and Yuna slid in with the others at 5,000 feet.

"Alright, Cobalt 5, 8, 10-you're riding with me. Here's how we break down the approach. Brightspark, we're on Wild Weasel duty. We focus on their facilities on the ground, kill any radar and then hit their runways, fuel trucks, hangars, anything they can use to get planes into the sky. Calico, Sparrow, you're in the air superiority fighters so you do what comes naturally. Anything that sniffs at me or Spark, make it rethink its actions. Remember, air defenses are last on our hitlist. Focus on shredding the priority targets and then getting away clean."

"If I go down, Calico becomes flight lead. Do what she says unless Heartbreak says otherwise."

Yuna replied in kind to Fuka's professional demeanor. "Roger Peacenik, we've got your back." It was still baked into her from her tenure at the RSAF, but a couple of her previous PMC employers had been sticklers about constant professionalism as well. She did not appreciate it in a PMC setting, as to her it was "not that serious," as she was known for saying to squadmates when bitching about it. But her ire was mostly derived from the insistence on maintaining military professionalism when on the ground in between ops, in order to stroke the young officers' egos. But flying the plane was the actual job, so she didn't mind treating it as such, even when it was coming from those same wannabe war heroes.

Thankfully, Fuka had none of the qualities she despised about those guys, so she had no complaints being professional to Fuka. Plus, she had a sneaking suspicion that Fuka would be the most fun to drink with in the entire squadron. She'd have to test that theory one day.

@Smike

As the squadron rose to join him and Fuka, Scott had a familiar feeling bubbling up in his chest. A mixed feeling of pride in the men and women who had agreed to follow him - but also dread of the thought he might lose any of them. Any more of them, he thought with a stab of sadness and shame, remembering he'd already lost one of them, so early on. Even if it was to the same sabotage and insurgency that had left him and Kat hurt rather than the enemies' actions, it was still something he felt deeply.
Nonetheless; having them all in the air together like this, having other planes on his wings and a target in mind - it gave him a sense of purpose he knew he'd struggled without.
The darkness of the late night hid a lot of details; some of the squadron's aircraft in their dark or low-viz paint schemes (his included) blended in all too well, and only the blinking position lights and nav lights showed them, along with reflections from below. As such, there was no point in a wing-waggle to Fuka or the others, but instead he spoke over the radio as he lead them in the turn out over the sea and towards Libya.
"All aircraft, drop altitude to five hundred feet, and extinguish all external lights. Good hunting, over".
Switching channels, he spoke out to Skywatch, the E-2 Hawkeye orbiting well clear of the area, but well within range of the powerful radar mounted atop the turboprop plane's fuselage. As he switched channels on the radio, he also took in the radio picture being sent from the Hawkeye, showing their relative position and that of anything flying, on the ground, or at sea that the operators aboard the aircraft packed in its' fuselage deemed relevant to the mission. He quickly noted Libyan aircraft on patrol over the country and off the shore, and the sweeping radars of SAM sites and early warning radars and felt his heart flutter; they were flying right into the enemies' face, just to kick them in the teeth and then tweak their tails on the way out too. It was gloriously - and absurdly - daring.
"Skywatch, Cobalt Leader. Got a good picture comin' through. I can see that there's a good few people burning the midnight oil over there. Looks like we're gonna have to be careful tip-toeing in through the door, over"
"Roger that, Cobalt Leader. Just stick to the plan, and you'll be fine. I'm sure you can handle whatever they throw at you, over"
"Roger that, Skywatch. Just make sure to keep an eye open for us, and get the greatest hits on tape, over"
"Always, Cobalt Leader. I'll make sure to cut the highlights reel together in time for you to get home. I've got my eye on you, don't worry. Good hunting, and godspeed, over".

The miles of ocean passed beneath their wings, and as the Libyan coastline drew nearer, Scott adjusted the heading minutely, threading the needle between picket ships, nudging them lower still so that they passed under the detection of hostile radar, sweeping the skies. They passed beneath patrolling aircraft, and then the land passed under their wings.
As Scott had predicted: the lights were off across the city except for essential areas, and their targets lay dead ahead; the airport closing in rapidly as they flew what seemed like deadly low across the patchwork of roads, desert, buildings and civilization. Then they reached the IP, and-
"Skywatch to all Cobalt Squadron aircraft, engage"
"Roger that, Skywatch. Break. Cobalt One to Alpha Flight; engage as briefed. Kitten, take the runway. Jefe, Stingray; take out the air defences. Valkyrie, you and I got the facilities and any parked aircraft. Go, go, go!"

Even as Scott spoke, the airport started to wake up, the sound of their jet engines couldn't be hidden for long, and as they rose in altitude to safely engage their targets, radars painted their aircraft. Hostile fighters would be slow to respond - but already, there were combat patrols over the city, and some of the pilots were clearly quicker off the mark and more skilled or independent than others, and they turned toward the squadron, even as others checked for confirmation on what their screens were showing them. A flight of MiG-29's headed toward Cobalt Haze squadron, and Skywatch's patient and cool voice advised them on the incoming aircraft, even as another flight of Mirages likewise started to creep their way

Meanwhile, the surface defences of the airport didn't lay idle either. Searchlights speared upward, sweeping to get a glimpse of the aircraft honing in on their position, and search radars for the HAWK Gecko SAM systems swept the skies, hunting desperately for the attacking aircraft. There was also the ever-present and worrying danger of infra-red guided missiles; no radars betrayed their presence, and the same with optically guided guns.
Lights on the ground stayed blazing, as the targeted Libyans hurried to get defence aircraft airborne, or hurry along flight operations already in progress.

Scott rolled his shoulders in his seat straps, and ignored the bead of sweat that trickled between his eyes as he breathed the stale, rubber-smelling oxygen through his mask. The Harrier performed like it always did under his expert hand; dancing through the skies with the grace and elegance of the predatory bird that was its' namesake. The radar warning receiver warbled and buzzed angrily as one of the hunting SAM launchers caught him, but the warning was transitory; he may have gained altitude, but he was still low enough that the ground clutter was causing issues.
He selected the AGM-122 Sidearm missiles from his weapons available, and the passive seekers did their magic, sniffing through the bouquet of electromagnetic signals crowding the skies until they found the one for the airports' search and tracking radar, and confirmed their lock-on to Scott. He held the Harrier steady and on course long enough to fire first one, and then the second missile. Both weapons, looking like the Sidewinders they were developed from, blasted off the rails in a flare of yellow-white flame as he called 'Magnum' twice over the radio, before heeling over in a sharp bank and changing direction to confuse anyone targeting him from below.



Unlike Scott, Kat had kept down low. Her Warthog carried no anti-radar munitions; that was the task for Scott and her other wingmates. Her target was the runway and anything on it, attempting to disable the airports' ability to launch more aircraft. Once they reached the initial point, she nosed up only a little; just far enough to give the LITENING targeting pod under her wing enough range to see the intersection between the two runways, and the entry-and-exit taxiways. Designating three of them, she stabbed the release button on her stick, pulling back gently to aid the separation from the A-10's belly, and sending the trio of thousand-pound laser guided bombs on their way, gliding toward the targets highlight by her laser, even as she nosed down again, searching for her next target.

@Smike, @Letter Bee, @AvaP, @Finetales, @Damo021

Mykhailo Martinez

Mykhailo rained death from above, his loadout the same as it had always been; balanced between ending ground targets and eliminating those foes who shared the air with him.

As he flew to follow Fuka's orders, which were to bomb the targets sitting on the ground while others took out the enemy planes, Mykhailo realized that his entire life since Artemio died was a struggle against hate, an effort to get over the need to blame someone for what had happened to his first love. No... he did blame someone or something for it, namely the N/UN's enemies. Enemies he had a chance to turn into ashes and more, if he let his already fragile control slip.

He launched a rocket at the nearest radar, causing it to blow up in flames. For a moment, he tasted what those below must be feeling; the terror and fear and anger that they had sowed into the minds of so many others.

His heart hardened for a second, and he began seeking out more targets, following the priority list Fuka had set. Radar, then runaways, then hangars and fuel lines, right?

A GPS-guided bomb dropped from the underside of his plane. blowing up a runaway with planes on it whose pilots were too slow to get on. Sad that none of the planes which did get up would be able to go past his comrades without luck; he needed a clean dogfight or two to cleanse his mental palate and get that desired ace-hood.

Was that self-centered? Yes. Was it honest? Same.

Mykhailo focused on being a machine of meticulous attrition, chipping away at the enemy's strength, inflicting death on the foes' soldiers, hoping that few to no civilians were harmed. But he had to ask: Did he want this? What did he want? Were Ace-hood and revenge really a worthy goal?

His rotary cannon spat out a line of shots against several hangars, piercing through the roofs of corrugated metal. His friends were doing a good job of keeping away the real threats.

But were they his friends, or was he deluding himself? At the end of the day, he was alone, his attempts to bond with others an utter failure. Heck, the person he interacted with the most, the one with the most impact on him, was Fuka, and the latter had good cause to dislike his personality, his actions, his... everything.

Then, in the middle of battle, he realized one thing.

My real reson for doing this is revenge. My real reason for doing this is empty.

Then he resolved, If I survive, I'm coming clean about my motivations. Then after my contract is up... I'm returning to civilian life, getting therapy, and heloing rebuild my country - Both of them.

@Damo021@Smike@Rhona W@Finetales@AvaP

Fuka Nakano

"Roger Peacenik, we've got your back."

"Alright then Flight 2, go to work."

