Scramble

0937L, December 4th, 1765.
Sequoia AFB, Inyo, Northern Union.
Almost six years after Saigon.

Mal lived for scramble calls: the all-out sprint to the flight line, carbide claws biting into the concrete as it ran, watching its allies frantically dive out of the way as it shouted “SCRAMBLE!”, the preparation for becoming what it really was— it was born for it. Well, really it hadn’t been born for anything in particular; it didn't believe in destiny. But it was very good at this. Once it stepped into the cockpit, Mal became MALACHITE, and its body melded into a form more appropriate for the task. Mal might have walked and talked and held conversations, but MALACHITE was a weapon.

And what a beautiful weapon it was, too. It was an IS-64 Blacklight, its nation’s premier strategic interceptor. It was a sleek, flattened dart painted anti-laser black, with a pair of rotating-detonation combined-cycle engines in the rear. It didn’t have a cockpit window: it didn’t need one, and the design couldn’t accommodate one. It navigated on sensors and cameras alone, the deluge of information providing the stimulation needed to set its overactive mind at ease.

MALACHITE radioed thanks to its ground crew as they disconnected the fuel and cryocoolant hoses in preparation for takeoff. While it was capable of human speech, it didn’t feel appropriate. MALACHITE instead warbled its appreciation with a few pitched notification blips followed by the growl of a seeker tone: Stores full, combat ready. The ground crew knew what it meant. Blacklight pilots were all odd ducks, and their ground crews weren’t exactly normal either. They cleared the hangar in a hurry; its engine exhaust could crush bones with ease.

It felt the gentle kick as its engines came on, the blast waves circling around the aerospike cones faster than the eye could see, but not faster than its sensors could detect. It held thrust for final approval, sending an inquisitive beep and a digitized request for flight plan to the tower.

The response was quick. “MALACHITE, this is SERAPH PALISADE. You are cleared for takeoff. Initial bearing is 340, we’ve cleared your immediate airspace. Your handler will be CANOPY for this operation, transmitting mission package now.”

MALACHITE warbled a confident acknowledgement as the data streamed in, redlining its engines for takeoff. Its rotating detonation engines didn’t have afterburners, but they didn’t need them. Five gravities of acceleration rocketed the Blacklight out of the underground hangar and into the brisk winter air as MALACHITE read over its mission package. Allied AWACS under threat. Decisively engage enemy interceptor forces. Remainder of flight dedicated to controller tasking.

That means close combat, it thought. It would have bared its fangs if it had them. It liked close combat.

MALACHITE basked as the battlespace data began to flow in, the tingle of transponders meshing with the gentle caress of friendly radar sweeps. It only took a few minutes for it to get a good picture of the fighting today, accelerating and climbing the entire time. Its skin tingled with heat as it ripped through the air, leading edges glowing red-hot.

It reached altitude and sent a digital ping to the AWACS, its encrypted radio handshaking with the big flying wing. Good handlers knew how to manage a Blacklight, and it had worked with CANOPY before. It would not have to resort to something as crass as digitized speech with him.

“MALACHITE, CANOPY. Good to have you again. I’ve got a delightful buffet of air targets laid out for you, but your first course needs to be the H-1000’s headed towards us. I don’t need any new holes in my airframe today. Tagging now.”

MALACHITE vibrated with pleasure as CANOPY indicated their intended victims: a flight of three Indian-made H-1000 Garuda long-range interceptors. Garudas were the ODI’s equivalent of the Blacklight, but had entered service first, where they had done a terrible number on PDT air superiority. Unfortunately for them, the Blacklight had the advantage of being made second, allowing it to exploit two critical weaknesses in the Garuda’s design. The first was that their turbine-based combined-cycle engines couldn’t match the Blacklight’s rotating detonation design, and they couldn’t beat it for range, speed, or acceleration. The second, and more glaring, was that they were not like it. Their bodies would fail before their airframes did; they could not feel the air. Unlike them, its body was alloy; its eyes were an array of multispectral sensors. It was no matter that there was flesh inside there somewhere: the flesh was a component designed for this body. The enemy thought that Blacklights were a combination of remote-controlled and automated, but MALACHITE was neither. Had the Garuda pilots known what exactly it was, they would have been repulsed by it, at what they would call the defacing of the human form. Its allies had no such compunctions, which was why it was going three thousand meters a second in a body made from eighty-three tons of titanium-silver alloy and high-temperature ceramics.

