Furball

0210L, January 2nd, 1760
240km northwest of Kota Kinbalu, Borneo, Indonesia.
Six hours after Saigon.

“ACAAF formation, you are directed to break off your approach immediately. Please acknowledge. Over.” Her radio produced nothing but static in reply.

She switched to Mandarin. “ACAAF formation, this is Major Saragi, Indonesian Air Force. Break off your approach immediately. Don't make this a war. Over.” Still static.

“ACAAF formation, please respond. You are directed to—”

A voice cut in with Mandarin, failing to replicate that cool and collected tone that so many PDT aviators prided themselves over, “In light of the disaster, ODI has established jurisdiction over this airspace. You are ordered to eject your stores and return to your airfield.”

Her MN-44-U1 Talon’s AN/AYQ-5 ELINT system gave a quiet blip, pointing out the speaker on the radar. Her ICAN overlay updated to identify the speaker as a Captain Dai Guanting. She blinked, surprised that ICAN could pull a voice ID. Maybe he's a streamer or something.

“Captain Dai, believe me when I tell you, Saigon wasn't us. Please break off. We don't want a war,” she said, trying not to let desperation creep into her voice.

The radio replied with silence. She stared at the blips on her display, inching closer to the intercept line.

“ACAAF pilot, you have thirty seconds to respond. You are entering restricted airspace. Break off your approach or we will fire. Over.” Come on, just turn away, she thought, trying to beam her wishes through the gold-tinted canopy and into her counterpart's brain.

The unencrypted radio squealed as jamming flooded the airwaves. The ELINT system again pointed out the source: the opposing AWACS formation, a pair of Indian-made DRD-N1A7s. More helpfully, it provided a burn-through time: eighteen seconds. Power for days, but it’s hard to beat a laser link to Dara C3.

She watched the timer tick down and switched over to the squadron link as soon as the jamming cleared, “All, get ready to rumble. We’re launching as soon as they do. Fighters first, we’ll try for the AWACS once the air cover’s gone.” A chorus of acknowledgements answered her.

Her warning system gave a short bleat that quickly changed to a panicked alarm as the androgynous ICAN voice spoke up with perfect calm. "Missile launch, forward, high. Intercept, radar."

She called into her radio, "Hostile launch! Weapons free, lob 'em!" Twenty-four diamond-winged Talons emptied their external stores, lofting forty-eight MAALR-2Q missiles forward into the sky. Their rocket engines burned brightly for three-point-eight seconds before their ramjet stages kicked on. A complicated dance of signals coordinated targeting parameters, dividing the squadron’s missiles as evenly as possible over the thirty-two triangles on her HUD.

Major Saragi flicked on her radar's countermeasure mode as the dots crept closer to each other. ICAN informed her again, "Missile launch, multiple, forward, high. One two eight incoming. Intercept, radar." She whistled.

“Alright folks, burn 'em down.” Her Talon's radar lashed out with two hundred kilowatts of radio energy focused into a pencil-thin beam, lancing an incoming missile through the sensitive seeker head. The incoming counter ticked down by one, then two, then twenty as her wingmates' radars burned out their targets. That should make it, she thought, but it's a bit close for comfort. The seconds ticked by, and another twenty-two missiles tumbled out of the sky. Eighty-three to go.

The two formations were locked into their fates now. Both Autarchy J-101K “Florists” and Union MN-44 Talons were stealthiest from the front. If the Florists turned, they’d expose their bigger RCS and bright engine plumes to her squadron’s multimode seekers, all but guaranteeing a hit. And if she turned more than 60 degrees away, the 200kW AN/APQ-58 radar in the Talon’s nose wouldn’t be able to angle its beam to intercept the incoming horde of missiles.

The IR photoreceptors in her slitted eyes noticed the bright lances of laser light flickering from the pair of AWACS orbiting in the far distance. Her radio spoke a fraction of a second before she could key up, “Bones? Laser alarm, that changes things. Flares aren’t gonna work.”

