March 15th, 2015. Under pressure from years of bad economic conditions and dicey diplomatic relations, The Russian Federation has slipped back into Cold War era communism, and has become the New Soviet Socialist Federation. With a leader hell-bent on projecting the power and dominance of his new State, Russian forces have taken all of Eastern Europe, and has begun a mass push into Western Europe, including Germany, Austria, Sweden and Denmark. A U.S. naval fleet is assisting in operations in the North Sea to prevent the NSSF from controlling this strategic waterway. Among the fleet is the U.S.S. Nimitz, a super-carrier with an entire class of ships under its very own name. The U.S. fleet has launched an invasion to retake Copenhagen, Denmark, which is currently occupied by Soviet forces. If the United States takes Copenhagen and the area around the city, the Soviets will be denied entrance to the North Sea, thereby cutting off any invasion of Western Europe from northern waters. U.S. Marines and Navy S.E.A.L.s slipped into the various ports under the cover of night and have engaged the enemy. Navy fighter squadrons are deployed to assist the ground forces in the early morning as the fighting turns bloody.
Out of the Blue
Into the Wild Blue Yonder
March 15th, 2015
0700 hours
North Sea
U.S.S. Nimitz
First Lieutenant Stanley Owens, USN, call sign: “Pegasus Three-Niner”
Stanley Owens stood on the edge of the Nimitz’s flight deck with his flight helmet cradled under his right arm, facing the ocean. It was a cold March morning as the sun slowly began to rise over the North Sea. The new sunlight danced and played on the low-rolling waves, whose crests glistened like liquid gold from the light. What few morning clouds there were that hung in the sky reflected the sun’s rays, giving off a bright shine around the edge of the white clumps of condensed vapor as though they were the halos of angels. A stiff, slightly salty breeze began to come off of the water, bringing with it more of the chilling morning air. Navy ships could be seen in all directions, faintly shining in the distance as the sun rose rose ever so slowly into the sky. The calm sounds of the ocean were drowned out by the sound of howling engines as various Navy planes soared through the sky. Even more noticeable, however, was the sounds coming from the deck of the very carrier he stood on.Stretching out at over one-thousand feet long, the USS Nimitz was less of a naval vessel as it was a floating portable air field, and a traveling symbol of American naval power. What space that wasn’t used for taking off or landing was lined by dozens of aircraft, ready to be fueled, loaded, and sent off into the sky for their own sorties.
“Hey, Owens! Earth to Owens!”
Owens turned his head to left, looking for the one person who had the nerve to break his peaceful trance.
“Oh, hey Bulkley.”
Captain Sarah Bulkley, the Pegasus squadron leader, was standing directly to the left of Owens. Standing at barely five feet, three inches tall, she was almost a head shorter than Owens. Despite her height, Bulkey projected her leadership strongly, and nobody doubted her position. She had all the good elements of a leader: a firm and assertive voice, good charisma, a true caring for those under her command.
“Watcha’ doin’ Owens?”
“Nothin’ much, just lookin’,” he replied in a flat tone.
“Looking at what?”
“The sunrise, I guess.”
“I can see why. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it? Cold as hell, but beautiful.”
“Yea."
“You've never really been much of a talker, have you?” Bulkley commented with a jokingly exasperated tone.
He replied with a slight chuckle, “I guess not.”
Owens felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He slowly turned around to face one of the flight deck crew members, a tall, skinny Caucasian male with a prominent southern accent.
“When y’all are done chit-chattin’, the plane’s loaded up n’ ready t' go.”
Owens began to walk toward his aircraft, an F/A-18E Super Hornet. He reach into one of the pockets in his flight vest and produced a small wrinkled piece of paper. Scribbled on it were Owens’s orders. He and Bulkley were to fly out to downtown Copenhagen and assist Marine forces trying to seize control of the Russian-occupied city with on-call fire missions. The primary objective was to target and eliminate any ground threats facing the Marines.The secondary was to keep the skies clean and clear of any enemy aircraft looking to take a pick at the Marines or his own fellow pilots. Owens checked the ordnance for the particular sortie, which consisted of:
>One three-hundred gallon external fuel tank, directly under the fuselage
>Two AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided air-to-air missiles,
>Two AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles
>Four LJDAM five-hundred pound laser-guided bombs
>Two AIM-9X Sidewinder infrared-homing missiles
Along with the outside weapons, the aircraft housed a twenty-millimeter Vulcan rotary cannon and several flare and chaff countermeasures. Owens gave each hanging armament a firm tug, checking to make sure everything was properly secured. Satisfied, he stepped back to take one last look-over of the aircraft. Among the many standard official military markings and warning labels, two details offered at least some level of the pilot’s personal connection to his F-18. The first was his name stenciled on the left side of the cockpit, which read, “LT Owens.” The second was the logo of his squadron, an alabaster pegasus with wings in full spread, adorning the left vertical stabilizer. Beautiful creature, Owens thought. Too bad they don’t exist.
