clouds or signs of weather as known to earth. Outside the cockpit the
air was thin and weak, insufficient for life, hardly sufficient to keep
the jets of the Mirage's engines burning, and the cold was a fearsome
sixty degrees of frost.
The two aircraft slowly ran out of energy, and they came out together at
the top of a mighty parabola. The sensation of flight was gone, they
swam through the dark forbidding oceans of space and far below them the
earth glowed strangely, with a weird unnatural light.
There was no time to admire the view, the Mirage was wallowing in the
thin and treacherous air, her control surfaces skidding and sliding
without bite.
Joe was on the target, tracking quietly and steadily and they came round
carefully on to the heading, with the aircraft staggering mushily and
beginning to fall away from these inhospitable heights.
David stared ahead, holding the Mirage's nose up for sustained altitude
but already the stall warning device was flicking amber and red at him.
He was running out of time and height.
Then suddenly he saw it, seeming startlingly close in the rare air,
ghosting along on its immense wings, like a black manta-ray through the
sable and silent sea of space, ahead and slightly below them, calmly and
silently, it drifted along, its height giving it a false sense of
invulnerability.
Desert Flower, this is Bright Lance visual on the intruder and
requesting permission for strike. David's cool tone hid the sudden gust
of his anger and hatred that the sighting had released.
Report your target, the Brig was hedgin& it was a dangerous decision to
call the strike on an unknown target.
Desert Flower, it's an 11yushin Mark 1 7-11. No apparent marines.
It needed no marking, it could only belong to one nation. David was
closing fast, he could fly no slower than this, and he was rapidly
overhauling the other machine. Those huge wings were designed to float
upon the feeble air of the stratosphere.
Closing fast, he warned Desert Flower. Opportunity for strike will pass
in approximately ten seconds. The silence in his headphones hummed
quickly, and he readied his cannons and watched the spy plane blowing up
rapidly in size as he dropped down upon it.
Suddenly the Brig made the decision, perhaps committing his country to
heavy retaliation, but knowing that the spy plane's cameras were
steadily recording vital details of their ability to resist aggression,
information that would be passed quickly to their enemies.
David, his voice was curt and harsh, this is the Brig.
Hit him? Beseder. David let the Mirage's nose drop a fraction, and she
responded gratefully. Two, this is leader attacking. 'Two conforming.
He went down on the Ilyushin so fast, that as she came into his sights
he knew he had time for only a few seconds of fire.
He pressed the trigger with the aiming pipper on the spy plane's wing
roots, and he saw her rear up like a great fish struck by the steel of
the harpoon.
For three seconds he poured his cannon shells into her, and watched them