“Yeah, I can see IR just as well as you can, Meatball.” Captain Emory "Meatball" Alu was her XO. They’d first met in the flight academy, and they’d been flying together for nearly a decade. Meatball had gotten his name from his body shape: he was simultaneously the shortest and fattest man she’d ever met in the military. When the Air Force switched over to wearing SIBs instead of natural bodies back in ‘57, he’d insisted on using his original one for flying, on the grounds that he could take more Gs. Nobody had believed him, until they’d put the short round man inside a centrifuge.

Of course, that was three years ago. They were wearing HP-F Navigators today, and Emory had stopped complaining about not matching his callsign when he started being able to pull 10G turns without a suit.

“Yeah, yeah. We’re gonna have to knife-fight real fast.”

“Yup.”

Their salvo of MAALRs entered response range of the Autarchy Florists, which opened up with a barrage of lightweight counter-missiles. J-101’s might not have had “real” stealth or internal weapons bays, but they had a lot more payload capacity than her Talons. The Autarchy of China Army Air Force was old, but it wasn’t stupid. They’d realized that flares and chaff wouldn’t cut it against imaging seekers, and made up the difference in interception tech by putting a half-dozen all-aspect interceptors on their bigger airframes. They weren’t as reliable as the laser-like beams of radio energy that PDT sub-diameter active electronically-scanned arrays could produce, but quantity was a quality all of its own.

Seventeen incoming. Sixty clicks. “All, prep for merge. They’ve got serious laser designation, so hold missiles for counterfire. Pick your targets and try not to die.” She tapped the selector button. Alright, Captain Dai, let’s dance.

Twenty-four Talons screamed into thirty-two Florists. Her laser warning light blinked on. The last incoming missile lost control and tumbled towards the sea. Twenty kilometers. The IR seeker tone growled in her ears, and she thumbed the weapons release button.

The weapons bay door flicked open, ejecting three of her six MAASR-4D short-range missiles, each targeting a different J-101K. Seconds later, her warning system screamed with launch alerts. The Autarchy’s heaters traded a slightly shorter range for a slightly smaller missile, theoretically so that they could carry more for the same weight. It sure felt like they had more. She stopped counting the incoming markers after the fourth one, flicked the active countermeasures switch, and slammed the stick forwards.

Bones made a mental note to send a thank-you to the BPD department responsible for designing her current body. The HP-F handled the negative Gs without even breaking a sweat. The interface, on the other hand, did not. It hadn’t been reprogrammed for their new G tolerances, and it added a new panicked noise to the cacophony of sounds filling the cockpit as she pulled an inverted split-S. Her radar automatically lashed out at one of the incoming missiles before she pitched out of its arc, microwaving the delicate imaging IR seeker. The pair of dispensers on the back of the Talon spat out a slew of T-flares, ghostly images of her plane flickering behind her as they burned. Two of the heaters took the bait, and another pair wavered long enough that she got out of their kill envelope. A last-minute MAASR-4D launch intercepted a sixth.

As she pulled up, a flickering beam of laser light danced through the cockpit as her laser alarm warbled. They must have picked me out from the radio. Shit. She threw the plane into into a spin, the white-hot point rolling over her thighs and hands as the plane turned. The polymer flight suit bubbled and smoked where the laser touched it, but her skin remained unharmed— a gift from her other half, just like her eyes. Damn, that has some serious power behind it.

The IR seeker tone growled, and she touched off her last two missiles without even looking at the target. Her warning system hadn’t stopped screaming since the two squadrons had merged, and she’d been spitting out flares every few seconds. But now the finger of god was pointed at her: a 50kW designation laser had marked her as the target, and there wasn’t a flare on the planet strong enough to overwhelm the glowing dot that painted the Talon’s skin.

It only took a few seconds for a missile to finally find her. A K-45 detonated six meters below and to her left, peppering her Talon with shrapnel. She lost rudder control instantly, and the engine ground like someone had poured a bag of ball bearings into it, a storm of shattered turbine blades shredding the back half of her airframe.

