>>6113131Finally, the four remaining of the enemy blaze past Blue Flight at a combined 900 knots. Into the Merge they all go. It is a damned fool thing - an F-14E not weighed down with ordnance is among the most nimble of all 4th-generation aircraft, second only to the F-16, and one still armed with high-off-boresight Sidewinders makes even passing close enough to merge suicide for almost anything that flies. But it is nothing good for your own, either: once merged and facing an aircraft of the same generation, a pilot’s fate came down to their ability as a pilot. Even the smallest mistake would be punished with death. So dangerous was the dance of equals that every advancement in tactical aviation since the invention of the guided missile had been made to prevent the merge from ever taking place - and to rousing success, as not once had an American pilot merged with a bandit since Vietnam.
Dangerous it is, and dangerous it proves. The sky became a tangled mess of missiles and planes scattering in every direction, turning into and around each other. Even from 250 miles away, you can feel the g-forces pressing your pilots hard into their seats as the wails of the damned pressed into their skulls. Blue 3 is almost immediately drawn into a brutal and terrifyingly close back-and-forth one-circle with one of the monsters, fighting their own plane’s flight controls as much as their bandit as they tumble downward towards the open Pacific. Blue Leader ends their fight quickly with a wild spray of white tracers that saw the foe in half in the first pass, insanely risky but deftly done. Blue 2 extends out and gets off their final Sidewinder at their bandit, just close enough that the magic spotlight could not do its work, and the enemy’s shadowy form erupts in black smoke and orange flame.
Blue 3 is struggling more than most with the hellish voices, barely in control, and no, no, no, eyes on your bandit! But it’s no use. When the green traces slash across the cockpit, you feel a sharp stab of pain in your gut, and then nothing, your telepathic link to Blue 3 suddenly severed, pilot and RIO both.
Distantly, you notice that Green 2 makes the final kill, silencing the monsters’ shrieks, but all your attention is on the slowly descending form of Blue 3, spinning and tumbling like a leaf. The monsters had gotten to them. A pilot and RIO were dead… and a bit of you had died with them; that much was plain enough, as the cold of empty racks not be filled tonight gnaws at you already when you look within.
Who… who were those brave aviators? The fact that you didn’t know their names or calsigns or faces hits you like an uncharted sandbar. Did they even *have* any? 5,800 officers and ratings make up your complement. Every one you had tasked today had carried out their duty with aplomb and without question, even when you sent them into battle outnumbered two to one, and you couldn’t do them the decency to know them first?
