The sky over Tripoli had completely fallen apart. Missile trails carved across the clouds while radar contacts flooded every display in Ayvee’s cockpit. Friendly and hostile aircraft mixed in a chaotic blur above the city, contrails twisting between bursts of flares and distant explosions. The radio was nonstop noise now — warnings, target calls, overlapping chatter drowned occasionally by static. Ayvee stayed just beneath the worst of it. The Seahawk cut through the lower airspace at high speed, weaving between layers of smoke drifting up from the harbor district. Fires burned along parts of the coastline below, reflecting off the canopy in brief flashes of orange as she scanned through radar modes and targeting feeds. Most of the squadron was tangled up in the air battle overhead. She had other priorities. A sharp radar warning pulsed through the cockpit. Tracking signal. Ground-based. Ayvee narrowed her eyes slightly as the emitter appeared on her display near the waterfront, tucked somewhere between warehouses and dock infrastructure. A SAM site still active and trying to paint aircraft above the city. “There you are,” she muttered. The Seahawk dipped lower as she approached the target area, the aircraft hugging the terrain while her targeting system refined the lock. Above her, two fighters tore past through the clouds, one dumping flares as missile smoke curled after it across the night sky. Ayvee ignored it. Weapon systems shifted over with a quiet tone in her headset. Target confirmed. She steadied the aircraft for only a moment before releasing the payload. The Seahawk shuddered lightly as guided bombs dropped cleanly from the internal bay. Ayvee rolled immediately into a hard banking turn, disappearing back toward the cover of the city while warning alarms briefly flared across her displays. A few seconds later, the horizon behind her flashed bright orange. The radar signal vanished. “Stingray,” she said over comms calmly, “SAM site’s gone. Airspace should be a little less miserable now.” [@Rhona W]