//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 
// Story: Until Fairer Skies Beckon 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow’s third mission passed without incident.  The pilots arrived too late to support a battle and circled futility among the smoke.
 
She realized she’d now been in Africa for a week.  It was difficult counting the days.  The pilots had no calendar.  There was really no need to know the date to do what they did.  That only made Rainbow want it more.  So many small normalities had been taken from her.
 
Her fourth mission went much the same way as her very first, though more smoothly.  She was comfortable in the plane now, and strafing was much easier than air-to-air gunnery.  She also dropped her first bombs in combat.  They weren’t very accurate, but Angels advised her that if she flew any lower to drop them, the fragments would probably knock her out of the sky just as well as they tore apart her targets on the ground.
 
That was just another in a long line of wake up calls.  It seemed like every time Rainbow turned around, she was finding out another way she could have just died.
 
The others didn’t help.  Oh, they gave her tips and advice to stay alive, but most of that just consisted of “stay out of so-and-so’s way.”  With the standing arrangement of shooting down deserters to earn five missions off, it paid to be constantly vigilant and not get too attached to anyone.  
 
Though, who was to say who was actually a deserter?  That was part of why the pilots always flew as a group of at least four, so one couldn’t kill another without other eyes to verify.
 
Angels, at least, seemed like a minimal risk.  She’d recently crested ninety missions, and had only five to go.  She had the skills to survive, and Rainbow tried to glean whatever she could from Angels’ experience.
 
Rainbow was more of a reader than most people would have thought.  The Daring Do series was her favorite, but since starting towards her pilot’s license, she’d read the classic Stick and Rudder, pilot biographies, and even the odd technical manual.
 
But she was completely lacking in experience to put the theory to practice.  That was where a more experienced pilot like Angels came in.
 
Rainbow also tried to solicit as much advice as possible from Soarin’.  That was more difficult.  His own inability to put his skills to practice made him surly and withdrawn.  It was a lot harder to coax anything out of him, but given his experience as a high-ranking military and stunt pilot, she coveted anything he told her.
 
But flying to stay alive was not a means to an end.  Rainbow needed to find a way to escape - not just the base, but the whole situation.
 
Strangely, the others seemed unwilling to discuss escape.  Angels finally took her aside and told her to keep her mouth shut.
 
At her direction, the two of them walked outside the Flyers Club in the darkness.  The moon was out.  Rainbow glanced up at it before following Angels’ invitation to go around the back of the building where it was more private.
 
“We get one mission off for snitching on an escape attempt,” she told Rainbow.  “So I wouldn’t go spreading your plans around.”
 
Rainbow blinked.  “What the hell?  Is there anything else I should know?  Do we get missions off for killing extra people?  For drinking the Kool-Aid and believing in what we’re doing here?”
 
“I get that you’re frustrated,” said Angels.  “Breaking out of here is going to require a lot of planning, courage, and luck.  You can’t depend on anyone else, because the UTA knows we’d work together if they didn’t provide incentives for us to backstab.  Lion Heart is an evil son of a bitch, but he isn’t stupid.”
 
“How come you never tried?” Rainbow asked.
 
Angels hesitated, but then unzipped her flight suit.  She turned around and raised her t-shirt.  Even in the moonlight, Rainbow could see scars on her back that were longer than her own forearm.
 
“Public whipping, to set an example,” Angels said softly.
 
Rainbow was still dumbstruck by the time Angels had redressed.  “But...why did you shoot someone down who was trying to escape?”
 
“What do you think they would have done to me if I hadn’t?  If I had just let the deserter go?  I would basically have been an accessory.”
 
Rainbow swallowed.  “This is all so messed up.  So why are you going to finish the missions then?”
 
Angels sighed and looked away.  “I never put together an escape plan that I thought could work.  Now, I’m out of time.  At this point, I have more faith in being let go than I do surviving an attempt to leave any other way.”
 
They both looked up at the moon.  It was easier than continuing the conversation.
 
After a moment, Rainbow said, “I hope it works out for you.”
 



 
Rainbow’s fifth mission was an utter disaster that she was lucky to survive.
 
She took off with Pantera flying as One, Stratus and Striker flying Two and Three.  They flew with the usual time/distance directions.  Not having GPS was nearly unheard of in modern aviation.  Rainbow hadn’t even seen a map or navigation device since arriving.  The UTA seemed to have thought of everything.
 
That didn’t stop her from considering how she would escape in the free minutes while they flew.  She still had no definite ideas, but resolved to keep her eyes open.
 
Arriving overhead, they checked in with a ground controller named Elephant.  The UTA forces would be assaulting a camp on hillock above their position.  The pilots would time their bombs to impact at intervals, hopefully keeping the Freedom Army heads down while the UTA advanced.
 
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of surprise.  Either their radios had been intercepted, someone with good eyes had seen the jets incoming, or the Freedom Army simply knew the UTA soldiers were out there.
 
“Four, take it away,” said Pantera over the radio.
 
Rainbow would have listened to Angels.  Instead, she said, “Why me?”
 
“Because I said so,” Pantera growled.
 
“Who put you in charge?” Rainbow argued.  “Does ‘One’ actually mean anything?  You were kidnapped, just like me.”
 
“Either someone drops bombs, or I’ll make sure that all of you receive consequences,” broke in Elephant.
 
