Even though it hurt, Nung shook his head. He knew now that he must leash his anger. He must maintain his composure or his body would betray him a second time. A catastrophe threatened. If Marshal Gang reported this… the Ruling Committee might summon him home. He knew what to do to win, and he must do it and show all of them that he was the greatest commander China possessed.
First taking several calming breaths, Nung glanced at the computer map. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make any sense of it. It kept blurring, hurting his eyes.
“Blue Swan,” Nung managed to say.
General Pi licked his mouth, bobbing his head. “The missiles are about to launch, sir, although on an ad hoc basis. We lack full coordination, I’m afraid. I have ordered our fighter drones into California in order to clear the space and swamp American anti-air defenses. For the same reason, I am also in the process of launching cruise missiles.”
Nung tried to gather his thoughts. It was like an old fisherman trying to draw a net too heavy with tuna. He lacked the strength. His willpower kept slipping. “Procedure,” he said.
“I know, sir,” Pi said. “I’m trying to follow your plan. But it is chaos tonight. Some of the Blue Swan launchers have been destroyed.”
“How…how many?” whispered Nung. This was terrible.
“We’re still in the process of discovering that, sir.”
Nung blinked several times. When did breathing become so difficult? He swayed, and the medics eyed each other.
“Sit,” Nung told them. “There.” He tried to indicate with his chin. He was simply too weak to lift his arms to point.
The medics moved him toward an open chair before a screen. Nung shuffled his feet. He felt so old, so desperately weak.
“Rest,” Nung whispered.
“Yes, sir,” the chief medic said. “You must rest here and gather your strength.”
As the night progressed, the air battle went heavily against the Americans. The surviving V-10s retreated from Mexican air space, racing for home. The Chinese fighter drones followed, although most had already launched their air-to-air missiles and expended their cannon shells.
Two American drones watched the battle from a great distance away near the stratosphere. Each had long, thin wings and many, black bubble canopies along the length of its fuselage. Hidden in each bubble was a sensor.
The three satellites were drifting junk in the stratosphere, clusters of twisted metal.
Then a Chinese strategic laser outside Monterrey, Mexico reached up and burned one of the high-flying drones, searing off a thin wing. There was hardly any noise this high up. The drone had drifted too near Mexican air space, but now it began a long tumble to the Earth below. That left one drone and three American AWACS hundreds of miles behind the border.
With the data from these sources, the JFC of California realized the Chinese were up to something. They had gone from defense to offense. Therefore, he gave the order. Waiting F-35s entered the fray.
Major Max Grumman gritted his teeth as he signaled his acceptance of the order. He had been watching the air battle for the past half hour. Drones. He hated them. They took the glory out of air combat. The great aces of World War I and II, the Vietnam jet-jocks and the heroes of the Alaskan War, he’d read about them avidly. Like his fellow pilots, he knew that UCAVs could never replace the man on the spot in his fighter plane.
The night was rich with stars and the ground was far below. Grumman banked and took the F-35 down.
His screen lit up with targets. Look at them, drones by the dozen, small and lethal. They could turn tighter and take any Gs their operators gave them. Yeah, drones had advantages, but desk boys weren’t jet-jocks.
“Little pricks,” Grumman said under his breath.
He activated a Sun-stinger. It was a lovely new missile, the latest thing in the American arsenal.
“You watching me through your cameras, desk-boy?” asked Grumman.
He began the targeting sequence. One of them jittery, fast-flying little pricks, ah, right in his crosshairs.
The F-35 shuddered as a Sun-stinger dropped loose from a wing. The heavy missile dropped and its engine ignited. The burn was a hard glow, and the missile zoomed into the night after its target.
Grumman watched on his targeting HUD. The little prick, it moved quickly, the jittery bastard. Then, a winking light on his screen indicated a hit and a kill.
Grumman’s gritted teeth turned into a faint smile as the Chinese drone ceased to exist. There were a million of them, though. This was like an old Star Wars movie. He shook his head, the edge of the oxygen mask pressing against his cheek. It was time to work, time to play the ultimate game. How could a desk-boy in Mexico City know anything about that?
In quick succession, Grumman launched two more missiles, getting two more kills in less than a minute. That’s how you did it. That’s how you owned the sky.
“It’s a turkey shoot!” he shouted over the radio.
Even as he said it, he studied the operational screen. Look at that. Three kills and the Chinese pricks just kept on coming. Tonight, he was going to become an ace—five kills. He just needed two more now. A turkey shoot was the right place to be in order to enter the hall of air-ace heroes.
Major Grumman might not have thought that if he’d known the Chinese plan. Like him, most of the F-35s fired their Sun-stingers, taking a dreadful toll of nearly dry—of offensive armament—enemy fighter drones.
The drones bored in, firing their remaining air-to-air missiles and if they made it close enough, using up their last cannon shells.
Grumman swore then.
“J-25s,” the ground-control operator said in his headphones. “They’re coming up fast behind the drones.”
The J-25 was the Chinese air-superiority fighter. Like sharks using a shoal of herring, they’d hidden behind the drones. The J-25s were armed, fresh and loaded for American pilots.
Major Grumman’s stomach tightened as he heard the growl of his threat indicator. Enemy radar had locked onto him. He launched chaff, a decoy and looked up into the starry night. Something flashed toward him. It came as fast as an enemy missile. Then he realized the truth, saw it for just a moment.
“Drone!” he snarled. Where had it come from? With his thumb, he readied his cannon.
The drone’s cannon fired first, quick blooms of light at shutter-speed, sending death and destruction. The operator in Mexicali had been waiting for this. The drone’s shells punctured Grumman’s F-35, a fragment of metal slicing into his back and severing several arteries.
The air battle turned savage after that. American tac-lasers, flak and SAMs devoured hordes of Chinese drones. U.S. officers and men alike shouted in glee at their stations. Many of them pumped their fists, although a few wondered how much more ordnance the Chinese would keep pouring at them. This was just too bloody much and it was a sign of enemy wealth.
Then enemy ARMs exploded a dozen American radar stations. In a matter of minutes, a half dozen more disappeared. The J-25s engaged the F-35s. There were too many Chinese, with more fuel and missiles. After twenty minutes, the F-35s were either dead or running away.
Waiting Chinese bombers screamed in, released smart bombs and then flashed away along the ground. American C-RAM systems chugged steadily. Several times an explosion created a greater fireball as an enemy bomber plowed into the earth and ignited, sending a column of fire up into the night.
Larger Chinese aircraft now fired air-to-ground missiles, flocks of them. The heavy missiles bored through flak, defensive explosions and screens of flechette clouds: tungsten particles that disintegrated many of the lethal cargoes. Half the missiles never made it to target. The others chewed up tac-laser sites, SAM launchers and radar installations. It was a bloody start to a savage attack, as the Chinese refused to quit and just kept on coming.
Because of this, more Chinese cruise missiles made it through the defensive belt than might have otherwise, even as they died. The enemy mass swamped the American defenses, overwhelmed it and poured through in sickening numbers, raining death and destruction, and bringing shock and awe.
It was then the first Blue Swan missile arrived. Like a cruise missile, it flew nap-of-the-earth, over hills, through valleys and scraping treetops. Its onboard sensors and AI allowed it to avoid nearby enemy defenses, aided
