| abstract | - The world's tallest tower had just been erected in the coastal area of Danville, and prior to it's first launch, thousands of people assemble to wonder and awe around the giant structure that split apart the skies. Dill, as the architect, was already inside the building to witness the Grand Opening of the tower, and some other people through another entrance was led to the grand ballroom. But that is not the point of the story. At the very day, one of the richest country in the world, Eurasia (not to be confused with Euro-Asia), declared war against the United States because of an "Unjust exploitation of our gold and oil resources hereby all circumstances" and had easily pushed in through the Western Seaboard with the power of fifty navy-and-aerial battalions, forcing the unguarded areas of the Western Seaboard to surrender it's firm to the area to the enemy.
- The world's tallest tower had just been erected in the coastal area of Danville, and prior to it's first launch, thousands of people assemble to wonder and awe around the giant structure that split apart the skies. Dill, as the architect, was already inside the building to witness the Grand Opening of the tower, and some other people through another entrance was led to the grand ballroom. But that is not the point of the story. At the very day, one of the richest country in the world, Eaurasia (not to be confused with Euro-Asia), declared war against the United States because of an "Unjust exploitation of our gold and oil resources hereby all circumstances" and had easily pushed in through the Western Seaboard with the power of fifty navy-and-aerial battalions, forcing the unguarded areas of the Western Seaboard to surrender it's firm to the area to the enemy. And how does the United States of America easily fell under this attack? Well, even though they have a number of air bases spread on the coastal areas of the nation, the sudden attack was never detected by any radars. Because, the Eaurasian forces are almost literally going blank-with no radio contact with each other, no sonar systems, nothing. All of the essential systems onboard their ships and aircrafts are turned off, because they know most of the defense systems in the States scan for unfamiliar and unregistered radio transmission to fire. And that is how they managed to creep slowly across the Atlantic ocean unnoticed. Until, that is, a patrol frigate encountered the blind battalion without even knowing they're close until the frigate's sonar detects movement of the giant army of ships and aircrafts ranging from cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and also bombers. All obstacles were easily eliminated by the airborne TU-16 bombers before the frigates can even make contact to command. Even a fishing vessel was sunk. Their target, however, is not Washington DC, as the preparations to defend the States will be faster if they altered it there instead of Danville. But why Danville? No one knows. I woke up today to the sound of a wreaked havoc all across the airbase. Sirens were wailing as humans ranging from cadets to commanders scatter in an inexplicable pandemonium doing this and that. Most of them are shouting to each other, some of them are busy with their squadrons and teams of fighters. A few were having breakfast. Nobody was orderly. In a distance, my eyes are caught in a sight of six bombers, which should have been decommissioned ten years ago. They were making a nap-of-the-earth as they emptied half a ton of bombs per swoop onto the airbase's hangars. SAMs and AA guns are not useful as they are too low for an optimal shot of the defense systems. Military installments caught fire and collapses as a TU-16 swooped above them. The panicking crowd and the faint wailing of the sirens about two miles from where I am. I haven't been in this base for more than a month, since my squadron was newly formed. The reason that they hired me to be part of this new squadron which vision is to be the best of them all, is that most of my folks back at Edwards AFB thought that I was the best test pilot anyone could have recruited. Logged over ten thousand hours on F-22s, F-35s and the redevelopment of the C130, most of them thought that it's time for me to join a much more elite squadron stationed on one of the most important air bases defending the giant metropolitan city of Danville. I dressed myself up in a split second and headed out for the briefing room which I have been called to earlier. Corridor after corridor, all I could see is a jubilee of humans running here and there, rushing barefooted or handling a stack of documents. Arriving on the briefing room, I was greeted by a sight of nearly five squadrons crammed into one large hall. The briefing ends as soon as I entered the room. Nobody was surprised though, because I always make it late to any meetings and ending up making my captain cross. Across the entrance in which I stood hangs a giant two-screen projector demonstrating the plans that the five squadrons came out with. It involves extreme air superiority and the application of the most complex of maneuvers. However, since I skipped briefing, I couldn’t make out the purpose of such delicate plan. “There you are, Rick! Will you ever learn to forget that morning habit of yours and get your a*s down the briefing room on time?” A female voice cried from a side of the screen. “Colonel Stanley! My apologies