Music To Set The ToneYour altitude increases as you prepare come out of the sun at the ground forces.
"I want you following behind me, we're hitting the vehicles first and I want you to make sure they're swept up if I miss any," you order Havoc.
"Yessir," he responds. You can hear how tense he is. This isn't a walk in the park for you, either - it's your first time as a flight leader outside of simulators and it's your wingman's first sortie. You can only hope you're making the right calls.
You approach the Scrap Yard along a wide road so the cityscape doesn't block your line of sight. You can see smoke and tracers from the gunfight below as you angle your nose towards the Earth. The moving mass of mutants is visible from your lofty heights, and with the aid of your bionic implants and connection to your craft's sensors you're able to positively identify the pair of gun trucks (two old-style pickups with very, very large caliber machine guns in quad mounts) as well as dozens and dozens of mutants pouring out of a handful of tenement buildings. How and why there are so many Reformed so close to the Towers is a question that'll have to be answered later. For now your priority is eliminating this threat.
"Once we take care of the vehicles I want you to level that fucking block," you command Havoc.
You hear the
click click of Havoc flicking his transmitter on and off. The nonverbal acknowledgement clues you in to just how focused, and likely scared, your wingman is.
You line your plane up with the nearest truck, centering yourself on it so the missile can acquire a lock on the vehicle. There's a low
beep...beep...beep suddenly punctuated by the continual hum of a target lock.
"FOX ONE!" you call out as you fire your first missile. In order to keep it on target you're required to keep your nose pointed at the truck so it stays within your sensor cone.
White-grey smoke trails behind the missile as it speeds ahead of yourself. The missile strikes it's target and the whole thing goes up in a fireball. Unfortunately due to the nature of the missile systems and the angle of attack increasing speed you're unable to get a lock on the second truck before blasting by. You roll the aircraft onto it's side and get a good look at the Reformed below. There is a lot of scurrying, and fear. Mostly fear. They'd no idea of your approach and the sudden attack caused them to stumble a bit it seems.
"FOX ONE!" Havoc bellows, then a few seconds later,
"Shit! I lost lock! They pulled the fucker back into an alleyway!""Circle back and hit them hard! They're in your target zone now!" you command. You then attempt to hail the ground forces, but to no avail. You can see a couple of them firing out of windows at Reformed, but you figure the huge smoking hole in a wall near them might have resulted in the loss of their radio.
"I'm clearing our boy's asses, hit this side until nothing moves!"You fly out a ways before banking back around, once again lined up with a road but this one to the south of the Scrap Yard. You can see Reformed moving on the ground and attacking some TRSF trying to probe for a chance to break through, or at least slip past. You angle down once more and open fire on the enemy combatants out in the open. While you definitely see a handful of them burst into clouds of meat chunks and blood the glare from the sun is now in your face and your sweep isn't as effective as you'd like.
Your jaw tightens as you pass overhead and get some distance before turning back once more.
"FUCK FUCK FUCK," your wingman begins shouting moments before you see him and, more importantly, the blast that levels the wrong set of buildings. It wasn't the Scrap Yard at least...
"What the hell was that!?" you demand an answer from your wingmate, who does not respond.
You make your next pass at the forces pushing into the TRSF rear, the old, broken streets shredding and turning into shrapnel as your three 20mms bombard it and a significant number of Reformed. You level out before hitting rooftops, admiring your precise maneuvering before you hear Havoc again.
As Havoc speaks you hear a beeping tone from his end,
"Something's locked onto me!" he calls out,
"You fucking with me, Valk?!"As his transmission cuts out you see a flash and puff of smoke from a rooftop in the distance.
"MISSILE INCOMING!" you shout,
"EVADE! EVADE!"You watch in terrified awe as the invincible Angels come under attack. The missile flies at Havoc from his 7 o'clock and gains fast. He pulls up sharply and then twists to the left and dives, but the missile easily course-corrects and follows suit. Havoc pulls his nose up before slamming into a building but the missile is right on his tail and...
There's an intense flash as the missile explodes behind Havoc's aircraft. In a fraction of a second you see his aircraft tilt downward, the engines dead, and fumes and vapor thickly pouring out in it's wake before a rapid series of explosions disintegrates the plane.
"Matt! MATT! FUCKING- MATT GOD DAMN IT!" you shout in your cockpit to nobody but yourself.
"Valkyrie, this is Goose Mother, we lost contact with Havoc. Everything okay over there?"You try to mask your emotions as you respond,
"Negative, Goose Mother. Angel 2 is down. I repeat, we have lost Angel 2."Beep...beep...beep...Someone's locked on to you now.
Do you flee combat, risking the loss of the entire ground force at the Scrap Yard? Or will you risk getting shot down in order to secure the supplies - and perhaps avenge Havoc? Or do you have a better idea?Ripley 'Valkyrie' Scott, Pilot
-Cybernetic Eye: Interfaces with her F-16 to provide direct data input
F-16 Fighting Falcon, Multirole Fighter
-Hailstorm 20mm Gun Pod x2
-Muninn Cluster Munitions x1
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Topic: Into The Fire - A Post-Apocalyptic/Sci-Fi CYOA/SG (Read 3159 times)