The crew member grew more irritated and impatient by the second as the pilot silently inspected what he had spent half an hour loading and meticulously checking with his fellow crew members. Finally, he snapped.
“Well any fuckin’ time, sweetheart!”
Owens simply shrugged off the man’s short-fused temper and walked toward the ladder leaning against his plane. Impatient one, isn’t he? Owens knew the crew member had every right to be, though. The carrier had a tight schedule for the morning, due to the operation in Copenhagen. Any delay or change would slow down the flight deck operations, screwing up the whole shebang. Naturally, everyone was in a rush to get the planes flying as soon as possible without causing an accident. Tempers were running short.
Owens climbed the ladder, his helmet still clutched in his right arm. Reaching the top, he slid himself into the cockpit, put on his head gear, and strapped in. The cockpit’s multitude of touch screens, gauges, and switches lit up green as the flight systems were turned on. He hit the controls to lower the canopy. The clear, bubble-shaped cover slowly came down to meet itself with the cockpit, muffling the outside sound from within. Owens checked with the crew to clear the back of his jet.
“Starting engines. Clear back. Clear back.”
“Roger, clear from back.”
Owens began the start-up. The twin F414-GE-400 turbofan engines slowly roared to life, one after the other. Once the engines were in full spin, Owens slowly inched the throttle forward and taxied his aircraft toward the catapult, where crew members were already waiting. Bulkley, now Pegasus Three-One, was already at the catapult to his left, running pre-flight checks. Owens carefully brought his own plane into position and stopped, where the catapult crew began fixing the gear to the launch system. The catapult officer contacted Owens.
“Alright, tree-niner, begin pre-flight checks.”
“Roger,” Owens responded. He ran through his mental list while checking each element. He observed the wings and empennage as the flaps, stabs, ailerons, and elevators moved back and forth, up and down, in their respective directions. He moved on to the weapon systems and countermeasures. Each came back green and responding as normal. Owens felt the cockpit give a slight shake as his flight lead was launched to the left. On his own side, the Jet Blast Deflector was raised behind the plane, and Owens pushed the engines to full throttle.
Satisfied, Owens gave the thumbs-up to the Catapult officer. He reached for the handle sitting atop the right side of the control panel and held on, waiting for the launch. A thick, white mist rose from the deck as the steam-powered catapult was readied.
The officer gave the catapult operator the signal to launch. Owens was firmly pressed against the back of his seat as the plane lurched forward with powerful acceleration. As soon as the landing gear left the deck, he pulled the nose up and toward the sky, gaining altitude as gravity made a futile effort to bring the plane back down. Slowly, he eased back the throttle and waited as Pegasus Three-One circled around to join him.
“Pegasus tree-niner, this is Pegasus tree-one, coming up on your wing, starboard side.”
“Roger, starboard side clear.”
Pegasus Three-One slowly made her way to Owens’s jet and positioned her own on the left side, wings no more than a few yards apart.
“Tree-one to tree-niner, heading south at one-six-fife, angels seven, how copy?”
“Solid copy, tree-one.”
With that, both planes banked right in almost perfect unison and turned toward their destination. The two then gradually increased altitude, and flew off into the wild blue yonder.
**************************************************************************************
The flight wasn’t exactly long.
Pegasus Three-Niner and Three-One had been launched in the waters near the very tip of Denmark and were flying south to Copenhagen, roughly two-hundred miles away. At cruising speed, the pair was estimated to reach Copenhagen in no more than twenty minutes. Not exactly a whole lot of time for deep thought.
