As we approached the door to a room inside the terminal building, Jackal winked at me and held a finger to his lips. He slowly turned the handle and opened the door. I could see him give the same signal to someone inside as I crept through the open door behind him. Inside was a conference room, though cleared out of all its tables and chairs, leaving just a screen on the wall. Inside, Shizuka was facing us, listening to instruction from the fox woman I had seen before takeoff.
The fox woman was making wide, sweeping arm motions and swaying her hips as Shizuka closely imitated her. Jackal snuck up behind her and placed an ice-cold water bottle directly on the side of her neck.
The fox woman instantly went stiff and popped into the air, turning around and batting at Jackal’s head as he laughed. Shizuka and I giggled as I handed a bottle to her. The fox woman stuck her tongue out at Jackal as she snatched the water bottle from him, uncapping it and taking a sip. “Already setting a bad example for your protégé, I see.”
She sounded exactly like Miss Takahashi. I blinked and pointed at her. “Wait, you’re Miss Takahashi?”
She turned her head to me. “You couldn’t tell?”
Jackal smirked. “To be fair, you were dressed a lot more conservatively yesterday.”
Miss Takahashi took another sip of water. “I guess that counts as a compliment. Must’ve looked silly, then, seeing me out cheering for you while you were getting ready for takeoff, huh?”
I laughed. “I thought a cosplayer had snuck out onto the tarmac and made friends with Shizuka.”
Shizuka giggled, opening her water bottle, “She’s been dressed like that all day. I was surprised too when I came in this morning.”
“She came in looking around and asked me, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, I’m looking for Miss Yuzuki Takahashi,’” Miss Takahashi said, sending us all into a fit of laughter.
As our laughter subsided, Jackal looked around the room, “So what’re we learning in here?”
Miss Takahashi smiled. “I’m teaching Shizuka her responsibilities as a flight queen.”
“A flight queen?” I questioned.
Miss Takahashi pointed to her outfit. “Flight queens. We’re part ground crew, part spokesmodel, and all eye candy. Pretty soon Shizuka and I will be out marshalling you two for takeoff.”
“Marshalling?”
She turned to Shizuka. “Shizuka, give me ‘start engines.’” Shizuka nodded and placed her water bottle on the floor. She held her left arm up at an angle to her side while swinging her right arm in a big circle at her elbow.
Miss Takahashi smiled. “Good.” She turned to me. “Hand signals. Jackal knows all of them. He’ll start teaching you soon, I’m sure.”
Shizuka picked her water bottle back up. “So, Miss Ryder-“
“You can call me Cammy,” I interrupted.
“Or Lynx!” Jackal added.
“So, Lynx is your callsign?” asked Shizuka.
I nodded. “Apparently I sneak around at dusk like a bobcat.”
“Not apparently.” Jackal interjected. “You literally snuck into the hangar and sat in the MiG.”
Miss Takahashi giggled. “Go easy on her. The girl likes planes. You should be happy she’s that eager to be in the cockpit.”
“I am going easy. The worst she got is that callsign.”
“I think it’s nice. It fits her somehow.” Miss Takahashi smiled at me. “We still need to figure one out for Shizuka.”
“How’d you get yours, Miss Takahashi?” I asked.
“You can call me Vixen, if you want. I was actually the first on our team to have a callsign. Since Kisaragi’s logo is a unicorn, my idea was to give everyone animal-themed callsigns. So when I gave Mama Bear the design for this flight queen outfit, she called the design ‘vixen,’ and then we figured that’d be my callsign.”
“Aren’t pilots usually the only ones with callsigns?” Shizuka inquired.
Vixen nodded. “I used to be a pilot, but not anymore. You’re right, though. Usually only pilots get callsigns. But we’re not military, so we decided to have some fun with it.”
“You never mentioned you were a pilot,” I added.
I noticed Vixen’s eyes quickly shift to Jackal before looking at me. “Well, I may not look it, but I used to fly a Viper Zero in my younger years.”
“You were a combat pilot?!” I could barely contain the excitement in my voice. “What company did you fly for?”
“Alright, alright,” Jackal interrupted. He started toward the door. “Come on, Lynx, let’s stop bothering Vixen. It’s almost sundown and I’ve still gotta show you where all the facilities are. They’re probably done setting up the trucks now.”
