Fear the Survivors (46 page)

Despite their best intentions, though, Minnie and Quavoce would have no such control over what happened in the raw reality of the coming battle.

Chapter 42
: A Brief Engagement

General Milton:
‘air wing, it’s time for you to move off. major toranssen, accelerate and engage, flight plan theta. good luck, everyone.’

Major Toranssen:
‘thank you, general. stratojets, accelerate to mach 3, on my mark. flight plan theta, coordinates on net. quavoce, you have squadron bravo; john, you have squadron charlie. squadron alpha, you are with me. engage.’

The thirty jets all ramped up their speed as one, rocketing away from the three massive airlifters as though they were all but standing still. They had been forced to fly not only slower, but significantly lower than their optimal cruise altitude to keep convoy with the burly heavy-lifters.

Despite these shackles, they did not climb now that they were taken off the leash, but actually began to descend as they accelerated, their progress through the thickening atmosphere marked by grey shockwaves emanating from their tails, the thunderous double clap of their hypersonic progress buffeting the ground below.

They were over the Ionian when they broke formation, and the StratoJets penetrated Montenegrin airspace in a matter of minutes, on the heels of a series of calls to its government, and its former Yugoslav neighbors, explaining the very unsubtle incursion into their sovereign air. It was not a request they could refuse, and nor would they, given their own long exile from freedom under the last Russian empire.

Before the calls were even complete, the bleeding edge of the fleet was already gone. Two hundred miles covered in four minutes. They were past Bosnia, past Serbia, bisecting Romania, and splitting already into their three arms. Ready for first contact.

As the bodies of the C-17s came hulking up behind at their molasses pace, the Russian forces were starting to hear rumor of the fleet coming up over the Mediterranean. But by then the StratoJets were already closing, coming in low and hard at the Russian columns.

Toranssen:
‘quavoce, john, i have confirmation from strategic command in stuttgart that the russian’s have crossed the hungarian border. we are officially clear to engage any and all targets west of the line.’

The border resolved in their minds, and then on into the minds of all the pilots in each wing. Clarification of a line of demarcation long since anticipated.

Toranssen:
‘we are cleared weapons hot. good luck, gentlemen. keep channels open, flag if engaged by tech-ten units.’

Tech-ten: the byword for the evolutional leap in technology that they may face here. The two Agents confirmed, and then each squadron banked and swerved smoothly away, three wings of weaponized fury soaring away at meteoric speeds.

Separate now, Jack narrowed his comms to his team and talked them into the approach.

Toranssen:
‘alpha squadron, on me, strafing run, parallels. alphas nine and ten on firewall. let’s open them up.’

The fighters did not slow. The Russian columns had long since split into three to fill the three main roads that linked Hungary to Ukraine. Each of Jack’s squadrons was targeted to a column. The leading Russian tanks and APCs in Jack’s column were already six miles over the border, and still coming.

Six miles. That would be Jack’s first strafing run. It would be over in fourteen seconds.

He targeted with cold precision, not on individual vehicles, but on the entire left lane of the two-lane road. The next in his squadron would target the right lane, the third back to the left again, and so back along his squadron, four planes pounding each lane. The last two planes in his squadron had different orders.

As Jack saw the first big T-90 battle tanks that led the column, he counted the milliseconds down to fire range. Then, angling his plane so he could maintain downward fire for the full six miles, Jack unleashed his guns.

His speed noticeably faltered as the momentum of his plane was thrown into the thousands of tiny pellets being railed out of the ports on his plane’s nose.

A Russian commander, exposed from the waist up as he surveyed their progress from the main hatch of his battle tank, spotted the inbound planes. He had the fortitude and time to say, “Incomi …!” before a sheaf of kinetic destruction ripped along the top of his tank, rending its armor, pulping his head and torso, and echoing throughout the hull of the mighty beast before grinding onward along the line.

Fourteen seconds. Over a million rounds. A line of death and mayhem burnt along the unsuspecting Russian forces like a blade made of lightning. But the Russians would not remain pliant for long. Jack knew that. Somewhere in these columns, he could not know where, was the real threat. Any moment it could spring on them. And that was saying nothing for the still potent standard weaponry the Russian Army had on hand.

Toranssen:
‘alpha nine and ten, wall of fire.’

They were already on it. While eight of Jack’s squadron had surged on with blistering speed, the last two planes had come to a thundering halt in front of the first of the T-90s. The big tanks were bruised by the initial strafing run, but far from done, and they were still trundling on, smoke rippling from their hulls as their crews scrambled to respond to the sudden attack.

Alpha Nine and Ten were there to stop them. Permanently. To stop them and anyone else that came on behind them, and to let their burning hulks pile up and block the column from progressing any farther.

Alpha Nine:
‘wall of fire. with pleasure, major. lighting them up now.’

Hovering over the road in front of the column, the two StratoJets concentrated their guns on each of the two lead tanks in turn. Not glancing blows, but a supercharged kinetic maelstrom. The pellets turned even the tank’s thick armor to liquid. Ambitious souls aboard the tanks attempted to return fire, to engage with the broad complement of anti-air and even anti-personnel munitions mounted on the burly brawlers. But they were very much in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were on the receiving end of power station’s worth of energetic release and their tank’s bodies began to heat and slag under the barrage.

To add insult to pervasive injury, each StratoJet then unleashed one of their Brimstone missiles at their respective targets, the stumpy rockets flying under the tanks and then detonating. The tanks lifted and buckled, as if shrugging at the impossibility of their position as punished armor and tarmac alike were shredded and destroyed.

