Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume19 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 4===

The Rev-51 bomber was much larger than Mariydi’s Zig-27 fighter, so it came equipped with a high-spec radar and computer. Based on its analysis of the encrypted transmissions, the Legitimacy Kingdom cruise missile launchers were divided between three locations. The launcher vehicles were spread out in a fan shape with the HQ sending them orders located at the center.

“Oversize to Ice Girl 1. Which one should we destroy?”

“All of them.”

(I really want some hard rock to listen to. I miss my music. Damn, am I not so different from that drunk after all?)

The enemy was aware of their presence too.

When many more dots suddenly appeared on Mariydi’s radar, it wasn’t because some stealth fighters had blasted their engines to rapidly accelerate.

(Did they reuse the launchers to launch the fighters themselves straight up from the ground?)

She was honestly impressed while she sucked some oxygen in through the tube at her mouth. The use of mobile launchers meant the Legitimacy Kingdom waned to hide their location as much as possible, so they couldn’t’ have an anti-air unit flying around overhead where various types of radar could detect them. But this system gave no thought to the high Gs it would subject the pilots to. Were the pilots considered disposable?

“Damn the Legitimacy Kingdom,” said Klarheit. “Did they lure in some drugged-up delinquent soldiers with some kind of extralegal reward? Ha ha! Are their supply crates labeled morphine? Or is it some cocktail designed to boost their fighting spirit?”

“That’s hardly funny coming from a guy who reaches for a liquor bottle while flying at Mach 1.4.”

The scrambled fighters had created a total of 8 dots rushing toward Mariydi and Klarheit on the radar.

This was the Northern Restricted Zone, so they couldn’t expect anything as polite as a transmitted warning and a warning shot demanding they leave this airspace immediately. As soon as the enemy had a lock, the missiles would be flying. Once they were visible, the hornets would be fighting to the death with their sharp stingers.

“Ice Girl 1, engaging.”

“Oversize, ditto.”

Mariydi opened up the throttle and flew out ahead of the bomber. Klarheit intentionally reduced his speed to keep his distance.

Both sides now perceived this chunk of the night sky at 7000m up as a hotly contested battlefield.

Again, there were eight enemies here.

They approached head on while sticking in formation.

Aerial battles were all about technology, but superior numbers still gave an undeniable advantage. And Mariydi was restricted by her need to protect the bomber as she fought. In dogfights, you were swiftly shot down if you became trapped and unable to move.

If she fought normally, she wouldn’t have a chance.

But she had been trained in the Northern Restricted Zone, so she would never fight normally.

“Attack gun.”

With that casual announcement, she fired her machinegun instead of an AAM.

The close-range bullets had almost no chance of hitting a target outside of missile range.

But it could still restrict her opponent’s movements

A line of tracer rounds passed just barely off the left side of the 8-craft formation. She didn’t have to hit. She just had to scare them into not turning that direction.

The distance between them rapidly shrank as they flew head on.

The first to get a radar lock was Mariydi.

“Attack Bravo.”

(Well, they can only launch their smallest fighters with those launchers, so their radars and such are so much weaker than this large air superiority fighter.)

“Attack Charlie.”

She did not hesitate to press the button on her control column.

An AAM was released from below her main wing and it rocketed through the night sky. Attack accuracy was reduced when flying head on like this, but Mariydi had set something up in advance.

The machinegun fire had restricted the enemy’s evasive action.

And the close formation prevented them from making any sharp turns toward the others in the formation. Unless they wanted to collide with them, of course.

The line of machinegun fire and their allies trapped one of the enemy fighters in place, so its dot on the radar soon blinked out.

“And Attack Delta. Strike.”

But it wasn’t over yet.

She was fortunate to have gotten an attack in before they spread out. The mangled wreckage of the destroyed fighter struck the other fighters flying only a few meters away. The single missile ended up causing a second and third Legitimacy Kingdom fighter to explode.

“Whew!! That might be a new record in cost performance,” noted Klarheit.

“Pay attention. I’m flying straight in, so now they’re going to attack me.”

It was like watching a deadly flower blossoming.