I followed Jackal out of the room and through a door onto the tarmac. Lines of trucks were parked out on the ramp near the terminal building. The ground crew were directing even more trucks around the taxiways and across the tarmac to the hangars. A few of the trucks nearby had opened up their sides and were serving food. Others had offloaded vending machines. Crates full of disposable plates and utensils sat on the ground, and crewmembers were setting up the last few collapsible tables and chairs. In the background, I could hear the hum of many truck-mounted generators.
“These are the food trucks.” Jackal explained as we stepped up to one, “Everything’s paid for, so don’t be shy. No need to go up on an empty stomach.” He turned to the crewmember inside the truck. “Let me get a chicken sandwich.”
“Make that two,” I added.
Our sandwiches in hand, we walked over to a vacant table and sat down. “We got everything we need to live here for the next five weeks. Food, water, supplies, they put a portable toilet down next to each hangar, and of course we’ve got all the facilities inside the hangars, the terminal building, and the tower.”
“What kind of place did this used to be, anyway? I know you mentioned it was mostly abandoned before the company bought it, but what was it before then?”
“Used to be an airbase for the local constabulary, back when this was close to the border and the trade routes ran through here.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“You got that right. And the nearby town already has a bigger airport up to the north, so this place pretty much just fell into disuse when the border moved and the constabulary moved with it.”
“Who owned it after that?”
“The royal family bought it from the original owners and held onto it for a while until they decided to auction it off.”
“And that’s when Kisaragi bought it?” I interjected.
“Not yet. There was an attempt at some point to start a vineyard nearby, and the owners of the vineyard bought this place in that auction. Thought they got a good deal on an airfield to use as a shipping hub for their grapes, but that didn’t work out.
“That owner sold it for cheap to some folks who turned out to be a band of Tucanos, but without any shipments to ransack, they basically just flew around. Which is just as good, because they eventually got run out by some air mercs looking to collect their bounties. The mercenaries settled here for a while, then moved on, I think either up north to Skuld or across the ocean to Circe. Either way, before they left, they sold it to Kisaragi for enough fuel money to make it to where they were going.”
“So this place was basically useless after the border moved?”
“Yep. Many such cases. Every time the border makes a big shift, a good dozen or so airfields lose their purpose.” Jackal answered matter-of-factly.
“That’s kinda sad. My home airfield housed some border guards years ago, but it was at least able to keep its civil traffic. I guess this one didn’t even have that.”
“Well, that just means this airfield’s bad for a lot of things, but good for training promising new fighter pilots.” He reached over the table and patted me on the shoulder, then stood up and pitched the foil wrapper from his now-eaten sandwich into a nearby trash can. “Good work today, Lynx. We’ll try the same again tomorrow, bright and early.”
We took off from the runway the next morning into a clear sky. I looked out to my left as Jackal and I flew up the river. I could see two young boys scrambling up onto a roof, looking up at us. Smiling, I tilted my stick side to side, rocking my wings as we passed.
“Alright, Lynx, focus up.” I turned to look toward Jackal’s plane as he began his explanation. “Hard deck is five thousand. When we reach the lake, get up above the hard deck and fly along the lake’s perimeter to the right. I’ll go left. When we pass each other, it’s game on.”
I ascended and rolled into a gentle bank along the lake’s rim. As I watched Jackal’s MiG skirt the opposite side of the lake, I flipped the master arm switch up. I pushed my throttle to full afterburner and ascended further as I approached the opposite end of the lake. Once Jackal’s fighter passed below mine, I pulled the stick hard, stomping on the left rudder pedal and pulling the throttle back. As my MiG shifted direction, I pushed the throttle up. Jackal’s plane held its position in my view as we rolled to counter one another.
I gave my stick another hard pull, bleeding speed and shifting my fighter’s nose right into Jackal’s flightpath. Machinegun noises assaulted my ears as I pulled the trigger. “HIT” flashed across my HUD as Jackal’s plane passed in front of me.
“Got you, Jackal!”
“Sure, but can you do it again?”
