Chapter Text
Five G-suit clad forms walked into the futuristic meeting room, a lab-coat wearing form with glasses standing in front beside the projector screen.
“Good, looks like everyone's here, we can start the briefing then."
The light shut off as everyone took a seat, and the projector started rolling.
“Good morning everyone, and welcome to Millennium. As you all well know what we’re here for, I won't waste your time.”
The screen changed, showcasing a 3D map of a forested area with a jagged central ravine splitting it down the middle.
“This is a 3D map of our personal piece of land we use for bouts. All electronics used by all other flying groups in Kivotos use the things we make for their own territory, but we have the newest stuff - prototypes and things like that. It’s all calibrated precisely and modelled using the same parameters so no complaining if you think a missile shouldn’t have hit you.”
Fingers were pointed at the heads of the Gehenna and Trinity group. “That means you two hyper-competitive lunks.”
The image shifted to five aircraft silhouettes, each recognisable as the aircraft each pilot would be flying, and grouped into two groups, one with four aircraft and one with one.
“The Trinity pilots have both gone with standard missiles and long-range air-to-air missiles, and the Gehenna pilots will both be using standard missiles and quick-manoeuvre air-to-air missiles. Trinity will have a hundred-fourteen of the standards and thirty long-range each, and Gehenna will have a hundred-ten of the standards and sixteen of the quick-manoeuvre each.”
A laser pointer appeared beside the larger group, pointing towards a warning symbol.
“Note that despite the rules stating friendly fire is an instant loss, both sides have refused to give each other their IFF signals. Your problem, not mine. At the very least, I want you four to have a shared comms channel - that one is for safety purposes, so don’t skip it, or we’ll consider that a forfeit.”
The pointer moved towards the solo F-15.
“Meanwhile, Sen- sorry, Talisman - will have a hundred-fourteen standards and forty-two six target multi-lock missiles, along with two decoy drones on hardpoints. The decoys are carried, so they’re legal.”
The slides switched again.
“Hard cap is 100 metres - anyone goes below that and we’re ending this instantly.
Any questions? If not, then feel free to get to your aircraft. We’ll start when everyone's in the air.”
Maaya loved the sky. She loved the feeling of freedom being above everything else gave, the solitary safety one had when alone in the cockpit, the thrill of high-g manoeuvres.
What she didn’t like was the uncertainty she felt right now. There were too many unknowns when facing Sensei, and unlike how she preferred her battles she couldn’t stack the deck in her favour.
What was his ability? How fast were his reflexes? His experience? Did Millennium do anything to upgrade the F-15 he was flying?
Questions, questions and more questions. The simple fact was that there had been no way to confirm anything, and hence they had to adapt and learn on the fly.
Alright. She could do that. The long-range strategy was practically made for it - use the capabilities of the radars on the Typhoon and Rafale and hit out as far as possible. Even in the Limited category where everything was standard, the long-range air-to-air missiles simulated would still work better for her and Kei because of their radars.
The issue was Gehenna. The last minute rule-change had apparently been submitted by Sensei - and agreed to by Gehenna.
If they shot down any of the wild Gehennans, it was an instant loss for their side.
He was playing dirty, and there was no way in hell little miss Hisako didn’t know that. Instead of any form of discussion, she agreed to it without consulting her and threw all of her usual plans out the window.
Probably so she could have her little tête-à-tête without any interruptions.
Without IFF set, any missiles launched had even odds of locking onto “friendly” aircraft when launched. So if they wanted to do their usual strategy, they had two options: try and coordinate with the Gehenna bunch or beat them to the punch.
Obviously, there was only one option.
“Kei. We’re gonna beat them to the target. Full afterburners, don’t let up.”
“Roger.”
“They’re going full afterburner.”
“Follow them, but don’t get too close.”
Hisako watched as the Trinity pilots flew off, afterburners blazing in the midday sky.
There was no way Fujita Maaya would be that careless, unless she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
Of course, that was if one believed the persona she put on. A carefully crafted mask that when Hisako looked dated back to her days in Trinity politics.
Hisako had seen the truth in their dogfight. Her style was craven, opportunistic, and aggressive to the end.
That was the very truth of the Trinity style of dogfighting. Utilising the intrinsic advantages their aircraft had, and taking minimal risk while going on the offense whenever they saw a weakness.
Very much like their leader, a politician who could have been part of the Tea Party if she had not left for the greater calling of the sky.
