Piranha

by Dale Brown

  The slashing dive had the desired effect—the lead F-14 pilot jinked madly as he unleashed a parcel of flares and chaff, not quite sure what was coming at him. The decoys would have been more than enough to clear an enemy missile from his back—but Zen wasn’t an enemy missile. He curled Hawk One upward, angling toward the dark shadow of the Navy aircraft. The Tomcat’s variable geometry wings had flipped outward to increase aerodynamic lift, a sure sign to Zen the plane was caught flat-footed. He pressed his attack into the Tomcat’s belly even as it upgraded GE F110’s spit red fire, the massive turbines winding to push the plane away.

  Had this been a “real” encounter, the Navy pilot might have escaped—an ol’ big block Pontiac Goat could beat a slammed Civic off the line any day of the week, and Zen at best could have gotten only a half-dozen shots into the belly of the accelerating beast—not nearly enough to bring her down, barring ridiculous luck. But the computers keeping score took the U/MF’s chronically optimistic targeting gear at its word. According to its calculations, something over a hundred 20mm shells raked the Navy plane’s fuselage and wings, turning it into a mass of flame and metal.

  “Score one for the AF,” said the event moderator blandly, circling above in a P-3 Orion. “Nirvana Tomcat One splashed.”

  Zen had already jumped into the cockpit of Hawk Two. He had the other F-14 on his left wing, cutting back toward its original course, C³, the sophisticated control-and-tactical-assistance computer that helped fly the Flighthawks, suggested a high-speed attack at the rear quarter of the F-14. Zen recognized it immediately as a long shot; even with the computers keeping score, such an attack would have an extremely low kill-probability.

  Deciding that was better than nothing, Zen told C³ to implement the attack plan, then jumped back into Hawk One, changing the view screens and control selections via a verbal command to the computer of “One” and “Two,” then pulling around, trying to set up an ambush on the Tomcat. A call from Raven’s radar operator changed his priorities.

  “Bogies at one hundred miles—make that a four-group of F-18’s, angels twenty.”

  “Hawk leader,” acknowledged Zen. Even as the information about the bandits’ course and speed was downloaded into his computer, Zen had decided he would pass off the Tomcat and concentrate on the Hornets.

  “Yo, Curly—you see the Tomcat gunning for the flight?”

  “On him,” said the other pilot.

  Aboard EB-52, “Galatica,” west of Hawaii

  August 16, 1449

  Unlike Zen, Captain Kevin “Curly” Fentress had never flown in real combat; nor was he a fully qualified jet pilot. He’d only racked up ten hours so far in Dreamland’s T-38 jet trainer, every minute among the longest of his life. Curly had come into the Flighthawk program after helping develop early-model unmanned aircraft including the Predator and Globak Hawk. While a good remote pilot, he lacked both the experience and instincts of a first-rate combat jock.

  But he was learning.

  The Tomcat packed a pair of all-aspect heat-seekers. While Fentress had to be respectful of the missiles, they were considerably less dangerous than AMRAAMS. It was also to his advantage that the Tomcat was gunning for the Megafortresses and probably had only a vague notion of the Flighthawks’ location. Fentress’s two robot planes were running roughly half a mile apart, separated by five hundred feet at thirty-one thousand and 31,5000 feet. His game plan was relatively straightforward—he’d engage the F-14 with one plane in a diving attack, and at the same time have the computer arc the second Flighthawk so it could grab the Tomcat’s tail for the kill. It was a classic strategy, basically the same double attack perfected by the Army Air Force Captains John Godfrey and Don Gentile against Me-109’s during World War II—minus the missiles, radars, and very high speeds the planes were using.

  The Navy jock wasn’t flying a Messerschmitt. Rather than engaging the small fighter as it dove in front of his F-14, he lit the burners and blew past both the U/MF and the approaching Megafortresses. Fentress gave a few blinks from the gun of Hawk Four, but the smaller engines couldn’t drive the Hawk close enough to the muscular Navy plane to record a hit.

  “We can take him with a Scorpion,” said Captain Tom Dolan, the copilot in Raven.

  “No, he’s mine,” said Fentress tightly. “You’re going to need that Scorpion later.”