for being late again. I wasn’t informed even when the briefing starts!” Colonel Stanley, the commander of all teams that is based on the Danville Waterfront Air Force Base, responds with a slight laughter. “We don’t have time for this. Enemies are sending in too many bombers for a time to share a laugh or two. Just get yourself out to the wild and get to your plane, may your captain explain what’s next.” “Yes Ma’am.” “Make sure you stay alive out there.” And with that, I took a transport minibus that takes us out to the intact hangars which our F-16s call home. We usually march our way out to here from the quarters, but the situation requires nothing but a faster move. As I alighted the bus, some of my team members are already taxiing for the two runways, with some already set up and going and my captain supervising the warm-up. “Finally, the little kid managed to find his way here! Would you like some lollipop as a gift of success?” said Captain Martin jokingly as a reflection of my tardiness. “You get three-three today, left rear, completely armed. She’s a hotshot, really. Less drag on mach one point three than the others. It’s just ironic that our lazy kid here was the one that’ll cope with her.” “I’m pretty sure she’ll be fine” I replied. “So what’s the task?” “HAH! I WAS RIGHT! You were never briefed, were you?” “Shut it Martin.” I said casually. “Very well then, slowpo-” A loud explosion thundered through the base as one of our AA Battery was disarmed by a flock of attack aircraft. “Screw it. Our objective is to finish up all remaining air power of the enemy and get to The Valley, stopping over at the city if they need any help.” “Wh-” I was about to say why, but was immediately interrupted. “Use your logics.” Martin said, and hopped on to his F-16. Realizing there is no point to continue the conversation, I jumped in my fighter and lit up the engines just as the ground ops finished doing pre-checks. As I taxied out the hangar, my eyes was invited on viewing a giant pile of wreckage. And I mean it literally. Nearly all of the terminal buildings and hangars opposite to ours were already destroyed, and so is one of the runways. Fighters are taking off desperately through the taxiway or the last remaining runway, which each launch can accommodate around three fighters at the same time. Even the control tower has been taken out; only the quarters and the last six hangars were save from the destruction. I joined the rush for take-off, risking my own life with it. Without the control tower, no aircraft is safe from an after takeoff collision with each other. Enemy bombers and fighters fill the sky, damaging the base one drop of bomb at a time. Extreme combat was already in progress between friendlies and Eaurasians; only to find the air power of the opposite too skilled for the cadets of the base. Plane by plane was struck by missiles; explosions that harms both sides occur twice per minute. I shut my eyes prayed as I pulled my F-16 above the taxiway and into the combat zone. I was lucky, along with only twelve other F-16s and two Eurofighters (look, they have a reason why they ordered a number of them, okay?) The other fifteen aircraft still desperately trying to make their way out of the wreckage couldn’t make out past the destroyed taxiways and runways. “Okay people, several enemy bombers and attack craft are making their way in to the city. As described before on point one-three of the briefing the bombers must not make it pass the base. So why should I waste time when I can rip those bastards off? Get to work !” And with that, we are off. One of the things that I love about air combat is the experience of flying a plane in a death zone; Your adrenaline won’t stop screaming for more near deaths than you do on the ground. I love to hang on a cliff that separates a person between death and life. A wrong gesture to the joystick or a slow move would end up in having yourself engulfed in merciless flames. The other thing is that I pretend to fly through a giant playground full of tall columns of smoke and a plethora of toys-or enemies-you can play with. Even though I’m still considered as a “Kid” on my squadron, I was the only one capable of losing the locks of five highly agile missiles at the same time--ten if I use my flares, which I barely do. It’s pretty easy to make way out of one bomber to another, destroying each of them on the way. They’re more of helpless pieces of metal than bombers; It’s age would not let them drop more than two 1000lbs bomb at a time, neither would it spare some flares and chaff. Considering the size of our base, it would take them an hour to fully overrun, and five minutes to be completely destroyed. “Fifteen bombers down!” a team member exclaimed with joy. Our superior air power is no match to the bombers flying too low. It only gives us an opportunity to mislead them into an evasive maneuver that would stall the bombers to the ground or drive them into collision with each other. I played along with two SU-25 attack aircraft that swooped too low to the sea, taking full impact on the water. Missile by missile was fired. We don’t need to worry of running low of missiles because someone invented a special system that could regenerate a missile up to 25 times for each launch pod. Well, at least that’s for our old F-16s. “Nice shot, kid.” A team member exclaimed as he watches me firing two missiles to a helpless bomber that