Chapter Text
"Be careful out there, Raptor isn't like the previous ones. He'll be your first opponent in this tournament that stands a chance against Juggernaut in a gunfight."
The voice belonged to Lauren, a spunky, brown-haired girl a little over a year older than me. She'd been my partner in crime for as long as I can think back and was currently doing the final maintenance on Juggernaut before the race. But most crucially, she was right. All the previous matches have been straightforward: If I make the sound barrier, I won. Lightning, Hexa and Albion had all simply been fast with little weapons or armor; but Raptor was a whole different beast.
Noticing my probably quite apparent nervousness, Lauren leaned into the cockpit and placed her hand on my shoulder. She said a few brief words; undoubtedly uplifting in nature, but I could not recount any one of them even a second later, as I was too busy keeping myself from getting lost in those dark green eyes of hers. Judging by the warm smile on her face, that was the intention, too.
As Lauren climbed back outside to check the bolts mounting the takeoff rockets, I press down the little comm switch on my pressure suit. Not because I have anything to say to her, but because it lowers the noise threshold of our radios, and listening to her humming does a great deal to calm my nerves.
In many ways, the upcoming match was a crucial point for our team. Promising newcomers from regional qualifiers were a dime a dozen, countless of them popping up every year, but few ever made it beyond their regionals. This, however, were the qualifiers for the national championship. If we win this match, we're in.
If.
Our opponent for this match was a blessing and a curse at the same time. Raptor has competed in international events before, and done quite well in them; this would not be an easy race. But if we... if I can pull this off out there in the air, Juggernaut will no longer be the heavyweight oddball, it will be the machine that went toe to toe with and defeated a champion.
I decided to say something over the comms after all, despite knowing the answer already.
"Lauren, do you really think we need the additional intake armor? Raptor isn't exactly slow, I feel a bit uneasy lugging that additional weight with me and throttling the airflow on top. I worry about the two seconds."
Lauren's voice over the radio was smooth and melodious, clearly knowing that I didn't actually want to remove the covers as much as being reassured that we made the right choice. "You know Raptor's preferred loadout as well as I do. Without those covers, he's gonna shred your fan blades with buckshot canisters before you'll even make it to Mach 1. I've quadruple-checked the math, between the kickstart and the takeoff rockets, Juggernaut has enough thrust to comfortably make that two second tolerance until you need to have broken sound, even when Raptor is flying with bare minimum equipment.”
Her face appeared in the hatch in front of me again, giving me a reassuring smile. "Bolts are all secure, Juggernaut is in peak shape. You got this, Soph."
With those words, she closes the hatch and the monitors around me zap to life. I put on my helmet, wait for her to get down to ground level and give me the thumbs up, before lifting Juggernaut's heavy body on its legs and making my way to the launch pad.
"And there comes our second contestant!" The voice of the announcer that had previously only been a faint noise among many was now being picked up in crisp detail. "At just shy of ten tons, this dark brown behemoth in front of you might appear to be far too heavy to stand a chance against the ever-fierce predator of the skies, but as we have seen with its swift defeat of Albion, those linear cannons are not to be taken lightly! A grand applause for the up and coming fortress - Juggernaut!"
I smile to myself thinking about how with each race, the announcer's introduction contained more and more praise, when a comm request interrupts my thoughts. The other side is a gravely, but not unpleasant male voice.
"I've been looking forward to this match. Fair skies, Juggernaut; may the better win."
I muster up all my confidence to reply in a calm tone of voice. "Fair skies, Raptor. May the better win indeed."
I looked over the control panels one final time. Battery is at 97%, fuel tanks are full, all instruments show the right values for ground level, no errors in the system logs. Lauren did a mighty fine job getting Juggernaut up to shape.
With a loud clank resonating through its body, the catapult sled locks on to Juggernaut's legs.
"Participants! Start yooouuuur engines!"
No turning back now. I place my finger on the ignition switch, and with my other hand push forward the thrust handle.
Juggernaut's body rocks forwards, but the clamps hold. I hastily close my helmet visor and attach the oxygen; at the kind of speed I'll be going in a few seconds, I'll need it.
"Liftoff in"
I put my left hand on the attitude control, right hand on the thrust handle and my feet on the rudder pedals.
"Three!"
I clench my fingers around the controls.
"Two!"
Thumb on the release switch
"One!"
The moment of truth.
"Liftoff!"
Click.
With a harsh snap, Juggernaut shoots forward, and a split second after leaving ground, the rocket thrusters kick in. Raptor pulls ahead of me, quickly increasing the distance, but all well within predicted ranges. I look away from the main monitor to catch a glimpse at the instruments; engines are running at full power, 617km/h airspeed and increasing, two seconds until jettisoning external thrusters.
Raptor begins to enter a wide right-hand loop around the first marker tower; far wider than I am turning, but Raptor will enter supersonic before I do.
The rockets eject just as a vapor cone begins to form around Raptor. 974km/h airspeed. Now is make or break. I press down the switch on the side of the thruster handle to harness the two seconds of afterburner that the rules allow; the same two seconds I have to catch up to also break sound. Not a moment too early, as Raptor's sonic boom overlaps with my own, and both of our machines arc around the narrow red and white building that is the first checkpoint.
It's all weapons free now, anything goes to force the opponent back below Mach 1. Raptor accelerates away from me, dumping some three or four charges of its infamous turbine-shredding pellets in the air in front of me, but this is where Juggernaut's slower speed comes in handy; by the time I reach them, the canisters are well below the suction zone of my main engines, and the leg thruster intake shields are doing an admirable job of keeping shrapnel away.
