Ninewa, 12/4/461 AC
Ricardo Cruz was just leaving the gymnastics building where he had showered when it happened
The first warning was a flash in the distance, behind some houses in the town. Next came the muffled sound of a small explosion. Then came the first blast, much nearer. Only after that could anyone make out the freight train rattle of incoming mortar rounds.
Cruz screamed, 'INCOMING!' as he threw himself into partial shelter at the angle where steps met building wall.
The rounds came in at even intervals, a dozen of them, about two seconds apart. Whoever was on the other end apparently knew what he or they were doing. They landed with about thirty meters between shells, moving in a slightly arcing line from near the broad front steps to the main office of the campus and across an open field. Between the even spacing and the even timing it was the obvious work of a well-trained mortar crew, using the traversing wheel on the bipod to quickly and expertly lay the rounds. Before the last round had landed someone caught on the field was screaming out in pain.
'I knew this shit was too good to last,' Cruz muttered as he picked himself up from his temporary shelter and then ran to offer aid, toward the still incoming blasts.
I swear I will kick my own ass if I ever go to the showers without my body armor again.
The mortar attack was over almost as soon as it began. Automatically, the legionary Command Post's duty officer ordered a reaction century of mechanized troops and a mixed flight by a Turbo-Finch and a Cricket.
The Cricket was airborne in minutes, the Finch following almost immediately thereafter. The mechanized troops were bursting through the university gate to race into the town scant moments later.
Mistake. Big mistake. Big, bad, fucking mistake.
Khalid al Marri kept in the shadows atop the half wrecked apartment building. It was the same building that had been taken by the now departed FSA 731st Airborne Brigade. People lived in it, still, but not in anything like what had been its pre-war capacity. That was a shame, because al Marri's mission was to get the crusader dogs to overreact, to kill some number of the civilians now living inside. Ah, well; between his own surface to air missile and the other one located a kilometer away and overlooking the same area, one was sure to take down a crusader aircraft and cause a reaction.
From his vantage point, al Marri saw the flashes of the mortar firing and the impact of the shells inside the university compound. Not much time now.
Despite his prediction, al Marri was still somewhat surprised at how quickly the enemy got aircraft into the air. Just like the dogs, to have airplanes standing by to kill the people, he thought, his heart overflowing with hatred for the infidel invader.
To the outsider, privileged to look into al Marri's mind, that would have seemed incongruous. There he stood, ready to do his best to bring violence and destruction down onto the innocents of the apartment building beneath him, and hating those he intended to provoke into that violence because of their willingness to engage in it.
There was no real contradiction, though. To al Marri, and he shared this much, at least, with much, perhaps even most, of the cosmopolitan progressive community, things were neither good nor bad in themselves, but only in relation to the end being sought. To some extent, they shared that viewpoint with Carrera, at least as he had come to be, the major difference being only the end in view.
In any case, one of the infidel airplanes was coming his way. Still keeping to the shadows, al Marri picked up the tube he had carried to the top of the apartment building and placed it on his shoulder, fitting his eye to the sight. He aimed the sight and tube at the noise he heard coming from the craft's engine. Then he flicked a switch and was rewarded with a low hum as the seeker head went active and coolant circulated to drop its temperature so it could make out the heat of the airplane's engine.
The engine stood out in fuzzy view in the sight's eyepiece. Al Marri squeezed the first trigger and was rewarded with a beep which told that the sight saw the target. Elevating the tube until the target was near the bottom of his field of view, he then squeezed the second trigger. The sealed back of the tube blew off as the missile went airborne, al Marri feeling a slight push from his front as the missile's exhaust pushed him backwards.
Though he was too busy to note it, the other missile, launched from a kilometer away, likewise took off within a couple of seconds of his own.
Tribune Miguel Lanza of the legion's air ala wasn't really a scout pilot, despite the Cricket he strapped himself into. Instead, he'd flown transports most of his adult life; 'hauling the trash,' as he liked to say, especially when the trash consisted of human beings who could hear him say it. Nobody minded; Lanza had been a fixture in the old Guardia Nacional, then in the Defense Corps, the Civic Force and now, finally, in the legion.
At nearly fifty, Lanza was a bit long in the tooth for the TurboFinches. Those birds went through gyrations that pulled the blood from the brain and made an old man faint. Even so, he had checked out on them. One never knew, after all, when a pilot would be needed. Likewise, he'd gotten himself qualified on the NA-21s and – 23s- which were similar to his normal bird-and the Crickets. The helicopters were still beyond him but he intended to fix that if he ever got a chance to get back to Balboa.
Lanza loved to fly. Moreover, he believed in leading from in front. For a pilot, leading from in front meant flying, even flying the dangerous missions. That was why, despite command responsibilities as the senior officer of the ala, he'd been standing by on alert when the word had come of the mortar attack. First to the Cricket despite his years, Lanza had told the younger pilot just behind him in the sprint to, 'Fuck off, sonny. This one's mine. You can observe.'
An amazing aircraft, the Cricket; one hundred feet of take-off run and the thing had gone up like an elevator, pulling Lanza's stomach down to his butt despite the low speed. Lanza's observer was already fiddling with the radio before the thing was off the ground, getting the latest intel update from the command post. There wasn't much intel; that was, after all, why the command post had ordered the Cricket launched in the first place. Aviation was mostly about reconnaissance and always had been.
The command post did have a presumed firing position for the mortar or mortars-no one knew for certain if there had been more than one-that had fired at the university. This Lanza set his heading towards. It led over a set of five modern and ugly looking apartment buildings.
Once airborne, Lanza pulled one of the two sets of night vision goggles the Cricket carried over his head and onto his eyes. The observer did the same. Lanza looked back and over his left shoulder, catching sight of the Turbo-Finch that followed at a discreet distance. Confident of support, Lanza turned his eyes back to the flight path. Then, with both pilot and observer looking forward, both sets of goggles suddenly flashed brightly and went blank.
'Shit!' Lanza shouted as he pushed the Cricket's nose down with one hand, tearing off the goggles with the other. 'Shitshitshitshitshit!'
The missile wasn't what one could call 'bright.' As a matter of fact, where the FSC had poured money into 'brilliant' munitions, the Volgans-and they had made the thing some years prior-concentrated instead on 'competent' ones. Competent was another way of saying, 'good enough for the purpose, especially if used in mass.'
It saw the target, a glowing greenish blur, and sped towards it. The target attempted to duck by dropping and the missile duly corrected itself, following the target down. The missile's dim but 'competent' mind went something like, 'Oh, boy, I'm going to hit… Oh, boy, I'm going to hit… Oh, boy, I'm going to hit,' as it got closer. Still, the target went erratic. 'Oh, boy, I'm going to hit,' changed to, 'Oh, shit, I missed.'
The missile promptly blew itself up, scattering numerous small rods of hot metal through the air, some of which connected with Lanza's Cricket.
Lanza felt the plane shudder, first from the blast and then, slightly and unevenly, from the metal rods scattered by the warhead. The observer felt rather more, and let it be known with a piercing scream, as one of the rods passed through the upper portion of the cockpit's Plexiglas rear canopy, through his seat, through his harness and into his back. He slumped forward.
The important thing is not to panic, Lanza reminded himself as he played with the controls to assure himself that his plane would still respond to command and fly. His heart was pounding, and it showed in his voice, as he called the CP and said, 'This is Lanza… We've got SAMs! Shitpots of 'em. My Cricket is hit and my observer wounded… I think they got the Finch that was following me
… I'm heading back and I suggest that no more planes be launched for now, not until we can reduce the SAM threat.'