"Bones, all. I'm hit, bailing." Her vision went dim for a half-second as the chair blew her free of her plane, the rocket ejector straining even her HP-F with its aggressive acceleration profile. Her radio cut out as the system automatically zeroized the Talon’s encryption keys, and she spent the next two minutes hanging from her chute in agonizing silence as the remaining planes spiraled together. The last Florist spiraled out, one engine flaming, and the remaining Talons went to full burner, sprinting after the pair of AWACS in the distance.

After what felt like an eternity, her radio regenerated its keys and allowed her to speak again. “How’d we make out?”

"We’re down five, they’re down everything, AWACS are running for it now,” replied Meatball’s dulcet tones, “chutes from all of our folks, at least. You in one piece over there?”

She gave herself a cursory once-over, noticing a wetness around her abdomen. Her hand came away bloody. She abruptly realized that the reason she had lost rudder control was because she had lost control of her legs. "That's a negative, I think my spine's gone, but nothing seven beers and killing myself won't fix. Who else went down?”

Meatball almost-laughed, clearly relieved to hear her voice. “We lost you, Cable, Widow, Tuna, and Firefly. Bunch of folks with holes too, but we’ll all make it back to Kota. Rescue chopper will met you all halfway.”

“Roger. Ask command if they want me to pull some of those ACAAF guys out of the water on my way back." She started working on unstrapping herself from the ejection seat, silently grateful that it was hard to feel excruciating pain if the nerves feeling it didn't connect to anything.

"Command says to grab whoever looks cooperative. Best vector is southeast, shouldn’t be too far. The old man also says you owe him a new plane."

"Tell him that there's plenty he can pick out of the water himself.”

“Will do. Also, congrats, you’ve got three kills now.”

“Well hot damn, good for me. I’m ditching, I need to get out of this body before it remembers that it’s supposed to feel pain."

"Roger. Good luck."

“Bones out,” she tossed her helmet and threw herself off the ejection seat, shifting as she fell. Her ruined body swirled and twisted, expanding and coalescing into nineteen hundred kilos of muscle, scale, and wings. Now that feels better. Let's see, which of these parachutes looks important...

Major Saragi was pissed. The flight back had been rough, to put it mildly. The first pilot she’d tried to pull out of the water had nearly killed her with a massive cannon of a pistol, and they’d stopped trying to grab prisoners after that. As it was, his shot had shredded her chest muscles, oxygen bladder, and lungs, and she’d almost died for the second time that day. She was down to just one body, her original human one, and it was naked. She hadn’t thought to put on clothes for two bodies when they’d been scrambled.

“Hey, at least you have a body left that we can carry. Could have been stuck swimming home.” vibrated Cable, leisurely beating his wings.

“Cable, I love you, but you’re a fucking lousy horse. I’m chafing something fierce back here.” Cable had gotten his callsign the second time he’d flown into a power line. Fortunately for him, he had some Stormwing ancestry, so the result had been embarrassing instead of lethal. He was also the easiest of the remaining four to ride, with a longer, smooth neck instead of spines or frills.

“Oh, you poor damsel in distress.”

“When we get back I’m loading up on bodies, I’m not gonna deal with this shit again.”

“Like, full spread? Think the old man will give you the time slots for that?”

“We don’t need his sign-off for cluster time for five or six. Dunno what I’d do with seven, honestly.”

“What do you want to get? You only had three, right?”

“Well. I need to replace my HP-F, and I’m keeping my originals, so that’s three. Um. Something engineered for number four, probably real high-performance flight and some nasty fire.”

“What, like a Voidripper?”

“Nah, ‘rippers are overrated. ‘Plasma beam’ sounds intimidating until you realize it’s just a big welding torch, not a real weapon. And nobody uses them for the vacuum capability, they just like LARPing as astronauts. Well, they fly pretty well, from what I’ve heard, but that’s expected for anything with that wing layout.”