I lock the turbine handle into place and move my right hand up to the second control stick.
From the backpack unit, a pair of thin tubes extend forwards, and two overlapping, jittering crosshairs appear on my main screen. No guided weapons, computer-assisted lockon or timed fuses allowed, all manual aiming.
My first two shots whizz past their target without even forcing Raptor to take evasive action that could slow him down. I remind myself to concentrate, and try again.
This time, it works. Right as Raptor begins to enter the lefthand turn around the second marker, one of my rounds impacts his stabilizers and causes a noticeable sway, before the grey machine catches itself again; the return fire is obstructed by the marker tower itself. So far, all according to plan.
We take a cheeky pot shot at each other as Raptor arcs around the other side of the tower, but neither of us have an angle to pose any real threat.
The next couple of seconds were uncharacteristically calm for a supersonic duel. Raptor was outside the range where my guns had a real chance of hitting, and I didn't have ammo to waste in case the next attack failed.
I looked down at my instruments again; Mach 1.6, 156 seconds of fuel, 7 rounds in each magazine, no damage to systems. This was just about the ideal situation we had pictured in advance.
In the distance, Raptor made it past the zenith of his turn and was heading back towards me. This is the moment our entire plan hinged on.
Still kilometers away, but now almost face to face, I train both cannons on the narrow silhouette approaching me. It's an awkward angle to shoot at, but such is how it is for intercept maneuvers on 8-shaped tracks. Raptor correctly predicts my first salvo and ducks low; not ideal that I missed, but it puts me at an advantage against his forward-facing weapon systems, which are all mounted underneath the wingline.
Another two shots out, another two shots dodged. This time, I'm within his firing range, but the small-caliber machineguns ineffectively bounce off Juggernaut's armor. The real problem comes now, on close approach.
I fire two barrels of shotgun blasts in quick succession to destroy the incoming unguided rocket; Raptor itself is still too far out of range to do damage to his turbines with that. One more salvo, five shots left in each.
One of my bullets finds its target and rips off Raptor's remaining stabilizer. Unfortunately, Raptor uses the upward jerk to bring himself above me and, on near approach, fire his remaining missiles down into Juggernaut.
I panic-fire the shotgun barrels and get the missiles themselves, but the cloud of shrapnel gets sucked into the main thrusters.
Alarms blare, my right main engine is blown out, the left engine throttles to prevent a flat spin and secondary turbines roar into overdrive to stabilize Juggernaut's flight path. I have mere seconds until I drop into subsonic speed; it's all or nothing now.
In a daring, if not idiotic maneuver, I kill all engines.
Using the still-existing airflow to steer, I swing around Juggernaut by almost 180° and fire off my remaining shots at the rear silhouette of Raptor. The last thing I see on my monitor before pulling the emergency parachute handle is a blaze of sparks and fire as one of the ten shots I fired strikes the unguarded rear of Raptor's turbines.
The landing was distinctly less than graceful, and Juggernaut's systems didn't take kindly to it.
It took me a moment to overcome my dizziness and check the analogue dials; no fuel leaks, no immediate fires, hydraulic pressure still good. I reached under my seat to pull the backup lever, and with an unpleasant shrieking noise, the cockpit hatch opened.
I turned around to take a look at Juggernaut before walking away to the nearest high point; planted in a blooming field of grass and flowers on a sunny day, its blocky armor bearing the marks of battle and the path it carved into the ground behind it, it looked almost poetic, like something you'd see in an old storybook.
I took off my helmet and sat down on the grass. It wouldn't be long until the emergency helicopter was here.
The second the bay doors opened, Lauren ran out and threw herself at my side, wrapping her arms around my neck. She was just barely holding herself together.
"Sophia! I was so worried when we couldn't reach you!"
It only now dawned on me that obviously, noone else knew that I wasn't hurt. I did my best to calm her down somewhat.
"Sorry, the radio didn't like the landing. Probably broke the antenna or something."
Another delayed realization set in. "Lauren, how is Raptor's pilot?"
The answer came not from Lauren, but from one of the paramedics next to her. "He's fine, the other heli has already picked him up. Wants us to congratulate you on the match, he sounded very impressed with you. But now, Miss, I'll need to interrupt this reunion, we still need to get you to the ER. You had a very rough landing there, any number of things that could have broken that aren't immediately obvious."
Lauren held my hand the entire flight to the hospital while the doctors were busy doing all manner of scans on me, thankfully all without signs of major injury.
"Oh, Soph, right. I completely forgot amidst all the excitement. You won."
That sentence took a moment to set in.
"Wait hold on. How? I was hit first. I still remember seeing my thrust dropping way below stalling even."
Lauren replied with a warm smile and a giggle. "Of course you were, silly. But Juggernaut is more than twice as heavy as Raptor. Lots of inertia to keep you going just a bit longer while you obliterated his engines."
I only began to grasp the full reality when tears of joy began to well up in Lauren's eyes.
"We did it, Soph. We're in the big game now." Her voice was calm and level, almost dazed, like she didn't quite believe it herself yet. "You didn't only force a champ out of mach speed, you shot him down outright. That's a huge deal, people have already tried to grab me for interviews on the way here. Juggernaut will be on global news by the end of today."
Now, I finally understood what this meant for us.
"...and we'll be in the national championship. I couldn't have done this without you. ...say, once I get out, fancy barbecue under the stars, like in the old days?"
Lauren nodded. "You bet! We're gonna be out in that field a long while anyways to get Juggernaut up and running again. I'll bring the big sleeping bag, if we fold up the armrest that seat should still be enough to fit both of us."