  He knew better than to try to run the F-14 down. Fentress held back as the Tomcat started tracking north, waiting for the plane to single out its quarry and start to close.

  Though it had a much easier angle on Raven, it seemed to be picking out Iowa.

  Coincidence? Or had he been briefed beyond the accepted rules?

  No matter. The F-14 began picking up steam as it pressed toward the Megafortress’s tail. Fentress had a good intercept plotted—the target indicator on Hawk Three began blinking yellow, indicating he was almost in range. Just as it went red, the F-14 pilot belatedly spotted the robot and abruptly nosed downward. Fentress once more found he couldn’t stay with the Tomcat, but according to C³, did manage to put six shells into its wing.

  The event moderator called it “light damage.” Under the rules of the game, the F-14 should have broken off and gone home. But instead, the Navy jock lit the burners and jerked his nose up, pulling a good seven or eight Gs. He recovered from his evasive maneuver and bullied his plane toward a firing solution a bare five miles off the EB-52’s vulnerable V-shaped tail.

  Iowa

  August 16, 1452

  Dog shook his head as his copilot reported that the F-14 was getting ready to launch AIM-9’s.

  “Flares.”

  “Flares. Stinger ready,” said Ferris. “They’re cheating,” he added bitterly. “Bastards.”

  “Fire when you have him,” answered Dog calmly. “Don’t hit the Flighthawk. Crew, hold on for evasive maneuvers.”

  Dog jerked the stick hard, pushing the big plane to the left, then back again, jinking the massive bomber as if she were an F-16. Adrenaline shot through his veins, and he realized he was laughing. It was times like this that reminded him why he’d joined the Air Force.

  Galatica

  August 16, 1454

  Fentress slapped Hawk Four toward the F-14’s tail as it closed on the Megafortress. The magnified screen showed the bomber’s tail stinger tracking back and forth, obviously taking aim at the aggressor—its air mines were fatal at 2.5 miles, which was just inside the fatal range of the Sidewinders. Undoubtedly the Navy pilot wasn’t concerned about “surviving” the conflict; he’d get close enough to launch the Sidewinders even if it meant he got slammed himself.

  Fentress pushed his nose down, moving his pipper dead into the canopy of the Tomcat’s two-man cockpit. He waited a second after the red bar flashed, remembering Zen’s admonitions regarding the Flighthawk control computer’s unyielding optimism.

  Fentress then fired a long, concentrated blast that, had this been a real thing, would have reamed a large hole in the Navy jet.

  The next second, he got a warning that the EB-52 was getting ready to fire its Stinger. Fentress had to jerk off quickly to avoid getting nailed by an air mine. As he did, another warning buzzed sounded—the F-14 had just launched his Sidewinders.

  Iowa

  August 16, 1500

  “One simulated missile hit on engine four, one miss,” reported Ferris, Dog’s copilot. “He cheated bigtime,” added Ferris. “The Flighhawk nailed him.”

  “We’ll send it to the Rules Committee,” stated Dog. “Wing damage?”

  “Negligible.” Ferris began reading through the damage-control reports; the simulated hit wasn’t bad enough to keep them from completing their mission. But unlike the Tomcat, Iowa’s flight computer was plugged into the game and trimmed the plane as if it had really been hit—within reason, of course.

  “How you doing down there, Delaford?” Dog asked the Navy Piranha specialist.

  “Still no contact. We should be about thirty seconds away.”

  “Too bad
it’s not a torpedo,” said Dog.

  “Believe me, Colonel, if this were the real thing, the target would be dead meat as soon as we can see it. Now under Option Four, carrying the double warhead—”

  “We’re a little busy,” said Dog. “You just have fun down there.”

  “Oh, I will, sir. It’s not every day you get to blow up an aircraft carrier.”

  Raven

  August 16, 1500

  While the Hornets thumbed through their radar scans trying to sort out the Megafortresses behind all the electronic noise, Zen brought the Flighthawks around, positioning himself for a diving, rear-quarter attack. Once his attack had began, Galatica would launch Scorpions at the remaining planes. Another wave of fighters was sure to follow; hopefully, they’d be ready to saddle up and get away by then.