Air defense commanders didn’t usually bother firing at Garudas if they knew a Blacklight was in the air, as the ground-based missiles that could hit them were neither cheap nor plentiful. Likewise, ODI air defenses wouldn't shoot at a Blacklight while they had Garudas up, though they might try microwaving it with one of their big ground-based arrays if it passed within range. That wouldn't be a concern today, and this fight would be purely between the four aircraft rocketing towards each other. MALACHITE dialed up a request for an orbital payload sled. I have two quarters, and I would like to play two songs. It didn't need any of the anti-air munitions in the 200-ton capsule, but it did need some proverbial bushes to hide in. Like it, Garudas had enormously powerful radars. Theirs were actually even more powerful than MALACHITE’s, but they couldn't focus quite as narrowly as it could. Somewhere far above it, a pair of JUKEBOX hypersonic glide vehicles began their deorbit burns.

The distance closed. They both knew that each other were here; there was no point to bother with stealth. The pair of HGVs nestled into position ahead of it, exactly where it wanted them. It transmitted a message in the clear: terrain warning, followed by IR seeker tone. Turn away, or you will die. It was ignored. Good. Then, to CANOPY: a digital notification of targets engaged. Things began to happen very quickly.

First, the jammers flicked on, each JUKEBOX pumping out megawatts of radar noise, directed straight at the oncoming fighters. Their batteries wouldn't last more than a minute at this output level, but they didn't need to. With a closing velocity close to Mach 20, the engagement would be over in seconds. The immediate radar picture disappeared in a hash of static. It cleared momentarily as the fratricidal jamming was filtered out, then went fuzzy again as the flight of Garudas began their own. But I can still see you. MALACHITE felt the kiss of the laser link in its back, the real-time feed of overhead IR tracking data providing it with a second sight. It opened its weapon bay, loosing a trio of telephone-pole-sized hypersonic anti-air missiles. While Garudas and Blacklights both carried laser interception systems, the combination of effective range and time-on-target needed to down a hypersonic missile made lasers useless against them. Instead, they would intercept MALACHITE’s missiles with their own counter-missiles, then nip and peck it to death once it had expended its ammunition. They knew enough to avoid a dogfight with it, where its tolerance for extreme sustained G-forces and higher acceleration would make victory tenuous, even in a three-on-one.

MALACHITE knew that, of course. It didn’t want to dogfight either: it knew it could kill them in a single pass. It waited a fraction of a second, then angled its nose up and fired a trio of guided rounds from its integrated railgun, putting them just ahead of its own missiles. It had no IR launch signature to detect, and the small maneuvering projectiles would be lost in the JUKEBOX jamming until their job was complete. They didn’t have enough range or delta-V to hit enemy aircraft at these speeds outside of point-blank range, but they didn’t need to. It felt the adrenaline rush of its warning receiver as the overhead IR link picked up the Garudas’ own air-to-air missile launches. Presumably, they had picked up its own missiles, and decided to use their own long-range ones to counter, keeping it at arm’s length. Those missiles are bit closer than you expected, aren’t they? Odie hadn’t updated his burn-through algorithms for months. Reportedly, they were having a hard time countering the newest PDT jamming patterns.

While the shots from its railgun had radar proximity fuses, they were far too weak and stupid to burn through the Garudas’ ECM. Fortunately, they had backup command guidance. MALACHITE reached out, guiding them to swipe away the incoming missiles. The rounds disintegrated into a spray of tungsten needles. At the speeds involved, the tiniest physical contact was enough to destabilize and destroy a missile, and MALACHITE felt the exhilaration of nipping at fleeing prey as the air was cleared for its own ordnance.

To their credit, the Garudas’ autonomous systems realized what was happening the second their missiles exploded, immediately firing short-range counter-missiles. Their pilots took another second to respond, switching to active radar scanning and volleying additional air-to-air missiles. Too slow. MALACHITE finally switched to active emissions, lashing out with its own radar emitters. Razor-thin beams of microwave energy cooked the counter-missiles’ electronics before they could accelerate. The bigger missiles were shielded to withstand a weaponized radar beam long enough for it to not matter, but counter-missiles were not. It got four of the six, with the remaining two killing two of its three missiles. Acceptable. It lit up the lead plane with all the target designation power it had as the last missile shrieked towards the trio of Garudas, closing the remaining three kilometers in under half a second. Impact. An H-1000 evaporated into a supersonic fireball of fuel and munitions as the missile hit the aircraft dead-on.