Five fighters had emerged from the wreckage intact and the radar showed them breaking from their formation and flying in large arcs to surround her.

She didn’t even need the radar at this point.

They were probably really after the Rev-51 bomber, but the small Legitimacy Kingdom fighters were soaring through the air close enough for Mariydi to see them with the naked eye. They were the delta wing style the Legitimacy Kingdom loved so much.

(Hm? Those are a lot smaller than the S/G-31s they normally use. Are these the S Cu-25 interceptors that are built small enough to take off from the highways and have their specs reduced to keep the costs down?)

But Mariydi could not afford to satisfy her curiosity. She took a sharp turn and took up position behind one of the five.

“Oversize, they’re headed your way too!!”

“What, giving me all the glory? Hic.”

The Legitimacy Kingdom’s small S Cu-25s had expected the bomber to be big and slow, so they frantically twisted out of the way. A line of light pursued the fleeing fighters like fireworks. Those were the tracer rounds of the air defense autocannon installed on the Rev-51’s belly.

Each bullet was the size of a hammerhead and more than 3000 were fired every minute. The attack was like a rotating waterfall of light, but it wasn’t enough to bring down a maneuverable fighter.

One of the small delta wing fighters must not have wanted to take damage from an aircraft it considered inferior because it carefully stuck to the bomber’s tail.

That was the most dangerous position to have the enemy in a dogfight.

But Klarheit Rubyhunter seemed to be smiling.

“Whoopsie-daisy.”

With that silly exclamation, he spread the movable wings as far as they would go and pulled the nose nearly vertical. That special maneuver was known as the cobra, something you would have to be crazy to do in a bomber. A fierce mass of air flowed back from the bomber’s main wings, shaking the enemy S Cu-25 with an invisible blow. The fighter temporarily lost its lift and stalled.

Its nose pointed down and it fell in a tailspin.

Delta wings had a variety of advantages, but one disadvantage was how unstable they were when they slowed down to match the bomber. An aircraft that could take sharp turns was also an aircraft that – for better or for worse – easily lost its balance.

“I’ve got a lot more wing to move the air than your tiny-ass fighters, so get behind me and you might just get a taste of an artificial blast of wind. Have fun in the localized turbulence.”

And he was not done yet.

One of the same skinny AAMs Mariydi used was launched from the giant bomber’s belly. Modern transport planes and bombers were equipped with counter weapons like that, but they had almost zero chance of actually shooting down a fighter gunning for them.

But things changed when the fighter had stalled and started falling in a tailspin.

Unable to take evasive action, the Legitimacy Kingdom delta wing fighter exploded.

“Attack Delta. Strike…is that the right jargon? Ha ha. I just shot down a fighter with a bomber! I think I’m setting some records up here too.”

“Celebrate once it’s all over!! Oversize, 7 o’clock and 11 o’clock!!”

“Then it’s time for some of that smart combat that’s all the rage these days. Ice Girl 1, lend me your eyes and ears.”

Mariydi clicked her tongue before silencing an enemy fighter with a missile and then pulling hard on the stick.

The Rev-51 bomber’s machinegun and missiles were far from perfect. Its oversized fuselage got in the way, creating blind spots. And with its great weight and slow turning, it couldn’t tail an enemy the way a fighter could.

One of the S Cu-25s seemed very pleased with itself after hiding in the blind spot below the bomber’s giant left wing, but Mariydi’s Zig-27 passed below the bomber and sent some radar waves its way.

“Attack Alpha, Attack Bravo, lock on.”

“Got it, Ice Girl 1. Link complete. Ditto on that Attack Bravo.”

An AAM launched from the bomber with impossible timing and at an impossible angle. The delta wing fighter that thought it was hiding in a blind spot was accurately caught and blown to smithereens.

Mariydi’s fighter had shared its radar lock data with the bomber and the bomber had used that to launch the missile.

“Attack Delta. Strike,” said Mariydi and Klarheit in unison.

The feature had been controversial with the pilots, but modern technology allowed aircraft to make locks based on ground radar data and even for their missiles on their wings to be launched remotely by a command from an aircraft carrier. The pilot didn’t even have to press the launch button.

