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All Along the Watchtower - a Modern Strike Witches Quest

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24.0 - Yellow Bird
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    • [><] Option 8 [+10% Dodge, Accuracy, Random chance to ignore enemy Armor rolls]
    You select the one furthest from you, with the white leg holes, royal yellow wingtips and underside, and greyed out topside camouflage.

    "An excellent choice, junior lieutenant. The batch that one came from did particularly well in batch testing. Go ahead and try it on."

    You momentarily wonder what will become of the other Striker units as you do so. Thought of anything besides these Strikers these Strikers these Strikers soon leaves your mind however, because holy frick these things are well fit. They feel as if they were custom made specifically for you.

    I guess the move towards taking thigh, knee, and shin circumference measurements paid off.

    "Would you like to do a test flight?" the chief KnAAPO representative asks. As if the answer wasn't painfully obvious by the look on your face. Fuck, these Strikers are so comfortable.

    "Yes, sir."

    "Good. Now, just lean forward."

    He deactivates the latch holding you in place, and your Strikers immediately swing out their landing gear.

    "In Landing mode, these Strikers automatically swing out their landing gear at a certain angle below a certain altitude. There's a switch on the left Striker unit that activates it, and a backup on the right one."

    You taxi for a minute or so around the hangar, easily maneuvering about - though there's no debris to worry about. Liberions are very careful to ensure their runways and hangars are free of anything that could be sucked into an aircraft's intakes - though you doubt Strikers have to worry much about that.

    "So what say you? Want to take them up, see how they fly? You have time for a little practice while the C-17 is loading up."
    [ ] Yes
    - [ ] Gentle flight - like a nugget taking to the air for the first time, nice and easy
    - [ ] Do a few loops and hard turns to see how it handles
    - [ ] All-out - this thing has thrust vectoring and supermaneuverability as a fighter, let's see how it does as a Striker
    [ ] No
     
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    • [X] Yes
    - [X] All-out - this thing has thrust vectoring and supermaneuverability as a fighter, let's see how it does as a Striker
     
    [X] Yes
    - [X] Do a few loops and hard turns to see how it handles

    Trying to pull of supermaneuverability in a jet that you've never flown before is a recipe for disaster. And I'm not sure if she's ever flown a fighter before.
     
    [X] Yes
    - [X] Do a few loops and hard turns to see how it handles
     
    [X] Yes
    - [X] Do a few loops and hard turns to see how it handles

    We know how to fly well so an entirely gentle flight is unnecessary, but this model is new to us. We need to get a handle on how the girl feels before we can think about messing around with the more advanced features.
     
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    [X] Yes
    - [X] All-out - this thing has thrust vectoring and supermaneuverability as a fighter, let's see how it does as a Striker

    I feel the need...The need for speed*.
    *This vote and comment brought to you by an 'obligatory Top Gun reference'. Because it's really the only way of justifying what would otherwise be a stupid idea.
     
    25.0 - And then WHOA
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    • [><] Yes
    -[><] Do a few loops and hard turns to see how it handles
    The last 'fighter' Strikers you used were Aero L-39s. Still, you feel confident enough with your flying ability to not take it... too easy on these Su-35s. And certainly you are confident enough to fly them here and now.

    "Of course."

    You roll out of the hangar and onto the tarmac. There is a gentle breeze, and the sky is cloudless apart from a few puffy cumulus humili scattered here and there.

    <<Tower this is Dekabrist, requesting takeoff clearance.>>

    <<...clearance granted. Will you be needing a runway?>>

    You smile.

    <<Negative.>>

    You shoot straight up into the air with-oh my, much more thrust than you anticipated, and soon find yourself well above the clouds, boosted higher still by the cloud's updraft. You twist your body to level yourself out an-wow.

    By their nature, all Striker units are technically thrust vectoring, in that the movement of a witch's legs direct where the exhausts point and thus the thrust. Even so, some Strikers handle better than others, just like their full-size counterparts, and some modern Strikers have thrust vectoring built-in to their exhausts to further increase maneuverability.

    By the standards of an aircraft, the Su-24, brick as it is, handles pretty well, and responds pretty quickly to your inputs. By a Striker standards, it is poor, but not the worst.

    By aircraft or Striker standards, the Su-35 is telepathic. You may as well have been flying an actual Su-24 in comparison.

    You slalom around clouds at speeds your old Strikers could barely turn at. You perform a loop at speeds the Su-24 couldn't reach in a vertical dive - albeit a very large loop. You roar down an unused airstrip at just under Mach 1 - you were about to go supersonic before tower control yelled at you.
    OOC: Retconning your transport to RAAF C-17 because superior range = fewer fuel stops; changing 'stop for fuel' to 'stop for more cargo'
    It's just so much fun.

    Eventually however, you hear over the radio that they're about finished reloading the C-17. You were at around 17,000 meters at the time, testing how high you could go without losing too much stability.

    <<Very well then. Dekabrist, coming in for landing.>>

    You roll onto your back and pull a gentle split-s towards the deck, decelerating as you level out at less than 100 meters and coming in for a landing not far from the C-17, where you see Eli and Ruya standing rather close to each other, watching you as you land. Eli has a couple of straws in her hand.

    "What is that?"

    "Drawin' straws," Ruya says. "We'll be escorted by a Super Hornet to the extent of its range to the southeast, then refuel and head in a northward curve to Caracas." She pulls out a smartphone, pulls up a map application, and draws a rough map of the flight path:

    "And the straws are for...?"

    "The flight distance from the refueling point to Caracas is around 5,300 miles," Eli says with a small cough. "Well over any of our flight ranges, or the flight range of the Super Hornet - and the Navy doesn't want to send up any more tankers than it absolutely has to. So we'll be taking turns. And the only fair way to decide who gets what is with straws."

    She holds the straws in her fist out for the three of you to pick.

    "Long straw gets the first turn, middle straw gets the middle turn, short straw gets the last turn."

    [ ] Straw 1 Long
    [ ] Straw 2 Medium
    [ ] Straw 3 Short
     
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    [jk] "This is a stupid way of deciding." (or variant thereof)
    [X] Straw 3

    Ancient North Chinese prophecy say 'A journey of a million steps always get hit with shit near end'.
     
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