were fatal at 2.5 miles, which was just inside the fatal range of the Sidewinders. Undoubtedly the Navy pilot wasn’t concerned about “surviving” the conflict; he’d get close enough to launch the Sidewinders even if it meant he got slammed himself.
Fentress pushed his nose down, moving his pipper dead into the canopy of the Tomcat’s two-man cockpit. He waited a second after the red bar flashed, remembering Zen’s admonitions regarding the Flighthawk control computer’s unyielding optimism.
Fentress then fired a long, concentrated blast that, had this been a real thing, would have reamed a large hole in the Navy jet.
The next second, he got a warning that the EB-52 was getting ready to fire its Stinger. Fentress had to jerk off quickly to avoid getting nailed by an air mine. As he did, another warning buzzed sounded — the F-14 had just launched his Sidewinders.
“One simulated missile hit on engine four, one miss,” reported Ferris, Dog’s copilot. “He cheated bigtime,” added Ferris. “The Flighhawk nailed him.”
“We’ll send it to the Rules Committee,” stated Dog. “Wing damage?”
“Negligible.” Ferris began reading through the damage-control reports; the simulated hit wasn’t bad enough to keep them from completing their mission. But unlike the Tomcat, Iowa’s flight computer was plugged into the game and trimmed the plane as if it had really been hit — within reason, of course.
“How you doing down there, Delaford?” Dog asked the Navy Piranha specialist.
“Still no contact. We should be about thirty seconds away.”
“Too bad it’s not a torpedo,” said Dog.
“Believe me, Colonel, if this were the real thing, the target would be dead meat as soon as we can see it. Now under Option Four, carrying the double warhead—”
“We’re a little busy,” said Dog. “You just have fun down there.”
“Oh, I will, sir. It’s not every day you get to blow up an aircraft carrier.”
While the Hornets thumbed through their radar scans trying to sort out the Megafortresses behind all the electronic noise, Zen brought the Flighthawks around, positioning himself for a diving, rear-quarter attack. Once his attack had began, Galatica would launch Scorpions at the remaining planes. Another wave of fighters was sure to follow; hopefully, they’d be ready to saddle up and get away by then.
The Hornets were in double two-ship elements separated by over a mile. Zen launched his attack against the plane at the point closest to the Megafortresses; it was on his left as he angled Hawk One downward, Hawk Two holding above. The attack went ridiculously well — he could see the while globe of the pilot’s hard hat dead on in his pipper. Two squeezes on the trigger and the Hornet was gone; by the time the event observer called out the kill, Zen had jumped into Hawk Two and slashed another dozen slugs through the tail of the first plane’s wingman. This Hornet tried to tuck into a turn, hoping to throw the Flighthawk in front of him. It would have been a fine strategy against nearly any other plane in the world, but the U/MF could turn far tighter than an F/A-18. Zen could have driven his plane right through the Hornet — a fact that made him more than a little annoyed when the referee failed to call the hit. He turned back and stuffed another long fusillade of simulated shells into the Hornet’s twin tailpipe.
“Yo,” he said.
“Cougar Two slashed,” said the event moderator with obvious disappointment.
The delay kept Zen from pressing an attack on the second element. In his absence, the flight computer had managed to set Hawk One up for a reasonably good front-quarter run at one of the Hornets. Zen jumped in the cockpit, but then decided to let C? finish the job. The computer obliged by tossing two dozen slugs into the Hornet’s belly and another dozen into the canopy area.
That left one plane. Zen had lost track of it in the swirl. He had to select the sitrep screen — a God’s-eye view of the battle area piped into his console courtesy of Galatica’s powerful radar. C? highlighted the Hornet, which was shooting back toward its carrier group.
Running away?
No, decoying him, as had the other F/A-18’s.
“We have bogies south,” said Galatica’s radar operator tersely. “In range for Phoenix launch in thirty seconds.”
“Clever bastards.”
Colonel Bastian checked the overall position on the sitrep screen in the lower left-hand corner of his dashboard. Piranha, still undetected, was now closing on the
He wished he could say that Iowa was also still undetected.
“Eight Tomcats, positively ID’d,” Ferris said. “They’ll launch any second.”
“Not a problem,” said Dog.
“Got it,” said Delaford.
“Yes!” added Ensign Gloria English. “We are within five miles of the aircraft carrier. Closing. We’re not detected.”
“If this were Option Four, they’d be dead. We could download to a sub now — boom, boom, boom!” sand Delaford.
“Tomcats are launching missiles!” shouted Ferris, so loud he could’ve been heard back on the tail.
“Evasive maneuvers,” said Dog. “If we’re in, we’re going to break, Tom,” he told Delaford. They were already at the extreme range for the Piranha system, and would have to close off contact to duck their attackers.
“Colonel, if we can hold contact for another sixty seconds, I can have Piranha pop up across from the
“Missiles are tracking,” said Ferris.
“Can we break them if we stay here?”
“Trying. The Tomcats are still coming. They want our blood.”
“We’ll hold our position as long as we can,” Dog told Delaford. “Hopefully, we won’t get nailed in the process.”
“It’ll be worth it,” said Delaford, whose project had faced considerable skepticism from the Navy brass.
Dog told the other Megafortresses they could break off.
“Sixty seconds,” said Delaford. “Right under the admiral’s nose.”
“Colonel, one of those Navy logs won’t quit.”
“Tinsel,” said Dog, giving the order to dispense electronic chaff designed to confuse the radar guiding the long-range missile.
“Fifty seconds,” said Delaford.
“Missile impact in twenty,” warned Ferris.
“Hang on, everybody,” said Dog. He pulled the Megafortress hard right, then back left, accelerating north briefly but then pulling back west, trying to stay within range of the Piranha buoy.
“Must’ve graduated from Annapolis,” said Ferris. “That missile isn’t quitting.”
Dog decided to do something he’d never be able to manage in a stock B-52—he twisted the massive plane through an invert and accelerated directly toward the AIM-54. Against a “live” missile, the strategy would have been dubious, since the proximity fuse would have lit the warhead as he approached. But the gear in the nose used to record a hit was a few beats slower than the real McCoy, and Dog just managed to clear the AIM-54 before it “exploded.”
“Shit, I lost the connection,” said Delaford as Dog recovered.
“Can you get it back?”
“Trying.” Dog could hear Delaford and English tapping furiously on the keyboards that helped them control the remote devices.