couldn’t climb up because of the damages we’ve made. One by one, the 6 TU-16 and their 20 reinforcements were wiped out before they could make it to the city. “Whatever their effort is, they are no match to the Skyline team! Those idiots, challenging us with only that much of an attack force! Hah!” Martin blurted over the radio as Skyline 2 took out the last SU-25 that has been supporting the bombers. “Not bad, people. Not bad at all. Alright, as Colonel Stanley said, we should move through Danville and check if any of our forces needs a helping hand. Now, since Goldstar is nowhere to be found, anyone knows what’s happening down there? Jeff, you’re the braniac, got ne-” “This is Skyline 3. I got something on radar.” He interrupted Martin’s comm abruptly with an alarming tone. Silence. “Are you just scaring us all, Jeffy?” We heard a loud beep from Jeff’s radar. Silence. “This is Skyline 2. I got nothing.” “Same here.” Martin exclaimed, sounding pretty anxious. “Maybe your instrument is just malf-” Another loud beep that indicates missile lock made us jump. This time, it came from my radar. “Okay. I’m all creeped out. Stop playing this game.” “I wasn’t the one controlling this!” Jeff said. “Then if it’s a real missile, why isn’t it registered as one on the radar?” There was another moment of silence. Only the pulse of the engines radiate the air with soundwaves. “Hey, that better not be what I think it-” Jeff was immediately cut off by a steady lock alarm from all unit’s radars. “-Could it be?” “COULD IT BE WHAT?” Martin panicked along with the others. I can see him twisting his head around as a sign of panic and confusion. I could sense the suspension in the air. Everybody is literally looking at each other’s aircraft to see any visual reaction. I held my breath. Everyone is tense. The lock alert grew louder and louder as it indicates the proximity of the unidentified item. “But isn’t the SWBM ours?” Martin to the silence. Wait, what is an SWBM? Dumbfounded, Skyline 5 broke in. “CRAP! DIVE NOW! HURRY!” Followed by Jeff. “WHERE IS IT COMING FROM? ANSWER ME! ANYONE!” And Skyline 4. “WHERE SHOULD WE GO? WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” The panic was then added by Martin. “BREAK FORMATION, NOW! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” And with that, I found myself literally pointing my aircraft’s nose eighty degrees down at full speed, desperately trying to follow the orders of a more senior Skyline 5 that may know what this SWBM thing is. The lock alert is echoing as loud as it could. I could tell by the alarm’s pitch that whatever that is going to kill us is about to happen in five seconds. What seems to be only ten seconds felt endless. Everybody was rushing down to a low altitude, perhaps to a near ground strike to evade this certain type of weapon. I watched my altimeter as it fell steadily from one hundred and fifty flight level to a lower altitude. I didn’t know what to do and I’m starting to have a bit of nausea. Considering that I might black out during the last seconds of the freefall, I leveled myself out at three thousand feet three seconds prior to the explosion, praying with all my might that I would make it out alive. Two... I could see Martin struggling to get to a lower altitude. One... My brain instructed me to get even lower. Zero. At the time that the missile lock silenced, I witnessed something that I have never saw before. At all. An extremely bright halo of light detonated out of nowhere, producing a massive shockwave that sent out it’s unexplainable power into a remarkably large radius that doesn’t seem to end. The detonation itself was accompanied by a deafening explosion that could literally break someone’s eardrum permanently. The flash of light itself is as bright as the sun at the summer solstice. The impactful vibrations it exerts even affects my plane that has been cruising low at an altitude of 1000 feet. Explosions produced by poor planes trapped in between the massive shockwave it produces, taking out mercilessly any items it caught within it’s tremendous pulsation. The shockwave continues to make it’s way past unfortunate members of my team. Eight planes are downed, taking their pilot with it. One of them is Martin, our captain. Kilometer by kilometer, the blue-white wave of death eventually weakens on a far distance, leaving only a weak blue powdery cloud in what used to be it’s detonation point. And it all happens in less than a second. Only Jeff, Skyline 5, Skyline 4, and I survived the fury of this superweapon. There was a long moment of silence in between the fighters until I decided to break the tension. “What the hell was that?” “That’s the SWBM.” Skyline 5 replied. “That’s our weapon. That’s what used to be our top secret superweapon. It was mentioned on the briefing earlier, but you weren’t there.” “But if it’s ours, then why is it taking out it’s friendlies?” I asked. “Because the project wasn’t anymore top secret.” He replied. There was a long moment of silence, until I broke in. “Come on, let’s head to Danville and see if we can help our forces there.” That's it, everypony, for now. If a lot of people actually said it's good, I may continue it. :) And if any of you are asking "what is the relevance to PnF in this story?" Well, if I continue it, you'll see part by part of this story coming to pieces and actually referencing PnF….and MLP. Oh, and Ace Combat, but not too much.
|
