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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 11:38:54 GMT -5
Due to their tendency to pick each other as wingmen, Daryush and Pepper were paired together for today's exercise. And they were second in line for the fight. And he knew this was going to be different than usual. Bateman and Brenda had been honing their linked skill for a while now. The first time this sort of exercise was done, it was easy pickings for almost everyone, even Daryush. Now they had trained for a while.
And there was the problem that no one had faced a human in battle before. Some were cocky, figuring that a human with none of the instincts of a jet would have any chance. Daryush was more careful.
"How do you want to do this?" He asked Pepper on a private frequency.
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 12:41:16 GMT -5
"In their current state, it'll be more like "How can we add a few seconds more to our lives?" Pepper answered. "The last time, they managed to paste Hammer a good one and he grumbled, but didn't say na'more about it. Let me take the upper since I got enough ceiling to get a good dive in."
Seeing the two part and Pepper climbing, Bateman checked alternate views on his helmet display and the HUD simulation ahead of him. He made several light taps on the right pedal, asking Brenda to delay reaction on the next set of instructions until their opponents made their sally. "Got that?"
"Got it." The combination of taps, pulls and occasional spoken words had become almost a private language between man and mechanian. He then entered a sequence of throttle and flap movements, and more pedal input, using them to silently communicate a complex set of maneuvers in an IF-SO-THEN-THIS fashion. He decided the movements and the order, but would leave the degrees of movement up to Brenda. It hadn't taken long for the pressure cues and their levels of intensity to acquire double or even multiple meanings in the interaction between well-matched minds. That was one thing that not even the most advanced UAV could do, and, as it would soon become apparent, the best of CV jets operating alone would be hard-pressed to match.
The team's eyes, as one, settled on Daryush, noting the degree to which he made the most of his relatively limited performance envelope. By no means were they taking him for granted, since it would be all too possible to overshoot him and leave themselves vulnerable from behind. Suddenly, Brenda opened with the low yo-yo maneuver that her group captain had specified, but with a speed and altitude of her choosing. Bateman took over some of the weapons systems and kept an eye on Pepper, who had finally made the commitment to dive. He had an intuition, based on her past performance, that she might try a scissoring ploy and wanted to be ready for it.
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 13:03:26 GMT -5
Daryush had broken off the low-yo-yo with a dive to another plane, denying a solution while breaking the pursuit on him. Though he realized it would have been better for him to keep them on his tail as he saw the attention turning towards diving Pepper.
As they entered the scissoring, Daryush chased after them at a moderate distance. He just needed few more seconds. Scissoring took a lot of mental focus, which left those in it open to attack by outsiders such as him. The main problem was if it was just Brenda or Bateman who were focusing, or just one of them.
When he felt that he had let enough time pass, he chased after them, attempting to get a solution during one of the passes.
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 13:22:05 GMT -5
Brenda felt Daryush on her five, and throttled off slightly to let him overshoot. Bateman took over after that, with real-time cues from this point, snapping her upwards out of plane and into a high vertical slice. Pepper was caught beneath them, still struggling for a solution as the Charger team laid into her with a disabling hit in mid-roll.
"Oh, damn." Pepper made a show of limping off to lick her simulated wounds. "Sorry, they're all yours now, Dary."
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 14:03:37 GMT -5
Daryush followed fast on the tail. If he would be bitten now Hammer would do nothing but to chew on him for it, especially if he could nail the two later today. He entered their plane and lined up his sights for a weapon solution and fired.
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 14:58:00 GMT -5
With onboard alarms whooping, Bateman initiated evasive maneuvers, with Brenda having anticipated the direction of the hit by feeling the man's weight shift as he looked around for the threat; she added an additional lick of speed as her afterburners kicked in. The stick and pedal pressures weren't the only cues. She and Bateman had been getting better and better, and so had the others now flying. The F-18 twisted and bucked to outrun the laser "missile" and managed a near-miss, sustaining some minor surface damage according to the simulation program. She entered into a spiral descent and then climbed hard, using her ceiling advantage for all it was worth, before coming down on Daryush again.