“Could always just go Fury or Wooly for the fire, those are pretty hard to beat.”

“Yeah, but everyone gets Furies, that’s too mainstream. Wooly is a good idea, though I’m not a fan of the fur. Hmm. Some sort of custom hybrid of Wooly, Goldback, and Razortail, maybe? Keep the Wooly’s fire and wing layout, juice up the size and musculature with the Goldback, Razortail for, y'know, the tail.”

“You know how to make one of those?”

“Absolutely not. But I get a paycheck, and I've heard rumors that currency can be exchanged for goods and services.”

Cable laughed, which came out more like a rumbling chuff than a human laugh.

“Anyway, for the fifth, something aquatic. Cuttlewing, probably, those are pretty. I’m sure there’s a nice variant schema for one.”

“Oh, actually, I know about one. Had a buddy testing it for the Marines, but they ended up ditching the pattern in favor of Snapscales. Mostly Cuttlewing, so you keep the chromatophores and paddle-tail, but with some Islander for endurance and the acid. Not sure about flame, though. I think they wanted to do thermite or some sort of gelid acetylene, but no clue what happened with that.”

“They ditched that in favor of a shitty Shatterscale with wings?”

“Yeah, it was unarmored, that was the dealbreaker. That and there were some concerns about the legality of spitting acid in combat.”

“Fucking Shatterscales,” she mused as Cable flew onward, “they design one decent combat form and now everything else has to be a variant of the same thing.”

“I mean, did you enjoy getting shot?”

“No, no. Definitely not. I get the reasoning, I just miss the days when everyone was their own thing. I mean, folks still are, but only off duty these days. Used to be you'd see a whole company lined up with as many different species and colors as they had people. Now they're all wearing Shatterscales and SIBs.”

“Well, you can always just use paint. Supposedly the Army's gonna start requiring camo paint soon instead of just suggesting it.”

“Seriously?” She raised her eyebrow, “they’re going to paint over all that glittery carbide?”

“First it’s that they all look the same, now it’s that they’re painting them. Bones, make up your mind.”

“Well, I never said they weren’t pretty, I just think they’re boring.”

“I think their primary concern is not getting shot.”

She pounded Cable's scaled back with a fist in mock melodrama, “Alas, another aesthetic sacrificed on the altar of efficiency!”

“Cry me a river, Major.”

They had been flying for a little over an hour when the first cruise missiles shot by them. First a trio, then a dozen, then they lost count.

“Holy shit.”

“Guess it’s on for real, then,” thrummed Widow.

“Think we’re still getting that rescue flight?” asked Cable.

“I’d be more worried about there not being any planes left for us when we get back,” the black-and-red dragon replied.

Bones fiddled with the handheld radio some more, finally getting what sounded like a voice through the hash of jamming. “Hey, wait, I’ve got something here, get some altitude.”

“Scratch that, I can see them.” Cable nosed towards a speck on the horizon.

The dance of getting aboard a helicopter over the ocean was tricky. Dragons couldn’t fly under the rotor wash, so they splashed down in the ocean and shifted back to human, letting the air crew haul them up onto the deck. They were handed towels and headsets, and strapped down in their seats. The heavy-lift chopper was designed for carrying injured dragons, leaving the interior mostly empty with them all in human form.

Bones had a sudden realization and almost threw up. I don’t have wings anymore. “Uh, I think I just got a fear of flying. Or an anxiety attack. Or something.”

The medic spoke up over the intercom, “Yeah, that’s pretty normal if you lose a body like that. We’re about an hour out, we can get you fixed up when we get back, too much steel to do that here. I can give you a shitload of Valium if you think you’re gonna lose it, but Odie’s about to bomb the shit outta Kota, so I’d recommend you just white-knuckle it. Trust me, you’ll be fine, it’ll go away once you get ‘em back.”

Bones followed his advice.