Remove ads

Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

Voting is open
Reader mode
PoptartProdigy said:
You have no intelligence on the size of the Victorian Air Force. Cali made them about forty planes.

You had fifty combat-capable fighters. You now have four. Seven more survived to return their pilots but will almost certainly never fly again.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Good god. Also, something from the discord you folks may find relevant:
Disco-Pop said:
Harassment is an option. In terms of defenses, you have a series of defenses set up along the way to Detroit. Two major lines with minor barricades covering the whole area elsewhere. Then there is the city itself, which, while not fortified, counts as fortified to undersupplied light infantry.

Toledo does have a regular army, and Detroit finds it quite formidable, but Detroit is the city which could only muster a single Quality 0 division of disorganized light infantry in its own defense.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Context was a discussion about using our technical forces to inflict additional casualties on the Eastern Force, as well as forcing them to waste additional supplies.
 
We should be able to learn ahead of times if and when the Viks start marching overland from Toledo. Hopefully that will give us a chance to wipe out the first landing group if we haven't already, and to prepare to fight the new army.
 
EBR said:
We should be able to learn ahead of times if and when the Viks start marching overland from Toledo.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If we're keeping out motorized cavalry patrols on technicals we'll probably get some warning, if only because the main body of their army is going to have to pick their way out of the Great Black Swamp that has partially recovered to surround Toledo to the south and east, and make their way northwards.

Unfortunately with our air force effectively gone and nothing like Governor Jameson's drones, we don't have aerial reconnaissance, and our gunboat fleet can't monitor Victorian troop movements effectively. So it'd all be down to our own technical corps to act as cavalry, and between Victorian airstrikes and the Viks' own technical forces that could get messy.

Hopefully their first offensive won't hit us with outright tactical surprise, but we're at a significant recon disadvantage. We may well not get a chance to reinforce our front lines, in our best case scenario might be down around the lakeside town of Monroe and along the Raisin River that runs through it.

On the other hand, Monroe is closer to Toledo than to Detroit, so it might have been too far forward to hold. :(

[Does research]

Monroe, Michigan... home to among other things, George Armstrong Custer and the La-Z-Boy recliner company. :p

@PoptartProdigy

I wonder if any of the dams on that river are still intact enough to be blown effectively...
 
Dwergar said:
Only partially true.
As long as naval transport is interrupted, the only part of airforce Victorians can move in and out of Toledo is jets themselves.

With parts or, more importantly, support staff like technicians they'd be constrained. And they probably don't have a vast reserve of aircraft technicians, considering airforce status in Victoria.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

there would be also the question of fuel and fuel farms also the F-16 in the assumption are current day machines, right? this is a Victorian variant, they could be somewhat different.

OTOH, we do want them to keep the CAPs going, so not necesarily raids, but feints of raids so that they have to start moving crafts and what not, hopefully that means the Cali effect will start coming into full swing
 
Chaos Blade said:
there would be also the question of fuel and fuel farms also the F-16 in the assumption are current day machines, right? this is a Victorian variant, they could be somewhat different.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Basically, I doubt they've had much opportunity to change the bulk parameters of the machine very much. Nobody in Victoria's really qualified to do a redesign, and the NCR doesn't have much incentive to do it.

EDIT:

To be clear, I'm not seeing any sign that the Victorian F-16V variant is significantly different in terms of size, range, and other major parameters of its performance. The modifications mentioned in the omake sound like they have more to do with ease of serviceability, but I doubt the Viks would willingly have compromised much on the plane's already limited range, for instance.

OTOH, we do want them to keep the CAPs going, so not necesarily raids, but feints of raids so that they have to start moving crafts and what not, hopefully that means the Cali effect will start coming into full swing
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I suspect it's already in full swing, personally, inasmuch as the NCR started sabotaging Victorian supplies at least a year ago.
 
Last edited:
PoptartProdigy said:
You had fifty combat-capable fighters. You now have four. Seven more survived to return their pilots but will almost certainly never fly again.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't want to seem like I'm trying to resurrect a thoroughly tenderized horse here, but my curiosity gets the best of me. You caught my attention in the aforementioned statement that seven aircraft had just enough in them to get their pilots back before clonking out. Does that mean that the other thirty-nine pilots went down with their aircraft? If not, how many made it back to our lines or were otherwise recovered by our ground troops?
 
Foxwood said:
I don't want to seem like I'm trying to resurrect a thoroughly tenderized horse here, but my curiosity gets the best of me. You caught my attention in the aforementioned statement that seven aircraft had just enough in them to get their pilots back before clonking out. Does that mean that the other thirty-nine pilots went down with their aircraft? If not, how many made it back to our lines or were otherwise recovered by our ground troops?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Much of the air combat happened over water; your navy was a tempting target. You as yet do not have a clear image of how many pilots managed to ditch or eject, and then survive.
Simon_Jester said:
Hm. Most of the rest must be old legacy aircraft maintained using a steady supply of NCR spare parts, I guess. To be fair, the Victorians were in a good position to seize a lot of Air Force materiel back in the day, and the Russians probably actively funneled that to them because it was cheaper than providing MiGs.

...Welp.

That is, ah, worse than I'd hoped and about as bad as I'd feared. The die roll was a tie, so I'd dared to hope that more of our planes would get out, if only by firing off their air-to-air ordnance and bugging out rather than getting into dogfights with the Victorians... ah, about how many confirmed kills do we have on Victorian aircraft during that period?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That, I will answer in the update itself.
 
Boresight
​
They were stacked to 20,000 feet, orbiting the flotilla. Old prop planes ambled around on the deck. The brass didn't think they could down a F-16 (and the jet jockeys were certain they couldn't) but at least they could disrupt any attack runs made under the AA envelope. A handful of jets above that, civilian jets and ancient museum birds that could theoretically chase an F-16 long enough to get a missile lock. The lone wing of F-16s at the top, operating as radar platforms, trying to avoid target confusion and, frankly, using the rest of the Air Group as bait. Not good odds, frankly. Even if the improvised 'fighters' took out a couple of Falcons, even if the real fighters made every missile count and the gunboats got their say in the fight, there were just too many of them. And everyone knew it.

But the odds were better than they'd been a couple months ago. The squids had downed a couple Falcons on their raid, and a last second scavenging project had come through back home. Against an entirely different enemy, over a wholly different battleground, a full century after its retirement, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was put back into service.

The idea came from abroad. That is to say, a helpful NCR agent with access to Wikipedia, and its pre-Collapse page on surviving F-4 airframes. The Victorians had been brutally efficient with their sweeps through the country destroying abandoned military equipment, but they skipped over quite a few museums and private collections. The Phantoms weren't alone in their re-activation, joined by four A-4 Skyhawks, two F-105 Thunderchiefs, and a lone turboprop A-1 Skyraider even more out of place than it'd been over Ta Chan. These 'aircraft' were older than their pilot's grandparents, kludged together with cannibalized parts from three or more airframes, none of which were the right variant.

But they had one more fight in them.

---

"All Sapphire call-signs, check in. Holding up alright?" Sapphire-1 (150444, F-4N, Prairie Aviation Museum, Bloomington IL) was an old hand. He'd flown in the last days of the Californian War, even scored a probable on a Victorian plane. He was far too old to be pulling Gs, and they'd just brought him in to train new blood. But there wasn't time. His poor RIO was trying to make the best of it, being trapped in a metal coffin with a walking heart attack, but...well.

"Sapphire-2. All green here." Sapphire-2 (66-7468, F-4D, Capital Airport Air National Guard Station, Springfield IL) was great. Quick, sharp, a bit cautious (admittedly a cardinal sin for a fighter pilot), she knew the bird's limits and when to push them. The only reason she wasn't element lead, hunting her own Falcons, was that -1 wanted someone good watching his ass. Her backseater was quiet. Nobody knew her, but -2 wasn't complaining.

"Three here, all good. You ready?" Sapphire-3 (148412, F-4B, Heritage In Flight Museum, Lincoln IL) was, frankly, an idiot. His backseater wasn't much better. Members of the first generation born into the collapsed Deep South, they fled as soon as they could...towards Victoria. Upon reaching the border, they promptly fled the other way and ended up in the Midwest. The flying thing just sort of happened. They didn't have any experience, but neither did anyone else, and -3 certainly seemed aggressive enough.

