"Alright boys," Colonel Frank "Fronk" Bishop eased the eight throttles of his lumbering B-52 all the way to their stops, letting the roar of turbojet engines mix with the mildly alarming rattle of the improvised bombardier's window. "We Ace Combat now."
A chorus of nervous laughter rippled though the bomber's fuselage, the sound almost lost in the multitude of disheartening mechanical noises the big old bomber was making. Bishop did his best to push any concerned about the structural reliability of the big ugly fuck to the back corner of his brain.
He'd pushed her faster than this at Edwards, and in thicker air. If the nose hadn't blown off then, it wouldn't now. Besides, he was driving a Boeing-built strategic bomber. It was just one step below flying an actual bunker.
"I see the princess," the tense voice of his bombardier crackled though the lumbering bomber's intercom, "Holy fuck she's huge." A pause. Then a nervous chuckle. "Uh… correct five degrees port."
"Copy," said Bishop, easing his hulking bomber into the requested turn. On paper, the five-thousand pound GPS-guided bunker-busters shouldn't have the slightest problem hitting any location his bombardier designated. But that paper never accounted for bombing zombie ships that didn't show up on radar.
Nobody'd ever tried GPS-guided ordy against abyssals before, and Bishop was doing everything he could to stack the deck in his favor. "Weapons release, one though four on your mark."
Two clicks of the mic was all the acknowledgement the Colonel received. For all its size and power, the modified Stratofortress only carried twelve of the bunker-buster weapons. And against a target like that… thing, they couldn't afford many misses.
"Mark!" The bomber shuddered as ten tons of precision-guided bunker-busting ordinance fell off its racks
Bishop glanced out his cockpit window, watching the slender bunker-busters fall off the other bomber in his little formation.
"How we looking?" he asked, pulling the bomber around to form up for another run.
"Uh…" A pause from the bombardier's station. Bishop felt his heart start to sink even before the next few words crackled though the intercom. "Miss Miss Miss. Bracketed but no hits."
Bishop wished he could've been surprised. But against Abyssals, precision ordinance deciding it wants to preciously attack fucking nowhere was an all to common experience. Now he knew how the submariners felt with those world war two torpedoes.
"Bonecrusher two, Bonecrusher lead, you score anything?"
"Just one," came the scowled response. "Just one fucking- SHIT! BREAK BREAK BR-" The radio died with a howl as something came streaking out of the sun. Something pouring 20mm cannon rounds into the bomber's slender fuselage.
Explosions and sparks raced along the bomber, smashing its cockpit in a spray of shattered glass and twisted metal. A second fighter raced after the first, stitching the bomber's wing root with its guns and tearing at the crucial load-bearing spars.
Bishop fire walled his throttles, peeling away from the stricken bomber just as its wing crumpled over at the root. "We're being engaged," he drawled, his voice so flat and even it terrified even him.
"Copy that," came the sweetly friendly voice of the Carrier Akagi. "I'll vector Reppus to cover you."
"Negative, Negative," said Bishop, his head frantically swinging from one shoulder to the other as he desperately tried to spot the abyssal hurricanes. "We'll be okay, cover Sword fleet."
"You fucking will not," thundered the noticeably less sweet voice of Battleship New Jersey. "Bug the fuck out, that's a direct order."
"Not gonna happen, ma'am," said Bishop, kicking his lumbering bomber into the most acrobatic barrel roll it could handle to spoil the shots of the two—three?—hurricanes that were impossibly clinging to his tail. "I outrank you."
"And I'm a fucking battleship," growled back Jersey, "We're fucking expendable, you aren't."
Bishop cursed under his breath. A B-52 was most emphatically not meant for dogfighting. He didn't even have a goddamn tail stinger to keep his six clear. But if these damn 'guided' bombs kept being anything but, he'd have to get low and slow to score hits. In that regime, a hurricane would stomp him even without the leveling effect.
"Fuck," he grunted, pulling away from the fight as fast as the lumbering bomber could manage. "Copy that, Bonecrusher flight disengaging."
The hurricanes, apparently bored with their pursuit peeled off to drop back into their CAP orbit.
"Jersey, be advised-"
"I know."
"I still have ordy, I could-"
"No." came the battleship's reply. Her voice was deadly serious, and so commanding Bishop swore he heard it over the sound of his plane's engines. "We lost enough zoomies today, we won't loose more. Disengage, get the fuck home, hug your fucking kids, and put on some Bon Jovi for me and the girls."
"Will do, J. Bonecrusher flight is RTB."
—|—|—
The Northern Princess stalked along her deck with her face buried in the machined steel of her choker. Her imps scrambled over her deck like so many miniature ants, fire hoses and shovels trailing in their wake as they frantically repaired what little damage she'd taken.
The sea of imps split into two seething masses of scrambling creatures, one shoveling all the kicked-up ice off the side while the other filled up the ragged crater with freezing arctic seawater. This far north, especially in the dead of winter, it would freeze solid within a few days, giving her a fresh new deck to launch her planes from.
If she had any planes left. The princess balled her tiny hands into fists, the padding of her thick mittens scrunching up as she shook with unrestrained rage. Her planes, her beautiful precious planes lay shattered on the ocean.
The princess felt her teeth grind against one another. Her eyes were bloodshot as she stared off at the battle. What aircraft she had left were fighting their little hearts out over the brawling mess of battleships and cruisers, but that wasn't where her eyes were focused.
She stared across the ocean at the super battleship and two dreadnoughts tearing into her horribly out-of-position escort battleships. Them, and those hateful little destroyers escorting them.
She hated them. Hated them with every fiber of her being. All she knew was hate for them. Her planes, her toys were broken and it was all their fault. They broke her beautiful planes without even giving them the honor of dying in a dogfight! They broke them with flak! Those destroyers took her precious toys and stomped them into dust!
The princess raised one shaking mitten, her bloody eyes locked on the hateful destroyers. "Kill them!" she shrieked. "KILL THEM!"
—|—|—
Yeoman Gale almost dropped her drink as the bunker's MC1 crackled to life, and even Admiral Williams seemed to suddenly stand a little straighter.
"Johnston," said the Admiral, his voice straining to be let free from the stern, level cadence he forced it into, "Say again."
The little destroyer's voice didn't have a shred of its usual bouncy energy. There was no bravado, no bombastic boasting or hyperactive fury in her soulless words. "Heermann's been hit, sir."
Williams snapped his fingers, but the drone cam was already swinging around to focus on Nagato's escort.
Gale gasped. This time she really did drop her drink. Everything from Heermann's stern-most turret aft was just gone. Her hull simply ended in a mass of burnt, twisted metal and bleeding oil.
Her body echoed the wounds in horrific fashion. Her shorts were in tatters, and huge chunks were torn from her calves, revealing the twisted, oil-soaked metal beneath.
Even though the shaky camera feed, Gale could see tears streaming down Hoel and Johnston's faces, and even the battleships looked moved as the formed up to punish the abyssals for their actions.
"I'm…" Heermann's whisper was barely loud enough to be heard, "I'mokay," she mumbled, keeling over into the water with a pathetic splash.
