I could see a lake at the head of the river as Jackal came in on the radio. “Let’s get started. The hard deck is five thousand feet. Make sure you stay above it. Break off right, circle around that grain silo and come directly toward the lake.”
Jackal and I separated. As he banked left, I drifted right, headed toward the grain silo he mentioned. He continued over the radio. “We’ll pass each other once, then turn your master arm on. Try and get behind me.” I rolled left and pulled the stick to come around the silo. As the lake came into view, I saw Jackal’s MiG in the distance, headed toward me at an angle. I kept my gaze locked on it and moved my left hand to the master arm switch.
As his plane passed mine, I flipped the switch up and immediately turned to bring his MiG into view, rolling right and pulling the stick back. As his MiG came into view, I saw him banking left. I pushed the throttle forward to catch up to him. He continued his turn as I accelerated and began turning to match him.
“Don’t get greedy, now,” he said calmly over the radio as he continued his turn. I pulled the stick, watching as his jet moved upward in my field of view, taking the inside of our turn. Helplessly, I watched as his jet lost speed and drifted toward my rear. Soon enough, I heard the dreaded tone of an enemy radar lock.
“I have you. Accelerate and continue your break left.” I did as he said, pushing my throttle to the limit and staying in the leftward turn. “Now break right. Pull hard.” I tilted the stick right and pulled hard. Immediately I felt lightheaded. I tensed my legs and my gut, taking deep breaths from my oxygen mask as I glimpsed Jackal passing behind me in my mirror.
“Good. Level off and ascend. Get ready to break left.” My breathing normalized as I rolled my plane out and pulled the stick back. I caught sight of Jackal’s MiG again, rolling into a right turn as I began my ascent.
“Break slight left, pull all the way through until you’re coming down right behind me and throttle down through the descent.” I rolled the plane left and pulled back on the stick. I heard my labored breathing in my own ears as the plane flew a corkscrew. For a moment, as I scanned for Jackal’s plane, I looked up to see the lake directly above me. Pulling the throttle back, I guided my MiG through the maneuver and saw the nozzles of Jackal’s fighter come down into the center of my HUD.
With a surprised gasp, I pulled the trigger on the stick. The stick vibrated and a rumbling machinegun sound buzzed inside my helmet. “HIT” flashed in big letters on my HUD. Overjoyed, I tilted the stick left, putting my MiG in a full roll. “I did it!”
“Careful. Don’t celebrate until that thing says ‘KILL.’ Or else your opponent might do something like this.” Soon after my MiG came out of its roll, Jackal’s MiG reared up, gaining altitude and pitching near vertical, bleeding off its speed and passing behind me. Pushing the throttle, I gave my jet full power and broke left to escape. I inhaled deep from my mask again, part in panic, part from the g-forces pushing me into the seat.
“Right where I want you!” A ricochet sounded off inside my helmet as my HUD flashed the word “DAMAGE.”
“Level off. Let’s try another.” I leveled my plane out and Jackal came up beyond my right wing. “Get in behind me. I’ll try and shake you. You stay on me.” I slowed down enough to maneuver behind his jet and placed him in the center of my HUD again. Immediately, he banked left. I followed closely, attempting to keep him ahead of me.
He rolled left and pulled into a sharp turn. I mimicked his maneuver, grunting as I tensed my legs. Suddenly, he inverted his plane and pulled hard, dipping lower as he leveled out below me, headed in the opposite direction. I continued my turn until I was facing the direction I saw him escape in.
He was nowhere to be found. My head darted around my canopy looking for him. Just then, I saw a decoy flare rise up into my peripheral vision. I rolled my plane right and searched the sky, just in time to see Jackal maneuvering on me from below, his nose pointed in my direction. Again, a ricochet sounded off in my helmet, followed by “DAMAGE” flashing on my HUD.
Jackal came around to my left side as I leveled off. “You lost me. You didn’t know where I was for maybe about three seconds, but that made all the difference. Remember what happened to Wheels and Scooter when they lost an opponent. ‘Lose sight, lose fight.’ If you can’t see me, I get to do whatever I want to maneuver on you and you can’t do anything about it until you find me.
“So you have to make a choice,” he continued, “try and find me real fast, or disengage and come back, and hope I didn’t get in behind you anyway. Think you got one more in you?”
I took a deep breath, looked at him, and nodded. “I think so.”
He nodded at me. “Good. You break right, I’ll break left.” He immediately flipped his plane on its left side and peeled away to the left. I pulled off to the right, looping around in a large circle back toward him. He completed his circle first, heading straight toward me. As we passed each other, we turned hard, spiraling against one another. I looked up as I strained my legs and my core. His jet was locked in position directly above me, inverted and facing the opposite direction.
He spoke between deep breaths. “Okay, we’re in a turn fight. What’re you gonna do?”
I couldn’t reply. I was too busy breathing, grunting, and tensing my thighs. Still, the edges of my vision darkened as our MiGs spiraled downward. A warning alarm sounded off in my helmet, followed by a female voice shouting “Hard deck! Hard deck!”
He somehow managed to continue speaking. “Getting close to the hard deck. What’s the call?”
With a frustrated growl I rolled my aircraft to the opposite side and peeled off, pushing my throttle to its limit and climbing. I caught sight of Jackal in my mirror.
“Shit.”