But that aggression was her weakness. Aggression made one take advantage of every weakness, real or imagined, and despite how Talisman obviously wanted them to pull a movie plot and make friends to defeat the big bad with the power of friendship, Hisako had no intentions of that.
Instead, she would let whatever trap he had trigger on the Trinity idiots and use that time to analyse his moves, so that when they wore him down they could go in and have the battle of her life.
Anxiety welled up as Maaya watched the Typhoon’s radar scan the skies.
She had faith in the AESA radar of the Typhoon, and in this terrain, the only place Sensei had to hide from radar would be the narrow ravine, a death sentence if one went inside.
That meant he would appear on radar at any moment.
He should even have already been on radar.
Yet he wasn’t.
The terrain was flat enough that the radar should have been able to pick up the F-15 Sensei was flying. It wasn’t a small aircraft, and with the two decoy drones the radar signature would be even larger, so where was it?
A small blip appeared on radar.
Before Maaya could even release the tension built up, it split into three.
Then six.
“What the hell?!”
“General, his decoys are on radar.”
“Good. Watch his actions.”
The Typhoon banked across the sky, finding an angle that would allow it and the Rafale to strike all six targets.
Six. A number that simply couldn’t have been.
Three was expected. The F-15 had two decoys after all. One of the expected ways she had formulated that Sensei would attack was to make them guess, using that to charge in - but six?! There weren’t missiles blended in, were there? Was he carrying additional drones they couldn’t see?
More importantly, which was real?
“Hard left!” That one could be brute forced at least. With their movement, they were now on an intercept course. A loop around and the contacts would be across their nose, and from there they would be behind-
“Maaya?”
“Did you see something?”
Kei’s voice came through hesitatingly, a stark contrast to her normal demeanour. “I think we should withdraw. Something seems off about this.”
“I agree” is what Maaya wanted to say, but her confidence was part of what gave them their edge. Admitting one was wrong shook and wavered that confidence, and they needed all the edges they could get.
Instead she brushed the concern off. “They could have been mother drones. We’ll use our usual tactics,” she said with confidence she didn’t feel. “We still have the range advantage and we will use it.”
Their formation flew over the ravine, and for a moment Maaya was distracted by the beauty of nature.
Kei was similarly awed. Trinity was large, but the terrain they used didn’t have any features that showed the beauty of nature in such a powerful way, mainly being over rolling farmland in gentle hills.
On a whim she rolled the Rafale, giving her a perfect aerial view of the ravine.
Rocks lined the bottom and sides, a small river running through the bed…
…and a gray dagger flew through it aimed right at her.
“BREAK BREAK BREAK!”
The call came through Maaya’s headset, and only through muscle reflex did she jerk her stick and fanned the rudder fast enough to avoid the silver aircraft that appeared in her peripheral vision as she did so.
“Was he in the ravine?!”
“Yeah! I’ve been hit, airframe down to 32%!”
The Limited ruleset meant that aircraft being hit wasn’t an instant kill, part of the gamification to ensure parity among schools, but missiles did only 50% damage.
Going at supersonic speed right out of a ravine, he had still managed to get guns on Kei.
She muttered a silent curse. The question of his reflexes was answered.
But the jury was still out on ability. She pointed the Typhoon's nose towards the F-15 flying away at full afterburners, waiting for the infra-red missiles to lock-on…
A beep. “Fox-2!”
Both flew out at the F-15, and right at that moment, the F-15 pulled hard to port, corkscrewing down with flares firing, afterburners out.
Kei’s voice crackled over the radio. “I’ve got him! Fox-2!”
In her mind's eye, Maaya could see the missile flying towards the F-15, trapped within the pincer of the missiles, about to be hit-
Then, against all the laws of reality, it pitched up, firing flares the whole way, faint wisps of fire blazing from the engines as it gained speed, while the missiles were drawn by the flares and went down.
A sound came over the intercom - missiles missed, try again.
This was going to be rough.
Since they refused to share IFF codes, for the purposes of the system the Trinity team was marked as neutral, so on radar they appeared yellow instead of the usual blue or red.
Watching on radar, Yuko could see the arrows representing the drones disappear - she knew they were the drones, because there was no chance that Talisman would allow himself to be shot down, and if he had lost it would have been announced through the radio by the moderators on the ground.