Amara stirred into wakefulness, looking up at the clock projection on the wall. It was 8:30AM or 0830 hours. This was almost oversleeping for one of her kind, and with a whuff! she pulled herself onto her treads, shook herself, rubbed her head against the available "itching post" and drew up to the doors to face the day. Another floor pedal opened them, and sunlight streamed in.
The details of the street that she hadn't noticed the previous night now filled her field of vision. The wide aisle between the hangars was covered with red terracotta-like tiles, with long, narrow raised flowerbeds running down the center. The garden strips were filled with a combination of hardy but colorful indigenous wild flowers, ornamental grasses and aromatic herbs that CV aircraft were particularly fond of, such as sage, thyme, rosemary and mint. Half-casks planted with purple-tinged applegrass, a common digester aid, were available for nibbling. The stuff grew wild in the CV and was an excellent soil binder for erosion-prone areas, but had never existed here until a few years ago, when a cultivated and controllable variety was introduced. Cattle and horses liked it too, and makers of drinks and confections were just beginning to discover its possibilities as an all-natural flavoring.
Venturing out, the F-16 woman heard the roar of jets in the sky and looked towards the northern horizon. Someone was training hard. She tapped into her own radio unit to see if she could get the frequency, and though the voices were unfamiliar, it was possible for her to construct a rough picture of what was going on, maneuver-wise. Apparently, the Frogfoot was giving someone else a run for their money this morning... Damn, that little bugger's taking on the Hornet!
A few others on the promenade were also lifting their heads and listening, including a couple of Flanker kids that Amara hadn't seen the other night. They seemed to be almost a reverse of her own children, older girl and younger boy. Now this was a sight - she really hadn't expected to see Russians here.
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 15:15:21 GMT -5
Daryush dived down just slightly to be out of the gunsights and eased on the throttle, attempting to let the Hornet overshoot him before she wouldn't figure it out.
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 15:32:32 GMT -5
Before Brenda overshot the Sukhoi, Bateman gave her a sharp RIGHT-NOW cue to peel out, climb out of plane and come down on another slice that would take her on a close overhead pass by Daryush. In the seconds before the pass actually occurred, a solution presented itself, and she locked on and fired.
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 15:43:28 GMT -5
Daryush winched as he was confirmed killed. He banked in defeat. All he needed now as for Hammer to make the kill on Brenda for bragging rights. My last victory was a fluke. He thought to himself as he got a permission to land.
After landing he went off the runway and sniffed the air for Pepper. Too bad she didn't smell like one. It would be pretty nice to find her at least.
Marianne headed over to Amara, but kept her distance a bit. She wasn't sure just how welcome she was now, having revealed her true nature to Amara while she had been just about going to sleep.
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 16:38:58 GMT -5
Pepper had resigned herself to watching the rest of the action on the simulation display. There were fewer people about, it being earlier in the workday, which she felt was a mercy for Daryush as Brenda's "missile" hit home.
She admitted to herself that her main mistake this morning was to rely too much on her ceiling advantage in relation to Daryush but not take the aggressor's into account. The wing commander would be sure to bring that up at debriefing today. The F-18 had a devious way of keeping her tone conversational while her eyes and posture projected sharp little barbs of YOU-CAN-DO-BETTER-THAN-THAT, and even Hammer was subdued after a session with her. She caught Daryush's scent on the wind, with accents of disappointment accompanying it, and finally saw him approaching.
"Hey, cheer up." she smiled. "You didn't make it easy for them."
Truth be told, it wasn't exactly the right time for any conversations with ghosts. Amara paused as the Flanker boy caught sight of her and approached, nose working as it caught her scent. She smiled pleasantly at the child, who seemed to bounce like Tigger even when standing in place.
"Hi." He smiled back, revealing a gap in his teeth where the adult eyetooth hadn't grown in yet. "Do you live here, or did you come the same time as us?"