Soon two columns of smoke and flame were rising at the head of the suddenly halted line of Russian forces. Two molten, liquid heaps lying where forty million dollars of military hardware had just been. The rest of the column would not enjoy a much better fate.

Toranssen:
‘alphas five through eight, starboard flank. target anti-air units. alphas two through four with me, portside.’

While alphas nine and ten turned the first tanks into a pyre, the remaining eight jets, Jack’s included, banked hard, slowed, and fanned out, forming two lines on either side of the six-mile column, firing into it without falter or mercy. They focused on threat points first: anti-air units and tank-mounted heavy guns. They knew that they only had a few moments left before a concerted response could be expected.

As they used their blitzkrieg to dismantle the Russian force’s forward fighting strength, Jack checked in on the other wings.

Toranssen:
‘¿quavoce, john, how goes it?’

He could see their squadrons as he thought of them, Minnie feeding his mind with the data he desired.

John:
‘bravo column halted, minimal resistance so far. i’m starting to see small arms fire from apc’s, and i am noticing forces across border in ukraine are starting to maneuver. seems like certain apc’s are being called up to the front.’

Quavoce:
‘can confirm same here in terms of small arms fire, but not the cross-border movement. anti-air units clearly being called up but not apc’s. expect fire from them within two to three minutes. no tech-ten units as of this moment.’

No Tech-10. They had to be out here somewhere. Surely Mikhail would not have committed to such a bold attack without putting his most powerful assets in play.

Minnie:
‘squadron leaders, i have a large inbound flotilla. sharing data now. coming in at mach 1.5.’

Toranssen:
‘¿mach 1.5? it isn’t slow, but it isn’t on our level, either.’

Minnie:
‘i can confirm that. i estimate seventy-five su-27s and forty su-35s. still no tech-ten ground or air units confirmed.’

Jack did some version of a mental whistle from his physically catatonic state. Forty Su-35s. They were no StratoJets, but they were the most maneuverable fighter in the air today, even more capable than the Typhoon. That would be no picnic.

Jack reviewed the Russian flotilla’s heading. It was not spread out. They were all focused on the most southerly column. On the column that had shown ground troop movement across the border: the only sign they had seen so far of potential real resistance.

Toranssen:
‘gentlemen, it looks like we have a pattern. they are focusing their air forces on john’s position. i am going to assume that their tech-ten units are either already there or en route. we just haven’t seen them yet. let’s not fully redistribute, i want to leave some eggs in our other baskets, but quavoce, i do want you to rotate out six of your squadron to john’s position. and please include bravo two among them.’

Bravo Two was one of the two fighters Minnie was piloting. The other was with Jack, and he had every intention of dispatching that version of their synthetic compatriot as well.

Toranssen:
‘minnie, that means you should take alpha two there as well, full speed. let’s put our best players on the field. alpha four, you too. alphas three and five rotate to reinforce bravo squadron, you are with quavoce now. let’s go, people, full throttle, i want all of you in place when the russian air forces get to charlie squadron’s position.’

When Jack said full throttle, his people responded, and the Russian forces under fire from Jack and Quavoce’s squadrons enjoyed a moment’s respite as some of their attackers banked and rocketed away.

While they may have wondered for a moment why their assailants were leaving, they did not look the gift horse in the mouth. They knew they needed to respond. They were struggling frantically to fight back and they were taking terrible casualties. From within the explosive madness that had become their world, their training was kicking in and they were spreading out into firing lines.

Jack saw the first volley of anti-air missiles come up at his squadron and watched his team respond smoothly. Each fighter handled the missiles coming at them individually, only asking for help if they were being overwhelmed.

Jack focused on those fired at him. They were an assortment of munitions. Some were fired from shoulder-mounted launchers; small but fast. But most of them were the much heftier, much more powerful vehicle-launched varietal. Jack hit each with a concentrated burst, following their advance until he had ended them with kinetic ferocity.

Even as he deleted each of the nasty little messages being sent his way, he also killed the messengers, targeting anyone foolhardily enough to fire upon him. Firing without mercy or pause, he released one of his own for every that was sent at him, their mission clear, their purpose singular: to obliterate any who dared to respond to his team’s devastating barrage.

And so the butcher’s bill rose, the planes of Jack’s squadron pouring a seemingly unending torrent of death into the line of fire and gore that they were etching into the countryside, three new valleys of death for poets to lament.

- - -

Minnie monitored everything from above, as well as from the perspective of every plane in the fleet, and especially, of course, from the cockpit of the two fighters slaved to her. Both were now rushing to join John’s fleet, to bolster it against the sizeable air fleet coming at it from the Russian forward base in Kiev.

For now she was also talking with General Milton, Ayala, and Neal as they watched the squadrons’ progress. But she would stop engaging in chatter once they engaged in air-to-air combat. She would need to focus her processing power.

General Milton:
‘we have the data as well, minnie. i see the russian fighters. they are coming in hard. ¿and what is that behind them, an a-50?’

Minnie:

Neal:
‘good, minnie, please assign an ai to keep an eye on the a-50 as well, we should probably deal with it once we have dispatched the russian fighters. but first, let’s get back to the ground forces. i want to see what they are up to across the border from john’s position.’

Their view swam downward, focusing and refocusing as it went and eventually coming to rest at the limit of their satellite Pod’s visual acuity. Minnie’s many AIs were already overlaying the images with data and force estimates as it zoomed.

Ayala:
‘there! i see them!’

The focus of Ayala’s attention was highlighted in the views of her friends and colleagues as she spoke, a set of faint streaking black lines emanating from a series of Armored Personnel Carriers along the column, just east of John’s squadron.