Mykhalio took the early initiative as was his nature. Fuka watched impassively as Brightspark nuked a radar installation before moving on to other targets with respectable gusto but a lack of protocol, firing off his arsenal without a single warning.

"Cobalt Five, do not fire without calling a weapon release code, I repeat, do not fire without giving a weapon release code.

The last thing Peacenik needed was to be dodging friendly fire because an errant shot crossed her path. Death by her own team would have been extremely embarrassing. But she wasn't there to ruminate; she had targets to find.

The flight lead yanked her stick rightwards, throwing the Black Bunny into a hard bank over the airport. A big airbase like this would have multiple radar installed and probably an extra brought in. Heartbreak had already snatched one it looked like, Myk another, so then where was-

Gotcha.

A beat-up P-40 still in Russian green and mounted on an old school artillery tractor, tucked out of the way behind a stack of storage containers. She almost didn't see the thing due to having to watch her missile lock indicators, only just catching a glimpse of the venerable beast as she carved a path over the backend of the airport. Moving low and slow like she was allowed her to turn on a dime, stomach lurching as she whipped up and over with the Litening camera now active. With no time to lock on and too low to manually guide a bomb without crashing Peacenik made a split-second decision:

"Magnum out!"

The AGM shunted from her weapon bay like a punch from Heaven, rocketing towards the truck at Mach 2. Without a lock onto a specific target, it went for the biggest source of radiation nearby, turning the P-40 and its operators into nothing more than spall.

A good hit, but she was running out of time. SAMs down below kept sweeping her, blinded by the number of targets available and unable to focus on any single one but quickly narrowing down their options. A Tunguska crawling along in search of cover fired a burst in her general direction, Fuka responding with egregious overkill in the form of-

"Rifle out."

Twin thirty-milimeters couldn't compete with a thousand pound JDAM.

"This is Cobalt 3, I see one radar installation left-behind the control tower. I'm going to try and snipe it before things get too busy, watch my back. "

Ximena Huang

She had mixed feelings about her loadout. On the one hand flying her beloved sea bird with external pylons meant cutting back on its main function. Stealthiness took a dive when you duct-taped a bunch of missiles to the outside of a plane specifically shaped to better hide. She wasn't a complete sitting duck like Kitten or even Scott, but she was definitely more noticable than she liked to be. But on the other hand...

Here we go, here we go, here we GO!

...she was perched on enough ordnance to knock out a city block, and it was getting to her. Two Soviet guided bombs from the turn of the century and NINE American air-to-air missiles from the depths of the Cold War made her, de facto, an angel of death. As a little girl her father had told her stories of the grave and terrible Yanluo Wang, the King of Hell and the ultimate judge of souls. Such superstiton was frowned upon by the CCP of course, but he had told her anyway and the images stuck with her ever since. He was a dharmapāla, a wrathful god, who rewarded the pious with protection and punished the wicked with brutality.

Jefe considered him something of a kindred spirit, her skull-marked plane and killer's talent making her as worthy a vessel as any other mortal. She was not overly religious but at times very spiritual, and those moments of quiet calm before a fight helped her enter a state of near-zen she struggled to find anywhere else.

Had she been crazy she might have actually seen herself as an angel or a saint or a god, but she was in fact perfectly sane.

That's why she only felt like all of the above.

While the others dove in like vultures who found a fresh carcass she showed uncharacterstic restraint, climbing high into the cloud cover but keeping roughly in pace with Kitten's Warthog below. The A10 smashed the remaining runway (Ximena would probably just dump her bombs into the a building and call it a day) and continued to prowl, a big lumbering bear in contrast to Jefe's raptor.

"Hey Kitten." she hailed, voice almost eerily steady in contrast to the excitement around them. "I'm the clouds with decent stealth and I've got basically nothing but missiles and bad intentions up here for anyone that comes your way. You see so much as a seagull moving towards you, tell me."

Whatever planes were left on the ground would be hard-pressed to make it into the air but Libya had other airfields. Within minutes there would be Mirages and MiGs a-plenty for the taking, so many they would blot the sky like mana falling from heaven. La Catrina would feast on their bodies, Ximena their fighting spirit. All would be well.

Some small part of her brain not drowning in adrenaline spoke up: perhaps she wasn't entirely sane after all. Ximena dutifully noted the possibility before ignoring it. Nuts, sane, supremely arrogant, overwhelmingly terrified, slightly sociopathic, outright traumatized-she was none of them and all of them at the same time. She was definitly off, dials cranked up too far for too long. Shattered let her fire all cylinders because she kept a lid on things and produced results, an arrangement that suited her perfectly. All the adjectives one could call her didn't matter because they melted away when the shooting started. Once the enenmy crossed the horizon she would be one thing:

Sublime.

As the squadron dove to just above the deck and extinguished their lights, Yuna felt a particular tension in the air. It was a tension present on any combat sortie, one that Yuna and the rest of Cobalt Haze had felt hundreds, if not thousands of times. To Yuna it was like a warm blanket, telling her that her senses were tuned to maximum and that the air around her and the job at hand were the only things that mattered. She wasn't just used to it, she welcomed it...but this time the feeling was a little different. It was a feeling she hadn't felt for awhile, certainly not since joining Cobalt Haze. It was a feeling of flying into a hornet's nest, baring your fangs against an enemy that might have bigger ones.

This squadron had performed very well so far, but Yuna felt this operation was its first real test. It was time to prove why she deserved her seat beyond a shadow of a doubt, and she knew that others in the squadron felt the same. There were nerves, sure, but Yuna always said that a little more stakes never hurt anyone, and as the radios crackled back to life she cracked a small smile.

Just another day in the office.

"Skywatch to all Cobalt Squadron aircraft, engage"

"Alright then Flight 2, go to work."

Yuna's radar was already lit up like a Christmas tree, and the picture it painted was grim. "Fuck, 29s," she muttered to herself. This was a far cry from the MiG-23s she had just fought over Lampedusa. This was the A-team. There was no time to dwell on it though, and as Yuna tracked a pair of MiG-29s turning towards Peacenik and Brightspark, she sprang into action immediately. She shoved the stick to an intercept vector, punched the afterburner, and selected her R-73E missiles. "Alright, let's do this shit," she muttered. She was about to draw the moths to her flame, which was exactly the plan.

She approached the pair of enemy aircraft quickly, her vector perpendicular to theirs. As her lock-on system began hunting, she knew it would only be seconds before she'd get others trying to lock on to her. She had to distract the two heading towards her squadron mates before that happened. One target at a time. Her vector put her behind the MiGs, and once she reached their flight path, she yanked the stick right and slid in a ways behind the two MiGs, hunting for a missile lock as quickly as possible. The lock came in about two seconds, and she punched the trigger the instant she heard a solid tone. She called out "Fox Two!" as she moved to focus on the other MiG. The first MiG punched flares and broke left, diverting the missile into the flares. Yuna began locking on to the second MiG, but had barely started before the second MiG broke right. She elected to chase the first MiG, and yanked the stick hard left. She had successfully diverted the two MiGs from attacking Fuka and Myk, but now she had two MiG-29s on her ass. You win some, you lose some.

As Yuna began giving chase, she rattled off a radio call. "Peacenik, Brightspark: I'm tangled with two MiGs, got them off your trail. There are more though, watch your back!" She hoped the other MiGs would be focused on other things for the time being. The three aircraft quickly became tangled in what can only be described as aerial spaghetti. The enemy pilots were clearly competent dogfighters, but hadn't managed to link up a kill shot on Yuna yet. Yuna knew that moment could come at any point, especially as her missile lock warning had been blaring more often than it wasn't. She'd need to pull out all the stops. Just after a MiG made an unsuccessful pass, she punched the throttle, gaining airspeed and allowing the other MiG to get a good look behind her. "Come on..." she grunted, disabling the angle of attack limiter as she did so. Like clockwork, the missile lock warning blared again, and she yanked the stick hard back, causing the plane to face straight up as it bled speed. At the right moment, she added power and brought the nose back down again, completing a successful Cobra maneuver and sending the chasing MiG past. As the nose on Yuna's Su-33 came back down, her eyes caught the other MiG fast enough to aim and unload her GSh-30-1 autocannon into it (yapping out "guns" three times as she did so), shredding the engine and resulting in a fiery explosion just as the pilot ejected. Yuna pulled hard to the right as she yelled in excitement, but her jubilation was short lived.

She could see the other MiG crossing at her 2-o'clock high, and neither of them were in a position to get a lock. Yet, her missile lock warning started to blare. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckin' A!" she exclaimed as the warning turned to a missile approach warning. She pushed the stick hard forward and left to dive as she deployed flares, which successfully diverted...two missiles??

She rattled out a radio call as quickly as possible. "Splashed one but I got at least three on me now. Need help!!"

Scott watched in a mix of amazement and bewilderment as Mykhailo charged in. The kid might be green as a lilypad, but he had balls the size of Jupiter when it came to putting himself in harm's way. The marine aviator noted the F-16 punch home a variety of hits against an array of targets, and mentally scolded that. Focus on one target, then reattack he chided mentally. Too many chances to be hit otherwise! Too much target conflict.
As much as the veteran aviator may have chided that mentally, however; he was relieved to hear Fuka provide some stern, but fair guidance - even though Brightspark's attacks were doing damage. One of the airport's radars was damaged by the rocket attack, Scott's own ordnance finishing it off. The runway was further cratered along with Kat's munitions already damaging it, putting it thoroughly out of action - not to mention, Mykhailo's bomb causing collateral in the form of aircraft on the taxiways, hit by the fragments. The cannonfire volley was less hard to determine; the 20mm rounds would have done some damage, but they weren't nearly potent enough to completely collapse the buildings.
Nonetheless, the younger pilot had certainly reaped his toll - but at cost, as one of the mobile SAM launchers defending the airport launched missiles toward the nimble, sleek F-16. Pillars of fire flashed up into the night as the four-wheeled armoured vehicle let loose, the missiles tracking in on the bright hot exhaust of Myk's F-16.