“Oversize to Ice Girl 1. Have you noticed their weird habit of getting way too close and trying to shoot AAMs? I never could’ve shaken that one with the blast of air otherwise.”

“What about it?”

“Look above us. They’re afraid of the aurora and the magnetic storm. But their cruise missiles worked perfectly over such a long distance, so we know those don’t affect their equipment all that much. If they’re acting weird because the weather ‘might’ do something, I’m guessing these are outsiders.”

Of the initial 8 fighters, Mariydi had shot down three in the initial head-on engagement, one had been shot down by the bomber’s blast of air and AAM, one had been shot down by Mariydi, and one had been shot down by their joint effort.

Only two S Cu-25s remained.

Mariydi Whitewitch’s thumb toyed with the control tower.

“Ice Girl 1 to Oversize. I’ll take care of the rest. You prepare for your bombing run.”

“Hang on, are you sure? It’ll be 1-against-2 for you. I’d really rather not see our cool blonde lady take a pounding from both ends by two burly macho men.”

Instead of dignifying that with a response, she shot down one of the enemy fighters with machine gun fire as she flew past.

That left just one, so it was 1-against-1.

“Attack Gun. Strike. …I shouldn’t have to rely on a bomber’s acrobatic flying in the first place. Just let me do my job.”

“Roger that, Ice Girl 1. Ugh, I should probably take another drink for good luck. No, let’s make it two.”

Had this guy mastered the Asian art of the drunken fist to the point that he had incorporated it into aerial combat? Even an ace pilot like Mariydi was astonished by his skill (not that she was ever going to tell him that), so the fact that he did it all while drinking was even more unbelievable.

The Legitimacy Kingdom had to have noticed their attack target by now. But in a one-on-one battle, the last remaining fighter was forced into a duel with Mariydi and could not pursue the bomber.

Meanwhile, the Rev-51 remained steady and began its attack procedure.

“Weapons selection: smart bombs. No issue with wind direction or anything else. Speed and angle within acceptable bounds. Okay, I’m starting. On your mark, standby.”

They shared their targeting data with each other.

The metal and heat sensors revealed the vehicles and soldiers on the otherwise dark ground.

(That’s a lot. They have an entire small camp set up in the forest.)

Well, they had launched more than 100 cruise missiles in a single attack. Those missiles weighed 1.2 tons and were large enough to carry explosives skimming just off the ground. Even with three launch sites, they needed the container-style launchers, spare munitions, cranes and tractors for reloading, an encrypted communication unit, power and fuel supply, a simple barracks and mess hall, and guards. All in all, it may have worked out to a small village.

Mariydi’s monitor displayed the bomber’s ground attack markers. The predicted hit point and the blast range were shown as a red ellipse and urchin-like spikes. Everything along the bomber’s path was covered by the estimated range of the flames, blast, and shrapnel. The line of predicted destruction soon filled her small screen. All of the shapes highlighted in white were covered.

“Three, two, one, shoot. …No effective countermeasures. GPS guidance is functioning. All bombs following predicted line.”

The actual ground was engulfed in flames just like the monitor had predicted.

The chilly night air of the Scandinavian February was scorched.

Mariydi was 7000m up, so she could not hear the screams of terror and rage from the bastards who had mercilessly targeted a safe country full of noncombatants and launched a surprise attack on the air base standing in their way. But she was satisfied seeing the night’s shadows swept away, the forest’s conifers torn from the ground, and the giant launcher trucks blasted into the air while they broke apart.

“Whew!! Strike check. All bombs detonated successfully! Nice, this is what I call an eco-friendly war!!”

Even in a cutting-edge dogfight where everything was highly digitized, a rattled pilot was still a deadly liability. Mariydi saw the enemy fighter stiffen for a moment when the ground troops were eliminated, so she tore through its engine and delta wing with her machine gun.

“Attack gun. Strike. That’s the last of them. Revenge is so hollow.”

“Hee hee. You sure know how to play the cool ace. I can practically see the smug grin on your face.”

“You didn’t use up all your bombs on this, I hope? We still have plenty of targets left. Woof, woof.”

“You’re having the time of your life out here, aren’t you?”