Owens and his flight lead were already ten minutes in. Both had their heads snapped out of the early morning conversation and into straight-forward, no-emotion combat mode. The pilots spent all their time checking their radar, checking and rechecking weapon systems, checking the radio for incoming calls from the boys on the ground. The endless drone of the jet engines were all that occupied Owens’ ears for the entire time. Radio silence seemed only to amplify the volume of the white noise. Finally, something came in.
“Pegasus three-niner, this is Charlie Company, requesting air support, over.”
Owens snapped into focus and made the reply.
“This is Pegasus tree-niner. ETA ten minutes. What do you need, Charlie?”
“Copy, we got enemy ma..ine ..un positi.., ...ed ..DA..s...”
The radio communication quickly began to grow unclear and filled with static.
“Charlie, you’re breaking up. Repeat, over.”
“......................................................”
Owens tried tweaking the radio, making sure the frequency was right. It was. He glanced to his radar. The screen had become as fuzzed and unfocused as the the comms unit, which broad-casted nothing but an incessant buzz. It was filled with random series of dots and blotting shapes, blocking out even the signal from Three-One, still hanging a few yards off his right wing. Somethin’s off, he thought. This better not be jamming. The evidence, however, seemed quite clear. He needed some confirmation.
Owens re-tuned the radio, finding the backup frequency reserved only for times that the rest were either malfunctioning or jammed. Fixing the number right on the dot, he checked to see if Bulkley had done the same.
“Tree-one, this is tree-niner. Respond if receiving, over.”
Owens was relieved to hear the familiar voice.
“This is tree-one. You getting buzzed?”
“Affirmative.”
“Same here. I think we’re getting jammed, possibly aerial. Keep you’re eyes peeled.”
“Roger that, tree-one. Looking for bogeys.”
Owens slowly swept his eyes across the horizon line, looking for anything else in the air. His plane was hovering almost a thousand feet above the cloud layer, which had begun to grow thicker since the take-off. The sun had since risen fully and sat itself just above the level of the clouds, bathing the white puffs in yellow-white light. Owens didn’t see anything. Gradually, though, He began to make out two tiny black specks barely poking out amongst the blue sky.
“Tree-one, I got bogeys. Tally two, coming in eleven o’clock, over.”
“Roger, tree-niner, I got two coming at one, sending I.F.F. tone, wait.” ….............
“Response sour. We got trouble. Get ready, tree-niner.”
Owens wrapped his fingers a little tighter on the joystick, waiting to see who would make the first move. Suddenly, the white noise of the cockpit drowned out by a loud WUP-WUP-WUP of a radar lock.
“Shit, I’m being targeted. Breaking left!”
Owens sharply rolled his jet to the left and pulled back hard on the joystick, putting the plane into a hard turn. He felt the all-familiar G-force crush his body into the flight seat as his plane narrowly evaded a head-on missile from the enemy. Owens looked back briefly to see a long, gray-white trail following the missile as it streaked through the sky, looking for it’s lost target. Just then, the two enemy planes roared past. They were two SU-27 Flankers, painted in full black and bearing the Soviet Red Star. Owens chased after them, trying to line up a shot of his own.
“Tree-one, group splitting up. I’m engaging!”
“Copy, tree-niner, engaging over here. Where the hell did they come from!?”
“Hell if I know, but we got a fight on our hands!”
Owens clicked off the safety switch and armed his Sidewinders. He punched the throttle and came up to within a hundred yards of one of the Flankers. He maneuvered his jet this way and that, trying to get a lock on the bandit. The lock-on changed from a series of rapid beats to a solid tone. Lock.
He fired.
The missile detached from the right wingtip, and the rocket engine engaged. The infrared-homing missile went screaming towards the enemy, leaving a white smoke trail in its wake. It soared gracefully through the air, if only for the shortest time, before the missile found its final resting place: the Flanker’s left engine.
The SU-27 erupted into a massive ball of fire and shrapnel, sending bits of burning metal raining back down to Earth.
“Hooyah! Splash one!” Owens yelled over the radio, ecstatic from getting the first kill of the day, and surprisingly early on in the dogfight.