"Four here. Severe engine problems, might need to turn back if our guests don't show up soon." Sapphire-4 (155764, F-4S, MAPS Air Museum, Canton OH) was just bad luck. He'd been given the most 'modern' of the fossils, a late-model F-4S, but they couldn't find the fancy smokeless engines that variant was built around. They stuck an older pair in, but those things have been trying to murder him since his first takeoff. His RIO is a joker from Brooklyn who everyone in the unit loves, and is thus destined to die in her first mission.

There's a pregnant pause before the radio crackles. "Uh, Three, you there?" -3 swears like only a redneck can, glaring at his backseater in his rearview mirror. "Transmitter's fucking broke again, man. You're the Radio Officer, handle it." -3 starts signalling to his flight leader's poor, doomed RIO to explain the situation. In the back, his buddy explains the difference between a Radio Intercept Officer (read: radar nerd) and a Radio Officer (read: mule carrying an officer's talky-phone.)

Before the percussive maintenance can make things worse, a fifth voice buzzes in. A squid from the radar picket station onboard one of the gunboats. "Sapphire, this is Red Dog. We've got bandits on the scope, 11,000 feet. One hell of a dot." As the data pours in, -3 squints out over the waves towards the radar dots. He spots a flash of light in the distance, sun bouncing off the nose-cone of an anti-ship missile. It grows into an F-16, doubles into two Falcons, doubles again into a full flight. The other pilots catch on in time to see the mitosis continue, the flight multiplying into two formations, then four. Sixteen F-16s taking up a vast swath of sky.

"Christ almighty." -3 instinctively holds down the transmit button, but the flight's morale is spared by his still-broken radio. His backseater finally gives up on the radio set, turning to watch the dots off their 3 o'clock grow by the second. Sapphire Flight freezes for five seconds, and in that time the F-16s close by a mile. -1 snaps out of it first, barking an order to turn to 10 o'clock, let the Vicks into the AA envelope before engaging. They kick into full afterburner, gaining a couple of miles, and turn back in for the attack.

---

"Gimme a lock, man! I need tone!" The four Falcons that turned to engage the Phantoms were brushed aside with ease. Their air-to-air missiles dropped like rocks, corkscrewed off into space or simply failed to launch. They'll be turning back on their tail, of course, but they won't have nearly enough energy to stop Sapphire from slashing through the strike planes. Sapphire -3 places the pipper of his gunsight on the tail end F-16, screaming at his RIO to get a lock. He glances off to his right. "Where the fuck is Four?"

Before he can think his wingman's absence through, a Sidewinder on his wing starts growling. Low and primeval, the kind of sound evolution taught us to fear. -3 cackles like a man possessed as he pulls the trigger. The two tail end Falcons have realized they're in danger, broken straight up for the clouds, but it's far too late. The F-16 cuts a hole in the cloud-bank, and the AIM-9 follows it through. When Sapphire-3 comes out the other end of the cloud, they rocket through a hail of debris. Scratch one.

The other F-16 is still climbing, too shocked to react. -3 slides his sight onto the bird. "I've got boresight, man, c'mon! C'mon!" Another missile starts to howl at the F-16's exhaust. As the AIM-9 leaves the Phantom's wing, the Falcon pilot makes his move, reversing with a sharp high G turn to the right and diving back through the clouds. The Sidewinder's homing head fails in the turn, looping off into the distance, and Sapphire-3 gives chase through the cloud layer.

The lumbering Phantom outweighs the cut-down F-16 by more than three to one. It might turn like a bus, and fly like...also a bus...in level flight, but it has no equal in a dive. Whatever lead the Vick pilot built in the climb vanishes in moments as the two warbirds race towards the ocean at thousands of feet per second. In his windscreen, -3 sees a full-blown furball. Dozens of aircraft duel over, around and in between the gunboats, coming together and breaking apart in seconds as they all try to avoid tunnel-vision. Arcs of tracer fire and telephone-pole sized SAMs pass within feet of the Phantom's canopy while the RIO hammers his controls. "No use, man! Can't see shit with everything down here!"

Sapphire-3 snarls as the F-16 pulls up feet from the wavetops. "Fuck it. Gimme-" His words are swallowed for a moment as he levels out. As he pulls a little too hard on the stick a little too low, as his body-weight goes from 190 pounds to 1000. He breathes, refocuses on the Falcon running like hell. "Gimme guns baby, I'm ready for fightin'." A switch flips in the backseat and a turbine crawls out of the pod on the jet's belly, spinning up in the wind stream just off the water. -3 fingers the trigger.

Two quick squeezes, a second each. Twice, twenty pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary rounds pass over the Falcon's cockpit without hitting. The Phantom's nose just can't drop any further; at this speed, even a slight dip would put them into the waves. The F-16 is coming closer, practically filling his windscreen. -3's about to overshoot, and he knows it. He has to peel off.

And then, a minor miracle. The first the Phantom crew sees of it is the tennis ball-sized 30mm tracers bracketing in the Falcon. The CWS Audrey Jameson. She's pulled out of formation to fight fires caused by an enemy strafing run, directly into the Falcon's escape path. He should've seen them earlier, skidded to the side a ways to dodge, but he didn't. It's the last mistake he'll ever make. Her smokestacks loom in the pilot's vision and he climbs.

Five seconds, this time. A hundred pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary run through the Falcon like a buzz-saw. Its fuel tanks catch fire, its control surfaces are irreparably shredded. The pilot, almost certainly dead, makes no attempt to eject before his pyre hits the water. The Phantom crew hoots and hollers, the RIO kicks the back of -3's chair. "We got him, man! We got him! God damn, Dee, I love you man!"

The celebration's short lived. They pull up over the stacks, through the fireball left behind by the F-16. The Phantom's hungry intakes swallow fire and debris instead of air, choking and shutting down. At altitude, it'd be a momentary problem. Shut the engine down, restart, carry on. On the deck, though, it's costly. The F-4 glides a few hundred feet on its speed and the tiny bit of altitude they built up, as Sapphire-3 battles the engine, before pathetically splashing into a wave. There's a short *snap* of whiplash, but they're mostly unscathed.

The two aircrew are hit with the full weight of combat fatigue. The whole engagement was, what, a minute? Ninety seconds? Feels like a lifetime. The RIO chuckles. "God damn. Two Vicks, man. We're heroes." He tries to punch the canopy out, but it won't budge. "Hey, you got the canopy breaker up there?"

"Nah, dude. Don't you have it?"

"No, it's meant to be with you. It's in the fuckin' pre-flight list."

"Ain't in my pre-flight list. Why don't you have one? Not like you're doin' anything else back there. Ope, found it." Glass rains down on the back-seat, and the RIO swears.

"Asshole."

---

Sapphire Flight:
Sapphire-1: Shot down by friendly anti-air while pursuing an enemy F-16. Pilot did not eject. RIO ejected, but became tangled in his parachute and drowned.
-Pilot: Major George Meyer, KIA
-RIO: Captain Roger Fitzpatrick, KIA

Sapphire-2: Killed two F-16s with missiles before being engaged by three F-16s. Dogfight lasted eight and a half minutes, the longest of any Commonwealth aircraft so far in the air war. Shot down by Sidewinder after killing one F-16 with cannon fire.
-Pilot: Captain Ria Morales, MIA
-RIO: First Lieutenant Bryna South, MIA

Sapphire-3: Engaged two F-16s in quick succession, killing both. Crashed, water landing.
-Pilot: Captain Jackson Welles, Recovered
-RIO: First Lieutenant Zachariah Howland, Recovered

Sapphire-4: Control surfaces crippled by AMRAAM in initial pass, returned to airfield using only rudder and afterburner, crashed into a barracks building. Credited with one Sparrow kill in initial pass.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Alvin Baron, WIA
-RIO: Second Lieutenant Hailee Richards, KIA

Honorable Mentions:
Solo-1: Lone turboprop Skyraider. Credited with 1 kill, sharing two head-on gun kills with a T-6 Texan trainer. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: Second Lieutenant Gwendolyn Harrelson

Lolo-1: F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber. Credited with two gun kills while protecting downed wingman, Lolo-2, from F-16s. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Rudolf Dhanani

---

i wrote a thing.

imagine ace combat 5 but instead of writing about blaze I decided to write about chopper.

also in this universe/canon, our air kills are being carried pretty hard by the F-16s using everyone else as bait and SAMs.

edit: 'captain lieutenant', big oof
 
Last edited:
natruska said:
Boresight
​
They were stacked to 20,000 feet, orbiting the flotilla. Old prop planes ambled around on the deck. The brass didn't think they could down a F-16 (and the jet jockeys were certain they couldn't) but at least they could disrupt any attack runs made under the AA envelope. A handful of jets above that, civilian jets and ancient museum birds that could theoretically chase an F-16 long enough to get a missile lock. The lone wing of F-16s at the top, operating as radar platforms, trying to avoid target confusion and, frankly, using the rest of the Air Group as bait. Not good odds, frankly. Even if the improvised 'fighters' took out a couple of Falcons, even if the real fighters made every missile count and the gunboats got their say in the fight, there were just too many of them. And everyone knew it.

