The next couple days were filled with boredom. I spent some time with the simulator, but the prospect of not being able to fly for real again was discouraging. Vixen and Shizuka were too busy to join me. On Friday, I awoke to the sound of fighter jets tearing through the sky above the runway at sunrise, accompanying the approaching engines of a cargo plane. I cautiously opened the door of my trailer and looked up. An F-14 and an F-16 had established an orbit around the runway. In the distance, I could see a C-130 on final approach. I quickly got my flight suit on and ran toward the runway.
I arrived at the hangar housing our MiGs as the cargo plane landed. The big door was wide open and I could see the C-130 rolling up the runway with its two-tone paintjob: Navy blue over eggshell white.
“High Beat?”
I rushed out onto the ramp. Jackal and Vixen were standing in front of the hangar, watching the cargo plane turn onto the taxiway. As the C-130 passed us, taxiing further down the ramp, the two fighters touched down, the F-14 in the lead.
Dark blue accented the Tomcat’s leading edges and its tailfins. A forward-pointing arrow in the same dark blue decorated the jet, just below the canopy. The F-16 behind it sported a striking black-and-white tigerstripe pattern.
The two planes taxied in, stopping near the next hangar down. As their engines spun down, the F-14’s pilot climbed out of the cockpit and carefully descended the boarding ladder. As she walked toward us, she removed her helmet and shook her hair loose.
“Magic! You didn’t tell me you got a new squadron. Or that you started hanging out with cosplayers.”
“Good to see you too, Thunder,” Vixen said with a smirk.
“Roulette! Didn’t recognize you.”
“I get that a lot.”
“Before we get any further,” Jackal interrupted. “I’m ’Jackal’ now. And that’s ‘Vixen.’”
The F-14 pilot raised her eyebrow, then looked at me. “And then what’s your name, miss?”
“Camillia. Callsign ‘Lynx,’” I replied.
She looked back to Jackal. “Where’s Galaxy? You two still fly with her or what?”
Jackal pointed straight up. The F-14 pilot and I both looked up into the sky, then back at Jackal. She smiled. “She finally made it, huh? Good shit. If you ever hear from her, tell her I’m proud of her. So, I guess this is the new Ronin squadron?”
“Unicorn,” Jackal replied. “I’m Unicorn One,” he pointed to me, “and she’s Unicorn Two.”
The F-14 pilot looked at Vixen. “Unicorn Three?”
Vixen shook her head. “I’m with the ground crew now.”
Just then, Mama Bear ran up to us, out of breath. She held a finger up as she doubled over, panting. Slowly regaining her composure, she stood and smiled. “Welcome! Thanks for coming! I’m Mary Morse, callsign ‘Mama Bear.’ I’m in charge here.”
The F-14 pilot shifted her helmet to her other arm and shook Mama Bear’s hand. “Tokemi Aiyama, callsign ‘Blue Thunder,’ High Beat Industries Air Wing. My RIO Nimbus is still up there in the Tomcat, and Metal came with us in his F-16. Heard you folks have a Tucano problem.”
“We lost three days of training already ‘cause we don’t want to call attention to ourselves.”
“Start back up as soon as you can. I wanna draw these guys out and make sure they don’t come back. We’ll be on standby. Nimbus and I will be High Beat One, Metal’s High Beat Two. You got someone who knows how to read the radar in that tower?”
“I know how,” Vixen chimed in. “Mama Bear will stay up there, and she’ll call for me if she sees any suspicious contacts.”
Tokemi nodded. “Good. We’ll settle down in one of these other hangars you aren’t using. That okay?”
Mama Bear nodded. “Our ground crew will help you get situated. If you’re willing to sit tight for a bit, you can join us for breakfast.”
Tokemi shook her head. She looked back to her RIO, who gave her a thumbs-up from the back seat of the F-14. “We’ll pass. We ate before we came here. If you could direct me to where I can get a shower, though, that’d be great.”
“We’ll have a couple portable hot showers moved over to your hangar along with the ground power unit.”
“Hot damn!” Tokemi turned and called out to her RIO. “You hear that, Nimbus? They got hot showers here!” I could see Nimbus clap his hands and pump his fist in the air.
Tokemi turned back to Mama Bear. “We’ll start getting our stuff unloaded. We’ll leave the C-130 out on the tarmac so they’ll see it nice and clear if they decide to come back. You folks go do what you need to do.”
Mama Bear nodded. “In that case, it’s breakfast time!” She turned and started walking back toward the terminal building. Jackal, Vixen, and I followed.
As we walked, I looked to Jackal, “You told me that you’re not a combat pilot.”
Jackal gave me a sidelong look. “That’s right. I’m not.”
“So then what’s all this about ‘Ronin squadron?’ ‘Magic?’ ‘Roulette?’”
“I was a combat pilot. I’m not one anymore.”
“You made it sound like you never were one.”
“And I’d rather keep it that way if you don’t mind.”
“You expect me to trust you to cover me while you’re keeping things from me?”
“Yes, if those things are none of your damn business.”
“Enough!” Vixen interrupted us, with an intensity in her voice I’d never heard before. The four of us stopped dead in our tracks. “Let’s have breakfast, and then we’ll talk. Shizuka volunteered to cook for us this morning, on account of our newfound downtime. Don’t ruin it.”
Vixen turned and continued walking. The three of us sheepishly followed.
Full with Shizuka’s pancakes, my stomach subtly growled with anxiety as Vixen shut the back door of the hangar behind her. She walked over to where Jackal and I were standing and leaned against the nearby wall. “Jackal, I think you owe Lynx an explanation.”
“I don’t think I owe her a damn-“
“If you don’t tell her, I will.”