  The Hornets were in double two-ship elements separated by over a mile. Zen launched his attack against the plane at the point closest to the Megafortresses; it was on his left as he angled Hawk One downward, Hawk Two holding above. The attack went ridiculously well—he could see the while globe of the pilot’s hard hat dead on in his pipper. Two squeezes on the trigger and the Hornet was gone; by the time the event observer called out the kill, Zen had jumped into Hawk Two and slashed another dozen slugs through the tail of the first plane’s wingman. This Hornet tried to tuck into a turn, hoping to throw the Flighthawk in front of him. It would have been a fine strategy against nearly any other plane in the world, but the U/MF could turn far tighter than an F/A-18. Zen could have driven his plane right through the Hornet—a fact that made him more than a little annoyed when the referee failed to call the hit. He turned back and stuffed another long fusillade of simulated shells into the Hornet’s twin tailpipe.

  “Yo,” he said.

  “Cougar Two slashed,” said the event moderator with obvious disappointment.

  The delay kept Zen from pressing an attack on the second element. In his absence, the flight computer had managed to set Hawk One up for a reasonably good front-quarter run at one of the Hornets. Zen jumped in the cockpit, but then decided to let C³ finish the job. The computer obliged by tossing two dozen slugs into the Hornet’s belly and another dozen into the canopy area.

  That left one plane. Zen had lost track of it in the swirl. He had to select the sitrep screen—a God’s-eye view of the battle area piped into his console courtesy of Galatica’s powerful radar. C³ highlighted the Hornet, which was shooting back toward its carrier group.

  Running away?

  No, decoying him, as had the other F/A-18’s.

  “We have bogies south,” said Galatica’s radar operator tersely. “In range for Phoenix launch in thirty seconds.”

  “Clever bastards.”

  Iowa

  August 16, 1505

  Colonel Bastian checked the overall position on the sitrep screen in the lower left-hand corner of his dashboard. Piranha, still undetected, was now closing on the Kitty Hawk.

  He wished he could say that Iowa was also still undetected.

  “Eight Tomcats, positively ID’d,” Ferris said. “They’ll launch any second.”

  “Not a problem,” said Dog.

  “Got it,” said Delaford.

  “Yes!” added Ensign Gloria English. “We are within five miles of the aircraft carrier. Closing. We’re not detected.”

  “If this were Option Four, they’d be dead. We could download to a sub now—boom, boom, boom!” sand Delaford.

  “Tomcats are launching missiles!” shouted Ferris, so loud he could’ve been heard back on the tail.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” said Dog. “If we’re in, we’re going to break, Tom,” he told Delaford. They were already at the extreme range for the Piranha system, and would have to close off contact to duck their attackers.

  “Colonel, if we can hold contact for another sixty seconds, I can have Piranha pop up across from the Kitty Hawk’s bridge. Kind of put an exclamation mark on the demonstration,” Delaford said.

  “Missiles are tracking,” said Ferris.

  “Can we break them if we stay here?”

  “Trying. The Tomcats are still coming. They want our blood.”

  “We’ll hold our position as long as we can,” Dog told Delaford. “Hopefully, we won’t get nailed in the process.”

  “It’ll be worth it,” said Delaford, whose project had faced considerable skepticism from the Navy brass.

  Dog told the other Megafortresses they could break off.

  “Sixty seconds,” said Delaford. “Right under the admiral’s nose.”

  “Colonel, one of those Navy logs won’t quit.”

  “Tinsel,” said Dog, giving the order to dispense electronic chaff designed to confuse the radar guiding the long-range missile.

  “Fifty seconds,” said Delaford.

  “Missile impact in twenty,” warned Ferris.

  “Hang on, everybody,” said Dog. He pulled the Megafortress hard right, then back left, accelerating north briefly but then pulling back west, trying to stay within range of the Piranha buoy.

  “Must’ve graduated from Annapolis,” said Ferris. “That missile isn’t quitting.”

  Dog decided to do something he’d never be able to manage in a stock B-52—he twisted the massive plane through an invert and accelerated directly toward the AIM-54. Against a “live” missile, the strategy would have been dubious, since the proximity fuse would have lit the warhead as he approached. But the gear in the nose used to record a hit was a few beats slower than the real McCoy, and Dog just managed to clear the AIM-54 before it “exploded.”

