If it came down to it. And it wasn’t supposed to, not on this flight.
“Maybe I ought to show him how it’s really done,” the captain off Thor’s wing mused.
“Yeah, right,” Thor said. That was just what they’d been briefed to avoid. No horsing around this time, their squadron CO had warned. Sure, show the Russian some fancy moves — entirely inconsistent with every warning they’d had not to provoke an incident. Not.
“Okay, then!” The captain’s Hornet peeled away and headed for the Forger.
The general watched the Russian and American fighters clutter the radarscope, hating the ship more with every passing moment. It was unnatural to breathe stale air, barricaded from the sky and the earth. Men should not die like this, blasted to atoms in the sky or entombed in ships. No, if they had to die, let it be on the ground where they could return dust to dust and ashes to ashes, not suspended in emptiness to drift around the globe forever.
Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he left the dark cave of the ship and made his way to the flight deck. He forced himself to walk slowly and purposefully, aware that even sailors drew confidence and courage from the way he held himself, the confidence on his face. But every second he could feel the fear — no, to be accurate, the terror — beating louder and louder in his veins, insisting that he was about to be trapped forever in this cave of steel, that he would be trapped and drown.
The air, blessed even though redolent with jet fuel fumes and the scorched taste of rubber and metal, blasted him as he opened the hatch to the flight deck. Just a few moments, he promised his pride, aware that any longer away from Combat might be taken as him having something he wanted to hide. Just a few moments to reorient myself, to know the time of day and what the weather’s like. Then we’ll get back to the business at hand.
The moments stretched into minutes. Finally, he forced himself to clang the hatch shut, take a deep breath, and begin the descent back down to Combat. The scent of the outside clung to him down several decks.
“Status,” he demanded crisply as he reentered Combat. The men manning the consoles were pale, colors never seen on a soldier’s face. The officers were pale, too.
“Two Hornets launched for each of our fighters,” the action officer replied. “Standard operating procedures — we have warned all flights to be careful not to provoke an incident.”
“Very well.” The general studied the large screen in front of him, aware of how his eyes were already accustomed to translating the unfamiliar symbols and lines into a tactical picture.
The fighters were ringing the transport, each orbiting close to a symbol marking their assigned station. Arrowing in from the direction of the carrier were five aircraft — no, he corrected, five pairs of aircraft, some of them already closing and beginning to circle around to reach the farthermost Russian fighters. They were all a safe distance away from the transport, if anything less than a thousand miles could even be called safe in the modern world.
“Two zero two,” the watch officer said, a trace of worry in his voice. “Interrogative your intentions. You are not maintaining assigned station.”
“Roger. I am just demonstrating the capabilities of the aircraft for our friends,” the pilot’s voice came back, amused and confident.
“That is not your mission,” the watch officer snapped. “Maintain flight discipline.”
The general felt a deep twinge of worry. This was not his environment; these pale strangers were not his troops. But the instincts born of countless conflicts evidently recognized something in this situation that was very dangerous.
“Badger, get your ass back here!” Thor shouted.
“Hey, you said okay,” the captain protested, already starting a turn in toward the Forger.
“Watch out!” Thor screamed. He could see the geometries closing, his own wingman’s bad habits juxtaposed against the Forger pilot’s, the inevitable approaching too quickly to stop. “Break hard right!”
“Sorry, I just—shit!” The captain’s situational awareness was two seconds slower than Thor’s, and those two seconds proved deadly. As he tried to tighten up his right turn to move back toward Thor, the Forger pilot snapped a roll, decreasing airspeed slightly as he did so. The change in airspeed was just enough to settle him a bit lower in the air — and wingtip to wingtip with the captain.
The captain screamed, wrenching the Hornet way past the normal flight envelope, and for a moment Thor felt an insane surge of hope that he might make it, even as one part of his mind coldly informed him otherwise. Thor’s hand was already moving over to his IFF readout, flicking the code switches to radiate a distress signal. Just as he keyed in the last digit, the Forger’s right wingtip brushed against the captain’s canopy.
It looked like a gentle caress, no more that the lightest stroke of metal on metal, but the effect was instantaneous and disastrous. A spray of sparkling light trailed after the Forger’s wingtip as the Hornet’s canopy disintegrated.
“Get him back on deck. Now,” Gorshenko ordered, not waiting for a naval officer to speak.
There was a moment of hesitation — a moment too long. Before Rotenyo decided to obey the ground officer’s command, one of the pair of Hornets split into two distinct radar blips, one of which headed directly for the Russian fighter.
Stupid young man. Your ego and your insolence are more dangerous here than even on the ground. “Withdraw — now!”
The Russian aircraft started to turn. The blip labeled as an American Hornet shivered on the screen as though it, too, were turning.
Too little too late. The general knew what was already inevitable.
The blips merged briefly, then separated. At the same moment there was a blast of ungodly noise over the aviation circuits. The green radar trace that was the Russian aircraft broke into four smaller blips that blossomed and merged into a cloud of noise in the sky.
Bolshovich arrived and absorbed the tactical situation in a glance. “Launch four more Forgers,” he ordered. “Vector toward the American fighters. They’re not going to get away with this!”
Gorshenko felt the crew respond to their captain’s leadership. He turned back to stare at the radar screen again, a sinking feeling in his gut.
“Badger!” Thor shouted. “Answer me!”
“Huh?” The captain’s voice was woozy but audible. “I’m bleeding.” There was a note of wonder in his voice.
“Badger, listen to me. Are you hurt? Can you fly?”
“I’m bleeding.” A note of panic now as the pilot regained situational awareness. “The canopy.”
“You had a brush with the Forger — can you fly? Are you getting a Master Caution light? Report status,” Thor said, keeping his voice level.
“No. Two hydraulics, the cabin pressure alarm. That’s all. Over temp on right engine.” The pilot’s voice steadied up as his training kicked in.