As situationally aware as Scott was, even he couldn't track everything, least of all a black jet in a black night sky, but he could see the plume of flame as Fuka launched her HARM at the cleverly concealed radar, and heard her announce the weapon release. With such short distances involved, there was barely a delay before Skywatch came back with a 'Confirmed, Peacenik; radar is destroyed or off the air, over'. The burst of her bomb hitting target lit up the night sky with another brief globe of flaming light as well, even as more tracer fire from all manner of weapons criss-crossed the skies; anti-aircraft guns, heavy machine-guns, and even ground infantry spraying the heavens and trying to become a legend and shoot down the untouchable combat jets and humble their pilots, or out of sheer terror and helplessness.

His attention was jolted back to the present as he heard Yuna's call over the net, and he replied with his characteristic laid-back manner, even as he fed his plane more throttle and nosed up, easing the wing over to bring himself onto course with the younger woman's Sukhoi, and where it was involved in the complicated aerial ballet with the chasing MiG-29's. He broke the one on Yuna's tail out of the melee, and armed one of his Sidewinders, the missiles' seeker head filling his ears with its' familiar pulsing tones as it searched.
"Roger, Cobalt 8; I hear ya. Keep him interested just a second longer, I'm gunnin' for him, over".
Scott's gloved hand moved to the controls for the VTOL nozzles on the sides of the Harrier's fuselage, and with a little turn of the wheel, that slight bit of vertical lift nosed up just enough...
The sidewinder locked on with a firm growl, and he thumbed the fire button on his stick, calling out as he did.
"Cobalt One; Fox Two!"
The missile rocketed into the darkness, and Scott's helmet-mounted sight kept the Fulcrum in sight, even as it heeled over hard and dumped flares. He rolled hard to follow; pull 270-degrees of bank and nosing down to follow as the twin-tailed jet, like a smaller shadow of Calico's plane, tried to lose the missile, even as it relentlessly followed, ignoring the bait of flares that arced out into the night sky. It slammed home at the join between the nose and fuselage of the plane, turning into into a tumbling fireball as Scott nosed up, using the vertical lift once more to smoothly pull out of the dive and nose back around to the airport.



Kat's callsign may have been 'Kitten', but the irony inherent in it was that she wasn't the cute, playful little feline of greetings cards, calendars and motivational posters. She was a hunter; a battle-scarred panther that moved through shadows and crushed its' prey between powerful jaws, and tore it to pieces with knife-like claws. Her scars were her personal kill-marks; the fights she'd lived through and carried with her as experience and proof she'd survived. A warning or challenge to others: This is what I've lived through already, you'd better be prepared if you want to try me.
As such, scudding around at low level, she was in her element in the target-rich environment presented to her. Yes, she was more vulnerable to aerial threats and to air defences... but only if they saw her first, or weren't preoccupied with her friends and allies.
And they were; the rest of the squadron's jets raised hell over the airport, and drew fire from anti-aircraft guns and SAM emplacements, marking them out for her via their telltale tracers and plumes of exhaust, and homed in through the LITENING pod under her wing. The SAM that fired on Brightspark received a pair of APKWS rockets for its' trouble. A BTR firing skyward got hosed with 30mm Avenger fire, and as she wheeled over the suburbs, banking to come around, she angled for the airports' aprons and hangars. She climbed slightly, and punched off two of the four CBU-103's as the release point tagged itself in her HUD, smoothly continuing the climb as Ximena spoke to her in that cheery, cocky tone she had.
"Roger, Hefe" she replied in her normal, rough, scratchy, low timbre. "Good to know I've got eyes watching my back, and appreciated. Didn't Cobalt 8 just call in some bandits, if you're looking for some playmates, over?
As they spoke, Kat's munitions carried out their pre-programmed task. Airbags flung out 10 submunitions from each bomb, and in turn, after a timed delay, each of them released four 'skeets', hockey-puck shaped projectiles which were little more than a package of sensors and an explosive charge. As they scanned the area and identified parked aircraft, support equipment, servicing vehicles and armoured vehicles, each one detonated, the explosion forming a penetrator that blasted through the skins of the vehicles, aircraft, or other equipment, disabling it and tearing it apart. In some cases, the impacts caused further explosions, and the apron was covered thoroughly by the pair of bombs and their eighty skeets. Any that didn't find a target self-detonated 50 feet up, avoiding any unexploded munitions.
For any observer, the effect was utterly terrifying as a chain of explosions blanketed the parking apron from seemingly out of nowhere, tearing through all the targets in place.

Jefe was about to get her wishes answered, however; as Skywatch called in over the squadron's channel.
"Cobalt Squadron, this is Skywatch. Be advised; I have a formation of four bandits approaching hot at high speed. Altitude ten thousand; radar identifies them as F-15's, but I'm getting issues resolving a steady picture at this range. These must be some of the mercs the Libyans have hired. Be on your guard, their aircraft may be heavily modified or unusual types, given the radar returns, over!"



In the cockpit of the lead F-15, the pilot spoke calmly to his wingmen as they closed in.
"Lady and Gentlemen; let's show our employers what their money can buy and make the boss back home proud. These upstart N/UNny mercs are going to regret being so bold. Break and engage. And don't hesitate to use your shiny toys, over"
The replies of 'Roger' ranged from calm and cool to eager and almost thrilled as they came in, and Reynard couldn't help an eager smile of his own creeping onto his lips under his oxygen mask.
"Titan Nine, Engaging"
The F-15SE Silent Eagle split from it's fellows, the V-Tailed, stealth-enhanced air superiority fighter diving toward the battlefield, a black F/A-18 in his sights, as his radar swept the skies for a lock-on. His aircraft was matte black with gold trim, and steel grey accents, the only identifying marking a simple gold 'T' surrounded by four gold stars on the tails and upper wing surfaces. Like all of the aircraft in his unit, they carried AMRAAM's in the stealthy compartments on the fuselage sides, as well as AIM-9X's under the wings, along with a pair of their 'shiny toys'; large pods a similar angular shape and size to a Storm Shadow or Taurus cruise missile; or an ECM pod, but tapering to a nosecone that had a large, dark, smoky lens at the tip; like a targeting or camera pod.
His wingmen went other ways, one of the matte-black jets with subtle gold-and-aqua trim arrowing for Yuna. The one with white trim singled out Hefe as she lurked in the clouds, while the last one, with lilac trim, sliced through the skies toward Mykhailo's plane, all of them sweeping for lockons, setting radar warnings blaring in the cockpits of the Cobalt Haze squadron planes.

@Smike, @Letter Bee, @Finetales, @AvaP, @Damo021

Fuka Nakano

"Peacenik, Brightspark: I'm tangled with two MiGs, got them off your trail. There are more though, watch your back!"

Well Calico was certainly eager, Fuka would give her that. Breaking off unbidden from the flight to smash into two bandits while more were coming in hot was...unorthodox, certainly, and potentially a lethal mistake. But high risk sometimes meant high reward, and Peacenik was more willing to trust the Singaporean ace's mad dog instincts than she was the Chinese mercenary's...or the Filipino child's, or the German air force transfer or the Swedish traitor or the English torture victim's...

"Roger Calico, I see them. Sparrow, I'm continuing ground attack for now. Peel off and help Cobalt 5, but stay loose. You might have to help both of us."

She had always been solitary, even as a little girl. One time, her mother, exhausted after a long day of work and then a night of glad-handing the upper crust of the political world at some charity event, had seen her coldly brush off the attempts of some of the other young guests to make friends. She had taken her aside and, calmly but firmly, told her:

"You're going to need to learn to like people, because they're everywhere. You will be working and living with them forever, and it's easier if they're your friends."

The memory stuck but not the lesson. Fuka remained distant; She was never anyone's best friend. No one thought to put her as an emergency contact, she had never been a bridesmaid, and not even her own siblings asked her to be godmother to their children. She stood apart from people by design-she could laugh and joke as required, of course, but that was in and of itself usually a performance, enough of a show to allow her to disappear. Those who got close to her found that she wasn't someone you could build a tight bond with and that she wasn't worth the effort anyway. She loved her family, but it was a distant and often somewhat obligatory love from both ends.

"That far hangar's got some gear in it, gonna handle it. Rifle out."

A SLAM-ER lived up to its name, slicing through the aluminum frame and detonating inside. The fuel or ammo stores within went up all at once, flames pouring through the gash in the roof. Fuka tilted away, already searching for targets with her Litening pod.

Sitting in her glass bubble high above the carnage on the ground, Fuka could remember a time when she had seriously wondered whether she was a psychopath. The thought had occurred to her in high school, and then later in the Army when she clamored for combat. It wasn't uncommon for super-grunts to want to see action (that was the whole point of being a Ranger) but where others wanted to fight because they hated the enemy or loved the people they were protecting or simply needed the rush to feel alive, her enjoyment of it was cold, clinical. It satisfied her in the same way as troubleshooting a car or patching a hole in the wall. She looked at a problem and the tools on hand and figured out what to do, and she could tell immediately whether she made the wrong move.