An “X” flashed over my HUD and my MFD while a low, steady tone sounded in my helmet and my cockpit. I sighed as I leveled off and rocked my wings. “Lynx, dead.”
Jackal came up on my right side. “You held your own pretty good, I’d say. Let’s get back to base and we’ll debrief.” I stuck close to him as the two of us turned back toward the river and cruised back to the airfield.
I could see the airport in the distance as Jackal spoke over the radio. “Unicorn Group, two-ship, inbound, ten miles out.”
Mama Bear’s voice replied. “Runway one-two is prepped for your arrival. Who won?”
Jackal chuckled. “She managed to get a hit on me. With some guidance.”
Miss Takahashi’s voice interjected, “Good work, Lynx! Maybe eventually you’ll be able to wipe that perpetual ‘I’m an ace pilot’ grin off his face.”
“Nah, she’ll just get the same grin and then there’ll be two of us.”
I couldn’t help but giggle as I extended my flaps and pulled the landing gear lever down. Jackal had put some distance between us. As his plane touched down, I took a deep breath and gripped the stick tightly, maintaining my glide slope. As the plane passed over the end of the runway, I cut the throttle. My MiG glided down the runway before touching its wheels down with a screech. I squeezed the brake lever on my stick, my feet keeping my MiG aimed down the runway’s center as I slowed it to a stop.
“Good work. Open up your canopy and let’s take it back to the hangar.” As Jackal and I took the taxiway, we opened our canopies. Like exhausted beasts, our MiGs slowly rolled back to the hangar they came from. I looked around the airport as we made our way back. Trucks had arrived on the tarmac. Fuel trucks, ordnance trucks, trucks carrying food and water. Even one truck carrying audio/video equipment, parked near the terminal building.
As we shut our jets down near the hangar, the ground crew swarmed our MiGs. Two crewmembers hooked the ladder to the side of my fighter and one immediately climbed up and started helping me disconnect my mask and my helmet from the plane.
The crewwoman took my hand as I climbed out of the cockpit. She hopped down the ladder to the ground and guided me down it. The tarmac felt hard, and my legs felt like they were burning. I took off my helmet and shook my hair loose as Jackal walked up to me. He held his hand out. “Good work up there.”
I shook his hand, smiling. “Thank you! It’s still a lot to get used to.”
He chuckled, putting a hand on my shoulder as he walked into the hangar. “Well, get used to it quick! If you can shoot me down by the time we’re done, maybe you’ll make it in the real Fox One.”
I quickly followed behind him. “What do you mean?”
He reached the back of the hangar and put his helmet on the rack. “I mean you’ll be going up against real air mercenaries. Some of the best pilots that exist.” He undid his vest and put it on the rack before flopping into his folding chair. As I put my helmet and vest on the rack with his, he leaned back, putting his feet up on the folding table. “Let’s talk about that last engagement. Tell me what happened.”
I nodded, sitting in the folding chair opposite him. “We were spiraling downward and we almost hit the hard deck, so I broke off.”
“Was there anything you could’ve done from that position?”
“Not really. I don’t think so.”
“Exactly. You cornered yourself trying to get me in that turn fight. By the time you rolled out of it and started climbing, you didn’t have enough energy to maneuver out of my gunsight. A lot of this is about energy transfer, and you don’t want to run out of energy that close to the deck like that. It limits your options.”
I nodded. “I get it. If I had disengaged sooner, I would’ve had enough airspeed to maneuver away, and to dive if I needed more.”
“That’s two more options, and both are a lot better than ‘get shot down.’” He swung his feet off of the table and leaned forward, placing his elbow on the table. “So, how was your first time in the MiG? I noticed you had a bit of trouble on takeoff, but you seemed to do alright, for the most part.”
“The g-forces kinda got to me in some of those turns, but honestly, once I got past takeoff, I was a lot more excited than freaked-out. I got over that pretty quick when I started flying.”
“Good to hear ‘cause we’ve only got five weeks to make sure you’re able to take on the best.”
“About that,” I interjected, “I still don’t really know what we’re up against. I mean, I’ve seen the same livestreams everyone else has, but it’s a lot different from really being up there.”
“You got that right.” Jackal grabbed his tablet from the corner of the table and tapped it awake. “Normally, Fox One participants are mostly combat pilots. PMCs, security contractors, mercenaries, and the like. Sometimes some of the larger air pirate clans will send some pilots to represent, but they’re not crowd favorites, to put it lightly. Every now and again a couple career aerobats or some rich thrill-seeker will scrounge together a team, but for the most part, Fox One pilots shoot other pilots down in real life as a day job.”
He slid the tablet over to me. It showed a webpage with photographs of planes and team members, listing off their affiliations. “These are the contestants from last year. All the major PMCs, most of the local ones, and a couple pirate clans sent teams. First and second place went to major PMCs, and third went to a local one.”
I looked up from the tablet, “So what makes us different from those rich thrill-seekers? I’m not an air mercenary.”
Jackal paused. His eyes darted away from me for a short moment, before looking back into mine. “Neither am I. Kisaragi just knows I’m a good pilot. And they know you’re a good pilot, too. You just need training.”
Sliding the tablet back over his way and turning it off, he stood up, motioning toward the hangar’s back door. “Speaking of training, let’s go see how your idol singer friend is doing.”