As I throttled up to escape, I saw Jackal’s plane level off behind me in my mirror. I immediately rolled inverted and pulled hard into a tight half-loop, reversing my plane’s direction. I glanced behind me. Jackal’s plane was in the middle of repeating my actions. I broke left and ascended. Jackal’s plane passed behind me, starting into a wide left turn.
I glanced back. Jackal was accelerating to bring himself in range. I glanced down at my hands, then back at Jackal’s MiG. Tightening my grip on the stick and throttle, I pulled the throttle and the stick back hard.
My plane lurched upward, lifting me up and tilting me backward. Before I knew it, I was looking directly up into the sky. I could hear the air batter the underside of my plane, shaking it as I skated forward and shed speed. The faint sound of Jackal’s plane cutting past me jolted me back to reality. Grunting, I shoved the stick forward and throttled up. Jackal was in front of me, just beyond my nose, in the middle of a turn. I pulled the trigger. “HIT.”
“Got you agai- Woah!”
I felt my body lift as my plane’s nose pitched down. I struggled, taking my hand off the throttle and grabbing the top of the stick. Panicking, desperate to level off, I pulled the stick back with both hands, only to flip my MiG’s nose up again.
“Hold the stick steady and throttle up!” I heard Jackal in my ear.
I tensed my right arm, holding the violently rattling stick still as I pushed my throttle to its limit. The afterburner rumbled my plane as it stabilized my path. After a few deep breaths, I pulled my throttle back and gently let my nose settle back down level. As I did, Jackal came up along my left side.
“You were looking pretty good, Lynx. Right up until the point you almost lost it and stalled out. You gonna be okay?”
I looked at him and nodded. “Yeah. I think I can keep going.”
“How’d it feel?” For some reason, I felt like I knew he was smirking under his mask as he looked at me.
“Unique.”
“That’s one way to describe it. Tell you what: If you can get the last shot on me, I’ll teach you how to pull the cobra maneuver in a way that won’t risk turning you into a lawn dart.”
With that, he peeled off to the left in a tight bank. I gasped as I realized he was trying to get in behind me. I followed him left. The tail of his plane held its position in my view, ahead and above me. I glanced down at my stick, then back up at Jackal’s plane. I wanted to pull harder, but when I thought about it, my mind replayed the mishap I’d just had with the cobra maneuver.
Sighing in frustration, I rolled right and broke off pursuit.
As I came around through my turn, I looked around for Jackal’s plane. It wasn’t where I was expecting. I frantically searched for his MiG, finding it only too late as I caught sight of it bearing down on me from up above, well within gun range. A ricochet sounded off in my helmet, with “DAMAGE” flashing across my HUD.
I growled, shaking my head clear as I finished my turn. I looked over my shoulder to see Jackal continuing his descent down past me. Rolling inverted, I pulled, quickly changing direction and crossing right in front of his flight path.
A ricochet sounded in my helmet and “DAMAGE” flashed on my HUD.
“What the-?” I looked over my shoulder again. Jackal’s plane leveled off, continuing its flight path. In the split second I was ahead of him, he had pulled the trigger and gained a hit on me. I rolled left and banked toward Jackal, coming up behind him. In response, he banked right, passing ahead of me. I pulled the trigger on impulse, but missed. As we passed in line with each other, we exchanged our turns, me rolling right and Jackal rolling left.
We passed each other again, exchanging turns and soon passing each other a third time. I noticed Jackal’s plane get closer with each pass. Furrowing my brow, I readied my thumb to activate the airbrake. As we began to exchange turns again, I remained in my roll, but didn’t begin my turn. Instead, I flared the airbrake, subtly moving my nose into position just as Jackal’s MiG finished its turn. With a pull of the trigger, my HUD flashed the word “KILL.”
“Jackal, dead.” Jackal leveled his MiG and rocked his wings. He chuckled. “I guess I owe you a cobra lesson. Good flying, Lynx. Let’s get back.”
As we descended toward the runway, Vixen came in over the radio. “So, who won? Don’t leave us in suspense.”
“Tell ‘em, Lynx,” Jackal replied.
“Three-to-two, Lynx.”
“Knew you had it in you, Lynx!” Vixen praised, “Keep up that pace and you’ll be able to keep up with Jackal for sure.”