Case in point, the RWR was beeping again.

"Got eyes on another mobile SAM. Guns."

The Black Bunny dipped its nose and spat, a burst of cannon shells ripping apart the truck-mounted missile launcher before it could try and hit a second target. The RWR fell silent. Problem solved.

Was she a psychopath? The fact that she was more curious than concerned was a mark of evidence in the Yes column, and her lack of emotional care for most people was another. She probably wasn't, but she was certainly not going to the shrink to find out. All that mattered was that she could do her job and her team could do theirs. Affection, trust, friendship, they would come on their own or not all and didn't matter anyway. One cog in the machine didn't trust another to move, it simply did its job and assumed the others would as well. If that wasn't the case, well...

She'd adjust.

"Cobalt 5, I have no visual on you at the moment. Assuming you're not dead, continue to strafe. We're going to-Hold that thought."

The RWR was one of the very few friends she had. It bleeted, it blathered, it hurt her ears with its atonal shrieks and robotic voice, but it only spoke when it had something important to say. It beeped in warning, pulling up the concentric rings used to indicate thread direction on her instrument panel. This most recent scan was from somewhere above. She glanced upwards, squinting into the dark-

Her self-control slipped.

"Godamnit."

That half-instant of anger was a secret shared between only her and the RWR and the plane itself. She hadn't even raised her voice nor make any gesture outside of a squint. It was the closest she ever got to rage, and with that moment of weakness out of the way, she could set about doing something about it.

Fuka flipped the comms on and broadcast to all friendlies, no longer just addressing her own flight."Be advised, there are more bandits. I repeat, more bandits." Peacenik glanced back at the intruders, lips moving as she counted silently. "A minimum of four heavily modified F-15s. I repeat, MINIMUM of four."

They had come up quick and quiet and professionally, the sort of approach Fuka preferred. Strike Eagles, like she said, but the fact that she was only aware of them now meant they had stealth capabilities. Fancy stuff, not the sort of thing the Libyans would have got their hands on before the world collapsed.

Another PMC.

Fuka drummed her mechanical fingers against the instrument panel as she hit the throttle, pushing power to the thrusters as she pulled into a basic chandelle. The number of knots per hour on the airspeed displayed crept up in unison with her altitude, the Black Bunny pulling up and to the left in a turn that would have been far too fast had she been trying to get her FAA license, but was just fast enough when peeling out of gunsight. She'd be moving too quickly to aim a cannon at but slow enough that any missiles would overshoot her, and with her taking the turn first, she had the advantage when it came to chasing each other's tails.

"Ladies and gentleman of Flight 2: Give 'em hell."

@Letter Bee @Finetales

Mykhailo Martinez

Mykhailo was going to acknwoledge Fuka, but as the SAM missiles came for him, all he was able to say was, "Wilco!," to indicate that he'd do such from now on, before trying to avoid the missiles and giving the brevity code for his plane's flares before launching them and causing them to turn the missiles away from his plane. His next words were, "Bandit group coming Hot! Orders, Peacenik?"

He waited a moment for Fuka's orders, even as he thirsted for the blood of the enemy pilot seeking a dogfight with him. He could barely restrain the desire for vengeance over the group that had declared themselves to be his squadron's rivals. Instead, he kept to his existing orders until told otherwise; he was eager to take down the enemy 'Ace' and bring down one more plane and thus cement his status as an Ace himself, while bringing down an enemy of the N/UN and its ideals and get one more bit of vengeance for Artemio -

Mykhailo chuckled. He knew vengeance was empty. Let the foe believe what they believe; he was letting go of his attachments and obeying the existing orders to keep strafing and pouding ground targets.

"Roger, Peacenik," he then followed up with the Brevity Code for his rotary cannon then began filing the hangar with lead as he relied on Flight 2 to cover him.

The itch to take the personal challenge from the Strike Eagle with purple trim hadn't left him. But if the foe was as good as he thought they were, then he can wait a little more. Besides, he wanted to prove that if he does win, it was against an enemy who was skilled enough to negate his tech advantage.

So he waited. He can wait for as long as it took, for the foe to reach him while he took apart the ones who had employed them. Mykhailo's F-16 turned to strafe the side of the enemy hangar now, even as he noticed the staccato of AA fire spike to reflect the hopes of the foe - Hopes he wished to disappoint.

Let go, he thought. Never stop trying to let go.

@Damo021@Smike@Rhona W@Finetales@AvaP

Ximena Huang

"I'm watching them, don't wanna blow my cover until I see just what I'm dealing with."

Slow and steady wins the race, patience is a virtue, all those good lessons she had heard somewhere and tossed aside as worthless-they mattered up here. She craved the fury of a fight and the glory of a kill but it would be hard to enjoy them if she misjudged a situation and ate rockets.

Rockets, yeah, right. Getting shot down by an unguided bomb would be pretty embarrassing.

"But you know what, just for you-I'll make an exception."

She had probably taken a few too many AMRAAMs and not enough AIM9s, but the MiGs were out of her visual range anyway. She wasn't paying for the missiles, and Shattered didn't give her a cash bonus for not spending all of them, so why not take a shot?

She slowly squeezed the trigger, waiting to hear the beautiful blessed sound of a confirmed lock. She only completed the pull when La Catrina whispered sultry, sweet nothings in her ear.

"Target locked."

Ah, bliss. Better than any dirty talk, that was for damn sure.

"Foooooox TWO!"

And still more were coming, a flight of Mirages creeping in for a scuffle while they were still unbloodied. Her finger hovered over the trigger as Catrina searched, the eyeless beauty using all her awesome power to detect the enemy. Invisible waves soared through the air before bouncing off an object moving at hundreds of miles an hour back towards her, and through some techno-occult magic the Beautiful Corpse had another victim in its sights.

"Target locked."

"God, she's sexy. Fox Two."

Another shot, another hit. That one almost missed due to some skillful maneuvering from the pilot, but the shower of flares they sent out didn't deter the missile. An entire wing was blown off, followed by the canopy as the operator bailed out.

Lucky you. Jefe thought, waving to her vanquished foe in their ejection seat. Get back to base, wipe the sweat from your face then get back into the sky so we can meet again. I'll kill you next time, I promise.

"Easy fuckin' does it. I'm still going to stick close to you for now Kitten, keep sniping them if I can. That way-"

"Be advised, there are more bandits. I repeat, more bandits. A minimum of four heavily modified F-15s. I repeat, MINIMUM of four."

"Pinches ratas con alas, cào nǐ mā!" She practically spat into the radio, groaning in annoyance. Right in the middle of a conversation, piece of shit bastard fucking-"I see 'em, moving!"

And see them she did. Blacked-out stealth fighters-shit, Silent Eagles? Great. Flying the same model of super plane like a real military unit, they even color-coordinated their trimming.

Well, aren't they just so well-organized? she sneered to herself, twisting the stick around. She recognized them too, the big T was a good logo: Titans. Efficient, lethal, better than the local yokels she had been chewing through the past couple of days.

Tonight was shaping up to be interesting.

"Sorry to love ya and leave Kitten, got a problem here."

It was only fair to let her know that she was on her own again, and in Ximena's defense someone was actively trying to kill her. She'd make up for being so rude later. Right now she had to get things started.

Step one was to keep her height advantage. Jefe was already high up in the clouds and wanted to climb even higher, force her new friend to chase her up a proverbial mountain. Letting her speed drop allowed her to turn on a dime, La Catrina flipping her nose around so she was coming down on Mister Green from on high.

"Nǐ hǎo!"

It wasn't a brevity code but it was broadcast for all to hear...right after she sent an AIM straight at him. The beauty of those things was that they were entirely immune to flares, being radar guided, and jamming them was often just tying the noose around your own neck. Once it detected a jamming attempt, it would switch to passive guidance and crash into the source of the signal.

And just for kicks, Ximena was guiding it with her Scorpion as well. There was a rule that applied to business, espionage, and combat aviation:

Always stack the deck.

@Rhona W

((Collab between @Letter Bee and @Rhona W .))

Mykhailo Martinez

The foe was coming towards him anyway. At the very last minute, the young man copied Fuka’s chandelle, and turned-climbed to face his enemy while at the same time trying to climb over them in the air. Then without preamble, the young man shouted, “Fox Two!”, for one of his Sidewinder as he launched one of those missiles at his enemy, then followed up by saying, “Guns!”, as he spat out bullets from his F-16’s rotary cannon, all the while announcing with more Brevity Codes that he was engaging this prick in a duel.

Whoever he, she, or they are, they will fall, and he will prevail.

The Titan pilot had the F-16C ahead of her. The sleek, needle-nosed jet was a worthy target; F-16’s were notoriously agile and quick, and she’d seen how this pilot had already caused a lot of damage to their Libyan clients’ facilities, although his flying was… amateurish and sloppy; all aggression and no precision. Nonetheless, he was dangerous, and that made him interesting to her.

“Titan Twelve; on my target,” she called out to the rest of her wingmates as she deftly flicked the Silent Eagle onto its wingtip, utilising the huge wing area of the F-15 to maneuver into a head-on approach to the smaller jet. Her plane had the advantage in power, with twin engines; and the big wing gave it excellent maneuverability. But the F-16 was lighter; the lesser mass meant it could react quickly. That became evidently clear as her instruments blared an incoming missile warning already.