  “Shit, I lost the connection,” said Delaford as Dog recovered.

  “Can you get it back?”

  “Trying.” Dog could hear Delaford and English tapping furiously on the keyboards that helped them control the remote devices.

  “We can drop another buoy,” suggested English.

  “We should,” said Delaford. “But this one is closer. You know Colonel, I think they’re trying to jam us.”

  “They have two jammers aloft,” said Ferris.

  “Give me a course,” said Dog. “Delaford, is there any way to make Piranha spit in the admiral’s eye when it comes to the surface?”

  “Working on it, sir.”

  Galatica

  August 16, 1507

  Unlike the earlier attacker, these Tomcats not only knew Fentress’s Flighthawk were there, but considered them enough of a threat to target them with their Phoenix missiles. Ducking the long-distance homers wasn’t that difficult—Fentress had done so in about a dozen simulations over the past two weeks—but it did take time. It also cost him position—he lost control of Hawk Four as his Megafortress jinked out of the ECM-shortened communications range to avoid another volley of missiles. The onboard computer took over the robot, turning it toward the EB-52 in default return mode.

  Fentress pulled Hawk Three higher, hoping to get into position to break the next wave of attack, which he expected to be close-in dash to fire heat-seekers. But the Tomcats had something else in mind; AMRAAM-pulses, fired from just over forty miles away.

  A red-hot wire snaked around his chest. Not one but two of the Scorpions locked on his plane. These were considerably more difficult to avoid. Even in simulations, he’d never gotten away from a pair. Galatica, with its performance significantly hampered by the revolving radar dome in its upper body, would have an even more difficult time, regardless of the countermeasures it spewed.

  Fentress recoiled himself to his job; he’d do his best and jinked in the direction of the lead Tomcat, which was already homing in on Galatica. To catch the Navy pilot’s attention, he winked his cannon. Though several miles out of range, the F-14 diverted just long enough to launch a pair of Scorpions at him.

  Two more missiles that can’t target Gal, Fentress thought to himself. He threw the Flighthawk downward, then cut diagonally, hoping against hope to beam the missiles.

  He did. As he started to recover from the dive, he realized he had
also gotten away from the missiles launched earlier. But all his jinking and jiving had left himself open to another F-14, which screamed toward him, gun blazing. Fentress started to turn, confident he could get out of the Tomcat’s gunsight. His screen showed a simulated run of bullets trotting past the canopy—and then everything buzzed red and a large “2” filled the control screen. He’d been nailed by a Sidewinder he’d never seen.

  Hawk Four, flown by the computer, had already suffered the same fate. Shorn of its defenders, the over-matched EB-52 found itself sandwiched between a pair of Navy Top Guns, whose M61;s made confetti of the wings.

  “We’re hit,” said the Megafortress pilot, Captain Teijen. “Performance degrading. Prepare for ejection.”

  “Aw, shit,” grumbled the copilot.

  Still, the EB-52 was a tough airframe. Teijen held her up, swooping left and right, and managed to take out one of the Navy fighters who apparently didn’t believe the brief on the potency of the Stinger tail weapon. There was no shaking the Tomcat flight leader, however, who came in close and winked his cannon, then rubbed their noses in it a bit by putting his plane directly over Gal’s tail.

  “You be sunk,” said the pilot with a laugh.

  The computer and the event moderator concurred.

  “Yeah?” said Teijen. We’ll see how loud you laugh when your carrier goes down.”

  Raven

  August 16, 1507

  Zen’s finger strained against the slider on the back of his combined stick-throttle. He had the engine nailed on the redline, trying to hustle the Flighthawks back to help Fentress fend off the rear-end attack. The Navy attackers had done an excellent job against the Dreamland planes, overcoming their technological disadvantage with shrewd tactics and kick-butt flying. They didn’t call these guys Top Guns for nothing.

  Not, of course, than Zen would admit that in mixed company—mixed company meaning anyone who showed an affinity for bell bottoms and pea coats. Naval aviators might have proven in combat they were every bit as good as Air Force jocks, but no red-blooded USAF zippersuit would say so—except under extreme duress.

  And maybe not even then.