But the odds were better than they'd been a couple months ago. The squids had downed a couple Falcons on their raid, and a last second scavenging project had come through back home. Against an entirely different enemy, over a wholly different battleground, a full century after its retirement, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was put back into service.

The idea came from abroad. That is to say, a helpful NCR agent with access to Wikipedia, and its pre-Collapse page on surviving F-4 airframes. The Victorians had been brutally efficient with their sweeps through the country destroying abandoned military equipment, but they skipped over quite a few museums and private collections. The Phantoms weren't alone in their re-activation, joined by four A-4 Skyhawks, two F-105 Thunderchiefs, and a lone turboprop A-1 Skyraider even more out of place than it'd been over Ta Chan. These 'aircraft' were older than their pilot's grandparents, kludged together with cannibalized parts from three or more airframes, none of which were the right variant.

But they had one more fight in them.

---

"All Sapphire call-signs, check in. Holding up alright?" Sapphire-1 (150444, F-4N, Prairie Aviation Museum, Bloomington IL) was an old hand. He'd flown in the last days of the Californian War, even scored a probable on a Victorian plane. He was far too old to be pulling Gs, and they'd just brought him in to train new blood. But there wasn't time. His poor RIO was trying to make the best of it, being trapped in a metal coffin with a walking heart attack, but...well.

"Sapphire-2. All green here." Sapphire-2 (66-7468, F-4D, Capital Airport Air National Guard Station, Springfield IL) was great. Quick, sharp, a bit cautious (admittedly a cardinal sin for a fighter pilot), she knew the bird's limits and when to push them. The only reason she wasn't element lead, hunting her own Falcons, was that -1 wanted someone good watching his ass. Her backseater was quiet. Nobody knew her, but -2 wasn't complaining.

"Three here, all good. You ready?" Sapphire-3 (148412, F-4B, Heritage In Flight Museum, Lincoln IL) was, frankly, an idiot. His backseater wasn't much better. Members of the first generation born into the collapsed Deep South, they fled as soon as they could...towards Victoria. Upon reaching the border, they promptly fled the other way and ended up in the Midwest. The flying thing just sort of happened. They didn't have any experience, but neither did anyone else, and -3 certainly seemed aggressive enough.

"Four here. Severe engine problems, might need to turn back if our guests don't show up soon." Sapphire-4 (155764, F-4S, MAPS Air Museum, Canton OH) was just bad luck. He'd been given the most 'modern' of the fossils, a late-model F-4S, but they couldn't find the fancy smokeless engines that variant was built around. They stuck an older pair in, but those things have been trying to murder him since his first takeoff. His RIO is a joker from Brooklyn who everyone in the unit loves, and is thus destined to die in her first mission.

There's a pregnant pause before the radio crackles. "Uh, Three, you there?" -3 swears like only a redneck can, glaring at his backseater in his rearview mirror. "Transmitter's fucking broke again, man. You're the Radio Officer, handle it." -3 starts signalling to his flight leader's poor, doomed RIO to explain the situation. In the back, his buddy explains the difference between a Radio Intercept Officer (read: radar nerd) and a Radio Officer (read: mule carrying an officer's talky-phone.)

Before the percussive maintenance can make things worse, a fifth voice buzzes in. A squid from the radar picket station onboard one of the gunboats. "Sapphire, this is Red Dog. We've got bandits on the scope, 11,000 feet. One hell of a dot." As the data pours in, -3 squints out over the waves towards the radar dots. He spots a flash of light in the distance, sun bouncing off the nose-cone of an anti-ship missile. It grows into an F-16, doubles into two Falcons, doubles again into a full flight. The other pilots catch on in time to see the mitosis continue, the flight multiplying into two formations, then four. Sixteen F-16s taking up a vast swath of sky.

"Christ almighty." -3 instinctively holds down the transmit button, but the flight's morale is spared by his still-broken radio. His backseater finally gives up on the radio set, turning to watch the dots off their 3 o'clock grow by the second. Sapphire Flight freezes for five seconds, and in that time the F-16s close by a mile. -1 snaps out of it first, barking an order to turn to 10 o'clock, let the Vicks into the AA envelope before engaging. They kick into full afterburner, gaining a couple of miles, and turn back in for the attack.

---

"Gimme a lock, man! I need tone!" The four Falcons that turned to engage the Phantoms were brushed aside with ease. Their air-to-air missiles dropped like rocks, corkscrewed off into space or simply failed to launch. They'll be turning back on their tail, of course, but they won't have nearly enough energy to stop Sapphire from slashing through the strike planes. Sapphire -3 places the pipper of his gunsight on the tail end F-16, screaming at his RIO to get a lock. He glances off to his right. "Where the fuck is Four?"

Before he can think his wingman's absence through, a Sidewinder on his wing starts growling. Low and primeval, the kind of sound evolution taught us to fear. -3 cackles like a man possessed as he pulls the trigger. The two tail end Falcons have realized they're in danger, broken straight up for the clouds, but it's far too late. The F-16 cuts a hole in the cloud-bank, and the AIM-9 follows it through. When Sapphire-3 comes out the other end of the cloud, they rocket through a hail of debris. Scratch one.

The other F-16 is still climbing, too shocked to react. -3 slides his sight onto the bird. "I've got boresight, man, c'mon! C'mon!" Another missile starts to howl at the F-16's exhaust. As the AIM-9 leaves the Phantom's wing, the Falcon pilot makes his move, reversing with a sharp high G turn to the right and diving back through the clouds. The Sidewinder's homing head fails in the turn, looping off into the distance, and Sapphire-3 gives chase through the cloud layer.

The lumbering Phantom outweighs the cut-down F-16 by more than three to one. It might turn like a bus, and fly like...also a bus...in level flight, but it has no equal in a dive. Whatever lead the Vick pilot built in the climb vanishes in moments as the two warbirds race towards the ocean at thousands of feet per second. In his windscreen, -3 sees a full-blown furball. Dozens of aircraft duel over, around and in between the gunboats, coming together and breaking apart in seconds as they all try to avoid tunnel-vision. Arcs of tracer fire and telephone-pole sized SAMs pass within feet of the Phantom's canopy while the RIO hammers his controls. "No use, man! Can't see shit with everything down here!"

Sapphire-3 snarls as the F-16 pulls up feet from the wavetops. "Fuck it. Gimme-" His words are swallowed for a moment as he levels out. As he pulls a little too hard on the stick a little too low, as his body-weight goes from 190 pounds to 1000. He breathes, refocuses on the Falcon running like hell. "Gimme guns baby, I'm ready for fightin'." A switch flips in the backseat and a turbine crawls out of the pod on the jet's belly, spinning up in the wind stream just off the water. -3 fingers the trigger.

Two quick squeezes, a second each. Twice, twenty pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary rounds pass over the Falcon's cockpit without hitting. The Phantom's nose just can't drop any further; at this speed, even a slight dip would put them into the waves. The F-16 is coming closer, practically filling his windscreen. -3's about to overshoot, and he knows it. He has to peel off.