A nose on shot? How very bold of you, she thought with a spike of thrilled fear. She rolled inverted and nosed down, pumping out flares to decoy the heat-seeker and get the hot leading edges and engines of her plane out of its’ line of sight.

Titan Ten’s voice came back to her over the radio as she dove away from her quarry.

“Be careful, Banshee; these Nunny mercs seem like they know what they’re doing”

“Mind your own business, Gorgon. This little fish is playing hard to catch. I’m just enjoying the challenge, over”

The only response was the older man’s rough laughter, muffled by the radio and his own strain as he pulled G’s much like her.

Mykhailo grinned as he saw the foe release flares while also evading his rotary cannon, and took advantage of that to try and circle towards the enemy’s back while trying to maintain his height advantage, then roaring. “Guns!”, before his F-16’s rotary cannon spat a stream of bullets.

Then he rolled to his right and her left in anticipation of her counterattack.

Her F-15 was somewhat larger, but also fast and powerful. But his F-16’s smaller size should allow him to whittle at her with sprays of gunshots; it wasn’t like he was running out of ammo.

No, he can win a battle of agility and attrition; there was a time to drop caution to the wind and this ain’t it.

Banshee’s banking turn brought her back toward the F-16, but he’d anticipated her move.

“Shit!” she barked out as the 20mm shells tore through the air around her. The F-16 had more energy to use in the dive, and the lighter mass let it pull out easier than her. Her F-15 shook and shuddered as the vulcan rounds tore a chunk out of her left wing. Cursing blue, she fought the flutter her plane had picked up, and pulled the switches for her fire extinguishers as she regained control. As he passed over her, she pulled a hard roll to her right; trading momentum from the diver for power and nosed back up. Too close for missiles, she switched to her new weapons; they weren’t restricted by range. Her helmet mounted sight showed the projected impact point of her weapons fire, and as it turned red, she squeezed the trigger on her stick.

There was no rumble or shudder as there was whenever she fired her vulcan cannon, or any sudden flare of missile or rocket exhaust.
Instead, twin spears of ruby light lanced out, one from each pod under the wings, slicing through the sky toward the F-16.

It was Mykhailo rolling to his right and her left a few seconds ago which saved him; for a brief moment, he thought, wait, real laser beams? Awesome, but I know the countermeasures.

The young man did not deign to follow her up, and instead said the Brevity Code for reflective chaff meant to deter targeting lasers but which he knew may reflect actual weaponized laser beams; lasers were just concentrated light, after all.

From under the cover of this cloud of tiny mirrors, the young man then called out, “Fox Two!” and unleashed another Sidewinder at the damaged enemy aircraft, then followed up with. “Guns!”, then another spray of rotary cannon fire.

After that, he was down to his rocket pods (Nails, right?) and more rotary cannon bursts.

Why was Mykhailo giving Banshee the silent treatment instead of enjoying the fight like she did? Because to be honest, his opinion of her was his opinion of any skilled, intelligent, and coherent enemies of the N/UN: Existential foes who threatened him and those he loved and the values he held in order to impose hell on earth because their sources of meaning and ‘morality’ demanded it.

Those had to be destroyed and the literal and metaphorical/rhetorical/ideological earth they stood on salted to the ground.

Let go, Mykhailo Martinez, his mind demanded. You’re acting like the child people think you are.

Maybe I am a child. Maybe I bluffed and play-acted like an adult long enough to enter the world of adults so I could kill the enemy and avenge Artemio.

You want to enjoy the battle too. Focusing on what your enemy believes is not a way to enjoy the battle, his mind scolded back. Let. Go.

He smiled as his worries were released into the air again, and whether his Sidewinder or Rotary Cannon hit or not, Mykhailo shouted once more, “Guns!”, and shot at the foe’s intact wing.

Gorgon’s earlier warning came back to her as the F-16C she’d been tangled with managed to avoid the twin lancing beams of her lasers - though, barely. Instead, he managed to recover and come around into a frantic missile shot - one she shrugged off with ease, it was poorly aimed enough. But points for trying it, kid, she thought as she rose up past his nose, getting a high angle above him, avoiding the burst of gunfire he sent her way. As she yo-yo’ed high and came down, he rose to meet her, unleashing another burst of cannonfire.

With an irritated snarl, she pulled over in a hard bank that sent a shudder through her plane as the damaged wing protested. The move, however, put him right in her sights and she mashed the fire button for her laser pods, the twin lines intersecting cleanly with the F-16’s port horizontal stabilizer - even as his own vulcan fire tore into her other wing. Red caution lights lit up across her displays, and cautions insistently clamoured at her ears as the Silent Eagle shuddered and bucked.

“Shit! Fuck!” she cursed and snarled, desperately trying to regain control. Regardless; one thing was for certain - she was too damaged to continue the fight.

“This is Titan Twelve; taken hits. I’m bugging out!”

Banshee punched off the laser pods and the missiles under her wings; at this point they were causing more drag and problems than helping. She slapped the chaff/flare release button as she fought her aircraft around, diving for low altitude and putting her throttle as high as she dared before the vibration got worse, attempting to extend and disengage from her target, her plane trailing smoke as she ran.

“Fuck!” Mykhailo swore as the laser melted a vital part of his F-16, making maneuvering hard, which was bad as he wanted to pursue - He was enjoying this now.

Nevertheless, he tried to force the plane to turn and pursue the enemy plane, trying to keep that target locked even as his own craft began to shake and uncomfortably wiggle without the stabilizer.

He then shouted, “Nails!, Nails!” as he fired one rocket, then another, at the enemy - Banshee, right? - as he tried to bring her down.

Then as the rockets sped toward her, the young man bantered with his foe for the first time, “Oi! Good job and don’t die - Now go down so I can shoot down my fifth plane!”

Banshee was already running, speeding low at only two hundred feet. She wasn’t trying to maneuver, but still; rockets were air-to-ground weapons; even the APKWS guided ones. Not at all designed or intended for air-to-air shots, even against a target not maneuvering, and the fuses in their warheads weren’t designed or intended to be used against aerial targets either. Nonetheless, it was more than enough to spook her as the brace of 70mm APKWS rockets tore through the air like flaming meteors, the explosions as they hit the ground rising in her rear view. She yelled out in confusion and surprise, turning hard using heavy pressure on her rudder pedals in a flat turn. It was to no avail, however; she didn’t have the mobility anymore with the damage she’d taken, and her jet started to pitch heavily to one side, and then back and up, creaking and groaning violently as the vibration increased and more cautions and warnings sounded. She fought for control, but nothing was responding as she felt the plane lurch and shudder, seeing debris detaching in her canopy mirrors.

Yelling in fear and confusion, she garbled a quick message into the radio.

“Titan Twelve, I’ve lost control; aircraft breaking up, I’m punching out!”

Before she reached down between her knees and pulled the ejection handle, leaving her plane behind in a blackness-inducing smash of force as her seat blasted her well clear of her stricken plane. Left behind, the Silent Eagle spun lazily over, turning into a cartwheeling shape in the darkness, trailing fire as it broke apart, and then smeared itself across the ground, coming down in an industrial park and the surrounding scrubby desert.

Mykhailo grinned, then decided not to commit a war crime by shooting at Banshee while she parachuted downwards. Instead, he hailed Scott and said, “Lost my Port Stabilizer to that Bandit! Should I keep going? I think I can take on one more Bandit.”

"Roger, Cobalt 8; I hear ya. Keep him interested just a second longer, I'm gunnin' for him, over".

Scott's reassuring radio call was music to Yuna's ears. The two remaining MiGs were hounding her, and she was purely on the defensive, chaining together high-G evasive maneuever after another to stay out of their hunting crosshairs. Lining one up for a missile lock was currently out of the question, and she could only tolerate so many punishing Gs before her body gave out.

Thankfully, Scott's Fox Two call came before that happened, and the resulting explosion lit up the sky. The radar warning beeps ceased in Yuna's cockpit as the other MiG broke off, clearly not wanting to be on the other side of a 2-on-1. "Ha, you bitch!" she yelled, followed by calling on the radio "Thanks Heartbreak, I owe you one!"

She was out of the tangle, but her reprieve was short-lived.

"Cobalt Squadron, this is Skywatch. Be advised; I have a formation of four bandits approaching hot at high speed. Altitude ten thousand; radar identifies them as F-15's, but I'm getting issues resolving a steady picture at this range. These must be some of the mercs the Libyans have hired. Be on your guard, their aircraft may be heavily modified or unusual types, given the radar returns, over!"

"Let me guess," Yuna muttered, rolling her eyes. The implied and unstated second part of her statement was that at least one of the four bandits would head straight for her.

And sure enough, Naga Merah started screaming at Yuna once more. "Awak anjing!" she spat at her plane in Malay. Just as she began turning the plane to square off against her attacker, the beeps became a solid tone and Yuna punched out flares and yanked the stick hard right and down. The missile hit a flare and exploded behind Yuna, who continued the turn to hopefully gain a favorable position against the F-15.

But Naga Merah was still beeping at her. This F-15 was out for blood. Yuna tightened the turn as much as the Sukhoi would give, and the beeps stopped as she saw the F-15 fly right over her, already banking to try to get behind her. She could barely see the plane at all in the darkness.

As she rolled the plane over and began a split S to hopefully get behind the F-15's downward bank, her brain made some connections that hit her like a Mack truck. "Wait..."

Blacked out F-15s...
Subtle trim...
Hyper aggressive...
Shows up late...

Could it be...?