MALACHITE was theoretically incapable of feeling sexual pleasure in its current form, as its biological component currently lacked the proper nerve endings for it. It disagreed with that theory, and had creatively rewired its own neurons to provide a counterexample. Had it been human, splashing a target would have made it shake with so much pleasure that it would have made a crater on the side of the nearest mountain. Its body didn’t have to worry about that, but the sensation was no less profound. It seized the remaining two aircraft with target designation beams, dancing closer in a brutal 20G spiral as they tried to bring their own guns to bear on it. It swatted aside two of the just-launched anti-air missiles with its railgun, then waited until the last possible second to fire its own counter-missiles, minimizing the time the enemy radars had to microwave them. Five launches, five intercepts.

It could have fired its own missiles then and there. The two remaining Garudas were too close for reliable counter-fire, and they had already wasted too many interceptors. But it knew that the three remaining hypervelocity missiles in its weapon bay were in short supply. A missile saved now was a missile it could use later when the outcome was less certain. It turned, crossing its targets’ predicted path, and fired two more rounds from its railgun. MALACHITE’s railgun would burn out its barrel in twenty-five shots, but that was fine. It only carried twenty-four rounds anyway. The Garudas lacked railguns, instead using twin sets of superimposed ETC hypervelocity flechette guns. They could fire their two thousand rounds of ammunition in a tenth of a second, a capability that had shredded dozens, if not hundreds of PDT airframes, but Garudas were no longer the rulers of the sky.

At this range, the rounds were visible to their warning systems, even through the megawatts of jamming. There was little they could do to evade. Both pilots reacted admirably, but victory had escaped them long ago. The first switched his aircraft to automatic control and ejected, hoping that the computer would be able to maneuver the aircraft at higher Gs to evade and then bring its guns to bear on MALACHITE. The second launched his final missile, aiming to intercept the railgun round with it and go for a gun kill.

The first Garuda was too slow. It disintegrated, hundreds of tungsten needles shredding its delicate skin before the computer could pitch it onto target. MALACHITE didn’t care to look for the chute. The second pilot suffered a similar fate: the missile had just left his weapons bay when its railgun round hit, peppering both aircraft and missile with hypersonic metallic rain.

It pinged CANOPY, broadcasting an ecstatic, shivering wail as it shot past the falling wreckage. Task complete. Request further duties.

“MALACHITE, CANOPY. Confirming three Garudas splashed. Good kills. I have some helicopters for you, and then some naval fighters if you’ve still got fuel.”

Adams cursed. Their air support had vanished when those damned Garudas showed up, and Odie was trying to make the most of it, bringing their heavy gunships out to play. It would have been less of a problem if his brigade hadn’t been in the middle of making a push for the port, but as it was, their mobile AD had gotten picked off first, and the rest of them were trying to cover in the outlying tower blocks. He’d put in for air support with division, but it sounded like the battlespace was fucked right now.

His radio pinged, and he felt a glimmer of hope. “IRONSIDE ACTUAL. Give me good news.”

“IRONSIDE, this is CANOPY. You have air support inbound, ETA one mike. Keep those choppers tagged for me.”

“…uh, roger, CANOPY.” Colonel Adams was not an FO, but he assumed that whoever CANOPY was would appreciate brevity. He shouted across the room at Sergeant Major McMasterson, “Mick! Get our folks to keep cameras pointed at those fucking things! Air support’s on the way, one mike!” Mick leapt into action, shouting directions into the the radio.

The seconds ticked by. He peeked out of a window, trusting the glass to block the circling helicopters’ IR cameras. Adams saw the effects before he heard the sound. A pair of gunships erupted in a spray of dust and fragments before falling like their strings were cut. The source came into view a second later: a sleek black dart, ripping through the air above him. Seconds later, the shockwave hit, rattling the concrete like a garden shed in a thunderstorm. The dart suddenly entered a flat spin, firing three more times as it did a full rotation, then accelerated off into the morning sky. The entire process took less than five seconds.

What the fuck kind of engines does that thing have?

Adams realized belatedly that the spin had been to hit the gunships positioned behind tower blocks from its angle of approach.

“Hel,” whistled Mick.

“Yeah,” was all he could muster in response.

The radio buzzed. “IRONSIDE, your airspace should be clear. That asset will be moving on, but don’t be a stranger.”

Adams clicked on his radio. Always pays to be grateful. “CANOPY, you’ve got one hell of a pilot in that thing. Tell them I owe them all the beers I can buy.”

There was a brief pause. “The pilot’s MALACHITE, IRONSIDE. And if you’re ever at Sequoia, I’ve been told that it likes sours.”

“MALACHITE, CANOPY. Confirming five helos splashed. That’s one ace-in-a-day, care to try for another?”

It transmitted its fuel level and an IR seeker growl in response. More.