And then, a minor miracle. The first the Phantom crew sees of it is the tennis ball-sized 30mm tracers bracketing in the Falcon. The CWS Audrey Jameson. She's pulled out of formation to fight fires caused by an enemy strafing run, directly into the Falcon's escape path. He should've seen them earlier, skidded to the side a ways to dodge, but he didn't. It's the last mistake he'll ever make. Her smokestacks loom in the pilot's vision and he climbs.

Five seconds, this time. A hundred pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary run through the Falcon like a buzz-saw. Its fuel tanks catch fire, its control surfaces are irreparably shredded. The pilot, almost certainly dead, makes no attempt to eject before his pyre hits the water. The Phantom crew hoots and hollers, the RIO kicks the back of -3's chair. "We got him, man! We got him! God damn, Dee, I love you man!"

The celebration's short lived. They pull up over the stacks, through the fireball left behind by the F-16. The Phantom's hungry intakes swallow fire and debris instead of air, choking and shutting down. At altitude, it'd be a momentary problem. Shut the engine down, restart, carry on. On the deck, though, it's costly. The F-4 glides a few hundred feet on its speed and the tiny bit of altitude they built up, as Sapphire-3 battles the engine, before pathetically splashing into a wave. There's a short *snap* of whiplash, but they're mostly unscathed.

The two aircrew are hit with the full weight of combat fatigue. The whole engagement was, what, a minute? Ninety seconds? Feels like a lifetime. The RIO chuckles. "God damn. Two Vicks, man. We're heroes." He tries to punch the canopy out, but it won't budge. "Hey, you got the canopy breaker up there?"

"Nah, dude. Don't you have it?"

"No, it's meant to be with you. It's in the fuckin' pre-flight list."

"Ain't in my pre-flight list. Why don't you have one? Not like you're doin' anything else back there. Ope, found it." Glass rains down on the back-seat, and the RIO swears.

"Asshole."

---

Sapphire Flight:
Sapphire-1: Shot down by friendly anti-air while pursuing an enemy F-16. Pilot did not eject. RIO ejected, but became tangled in his parachute and drowned.
-Pilot: Major George Meyer, KIA
-RIO: Captain Roger Fitzpatrick, KIA

Sapphire-2: Killed two F-16s with missiles before being engaged by three F-16s. Dogfight lasted eight and a half minutes, the longest of any Commonwealth aircraft so far in the air war. Shot down by Sidewinder after killing one F-16 with cannon fire.
-Pilot: Captain Ria Morales, MIA
-RIO: First Lieutenant Bryna South, MIA

Sapphire-3: Engaged two F-16s in quick succession, killing both. Crashed, water landing.
-Pilot: Captain Lieutenant Jackson Welles, Recovered
-RIO: First Lieutenant Zachariah Howland, Recovered

Sapphire-4: Control surfaces crippled by AMRAAM in initial pass, returned to airfield using only rudder and afterburner, crashed into a barracks building. Credited with one Sparrow kill in initial pass.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Alvin Baron, WIA
-RIO: Second Lieutenant Hailee Richards, KIA

Honorable Mentions:
Solo-1: Lone turboprop Skyraider. Credited with 1 kill, sharing two head-on gun kills with a T-6 Texan trainer. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: Second Lieutenant Gwendolyn Harrelson

Lolo-1: F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber. Credited with two gun kills while protecting downed wingman, Lolo-2, from F-16s. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Rudolf Dhanani

---

i wrote a thing.

imagine ace combat 5 but instead of writing about blaze I decided to write about chopper.

also in this universe/canon, our air kills are being carried pretty hard by the F-16s using everyone else as bait and SAMs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Could use backing music; can I recommend First Contact, from Ace Combat 7?

also it's great and we should have more ace combat plz
 
natruska said:
Boresight
​
They were stacked to 20,000 feet, orbiting the flotilla. Old prop planes ambled around on the deck. The brass didn't think they could down a F-16 (and the jet jockeys were certain they couldn't) but at least they could disrupt any attack runs made under the AA envelope. A handful of jets above that, civilian jets and ancient museum birds that could theoretically chase an F-16 long enough to get a missile lock. The lone wing of F-16s at the top, operating as radar platforms, trying to avoid target confusion and, frankly, using the rest of the Air Group as bait. Not good odds, frankly. Even if the improvised 'fighters' took out a couple of Falcons, even if the real fighters made every missile count and the gunboats got their say in the fight, there were just too many of them. And everyone knew it.

But the odds were better than they'd been a couple months ago. The squids had downed a couple Falcons on their raid, and a last second scavenging project had come through back home. Against an entirely different enemy, over a wholly different battleground, a full century after its retirement, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was put back into service.

The idea came from abroad. That is to say, a helpful NCR agent with access to Wikipedia, and its pre-Collapse page on surviving F-4 airframes. The Victorians had been brutally efficient with their sweeps through the country destroying abandoned military equipment, but they skipped over quite a few museums and private collections. The Phantoms weren't alone in their re-activation, joined by four A-4 Skyhawks, two F-105 Thunderchiefs, and a lone turboprop A-1 Skyraider even more out of place than it'd been over Ta Chan. These 'aircraft' were older than their pilot's grandparents, kludged together with cannibalized parts from three or more airframes, none of which were the right variant.

But they had one more fight in them.

---

"All Sapphire call-signs, check in. Holding up alright?" Sapphire-1 (150444, F-4N, Prairie Aviation Museum, Bloomington IL) was an old hand. He'd flown in the last days of the Californian War, even scored a probable on a Victorian plane. He was far too old to be pulling Gs, and they'd just brought him in to train new blood. But there wasn't time. His poor RIO was trying to make the best of it, being trapped in a metal coffin with a walking heart attack, but...well.

"Sapphire-2. All green here." Sapphire-2 (66-7468, F-4D, Capital Airport Air National Guard Station, Springfield IL) was great. Quick, sharp, a bit cautious (admittedly a cardinal sin for a fighter pilot), she knew the bird's limits and when to push them. The only reason she wasn't element lead, hunting her own Falcons, was that -1 wanted someone good watching his ass. Her backseater was quiet. Nobody knew her, but -2 wasn't complaining.

"Three here, all good. You ready?" Sapphire-3 (148412, F-4B, Heritage In Flight Museum, Lincoln IL) was, frankly, an idiot. His backseater wasn't much better. Members of the first generation born into the collapsed Deep South, they fled as soon as they could...towards Victoria. Upon reaching the border, they promptly fled the other way and ended up in the Midwest. The flying thing just sort of happened. They didn't have any experience, but neither did anyone else, and -3 certainly seemed aggressive enough.

"Four here. Severe engine problems, might need to turn back if our guests don't show up soon." Sapphire-4 (155764, F-4S, MAPS Air Museum, Canton OH) was just bad luck. He'd been given the most 'modern' of the fossils, a late-model F-4S, but they couldn't find the fancy smokeless engines that variant was built around. They stuck an older pair in, but those things have been trying to murder him since his first takeoff. His RIO is a joker from Brooklyn who everyone in the unit loves, and is thus destined to die in her first mission.

There's a pregnant pause before the radio crackles. "Uh, Three, you there?" -3 swears like only a redneck can, glaring at his backseater in his rearview mirror. "Transmitter's fucking broke again, man. You're the Radio Officer, handle it." -3 starts signalling to his flight leader's poor, doomed RIO to explain the situation. In the back, his buddy explains the difference between a Radio Intercept Officer (read: radar nerd) and a Radio Officer (read: mule carrying an officer's talky-phone.)

Before the percussive maintenance can make things worse, a fifth voice buzzes in. A squid from the radar picket station onboard one of the gunboats. "Sapphire, this is Red Dog. We've got bandits on the scope, 11,000 feet. One hell of a dot." As the data pours in, -3 squints out over the waves towards the radar dots. He spots a flash of light in the distance, sun bouncing off the nose-cone of an anti-ship missile. It grows into an F-16, doubles into two Falcons, doubles again into a full flight. The other pilots catch on in time to see the mitosis continue, the flight multiplying into two formations, then four. Sixteen F-16s taking up a vast swath of sky.