A memory flashed through Yuna's mind. A weathered cockpit, a younger Yuna at the controls, and an overwhelming sense of immense frustration. A MiG-23 held together with duct tape, an incompetent squadron around her, and a seemingly endless parade of enemy fighters that she alone was responsible for. The Kazakh desert below would not be forgiving if a missile finally connected.

And suddenly...

A blacked out F-15.

Punching out. The long fall to the ground, looking on helplessly as most of your squadron gets decimated, and the survivors run for the hills. Meeting that Kazakh desert up close, and way too personal.

The flashback only took moments, but it told everything. And now Yuna's situation was all too clear.

"Not this time, motherfucker," she muttered through gritted teeth as she completed her split S, keeping the stick pulled back as she saw the F-15 perpendicular to her at two o-clock high. She banked right to get her crosshairs lined up, and when she got a solid tone, she squeezed the trigger and let an R-73E fly, calling out "Cobalt 8, Fox Two" as she did so.

The missile missed its mark, hitting one of the flares the F-15 deployed as the F-15 entered a steep dive to assist evasion. But this didn't bother Yuna; she had a plan.

Radar lock hunting. 10 missiles left.

@Rhona W

Freyja Svensdotter

Thus far the night fight had been going well, the two flights were hitting their targets despite the much heavier resistance and giving the squadron more run for their money, still it did not deter them as her fellow squad mates showed of their skills. Valkyrie had a mixed load out of air to air and air ground ordinance for this operation and she was glad she did, her fellow pilots she was assigned to had most of the fun hitting multiple targets, the Swede on the other hand conserved her and took targets of opportunity in follow up attacks after her team mate’s ones, scoring a few ground target hits.

Valkyrie heard of the situation Yuna had got herself into with multiple MiG’s on her tail, she moved to go intercept and protect the flanker, however heartbreak beat her to it, the harrier no doubt bringing an unexpected surprise for those pilots coming out of nowhere. One of the last MiG’s broke of, not wanting the smoke as the saying goes. “Cobalt 6, Fox two” came onto the airwaves, moments later the MIG was struck and went up into a ball off flames lighting up the dark sky for a moment. “Cobalt 1, Cobalt 8, Apologies for the delay, won’t happen again.”

"Cobalt Squadron, this is Skywatch. Be advised; I have a formation of four bandits approaching hot at high speed. Altitude ten thousand; radar identifies them as F-15's, but I'm getting issues resolving a steady picture at this range. These must be some of the mercs the Libyans have hired. Be on your guard, their aircraft may be heavily modified or unusual types, given the radar returns, over!"

Great just what they needed, another PMC, Valkyrie could barely make them out from where they were, she was able to make out the markings, matching, she heard rumours of such craft from a PMC, but she had never come across them in her time, one had already engaged Brightspark while another tangled with Yuna. Another one climbed and the last one went after Yuka, they seemed aggressive, they want aggressive, she’ll give them aggressive.

The Gold trimmed one will be her target for tonight’s dance, considering they were occupied in going after Fuka, Valkyrie throttled up and moved in to engage the enemy PMC fighter. Soon enough the Gripen was lining up at the enemy fighter’s six o’clock. “Not on my watch” She said to herself, she was not going to give them a chance to try and get a hit on her fellow squad mate. She attempted to get a lock, taking a few seconds the target lock beep went off. “Cobalt 6, Fox 2” She calmly announced as the missile went after its target.


Amelia Schön

"Roger Calico, I see them. Sparrow, I'm continuing ground attack for now. Peel off and help Cobalt 5, but stay loose. You might have to help both of us."

“Roger Peacenik, moving to assist,” Sparrow was kitted mostly for air to air compared to her squad mates, this was the plan to run defence while they fubar the enemy base. And by god were they doing just that. Like it was on cue, Emilia saw the navigation lights of an enemy fighter moving in on Brightspark while he was taking out ground targets, she quickly moved into intercept the craft, while getting a target lock, it was enough to make the craft bank hard left and abandon the idea of attacking Cobalt 5, she wasn’t about to let it out of her sight, leaving would give a chance for it to return and re-engage.

Soon enough the message came from Skywatch of additional bandits on radar, she simply had to listen on the radio as she continued engaging the craft she was chasing, the pilot was at least a more decent one than most they had engaged. In the process she missed the fact one of the new arrives engaged in one hell of a duel with her wing mate she was supposed to protect, she cursed herself under her breath, “Cobalt 10, Fox 3” She announced finally getting a proper lock, the enemy craft went up in a ball of flames, somehow the pilot managed to eject but that was not her concern for now and hauled ass back towards Brightspark.

She arrived in time to see the enemy F-15 had actually been taken out with pilot ejecting, she was happy to see that at least but upon hearing of the damage Brightspark spoke of, wiped the smile of her face as she manoeuvred into formation with him to try and survey the damage, it was hard to tell during the night sky how bad it is, but it didn’t look pretty. “Cobalt 5, Your stabilizer is not looking pretty, how she feeling?” second later, beeps started going off in her cockpit, someone was attempting target lock, of course she forgot about the Mirage’s coming in. “Hold that thought” she said as a target lock was achieved.

She immediately deployed flares, and performing the Cobra maneuver on them, coming back to normal position behind them. Lighting one up with her cannon, scoring several hits on its stabiliser and smoke emanating from the nozzle, forcing them to break off and retreat, she immediately concentrated on the second one who was trying to lock onto her team mate, she attempted lock on the Mirage forcing it to move off and perform various defensive maneuvers to avoid a missile lock, but at least it kept them of her team mates back.

@Letter Bee @Smike @Rhona W @Finetales @AvaP

"Sorry to love ya and leave Kitten, got a problem here."

The Silent Eagle sporting sleek white trim angled in toward the streamlined, equally sleek shape of Jefe’s F-22N. Even with the swing-wing jet carrying external stores, it still had a reduced radar cross-section and enough of one that it was hard to resolve a strong lock with his AMRAAMs, and as it rose upward through the clouds, he had to push his throttle up a notch to keep his speed up and gain power in the climb. His radar warning receiver blared; a lock on against him and a missile in the air. It was a head-on shot, and that made things slightly easier, but not much. He slapped the countermeasures button for chaff, even as he heeled over into a tight turn off-beam to the missile and dropped altitude rapidly, pulling a high-G turn. If he could drop low enough, he could lose the missile in the ground clutter along with the hard turn, trying to outfly it.
-----
Ximena clicked her tongue in annoyance at the cloudburst of chaff even as she moved to follow. The maneuver was well-timed and nicely executed, the Sidewinder hurtling past her target towards the ground. It was trying to veer back in the right direction but its angle was off and those thrusters didn’t last forever. With luck it’d hit someone or something important down there, but she had to focus on the more immediate target.

Dropping low was the smart play for the Eagle, trying to go high would have slowed its momentum and made it missile-bait. Unfortunately for Mister White going down only made it easier for Ximena to keep her height advantage.

“Where are you going you little rodent?” She hailed him, cycling over to the main gun as she followed his path from on high. Trying to aim directly at something when both she and the target were moving at hundreds of miles an hour was of course a wasted effort but leading a shot? Pretty simple.

She spun up the Vulcan and let loose a half-second of fire, trying to blow apart the Eagle’s cockpit and the pilot with it.

Scudding low over Tripoli’s rooftops and streets, the dark shape of the Silent Eagle was even darker against the night, and the blacked-out city threw up very little light to highlight the fleeting, arrowhead shape. Nonetheless, a pilot with Ximena’s skill, along with her planes’ instruments and her enhanced vision picked out the moving shape. While the burst of cannon fire from her M61 was well-aimed, the Titan pilot pulled a hard bank to port at just the right moment, the volley of 20mm shells missing, tearing his cockpit apart by the barest of hairbreadths. The majority of the stream of hot lead missed, but the tail end of the burst chewed into the forward edge of the starboard intake and wing root, disabling his own vulcan and slamming the plane around in the air and forcing him to gain altitude in an elegant, steep looping climb.
-----
“Worthy of your plane, I see,” he spoke to himself as he pulled up, the weight of the G’s tight on his barrel chest, and his thick neck muscles straining against the amplified weight of his helmet as he looked out the top of the canopy, searching the skies for the F-22N. Lighter in colour, he picked out the swing-wing stealth jet and his helmet-mounted sight locked onto it, and he squeezed off a snap-shot with one of his own AIM-9X’s, the heat-seeker locking onto the friction heat of the plane’s leading edges.
-----
She watched most of the burst fly off somewhere into Tripoli, the impact distant enough that she couldn’t see the miniature explosions. Hopefully it hit somewhere unoccupied!

It wasn’t her problem and she didn’t have the time to care. Hitting the intake was a decent consolation prize if she had actually managed to damage it, knocking out the other would be a kill (or close to it). But Mister White was already pulling into a quick climb, scrambling to get back onto an even playing field. Ximena moved to match him, her height advantage allowing her to La Catrina’s nose down in a shallow dive on an axis to intercept.

“Missile incoming.”

La Catrina’s warning wasn’t news (Ximena would have done the same had she been in Mister White’s seat) but the plane wasn’t built to read minds. It looked at facts. Millions of complex processes occurred instantaneously, providing as much information as possible to the pilot. La Catrina was particularly diligent thanks to the Distributed Aperture System crosshatched into her guts-she spotted a surge of heat and read its heading as being ‘right towards me’, duly alerting her jockey and automatically sending out a spray of chaff and flares. That was everything the Beautiful Corpse could do, the rest was up to Ximena.