The radar of Owen’s jet suddenly cleared, as if a massive green dirt stain had been wiped off of it. All of the aircraft in the sky were now clearly visible. He had taken care of the jamming aircraft. He decided to make a move on the other Flanker, dropping out as it pulled a hard Spilt-S turn downwards. Owens inverted his plane and dived after it. Out of nowhere, he heard Bulkley shouting into her radio in a panic.
“Tree-niner, I’m trailing one bandit but I got another on my tail. I can’t shake ‘em! I could use some help over here!”
“Roger, tree-one. Moving to assist.”
Owens pulled away from his path behind the lone Flanker and quickly engaged his afterburner, trying to catch up to his flight lead. He spotted the formation half a mile away, five-hundred feet higher in altitude to where he was. Bulkley had indeed become sandwiched between the two Russian planes. The one behind her had grown dangerously close. Owens raced toward the trailing SU-27, trying to line up the shot. He watched his HUD as the cursor ever so slowly fixed itself onto the enemy.
His targeting was stopped abruptly by a similar but more menacing tone. The jet he had disengaged from had come back for revenge. Four-hundred yards behind, the Russian fired. Owens quickly dumped his flares. A small shower of white-hot magnesium and Teflon rained down from the back of the F-18 as Owens pulled to the right. The missile was drawn away from the aircraft and flew out into empty air.
After leveling the plane, Owens snapped his head to the left, frantically checking to see what was happening to Bulkley. He didn’t feel any calmer to find out. While he had evaded, the Flanker had centered itself directly on Three-One’s six o’clock. Owens spotted a smoke trail running up to her aircraft.
“Tree-one! Fox two! Fox two!”
Owens saw Bulkley trying to fire her own flares and evade, but her attempt, however, proved fruitless. He could only witness in horror as the missile homed in straight on target. Bulkley’s aircraft was ripped to pieces as the rocket-propelled projectile slammed into the engines and ignited the fuel within. Not a single part remained intact. No person could survive such an explosion. Tree-One was officially K.I.A.
“Tree-one, tree-one, come in! Come in! FUCK!”
Owens sighted the enemy that had killed his wingman, and dove in to take his vengeance.
“Oh, I got you now, you Communist piece of SHIT!”
He locked on and fired.
The enemy aircraft quickly shot out a set of flares, evading the Sidewinder missile.
“You’re not gettin’ away that easily,” Owens said in a menacing tone to himself as he armed his twenty-millimeter Vulcan nose-mounted cannon.
He lined up the targeting reticule just ahead of the Soviet, making sure to lead his shots. And he opened fire.
A mass of twenty-millimeter rounds ripped into the plane.The engines and wings of the enemy burst into flames as the aircraft fell into a steep death-dive toward the ground several thousand feet below. Splash two.
Owens moved to deal with the plane Bulkley had tried to bring down just a minute ago. At the very same time, Owen’s own trailer tried to get on his six and finish the job. Owens found himself in the same position Three-One had fell into earlier. He sent his jet into series of tight barrel-rolls and side-to-side moves trying to keep the bandit from acquiring a lock as he maneuvered to get behind the aircraft ahead. Getting right onto its six, Owens switched to his AMRAAMs and waited for the lock-on tone to sound off.
All of a sudden, the Flanker’s nose shot up sharply into the air as the plane appeared to stop dead, a textbook Pugachev’s Cobra. Owens raced ahead of the nearly motionless jet, caught in a state of bewilderment at what had just happened. The Russian had bled speed and now Owens had two on his tail. This just isn’t my day, Owens thought in frustration. This problem was only escalated by the horrible monotone beeping of being locked-on from behind. He frantically jerked his head left and right, trying to see how close they had truly come. They were virtually on top of him.
Owens desperately shot out his flares and pulled the plane in a high-G right turn, trying to throw off the incoming missiles. One missed.
But the other found its prey.
Owens’s plane shook violently as the missile’s blast-fragmentation warhead dug into the region between the back of his left wing and empennage, ripping the wing clean off. Owens felt like he almost flew out of his seat as the plane descended into a stomach-lurching dive. As Owens tried pulling back pointlessly on the joystick, he could vaguely make out a strange and peculiar cloud just below him. It seemed to ripple and spark with small bursts of multi-colored lightning. And he was headed straight into it.
The F-18 continued its head-spinning descent straight toward the aerial anomaly. The nose made contact. In a sudden bright white flash, the jet vanished into thin air.