"Christ almighty." -3 instinctively holds down the transmit button, but the flight's morale is spared by his still-broken radio. His backseater finally gives up on the radio set, turning to watch the dots off their 3 o'clock grow by the second. Sapphire Flight freezes for five seconds, and in that time the F-16s close by a mile. -1 snaps out of it first, barking an order to turn to 10 o'clock, let the Vicks into the AA envelope before engaging. They kick into full afterburner, gaining a couple of miles, and turn back in for the attack.

---

"Gimme a lock, man! I need tone!" The four Falcons that turned to engage the Phantoms were brushed aside with ease. Their air-to-air missiles dropped like rocks, corkscrewed off into space or simply failed to launch. They'll be turning back on their tail, of course, but they won't have nearly enough energy to stop Sapphire from slashing through the strike planes. Sapphire -3 places the pipper of his gunsight on the tail end F-16, screaming at his RIO to get a lock. He glances off to his right. "Where the fuck is Four?"

Before he can think his wingman's absence through, a Sidewinder on his wing starts growling. Low and primeval, the kind of sound evolution taught us to fear. -3 cackles like a man possessed as he pulls the trigger. The two tail end Falcons have realized they're in danger, broken straight up for the clouds, but it's far too late. The F-16 cuts a hole in the cloud-bank, and the AIM-9 follows it through. When Sapphire-3 comes out the other end of the cloud, they rocket through a hail of debris. Scratch one.

The other F-16 is still climbing, too shocked to react. -3 slides his sight onto the bird. "I've got boresight, man, c'mon! C'mon!" Another missile starts to howl at the F-16's exhaust. As the AIM-9 leaves the Phantom's wing, the Falcon pilot makes his move, reversing with a sharp high G turn to the right and diving back through the clouds. The Sidewinder's homing head fails in the turn, looping off into the distance, and Sapphire-3 gives chase through the cloud layer.

The lumbering Phantom outweighs the cut-down F-16 by more than three to one. It might turn like a bus, and fly like...also a bus...in level flight, but it has no equal in a dive. Whatever lead the Vick pilot built in the climb vanishes in moments as the two warbirds race towards the ocean at thousands of feet per second. In his windscreen, -3 sees a full-blown furball. Dozens of aircraft duel over, around and in between the gunboats, coming together and breaking apart in seconds as they all try to avoid tunnel-vision. Arcs of tracer fire and telephone-pole sized SAMs pass within feet of the Phantom's canopy while the RIO hammers his controls. "No use, man! Can't see shit with everything down here!"

Sapphire-3 snarls as the F-16 pulls up feet from the wavetops. "Fuck it. Gimme-" His words are swallowed for a moment as he levels out. As he pulls a little too hard on the stick a little too low, as his body-weight goes from 190 pounds to 1000. He breathes, refocuses on the Falcon running like hell. "Gimme guns baby, I'm ready for fightin'." A switch flips in the backseat and a turbine crawls out of the pod on the jet's belly, spinning up in the wind stream just off the water. -3 fingers the trigger.

Two quick squeezes, a second each. Twice, twenty pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary rounds pass over the Falcon's cockpit without hitting. The Phantom's nose just can't drop any further; at this speed, even a slight dip would put them into the waves. The F-16 is coming closer, practically filling his windscreen. -3's about to overshoot, and he knows it. He has to peel off.

And then, a minor miracle. The first the Phantom crew sees of it is the tennis ball-sized 30mm tracers bracketing in the Falcon. The CWS Audrey Jameson. She's pulled out of formation to fight fires caused by an enemy strafing run, directly into the Falcon's escape path. He should've seen them earlier, skidded to the side a ways to dodge, but he didn't. It's the last mistake he'll ever make. Her smokestacks loom in the pilot's vision and he climbs.

Five seconds, this time. A hundred pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary run through the Falcon like a buzz-saw. Its fuel tanks catch fire, its control surfaces are irreparably shredded. The pilot, almost certainly dead, makes no attempt to eject before his pyre hits the water. The Phantom crew hoots and hollers, the RIO kicks the back of -3's chair. "We got him, man! We got him! God damn, Dee, I love you man!"

The celebration's short lived. They pull up over the stacks, through the fireball left behind by the F-16. The Phantom's hungry intakes swallow fire and debris instead of air, choking and shutting down. At altitude, it'd be a momentary problem. Shut the engine down, restart, carry on. On the deck, though, it's costly. The F-4 glides a few hundred feet on its speed and the tiny bit of altitude they built up, as Sapphire-3 battles the engine, before pathetically splashing into a wave. There's a short *snap* of whiplash, but they're mostly unscathed.

The two aircrew are hit with the full weight of combat fatigue. The whole engagement was, what, a minute? Ninety seconds? Feels like a lifetime. The RIO chuckles. "God damn. Two Vicks, man. We're heroes." He tries to punch the canopy out, but it won't budge. "Hey, you got the canopy breaker up there?"

"Nah, dude. Don't you have it?"

"No, it's meant to be with you. It's in the fuckin' pre-flight list."

"Ain't in my pre-flight list. Why don't you have one? Not like you're doin' anything else back there. Ope, found it." Glass rains down on the back-seat, and the RIO swears.

"Asshole."

---

Sapphire Flight:
Sapphire-1: Shot down by friendly anti-air while pursuing an enemy F-16. Pilot did not eject. RIO ejected, but became tangled in his parachute and drowned.
-Pilot: Major George Meyer, KIA
-RIO: Captain Roger Fitzpatrick, KIA

Sapphire-2: Killed two F-16s with missiles before being engaged by three F-16s. Dogfight lasted eight and a half minutes, the longest of any Commonwealth aircraft so far in the air war. Shot down by Sidewinder after killing one F-16 with cannon fire.
-Pilot: Captain Ria Morales, MIA
-RIO: First Lieutenant Bryna South, MIA

Sapphire-3: Engaged two F-16s in quick succession, killing both. Crashed, water landing.
-Pilot: Captain Lieutenant Jackson Welles, Recovered
-RIO: First Lieutenant Zachariah Howland, Recovered

Sapphire-4: Control surfaces crippled by AMRAAM in initial pass, returned to airfield using only rudder and afterburner, crashed into a barracks building. Credited with one Sparrow kill in initial pass.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Alvin Baron, WIA
-RIO: Second Lieutenant Hailee Richards, KIA

Honorable Mentions:
Solo-1: Lone turboprop Skyraider. Credited with 1 kill, sharing two head-on gun kills with a T-6 Texan trainer. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: Second Lieutenant Gwendolyn Harrelson

Lolo-1: F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber. Credited with two gun kills while protecting downed wingman, Lolo-2, from F-16s. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Rudolf Dhanani

---

i wrote a thing.

imagine ace combat 5 but instead of writing about blaze I decided to write about chopper.

also in this universe/canon, our air kills are being carried pretty hard by the F-16s using everyone else as bait and SAMs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Beautiful.

I'd hoped to write this, but it wasn't in me tonight.

Not quite crying a little.
 
This is excellent, but
natruska said:
"Four here. Severe engine problems, might need to turn back if our guests don't show up soon." Sapphire-4 (155764, F-4S, MAPS Air Museum, Canton OH) was just bad luck. He'd been given the most 'modern' of the fossils, a late-model F-4S, but they couldn't find the fancy smokeless engines that variant was built around. They stuck an older pair in, but those things have been trying to murder him since his first takeoff. His RIO is a joker from Brooklyn who everyone in the unit loves, and is thus destined to die in her first mission.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

natruska said:
Sapphire-4: Control surfaces crippled by AMRAAM in initial pass, returned to airfield using only rudder and afterburner, crashed into a barracks building. Credited with one Sparrow kill in initial pass.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Alvin Baron, WIA
-RIO: Second Lieutenant Hailee Richards, KIA
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You monster.
 
natruska said:
Boresight
​
They were stacked to 20,000 feet, orbiting the flotilla. Old prop planes ambled around on the deck. The brass didn't think they could down a F-16 (and the jet jockeys were certain they couldn't) but at least they could disrupt any attack runs made under the AA envelope. A handful of jets above that, civilian jets and ancient museum birds that could theoretically chase an F-16 long enough to get a missile lock. The lone wing of F-16s at the top, operating as radar platforms, trying to avoid target confusion and, frankly, using the rest of the Air Group as bait. Not good odds, frankly. Even if the improvised 'fighters' took out a couple of Falcons, even if the real fighters made every missile count and the gunboats got their say in the fight, there were just too many of them. And everyone knew it.