Jackal halted. He sighed and folded his arms, turning to me. “It’s true. I used to be a combat pilot. An air mercenary. We were Ronin squadron. Started out a little over ten years ago. My callsign was ‘Magic.’”
“Because his name is ‘Merlon.’ Like the magician.” Vixen added. “Mine was ‘Roulette’ because I worked in a casino before joining.”
“And our number three was a young woman called ‘Galaxy,’ whose real dream was to become an astronaut.”
“So that’s why you pointed up when Tokemi asked about her,” I noted.
Jackal quickly nodded.
“But why the change of heart? You were against calling in people to help a few days ago.”
“I made the call,” Vixen interrupted. I looked at her, then back at Jackal. Vixen continued, “It’s a long story, but these folks owe Jackal a favor from years back. All I had to do was mention his name and they were on-board.”
“If it’s that easy,” I responded, looking at Jackal, “why not just call them?”
“There are parts of our lives as air mercenaries that Jackal wants to forget,” Vixen interjected.
“But,” I began to ask, turning back to Jackal, when I was interrupted by a new voice.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important in here!”
The three of us turned. Tokemi was walking toward us from the open hangar door. The ground crew entered behind her, quickly fanning out to prep the planes. “So these are your planes, huh?”
Jackal took a step toward her, turning to the MiGs. “Yeah. They’re built specifically for mock air combat.”
“Ahh, so that explains why you couldn’t just shoot down those Tucanos.” She turned to Jackal. “So, how does she fly?”
“Almost exactly like a normal MiG. Maybe even a little better, since a lot of the-“
“I’m not talking about the plane,” Tokemi interrupted. She turned to me. “I mean Lynx.”
Jackal looked at me, then back at Tokemi. “She has good instincts. She just needs to be taught how to fight.”
Tokemi smirked. “I’m beginning to think you have a good eye for promising young female pilots, Magic.”
“Jackal.”
“Sorry. Jackal.”
I felt a little uneasy being talked about while I was right there in front of them. I turned my head to glance at Vixen. Her gaze was locked on Jackal before she noticed me looking and turned her head.
“I’ll go see how Shizuka’s doing. We won’t be walking you out this time. Her training is behind schedule.” Vixen stood up off of the wall and left the hangar through the back door.
Tokemi smiled and turned to me. “Good luck up there, Lynx. I’ll be rootin’ for ya!” With that, she turned and left, walking between the MiGs through the open hangar door.
Jackal looked at me, then started heading for the equipment rack on the wall behind me. As he passed me, he patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s get geared up. We’ll be learning some more radar and dogfighting with heat-seekers today.”
“Tower, Unicorn two-ship is ready to taxi for departure.” I rested my right hand in my lap as Jackal called the tower. His MiG was to my left. The whine of our idling engines rang softly in my ears, muffled by the helmet on my head.
The ground crew had fitted a device onto my helmet before I entered the cockpit. I reached up and felt the bracket above my visor, tracing my finger down to an arm folded up into it. They told me Jackal would explain while we were up in the air.
“Unicorn team, taxi three-zero via alpha.”
“Three-zero via alpha for Unicorn.”
“Tower,” Tokemi’s voice came in on the frequency, “High Beat two-ship will stand by in the hangar at ready five.”
“That means they can launch with five minutes notice,” Jackal explained as we took the taxiway. “If any fighting craft turn to engage us while we’re out there, we both turn back immediately and return to base. If we hear that they’re at the base, we’ll head back to cover High Beat’s takeoff.”
I nodded as we stopped short of the runway. “I got it.”
Jackal contacted the tower. “Tower, Unicorn is holding short three-zero, ready for takeoff.”
“Unicorn, cleared for takeoff. Good luck, you two.”
“Here we go, Lynx. One, taking the runway.”
“Two,” I replied as we both closed our canopies and turned onto the runway, immediately pushing our throttles to their limit and rocketing down the strip. His nose rose into the air and his MiG’s wheels left the ground. With a gentle rotation of my stick, my fighter was airborne as well. My hand left the throttle for a second to raise my landing gear. As we gained altitude, I glanced over my shoulder at the airfield, now rapidly retreating into the distance.
“You still freakin’ out?” I could hear Jackal chuckle over the radio.
“Not at all. Think I’m used to it now.”
“Good! Ease up off the afterburner and come to my right. Follow the river with me.”
I pulled the throttle back and banked toward the river, settling in with Jackal’s MiG ahead of me to my left. He continued. “Activate your close-range radar and lock-on to me.”
“What?” I replied, bewildered.
“You heard what I said.”
“But what if I-“
“Shoot a missile at me? Well, first, just don’t pull the trigger, and second, our weapons are fake, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Feeling dumb, I locked up Jackal’s MiG in my HUD.
“Okay, good. I’ve got a radar warning that I’ve been locked-onto. In combat, things can get pretty hectic. The fog of war. This is especially true when you can’t see what you’re locked onto to identify it. So we pilots developed a system to minimize accidents. If you’re locked onto something you’re not certain is an enemy, you call out ‘raygun.’”
I nodded. “Unicorn Two, raygun.”
“And now if I have a radar warning that I think is coming from your direction, my call is ‘buddy spike.’ Buddy spike, Unicorn Two. Now you try.” I lost my lock as he slowed his plane, allowing mine to pass him by as he settled in behind me. Sure enough, my radar warning receiver sounded off with a steady tone, and indicated a radar lock from behind me as I heard Jackal’s voice. “Unicorn One, raygun.”
“Buddy spike, Unicorn One.”
“Good, good. We’re getting near the lake now. Keep that procedure in the back of your mind, but for right now, we’re adversaries as soon as we pass over that lake. Let’s see what you learned shooting at those Tucanos.”