"I just got in last night." Amara admitted. She wasn't about to get too pokey with the kid, even if he was over-inquisitive himself.
"My name's Illya." he announced, matter-of-factly. "What's yours?"
"Amara." the F-16 shrugged as she glanced over to the older girl. "Is that your sister over there?"
"That's Zarya." the boy answered as the girl followed him over. "And it looks like I'm in trouble."
"Illya!" the girl called out. "We've only been here one night and you're already pestering the neighbors. Mama's gonna have your guts!"
"If she can move fast enough." the boy smiled impishly. "She'll have to drop that baby before she can catch me again."
"And I'll tell her you said that if you don't come back over RIGHT NOW!" Zarya nipped at her little brother's tailplanes and herded him smartly back to their residence. She smiled apologetically to Amara. "Sorry if he was bothering you."
"No problem." Amara smiled back. It would be best if she got off on the right start with the neighbors. She'd be seeing them often for the next three months. Finally, she drew back inside her own quarters, having seen Marianne hanging about. What would she have to say this morning?
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 17:03:48 GMT -5
"After yesterday's victory I had hoped to that I could deal with Brenda and Bateman." Daryush said. "I mean, that joining has to be crippling to reaction time. Gonna get chewed out on that I wager." He finally cracked a smile. "At least Paul is not an early riser." He said looking around.
"Good morning." Marianne said as Amara had acknowledged her, and gotten far enough away from others for them to talk to each other without trouble. "I wasn't sure how well you would receive me after that bombshell yesterday."
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 17:47:00 GMT -5
"As far as I know, he was given some time with the kids to get them settled." Pepper said, "So he won't be up against those two until later. By then she'll be a bit tired, but wouldn't it be grand if he got taken out too?"
"I can live with it." Amara shrugged again. "It's really nothing compared to being a stone's throw away from my ex. I'm not the malicious type, but I hope that Hornet gives him another good spanking today."
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 18:33:43 GMT -5
"Yeah." Daryush chuckled, though he wished he had Pepper's optimism. As humans put it, he felt as if he had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. "While the sky is busy, there's nothing to do until the briefing. How about some refueling?"
Marianne chuckled. "It isn't just the Hornet." She said. "You might have heard about this, but Brenda doesn't only got an observational cockpit, but that as well is connected to her brain. Now up there, there are two acting as one."
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Post by Evangeline on Jul 12, 2010 19:23:20 GMT -5
"I could go for some brekky myself." Pepper looked towards the fuel bar. The smell of applegrass extract from the kitchen teased her nose. She wished she had some fresh stalks to nibble. That was one thing she missed from the CV, the applegrass that grew wild in the fields around the airports, which blew sweet scents across the apron when the wind shifted. Oh, the ground crews hated it when the aircraft took bunches of it back to their hangars and made a mess, but it was one of the treats of summer. "And I could go for a mocha mix right now. Comfort food."
"So I've gathered, from the radio chatter." Amara said. "They've been working on that since a few years after contact." she used the general term for the appearance of humans in the CV. "The girl who volunteered for the first experiments used to live down at the end of the street from our place when I was still in high school. Even before that, she created a bit of a sensation when she married at eighteen years old, to a college prof almost twice her age. But at least they waited 'til she was legal! She was an A-5 Vigilante, third-generation descent, an outmode but a drop-dead gorgeous one. You ever see a woman who came into a room and turned on all the men, some of the women and a few pieces of furniture? That was her in a nutshell, but that's neither here nor there." She paused as her insides spoke up, reminding her that she hadn't eaten yet.
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Post by elizar on Jul 12, 2010 19:44:02 GMT -5
Daryush chuckled. "I think I want just the usual." He said as he headed to the cafe with Pepper. "I never got used to the coffee-taste." He said. "I'm more for the fruits and berries, as hard as it is to produce it for us!"
"Mind if I tag along?" Marianne said as she realized that the next order of business would be breakfast. "You don't have to talk to me, but I might want to talk to you, just to warn you." She smiled shyly.
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