“Thank you my darling.” Jefe grunted, straining under multiple Gs while going into evasive maneuvers. The lower approach Mister White was firing from worked in her favor; the missile was forced to take an awkward turn to get on her tail. Not that awkward, mind, those Sidewinders were mobile suckers. She had a second, maybe one second, to save herself.

She followed procedure automatically, performing a technique that had been drilled into her head after a thousand repetitions. With the cloudburst of distractions fanning out behind her, she pulled her plane onto its side, flying knife-edged perpendicular to the missile to throw it off. In a risky maneuver, she cut her burners, trying to let the plane blend into the cold night sky.

The American taxpayer had spent a bit more than $300 million to build her plane. Ximena had been one of said taxpayers for a time, her realty income going directly into the United States war machine. You’d think that for that money, her Seabird would be goddamn invisible against a half-million dollar bomb! Then again, La Catrina was stolen so Ximena was already getting a hell of a lot more bang for her buck than she would have been otherwise.

Fair enough.

“What’d Titan do, recruit you right out of the crop duster?” she called to him, well aware that the supersonic blur that just passed over had been a few inches away from turning her into soup. “Surely you’ve got more than that?”

She had shifted over so that she was once again on the path to intercept. This time he was rising, dodging would be harder. Good! She pulled the trigger, another half-second of Vulcan fire ripping forward. Something flickered at the edge of her periphery, twin spears of light.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

She stabbed the control panel to switch back to closed comms, giving the rest of the squadron a warning:

“All friendlies be advised, enemies has advanced weapons! Repeat, enemy has directed energy weapons!”

The last she heard of them they were a dead-end technology, too difficult to miniaturize. Fabricante Diaz had been a trainwreck of a company that hemorrhaged money, but their science was solid. They had checked the numbers again and again; you just could not shrink a power source enough to mount lasers on anything but the largest of vehicles.

Well, someone had figured it out.
-----
Gorgon, the white-trimmed Silent Eagle, had tail-slid around in a tight turn that had blurred his vision and crushed the air out of his lungs, but it had got him around on the F-22N and its tricksy pilot. Whoever they were, they were good; very good, and very lucky too. But luck couldn’t outrun lasers. As the targeting reticle in his helmet visor predicted the path of the beams, he jabbed at the trigger, staggering shots to try and land something on the sea raptor, before the jet’s silhouette slid out of his view, and he pulled into a hard wingover and a dive to avoid any followup from his target, trying to weave around to line up another shot.
-----
She would never admit it to him of course, but Mister White was world-class. Unfortunately, she was better-she was a strong pilot and a faster thinker, and while fancy lasers gave the Titans an advantage she wasn't going to be caught off guard like some wet-behind-the-ears prick in a puddle jumper.

As soon as her shot missed she was already moving, well aware of the Eagle coming in on her outside. She launched multiple sprays of flares and chaff, the brilliant display forming makeshift physical concealment in tandem with her bird's stealth functions. Beams of weaponized light split the aluminum-encrusted, magnesium-lit corona like lightning across the sky, casting an eerie glow through the night...but hitting nothing more than air and foil strips.

Somewhere within the man-made supernova Jefe had blindly dropped the throttle back, slowing suddenly while her opponent riddled empty space ahead of her. While he was diving, she was moving in the opposite direction, tipping Catrina's nose up into an absurdly high pitch; a classic Cobra maneuver. She was now behind him while he was committed to a weaving dive, which meant that she was once again on top.

"Good show, good night, cào ni mā."

The eye-tracking reticle wired into her helmet locked onto Mister White immediately, an AMRAAM firing in tandem with another half-second burst of cannon fire.
-----
Gorgon struggled to pull back, the Silent Eagle doing its utmost to co-operate. But physics was just not on his side. Energy was everything in a dogfight. He’d gained some in the dive, sure; but he was fighting gravity to try and pull up and get her off his tail. The jets’ radar warning receiver blared at him and he cursed and snarled, pulling a hard wingover. It was a risky move and he lost more energy in doing it, and he felt the lift drop out from under him. He pushed the throttle up, trying to build up more power. As he did, the damaged intake shed more debris and there was a loud bang from somewhere in the plane and it lurched, red ‘FIRE’ caution lights lighting up across the panel for his starboard engine. Power dropped off, and there was no way to avoid Jefe’s missile or her follow up burst of gunfure.

There wasn’t time to do anything.

Gorgon was reaching to pull the ejection handles as the AIM-120C plowed into the broad back of the Silent Eagle. The blast-fragmentation warhead tore through the thin skin of the jet, igniting fuel left in the tanks and volatile hydraulic fluid. The resulting fireball tore the jet apart in fractions of a second, burning components flung asunder in a fireball. It was so quick, the pilot had no time to even feel it or register his own death as it happened.
-----
Ximena snickered to herself as the Eagle split apart, its cockpit now a crematorium.

"Looks like you boys are down a pilot!" she gloated over open channels. "I hope you've arranged your wills."

She shifted towards the next fight, having gotten a taste for blood and wanting more. Calico looked like she could use some help and Kitten was for the time being unbothered so Jefe went towards the smaller of the felines, intent on giving the aqua-trimmed Titan a second problem to focus on.

Scott was relieved and in admiration as he saw three of the Silent Eagles go down in the space of mere minutes, and then Sparrow tearing a Mirage 2000 out of the sky with almost contemptuous ease. He'd already been impressed by what the men and women under his command had done in the scant few days he'd known them; their skills and talent matched up to that feeling by what he'd seen. The remaining Silent Eagle was still angling in for a run on Fuka's F/A-18, and Scott was about to throw himself into the attack, but Freyja was there before he could take action.

“Cobalt 6, Fox 2”

The gunmetal-trimmed Silent Eagle had already been shaken by Valkyrie's lock-on to his plane. As she let loose with her Sidewinder, Titan 9 punched out flares, and pulled a hard, abrupt bank, one that had him on the edge of a red-out. Heavier and larger than the Gripen, but with much more power and wing area, the F-15 was - on paper - evenly matched, but in close like this, the lighter jet could keep more energy. He had to break away and use his power and speed.
Even as those thoughts went through his head, Titan 11's panicked and strained voice came through his helmet's earphones.
"Basilisk to Hellhound; we just lost Gorgon and Banshee punched out! These mercs are better than we gave them credit for. Even with the lasers! They've got us outnumbered, over"
"I know, Basilisk. But we can still hurt them. Hit your target, and then break contact. All we need to do is buy time, and we're doing that. That was the mission, remember? Just do what you were told"
He was more curt with her than he was happy with; the younger pilot was less experienced. He felt a moment of regret for it, but the battle he was in took the priority, and the mission above that. And with that in mind, he fed the engines more power, getting the speed and energy he needed to put distance between himself and the Cobalt Haze planes. He pulled the jet around in a smooth climbing roll after he had a few miles of vertical and horizontal distance, and cued his helmet-mounted sight, tracking in on both the F/A-18 and the Gripen alike. He bracketed each with an AMRAAM, and as soon as they was a positive tone, snap-shot off a missile each apiece, before continuing the dive, and levelling out down low, using the ground clutter and his planes' reduced RCS to try and hide in the clutter and aim to pop-up from below if the missiles didn't hit as planned.

“Hold that thought”

The remaining Mirage 2000-5 sliced through the night sky toward Brightspark and Sparrow. The seeking radar snapped a lock onto both the Typhoon and F-16 alike, and the bold Libyan pilot rippled off a MICA radar-guided missile apiece at them both from medium range, while still boring in to close the distance and press the attack with their shorter-range Magic IR-Guided missiles if need be.

Hellhound in the Aqua-trimmed Silent Eagle was still set on tangling up with Yuna and her deadly Sukhoi. The first missile had spooked her, but surviving it had only strengthened her resolve and her confidence in her skills and her plane. Her radar warning receiver sang at her as Calico's radar hunted for a lock. She needed to reverse the situation and get the big, heavy, and powerful Su-35 off of her tail and get back into a position of advantage. Especially hard, when the Super Flanker had its' trademark impressive manoeuvrability. Still, Basilisk's words rang in her head and still stung her pride. She nosed down, gaining speed and putting on power, luring the Sukhoi and it's pilot to follow her low, before pulling up and hard into loop, using her jets' lesser mass and the power she'd gained to try and roll inside the their climb and put herself back on their tail.
Just as Jefe's hunting radar locked onto her plane, and she cursed, now faced with two powerful, advanced enemy jets hunting her down. She gave a frustrated yell as she punched out chaff, breaking into a tight bank that left contrails streaming and a giant standing on her chest, pinning her back into her seat and choking air out of her lungs, before she violently pulled a reverse to the motion, hauling the nose around in the opposite direction. She knew the second plane was stealthy; it wouldn't show up as well on her radar, but at this short a range it wasn't 'invisible'. Added to this, she had the LANTIRN pods under the fuselage and the Sniper pod of the pair could hunt with infrared, TV and laser-guidance.
And the Sukhoi, well; that wasn't stealthy. Her helmet-mounted sight helped too; anything she could see she could lock onto or track - but that only worked for her missiles.
She craned her neck, as she strained to get one of the pair into her sights. She switched over to short-range, selecting her lasers even as her vision tunneled, and the sleek shape of the F-22N came into view and she pulled the trigger as tight as she dared, the beam lashing out and drawing a line across the shape of the swing-winged jet for the brief heartbeats it was in view, before she rolled inverted once more, feeding power to the engines to extend and break away, putting distance between them to reattack.