“Fine!” said Rainbow.  “Let’s get this over with.”  She pointed her nose down.
 
Rainbow had set up her target in coordination with the others.  She was supposed to bomb the hill on its south side and the others would walk their ordnance over the rest.  As she swept downwards, a white trail popped up out of the corner of her eye.
 
Rainbow jerked her head at it, if only to confirm what she already suspected: a missile launch.  Attack ruined, she rolled and pulled hard, racing the missile towards the ground.  The Tucano’s dive steepened until the nose swung past the ground and started to climb again.
 
The missile couldn’t turn fast enough to reverse its climb and went past her.  The shooter had apparently not anticipated Rainbow heading towards the ground even quicker than she already had been.  Unfortunately for her, that meant she leveled out at less than a hundred feet, her biceps straining to pull the stick back even another millimeter.
 
She could clearly see people running for cover, seemingly close enough to touch.  There was no way she could attack now; dropping bombs would probably kill her too, and the guns could only be aimed if she was still pointing at the ground.  There simply wasn’t room to go any lower.
 
Rainbow banked, aiming to get clear and gain altitude.  A wall of tracers erupted in front of her, from a machine gun mounted on the back of a pickup truck.  She was close enough to see the gunner, a completely out of place thought going through her head about how odd it was to actually make eye contact with an adversary when one was in a fighter plane.
 
Her hand twitched, sending the Tucano into a tighter roll, the savannah now above her cockpit and still only a hundred feet away.
 
She looked over her shoulder, as if that would somehow help her.  All it did was make her completely unprepared to correct when the plane was hit.
 
The thump didn’t sound bad, but Rainbow’s ears picked it up just as if it had been a scream.  Desperately, she rolled the plane again, dropping down off the hill and actually flying below the Freedom Army troops.  Pulling hard again, she reversed her roll and climbed, hoping desperately the turbine engine hadn’t been hit.  The Tucano was either going to give her its all or die trying.  And so was she.
 
Tracers danced around the plane, but gradually fell away.  Rainbow looked back.  Striker dropped his bombs, eliminating a sizeable portion of the Freedom Army lines.
 
Rainbow took a second to breathe, and then began looking around.  No warning lights.  She glanced outside.  There was an irregular hole in the left wing, probably from a heavy caliber machine gun bullet tearing the delicate aluminum.  It looked like it had traveled at a diagonal angle, going in the top of the wing near the rear and exiting the bottom near the front.
 
It had missed her body by just feet.
 
“Four, are you okay?” Striker asked.
 
“I’m alive,” Rainbow replied.
 
Striker had come off his bombing run and flew up to join her.  He did an orbit around her plane, focusing on the left wing.
 
“You have some sort of fluid coming out the bottom, probably fuel,” he said.
 
Rainbow checked her gauges.  “Only the center tank was filled.”
 
“Could have cut the transfer line, then,” Striker speculated.
 
Rainbow tried rolling slightly to the right and using the rudder to fly straight.  “How about now?”
 
“It might have slowed down,” said Striker.
 
Rainbow kept an eye on her fuel while the other two made their drops.
 
“What about the last one?” asked Elephant.
 
“I’ve already got a damaged plane,” Rainbow said.  It seemed like they cared more about that than her.  “And anyway, I kicked up the hornets’ nest so the rest didn’t have to.”
 
Elephant let her comment go.  The pilots turned back for the base.  Rainbow adjusted her throttle in an attempt to save fuel.  It definitely looked like she was losing some and desperately tried to calculate in her head if she had enough left.
 
Flying crooked added drag, but flying straight lost more fuel.  She could try to draft another plane, but none of them could slow down as much as the Tucano, where her engine got its best economy.  Plus, flying slower meant fuel would spill for a longer period of time.
 
In the end, she decided to go for halfway in between and set the throttle for a little lower than regular cruise speed.  Also, she jettisoned her bombs.  Still, it was a longer ride than it seemed, her foot constantly on the rudder and already-tired arms holding the stick in place.  Rainbow’s eyes barely left the fuel gauge, which kept dropping.
 
The engine coughed as the base came into view.  Rainbow rocked the plane, trying to splash any fuel she could into the intake.  It barely helped.  The smooth-running turbine wheezed and fell silent.  Rainbow feathered the prop and pushed the nose down.
 
A plane would glide the furthest with better airspeed.  Conversely, it would glide for the longest time by retaining as much altitude as possible.  In this case, Rainbow knew she had to make the runway.
 
Well, putting the plane down within sight of the base would probably just earn her a truck ride back or something.  But with an injured plane, there was no telling what might happen if she landed it on unprepared dirt and tall grass.  If she could make the runway, she should try.
 
The Tucano faithfully brought her to the runway threshold, and not a moment too soon.  The landing was rough, but that was better than it could have been.  With no engine, the power brakes didn’t work, but Rainbow slowly brought the plane to a halt.  The ground crew was on the ball and quickly towed her away to make room for the others to land.
 
It was only after Rainbow was parked and had climbed out did the full extent of the mission hit her.  She stared at the hole torn straight through the wing, light visible through it.
 
She had nearly died how many times already?  And this was only mission number five.
 
Angels had said that she considered her own odds were better if she kept flying missions rather than trying to run.  Rainbow, after nearly having her aircraft shot from under her, decided then and there to take her chances with escape.
 
But how?