But the odds were better than they'd been a couple months ago. The squids had downed a couple Falcons on their raid, and a last second scavenging project had come through back home. Against an entirely different enemy, over a wholly different battleground, a full century after its retirement, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was put back into service.

The idea came from abroad. That is to say, a helpful NCR agent with access to Wikipedia, and its pre-Collapse page on surviving F-4 airframes. The Victorians had been brutally efficient with their sweeps through the country destroying abandoned military equipment, but they skipped over quite a few museums and private collections. The Phantoms weren't alone in their re-activation, joined by four A-4 Skyhawks, two F-105 Thunderchiefs, and a lone turboprop A-1 Skyraider even more out of place than it'd been over Ta Chan. These 'aircraft' were older than their pilot's grandparents, kludged together with cannibalized parts from three or more airframes, none of which were the right variant.

But they had one more fight in them.

---

"All Sapphire call-signs, check in. Holding up alright?" Sapphire-1 (150444, F-4N, Prairie Aviation Museum, Bloomington IL) was an old hand. He'd flown in the last days of the Californian War, even scored a probable on a Victorian plane. He was far too old to be pulling Gs, and they'd just brought him in to train new blood. But there wasn't time. His poor RIO was trying to make the best of it, being trapped in a metal coffin with a walking heart attack, but...well.

"Sapphire-2. All green here." Sapphire-2 (66-7468, F-4D, Capital Airport Air National Guard Station, Springfield IL) was great. Quick, sharp, a bit cautious (admittedly a cardinal sin for a fighter pilot), she knew the bird's limits and when to push them. The only reason she wasn't element lead, hunting her own Falcons, was that -1 wanted someone good watching his ass. Her backseater was quiet. Nobody knew her, but -2 wasn't complaining.

"Three here, all good. You ready?" Sapphire-3 (148412, F-4B, Heritage In Flight Museum, Lincoln IL) was, frankly, an idiot. His backseater wasn't much better. Members of the first generation born into the collapsed Deep South, they fled as soon as they could...towards Victoria. Upon reaching the border, they promptly fled the other way and ended up in the Midwest. The flying thing just sort of happened. They didn't have any experience, but neither did anyone else, and -3 certainly seemed aggressive enough.

"Four here. Severe engine problems, might need to turn back if our guests don't show up soon." Sapphire-4 (155764, F-4S, MAPS Air Museum, Canton OH) was just bad luck. He'd been given the most 'modern' of the fossils, a late-model F-4S, but they couldn't find the fancy smokeless engines that variant was built around. They stuck an older pair in, but those things have been trying to murder him since his first takeoff. His RIO is a joker from Brooklyn who everyone in the unit loves, and is thus destined to die in her first mission.

There's a pregnant pause before the radio crackles. "Uh, Three, you there?" -3 swears like only a redneck can, glaring at his backseater in his rearview mirror. "Transmitter's fucking broke again, man. You're the Radio Officer, handle it." -3 starts signalling to his flight leader's poor, doomed RIO to explain the situation. In the back, his buddy explains the difference between a Radio Intercept Officer (read: radar nerd) and a Radio Officer (read: mule carrying an officer's talky-phone.)

Before the percussive maintenance can make things worse, a fifth voice buzzes in. A squid from the radar picket station onboard one of the gunboats. "Sapphire, this is Red Dog. We've got bandits on the scope, 11,000 feet. One hell of a dot." As the data pours in, -3 squints out over the waves towards the radar dots. He spots a flash of light in the distance, sun bouncing off the nose-cone of an anti-ship missile. It grows into an F-16, doubles into two Falcons, doubles again into a full flight. The other pilots catch on in time to see the mitosis continue, the flight multiplying into two formations, then four. Sixteen F-16s taking up a vast swath of sky.

"Christ almighty." -3 instinctively holds down the transmit button, but the flight's morale is spared by his still-broken radio. His backseater finally gives up on the radio set, turning to watch the dots off their 3 o'clock grow by the second. Sapphire Flight freezes for five seconds, and in that time the F-16s close by a mile. -1 snaps out of it first, barking an order to turn to 10 o'clock, let the Vicks into the AA envelope before engaging. They kick into full afterburner, gaining a couple of miles, and turn back in for the attack.

---

"Gimme a lock, man! I need tone!" The four Falcons that turned to engage the Phantoms were brushed aside with ease. Their air-to-air missiles dropped like rocks, corkscrewed off into space or simply failed to launch. They'll be turning back on their tail, of course, but they won't have nearly enough energy to stop Sapphire from slashing through the strike planes. Sapphire -3 places the pipper of his gunsight on the tail end F-16, screaming at his RIO to get a lock. He glances off to his right. "Where the fuck is Four?"

Before he can think his wingman's absence through, a Sidewinder on his wing starts growling. Low and primeval, the kind of sound evolution taught us to fear. -3 cackles like a man possessed as he pulls the trigger. The two tail end Falcons have realized they're in danger, broken straight up for the clouds, but it's far too late. The F-16 cuts a hole in the cloud-bank, and the AIM-9 follows it through. When Sapphire-3 comes out the other end of the cloud, they rocket through a hail of debris. Scratch one.

The other F-16 is still climbing, too shocked to react. -3 slides his sight onto the bird. "I've got boresight, man, c'mon! C'mon!" Another missile starts to howl at the F-16's exhaust. As the AIM-9 leaves the Phantom's wing, the Falcon pilot makes his move, reversing with a sharp high G turn to the right and diving back through the clouds. The Sidewinder's homing head fails in the turn, looping off into the distance, and Sapphire-3 gives chase through the cloud layer.

The lumbering Phantom outweighs the cut-down F-16 by more than three to one. It might turn like a bus, and fly like...also a bus...in level flight, but it has no equal in a dive. Whatever lead the Vick pilot built in the climb vanishes in moments as the two warbirds race towards the ocean at thousands of feet per second. In his windscreen, -3 sees a full-blown furball. Dozens of aircraft duel over, around and in between the gunboats, coming together and breaking apart in seconds as they all try to avoid tunnel-vision. Arcs of tracer fire and telephone-pole sized SAMs pass within feet of the Phantom's canopy while the RIO hammers his controls. "No use, man! Can't see shit with everything down here!"

Sapphire-3 snarls as the F-16 pulls up feet from the wavetops. "Fuck it. Gimme-" His words are swallowed for a moment as he levels out. As he pulls a little too hard on the stick a little too low, as his body-weight goes from 190 pounds to 1000. He breathes, refocuses on the Falcon running like hell. "Gimme guns baby, I'm ready for fightin'." A switch flips in the backseat and a turbine crawls out of the pod on the jet's belly, spinning up in the wind stream just off the water. -3 fingers the trigger.

Two quick squeezes, a second each. Twice, twenty pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary rounds pass over the Falcon's cockpit without hitting. The Phantom's nose just can't drop any further; at this speed, even a slight dip would put them into the waves. The F-16 is coming closer, practically filling his windscreen. -3's about to overshoot, and he knows it. He has to peel off.

And then, a minor miracle. The first the Phantom crew sees of it is the tennis ball-sized 30mm tracers bracketing in the Falcon. The CWS Audrey Jameson. She's pulled out of formation to fight fires caused by an enemy strafing run, directly into the Falcon's escape path. He should've seen them earlier, skidded to the side a ways to dodge, but he didn't. It's the last mistake he'll ever make. Her smokestacks loom in the pilot's vision and he climbs.

Five seconds, this time. A hundred pounds of high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing incendiary run through the Falcon like a buzz-saw. Its fuel tanks catch fire, its control surfaces are irreparably shredded. The pilot, almost certainly dead, makes no attempt to eject before his pyre hits the water. The Phantom crew hoots and hollers, the RIO kicks the back of -3's chair. "We got him, man! We got him! God damn, Dee, I love you man!"