"Kitten to Heartbreak; the airport is out of action. Nothing is going to be flying out of here anytime soon - or landing here, over"
Scott orbited the airport, a few miles distant off his port wingtip. The place was aflame in various places, and the blaze was only growing.
"Skywatch, this is Cobalt One; primary target is down. We still have hostiles in the area and are engaged. What's the situation looking like, over?"
There was a brief pause before the always-calm AWACS operator aboard the distant E-2 Hawkeye replied.
"Cobalt One, Skywatch. Seems like the enemy are in disarray; patrols are vectoring to your location, but are miles out. Primary radars are down, recommend you proceed to secondary objective, over".
"Skywatch, Cobalt One; roger. Will proceed to phase two as soon as our noses are clear, over"
Like any fighter pilot; Scott was possessed of a particular mindset and skill that was necessary for the role and it's responsibilities: being able to sum up a situation in the blink of an eye, and make judgements and decisions quickly. Jets travelled so quickly, and moments were all it took to be past a target, and to miss an opportunity in combat. Moments were all you had to make decisions, and command added even more pressure to that equation.
We have another ground target to strike; it's a smaller one but still vital. I've got most of my ordnance, Kat has expended most of hers, Myk is running low. Ayvee hasn't loosed a shot, Freyja is still loaded for air to ground, Ximena still has air to ground ordnance, and so does Amelia. We still have enough air-to-air to protect ourselves. We can do this, if we can lose these bandits.
The remaining Silent Eagles were extending, trying to get better shots on the four aircraft they were engaging, and the remaining Mirage 2000 was likewise trying to punch above their weight. The Cobalt Haze squadron outnumbered the three bandits, regardless of skill and even if some of Cobalt's planes were damaged.
"Cobalt One to all aircraft. Let's ditch these losers; there's three of them and nine of us. Team up on them, and let's bully them out of our sky, and get that second target. All aircraft, engage the bandits!"
"Cobalt One, Cobalt Seven. Already ahead of you, chief"
Kat's voice was tight as she spoke, and it was only as Scott saw the flare of gunfire in the night sky that he saw the A-10 climb from down low. The GAU-8 in the nose was roaring, and the line of tracers intersected the course of the Mirage 2000 bearing down on Mykhailo and Amelia. The massively powerful anti-armour 30mm rounds were overkill for the thin-skinned combat aircraft, and for a moment it looked as though nothing had happened, before the engine tore itself apart and the delta-winged plane exploded in an angry red fireball, Kat pulling inverted to avoid the cloud of shrapnel and flame.
For his part, Scott pulled a heavy wing-over, and poured power on, homing in toward where Fuka and Freyja were tusselling with the silver-trimmed Basilisk, and switching to his remaining sidewinder.
Cobalt One to Three and Six, I'm heading to join you. Three, break off and go help scratch Eight and Nine's backs, over!"
It was time to get this over and done with, and move on to the next target. They'd been side-tracked too long.

@AvaP, @Smike, @Letter Bee, @Finetales, @Damo021

Yuna pushed her nose down in tandem with the Silent Eagle, sizing up the situation. She knew the F-15 was lighter than her big Sukhoi, and that the pilot would likely try to take advantage of that. But Yuna knew the Flanker better than she knew herself, and she liked to think she knew herself pretty damn well. She knew the Naga Merah's limits, and if there was any time to test them, it was now. She followed the F-15 as it dove for the deck, attempting to anticipate its next action but taking an even steeper dive to get below it. Only trouble was, a smart pilot would...

Shit, she thought to herself as her adversary began to pull up sharply, exactly what she was concerned about. Yuna was at risk of an overshoot now, but before she could mentally address that for even another millisecond, the Silent Eagle suddenly spit out chaff and banked hard left. Yuna smiled as she followed the F-15 left, assuming the pilot had gotten spooked and made a mistake. And, well, she was kind of right, but not for the reason she initially thought. Yuna's smile grew wider as the F-15's sudden bank put the Sukhoi in a more advantageous position, but then her smile faded as the enemy aircraft used...a laser???

"What the FUCK was that?!" she exclaimed, before noting exactly what it was the laser was shooting at. "Jefe, you fucking..." she muttered to herself, but she had no time to address the laser or the Sinomexican's arrival any further. She had to wrap this up right now. As the F-15 rolled inverted and tried to break away, Yuna momentarily cut the power and yanked the stick hard to keep the Silent Eagle in her sights. Once reacquired, she punched the throttle to give chase. With the F-15 further away, Yuna could now fully enact her master plan: Operation I Have More Missiles Than You.

"Party's over," she said calmly, as her missile lock turned into a solid tone and she let an R-73E rip with an accompanying "Fox Two". But rather than break off, she stayed on the F-15, keeping that sweet solid tone going as she ripped not one, but two more R-73Es out (with attendant "Fox Two"s) in rapid succession after the first. Dodge that, bitch.

@Rhona W @Smike

Fuka Nakano

Her chandelle had been a hasty manuever performed to buy her time without expectation of a successful escape. Peacenik assumed that if someone had been entrusted with a fancy-supertech stealth fighter they were good enough to stay on her tail. Shifting into the long, climbing turn would only break missile lock, give her a chance to think. After that she was back in the fire.

"Cobalt 6, Fox 2"

Valkyrie came in swinging, her wild haymaker of a missile launch missing its target but forcing him away. Good. Great, actually, a better result than she hoped for. With a second bandit hounding him he'd find it hard to recover his momentum, a problem Fuka could commiserate with. They had the same problem: flying a big, heavy craft while trying to outmaneuver someone throwing much less weight around.

In the time it took for the Titan to get a lock Peacenik had already come out of her turn, tilting the Black Bunny to provide a smaller cross-section as she activated the usual countermeasures. Flares and chaff spread out behind her as she continued, showing no more concern than if she had just merged onto a particularly tricky section of highway.

"Thanks for the assist, Valk. Heartbreak, good copy. Trusting you to not get me killed."

Turning her back on an enemy while they were still alive made the hairs on the back of Fuka's neck stand up, but what could she do? If two ace pilots weren't enough of a distraction to keep the rival gun-for-hire busy she might as well've pulled out her pistol and ejected her brains across the cockpit.

"Cobalt 8, 9, I'm coming in. Stagger your shots, we'll catch them in a buckshot pattern."

Ximena Huang

The aqua-tailed prick flinched once Ximena got them in her gunsights, Jefe snarling in savage glee as her opponent was forced to abandon their original plan. Strike Eagles were a touch faster than La Catrina, yes, but that wasn't everything. There wasn't enough of a power gap between the systems to make up for a skill and positioning gap, and Ximena was ahead in both categories.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" she hailed, well-aware that the Titan wasn't any more likely to respond than her peers, but so high on adrenaline she didn't care. "You're not sneaking out of this!"

She essentially copied Miss Blue's maneuver, overshooting the Silent Eagle while lurching La Catrina's nose in tandem with the enemy. A minute earlier the burst of laserfire might have caught Ximena off-guard but now that she knew energy weapons were on the field? Not a chance. She dipped low in the midst of her swing-round, beams of light lancing over her head. A stray shot hit, but at an oblique angle, scorching the seabird's underbelly. La Catrina didn't even shudder, the massless bolt singing through the stealth-coated skin and into the air intake.

“Minor damage sustained.”

"I noticed babe! Don't worry."

Had it been a straight-on shot the injury would have been catastrophic. But Ximena understood laser technology, knew the upsides and downsides and how it worked. Moving at an angle forced the light to reflect awkwardly, wasting some of its thermal energy. Instead of destroying her intake Miss Blue had only damaged it, and not overmuch at that. La Catrina was pulling to one side due to inefficient engine thrust but a quick glance at the HUD told Jefe she hadn't lost any of her electronics or weapons. There was no fuel leakage, no fires to extinguish, only a bitch to put down.

"Fox Two"

Calico had the same brainwave, Ximena watching as three missiles streaked out in search of fresh meat. A second later Peacenik joined in with a Fox call of her own, and then a second after that-

"Fox 2, Miss Blue. ¡Métetelo por el culo!"

She didn't know if Calico spoke Spanish but Peacenik probably knew a bit-

"Cobalt 9, keep the commentary to yourself."

Yep.

@Finetales @Rhona W

Mykhailo Martinez

Amelia Schön

She arrived in time to see the enemy F-15 had actually been taken out with pilot ejecting, she was happy to see that at least but upon hearing of the damage Brightspark spoke of, wiped the smile of her face as she manoeuvred into formation with him to try and survey the damage, it was hard to tell during the night sky how bad it is, but it didn’t look pretty. “Cobalt 5, Your stabilizer is not looking pretty, how she feeling?” second later, beeps started going off in her cockpit, someone was attempting target lock, of course she forgot about the Mirage’s coming in. “Hold that thought” she said as a target lock was achieved.

@Letter Bee

"The spirit is willing but the body is... I think you can see," Mykhailo quipped happily as he continued, "I should apologize; I spent a lot of ammo trying to bring down one plane. On the plus side, lasers are possible, apparently... and I want some."

Then he remembered that Amelia was being kind enough to fly beside him, and the young man responded, "Thanks; what about you? You doing well?"

He spotted the remaining enemy planes; he knew that he needed first shot at the foe and so said, "Fox Two! Guns!" as he fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder at the nearest Strike Eagle followed by a burst of rotary gun fire.

If he was lucky, he'd become an Ace. And at the expense of rivals too.

@Smike@Rhona W@Finetales@AvaP