In between shootdowns, a yellow arrow representing a Trinity pilot would twist and turn, while a red arrow clearly showing Talisman would keep up, nearly overwhelming them before the other yellow arrow would leap in after taking out another drone to rescue their comrade.
As she watched, she thought about the way the General had been acting since this challenge was posited to her. There was no reason to accept it, no reason to take a silly challenge that would make them team up with a club that even outside of belonging to the school most opposed to Gehenna was one they had poor relations with?
Why? Why did she take it?
The General always had a proud streak - what did she see that made her think it was worth the conditions placed on them to accept?
And more to the point, if Trinity - who despite their shared animosity Yuko could admit was above average - was being toyed with like this, how do they defeat him?
Her thoughts clouded the skies as the red arrows disappeared, leaving only one to chase around the two yellows.
In the sky, the Typhoon danced around, never committing to a turn too long so as to keep as much speed as possible. The Rafale did the same, though to a trained eye, with less poise and grace.
Aircraft design is filled with tradeoffs. The delta design of the aircrafts meant that they had incredible turning prowess, however the sheer size of the wings meant that in exchange they lost far more speed in a turn.
The twin deltas were guided deftly, using the advantages they had to their fullest, but there was a real reason why the two of them usually picked off their enemies from afar.
In a dogfight, speed and manoeuvrability were king. The Typhoon, especially with the new engines, could make up for that loss in speed when turning but the Rafale at roughly the same weight had much weaker engines, meaning Kei had to husband her speed.
A weakness Talisman was more than willing to exploit.
“Kei! We need to split!”
Maaya pulled her Typhoon up, trying to get the F-15 to overshoot her and get her nose onto his tail so that he would have to pull his focus away from the struggling Rafale.
Losing sight as the nose went up and the F-15 that had been on her tail went by close enough that she could hear the engines roar past, she rolled the aircraft, her eyes getting visual on the F-15, sending the Typhoon into a full speed dive right towards it.
Her missiles started locking on, the helmet-mounted display telling her that she was just slightly too far away for the system to lock-on with her standard missiles.
She was in range for her long-range missiles.
“Fox-3, Fox-3.” Two away, hopefully giving Kei some breathing room.
The missiles flew out, and reacting directly to it the F-15 banked hard right as the Rafale banked left. Turning gently so as not to overshoot the F-15, Maaya watched as it pulled hard up, afterburners blazing.
As she followed suit, making sure it never left her line of sight, she already knew the missiles would miss.
What she didn’t expect was the F-15 cutting power, putting full airbrakes, and diving instantly past her.
“Oh for f-” She started evasive manoeuvres even before the radar warnings started sounding.
“General?” Yuko’s voice was unusually hesitant, meaning that she was about to raise a suggestion Hisako would most likely not agree with.
“Speak.”
“I believe that since they are having such issues with Talisman, we should take this opportunity to pounce while he is distracted.”
“In a dogfight, we might shoot down the Trinity fools.”
“Hence I suggest we share IFF codes.”
Fight.
Right now, they were merely forced into an alliance of convenience. A whim of an adult. To share the codes would be to symbolically admit that they would require assistance instead of being capable of defeating him themselves.
Win.
On the other hand, their skills were, despite what their tactics might have implied, in the upper echelon and they were quite obviously on the defensive. Plus, the movements he was making…
Uncertainty.
“Radio in to them. If they want our help, they will need to admit it.” Plus, they were probably busy.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Trinity. Are you there?”
The incessant noisemaking of the radar warning nearly drowned out the voice coming over the radio. Kei barely registered it as she drove the nose of the Rafale hard towards the ground to avoid the simulated missile coming at her.
“What-” she grunted as she pulled out of the extended dive “-do you-” she swung the nose hard to port “-need” she pulled around trying to regain contact.
“We can’t enter the melee without your IFF codes. Give them.”
“No- GAH!-” she spotted the dark grey F-15 on the tail of the Typhoon “-way!”
“Give it to them!”
She recognised that voice. If Maaya felt they needed it… Kei didn’t like it, but Maaya was the smart one.
“Fine!”
As the yellow arrows turned into blue ones, Hisako smiled.
“Let’s not keep them waiting. Full speed ahead.”
Glory was waiting.
In the control room back at the runway, the students listened to the comms with rapt attention.
From the MARG students handling their own runway and airspace, to the Trinity nun who accompanied Sensei, all were captivated by the action, and all knew.
Now, the main show was about to start.