The celebration's short lived. They pull up over the stacks, through the fireball left behind by the F-16. The Phantom's hungry intakes swallow fire and debris instead of air, choking and shutting down. At altitude, it'd be a momentary problem. Shut the engine down, restart, carry on. On the deck, though, it's costly. The F-4 glides a few hundred feet on its speed and the tiny bit of altitude they built up, as Sapphire-3 battles the engine, before pathetically splashing into a wave. There's a short *snap* of whiplash, but they're mostly unscathed.

The two aircrew are hit with the full weight of combat fatigue. The whole engagement was, what, a minute? Ninety seconds? Feels like a lifetime. The RIO chuckles. "God damn. Two Vicks, man. We're heroes." He tries to punch the canopy out, but it won't budge. "Hey, you got the canopy breaker up there?"

"Nah, dude. Don't you have it?"

"No, it's meant to be with you. It's in the fuckin' pre-flight list."

"Ain't in my pre-flight list. Why don't you have one? Not like you're doin' anything else back there. Ope, found it." Glass rains down on the back-seat, and the RIO swears.

"Asshole."

---

Sapphire Flight:
Sapphire-1: Shot down by friendly anti-air while pursuing an enemy F-16. Pilot did not eject. RIO ejected, but became tangled in his parachute and drowned.
-Pilot: Major George Meyer, KIA
-RIO: Captain Roger Fitzpatrick, KIA

Sapphire-2: Killed two F-16s with missiles before being engaged by three F-16s. Dogfight lasted eight and a half minutes, the longest of any Commonwealth aircraft so far in the air war. Shot down by Sidewinder after killing one F-16 with cannon fire.
-Pilot: Captain Ria Morales, MIA
-RIO: First Lieutenant Bryna South, MIA

Sapphire-3: Engaged two F-16s in quick succession, killing both. Crashed, water landing.
-Pilot: Captain Jackson Welles, Recovered
-RIO: First Lieutenant Zachariah Howland, Recovered

Sapphire-4: Control surfaces crippled by AMRAAM in initial pass, returned to airfield using only rudder and afterburner, crashed into a barracks building. Credited with one Sparrow kill in initial pass.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Alvin Baron, WIA
-RIO: Second Lieutenant Hailee Richards, KIA

Honorable Mentions:
Solo-1: Lone turboprop Skyraider. Credited with 1 kill, sharing two head-on gun kills with a T-6 Texan trainer. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: Second Lieutenant Gwendolyn Harrelson

Lolo-1: F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber. Credited with two gun kills while protecting downed wingman, Lolo-2, from F-16s. Returned to base intact.
-Pilot: First Lieutenant Rudolf Dhanani

---

i wrote a thing.

imagine ace combat 5 but instead of writing about blaze I decided to write about chopper.

also in this universe/canon, our air kills are being carried pretty hard by the F-16s using everyone else as bait and SAMs.

edit: 'captain lieutenant', big oof
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Holy fuck

Not non-canon

Not canon

Not an omake

You beautiful bastard, you are going in the update.

Assuming you're fine with that, of course, and with all due credit. :)
 
Water Rats​

The CWS Haymarket was still standing off of the shoreline, a pall of smoke and dust throwing a haze over the sky, even as far out as they were. Burning ships and "torpedo" boats and oil slicks dotted the harbor. Overhead, there was still the scream of jet engines and the deeper, ominous buzz of prop planes, although by now the sound of engines had begun to fade. Onshore, there were more fires, dust kicked up by the impact of shells and Ensign Christina Odilo could make out scurrying figures through the binoculars she was using to watch the ongoing bombardment. The gunboat was swinging out, though, away from the shoreline, the thudthudthud of the autocannons falling silent. She was supposed to direct the fire for one of the .50 caliber tubs, but after the last trawler had been shredded, she hadn't had much to do.

Instead, she and her guncrew had had the pleasure of watching their autocannons work over the harbor and gotten a ring-side seat to the aerial battle overhead. The contrails were still fresh and she could swear she'd even seen one of their jets chase an F-16 almost right into the smokestacks of the Audrey Jameson before sending it crashing into the sea. Really, most of the battle was a blur and she was still running on an adrenaline high. And she and her crew hadn't even had to do much. Still - they all knew they couldn't stay out in the open too much longer; the Vicks would be back again, eventually, and the next time they'd probably have to depend on their own AAA - without any help from what was left of their airforce.

There was a crackle from the intercom: "Odilo - secure your gun tub and come forward. We're picking people out of the drink."

Right. There were still people in the water. Some Chicagoan pilots, some Vickie pilots, and a whole lot of Victorian "naval" personnel and soldiers from some of the transports. Even with the threat of the enemy air force, they were going to make an effort. Securing the .50s took a few moments and then she trotted to the prow, gathering with a handful of enlisted, most of them gabbing away about the fight, their voices too loud, too used to the volume they'd had to yell at to be heard over the crash of explosions and gun-fire.

"I just don't get why we're picking up any of them. They wouldn't do the same thing for us," grouses one of them - someone young, full of fire and a burning desire for vengeance. A lot of them were like that. Hell, so was Odilo. She'd grown up just like the rest of them, hearing stories about Vickie atrocities. But there was a reason. She was about to interject, when one of the others spoke up - a senior enlisted. Older. Someone who'd been around before the Des Plaines class were even laid down.

"Because we're not them."

That's all he had to say.


In a few minutes they were approaching their first target. A handful of cold, wet, and miserable looking sods clinging to a larger piece of wreckage together and floating in the cold waters of the lake. They were what was left of one of the replacement naval crews and Odilo couldn't help but feel a little sorry for them. Everyone who'd actually had a career in the Victorian "navy" on the Great Lakes had been annihilated in their raid; these poor bastards had probably been told to make it work. Regardless if it was possible or not. As the Haymarket began to back engines and slow, there was some sort of scuffle between the men on the wreckage and finally one of them one shoved off from the rest, swimming for the gunboat. His companions yelled after him, but the words didn't reach Odilo. She watched as he finally reached the boat and grabbed onto the rescue net that had been lowered over the side.

For a long moment, he hung there, looking cold and exhausted in his life-jacket, and then started to pull himself up. Or tried to, anyway. The water was relatively calm, but it was still cold and she had no idea how long he'd been in the water. She glanced over at the rescue crew and nodded, "Pull him up-!"

Hand over hand, they heaved the boarding net back up - at least until that old salt reached down with one powerful arm and simply plucked the half-drowned man right off of the net and deposited him on the deck, dripping water and shivering. For a few long moments, the rest of the crew stared and gathered around the man in a curious little knot. This was the first Victorian any of them had ever really seen up close (or ever, really) and there was a certain element of curiosity.

"Christ, he's just a kid-" She heard someone say as she started to shoulder her way in.

"Break it up - get back to it!"

They were right, though. He was just a kid. A teenager - probably eighteen or nineteen. Maybe even seventeen. He was staring around him with wide eyes, a mixture of exhaustion, fear, and defiance on his face. Someone (with a little more carelessness than was strictly necessary) draped a blanket around his shoulders as the group broke up and went back to staring out over the water, except for a rather large enlisted rating toting a shotgun who loomed in the background and stared at the Vick meaningfully, almost as if he wished he would try something. The next step was going to be seeing if the rest of that group would want to come aboard. She was still thinking about that when she heard the Vick speak up in a croak.

"You're a woman."

She blinked and looked down at him, where he was shivering against the bulkhead, "Of course I am."

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then frowned, trying to stop himself from shivering. Male pride or something. Or maybe just Vickie pride. Then he spoke up again, "I thought that was supposed t-to make you-"

Whatever he was about to say, he realized that he probably shouldn't say it and he snapped his mouth shut, cutting himself off before continuing with, "I won't tell you anything. I just - drowning felt like a really stupid way to die."

Odilo snorted, "Yeah, well, you made that choice. What you do or don't tell me - tell us - is up to you, but I'm not in charge of that anyway. Just... sit tight."

As it turned out, the Haymarket only picked up a handful of other survivors - a scattering of Victorian sailors and one Chicagoan pilot - before heading back in with the rest of the fleet. Odilo couldn't get one particular attempt out of her head that night, bunked down on her cot, staring at the ceiling. It had been in marked contrast to the boy they'd picked up. It had been another Vick treading water, clinging to a floating piece of debris, but he'd just yelled curses at them, a tirade of invective against the imagined evils of Chicago. Unlike the sailors, he'd been in an army uniform. And unlike them, he'd been armed.

She knew this because as they'd dragged the man over the railing and dropped him onto the neck, he'd come up with a pistol and tried to shoot one of the ratings. The pistol had misfired and in the next moment, the soldier had cleared the chamber and swung it up to his temple and tried to blow his own head off. Emphasis on tried, because the gun had refused to fire a second time and then the man had been dogpiled by some very angry sailors.

How did you fight that? How did you square that circle? Scared kids versus the ones who would rather die than get picked up? Who would try and shoot the people saving you from drowning?

She didn't know. And that wasn't really her problem, was it? Or maybe it was.

Maybe that was a reckoning that they were all going to have to deal with one day.

A/N: That last incident is based on anecdote I read about a Japanese pilot picked up during the Second World War; he tried to shoot the man who helped him on board between the eyes; gun misfired. Tried to shoot himself; gun misfired again...​​
 
Rat King said:
Water Rats​

The CWS Haymarket was still standing off of the shoreline, a pall of smoke and dust throwing a haze over the sky, even as far out as they were. Burning ships and "torpedo" boats and oil slicks dotted the harbor. Overhead, there was still the scream of jet engines and the deeper, ominous buzz of prop planes, although by now the sound of engines had begun to fade. Onshore, there were more fires, dust kicked up by the impact of shells and Ensign Christina Odilo could make out scurrying figures through the binoculars she was using to watch the ongoing bombardment. The gunboat was swinging out, though, away from the shoreline, the thudthudthud of the autocannons falling silent. She was supposed to direct the fire for one of the .50 caliber tubs, but after the last trawler had been shredded, she hadn't had much to do.

Instead, she and her guncrew had had the pleasure of watching their autocannons work over the harbor and gotten a ring-side seat to the aerial battle overhead. The contrails were still fresh and she could swear she'd even seen one of their jets chase an F-16 almost right into the smokestacks of the Audrey Jameson before sending it crashing into the sea. Really, most of the battle was a blur and she was still running on an adrenaline high. And she and her crew hadn't even had to do much. Still - they all knew they couldn't stay out in the open too much longer; the Vicks would be back again, eventually, and the next time they'd probably have to depend on their own AAA - without any help from what was left of their airforce.

There was a crackle from the intercom: "Odilo - secure your gun tub and come forward. We're picking people out of the drink."

Right. There were still people in the water. Some Chicagoan pilots, some Vickie pilots, and a whole lot of Victorian "naval" personnel and soldiers from some of the transports. Even with the threat of the enemy air force, they were going to make an effort. Securing the .50s took a few moments and then she trotted to the prow, gathering with a handful of enlisted, most of them gabbing away about the fight, their voices too loud, too used to the volume they'd had to yell at to be heard over the crash of explosions and gun-fire.

"I just don't get why we're picking up any of them. They wouldn't do the same thing for us," grouses one of them - someone young, full of fire and a burning desire for vengeance. A lot of them were like that. Hell, so was Odilo. She'd grown up just like the rest of them, hearing stories about Vickie atrocities. But there was a reason. She was about to interject, when one of the others spoke up - a senior enlisted. Older. Someone who'd been around before the Des Plaines class were even laid down.

"Because we're not them."

That's all he had to say.


In a few minutes they were approaching their first target. A handful of cold, wet, and miserable looking sods clinging to a larger piece of wreckage together and floating in the cold waters of the lake. They were what was left of one of the replacement naval crews and Odilo couldn't help but feel a little sorry for them. Everyone who'd actually had a career in the Victorian "navy" on the Great Lakes had been annihilated in their raid; these poor bastards had probably been told to make it work. Regardless if it was possible or not. As the Haymarket began to back engines and slow, there was some sort of scuffle between the men on the wreckage and finally one of them one shoved off from the rest, swimming for the gunboat. His companions yelled after him, but the words didn't reach Odilo. She watched as he finally reached the boat and grabbed onto the rescue net that had been lowered over the side.

For a long moment, he hung there, looking cold and exhausted in his life-jacket, and then started to pull himself up. Or tried to, anyway. The water was relatively calm, but it was still cold and she had no idea how long he'd been in the water. She glanced over at the rescue crew and nodded, "Pull him up-!"

Hand over hand, they heaved the boarding net back up - at least until that old salt reached down with one powerful arm and simply plucked the half-drowned man right off of the net and deposited him on the deck, dripping water and shivering. For a few long moments, the rest of the crew stared and gathered around the man in a curious little knot. This was the first Victorian any of them had ever really seen up close (or ever, really) and there was a certain element of curiosity.

"Christ, he's just a kid-" She heard someone say as she started to shoulder her way in.

"Break it up - get back to it!"

They were right, though. He was just a kid. A teenager - probably eighteen or nineteen. Maybe even seventeen. He was staring around him with wide eyes, a mixture of exhaustion, fear, and defiance on his face. Someone (with a little more carelessness than was strictly necessary) draped a blanket around his shoulders as the group broke up and went back to staring out over the water, except for a rather large enlisted rating toting a shotgun who loomed in the background and stared at the Vick meaningfully, almost as if he wished he would try something. The next step was going to be seeing if the rest of that group would want to come aboard. She was still thinking about that when she heard the Vick speak up in a croak.

"You're a woman."

She blinked and looked down at him, where he was shivering against the bulkhead, "Of course I am."

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then frowned, trying to stop himself from shivering. Male pride or something. Or maybe just Vickie pride. Then he spoke up again, "I thought that was supposed t-to make you-"

Whatever he was about to say, he realized that he probably shouldn't say it and he snapped his mouth shut, cutting himself off before continuing with, "I won't tell you anything. I just - drowning felt like a really stupid way to die."

Odilo snorted, "Yeah, well, you made that choice. What you do or don't tell me - tell us - is up to you, but I'm not in charge of that anyway. Just... sit tight."

As it turned out, the Haymarket only picked up a handful of other survivors - a scattering of Victorian sailors and one Chicagoan pilot - before heading back in with the rest of the fleet. Odilo couldn't get one particular attempt out of her head that night, bunked down on her cot, staring at the ceiling. It had been in marked contrast to the boy they'd picked up. It had been another Vick treading water, clinging to a floating piece of debris, but he'd just yelled curses at them, a tirade of invective against the imagined evils of Chicago. Unlike the sailors, he'd been in an army uniform. And unlike them, he'd been armed.

She knew this because as they'd dragged the man over the railing and dropped him onto the neck, he'd come up with a pistol and tried to shoot one of the ratings. The pistol had misfired and in the next moment, the soldier had cleared the chamber and swung it up to his temple and tried to blow his own head off. Emphasis on tried, because the gun had refused to fire a second time and then the man had been dogpiled by some very angry sailors.

How did you fight that? How did you square that circle? Scared kids versus the ones who would rather die than get picked up? Who would try and shoot the people saving you from drowning?

She didn't know. And that wasn't really her problem, was it? Or maybe it was.

Maybe that was a reckoning that they were all going to have to deal with one day.

A/N: That last incident is based on anecdote I read about a Japanese pilot picked up during the Second World War; he tried to shoot the man who helped him on board between the eyes; gun misfired. Tried to shoot himself; gun misfired again...​​
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Y'all are on fire today! You mind if I steal this one, too?
 
Per request of @PoptartProdigy, here's what we know about the Nuke:

Y'all do not know who could have acquired the nuke, beyond, "whoever made it to and won that fucking auction."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And as for sending people there...

You didn't make it in time. The people selling were willing to sell to anybody but Victoria, and recognized the obvious vulnerability. Getting the site of the auction required a National Treasure-style clue hunt across the Country, terminating in a random Coloradan valley amidst the highest Rockies. The site was a month deserted by the time your team made it through the chain of clues. They had a shootout with the Victorian team trying to get there, only to realize that they were too late.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Poptart also requests omakes.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top