Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

F-15s in the lead but F-16s not far behind along with Tomcats and even a pair of F-18 Hornets. Eight-ten-twelve in all leading the charge followed by a mixed bag of aircraft: Six F-111 Aardvarks; three F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighters; four A-10s all of which sported the scars of recent battles and five EA-6B Prowlers stripped of their electronic warfare gear in favor of weapons pods.

The mass of soldiers in the mall parking lot below stopped packing crates, woke from their naps, put aside their chow, and watched.

They knew what passed in the sky. The last of mankind’s once-mightiest air force. Now piloted by left over guardsmen and commercial pilots-turned-warriors, those high-tech machines were once capable of ruling the skies, even in the post-Armageddon world when the Hivvans and the Duass and the California Cooperative had tasted death from above courtesy The Empire’s gallant flyers.

Despite the mighty roar, every soldier below knew they watched the end of something.

Voggoth would sacrifice 100-200-1,000 of his half-machine/half-monster ‘Spooks’ to knock the planes from the sky only to re-grow those horrible weapons by the bushel while The Empire could no longer replace, repair, or re-build the jets.

The soldiers on the ground did not know why the air force flew, they could only watch and pray that the Generals expended this last resource for some benefit. So they watched the fighters fly away; they listened to the last echoes of the turbines; they watched-and hoped.

The tail fins of the lead F-15s sported an icon of a female arm holding a bolt of lightning. The veteran combat pilot in the lead radioed, “Dasher One to group, watch the wash back there boys.”

His wingman-young before Armageddon but now a veteran as well-pointed out, “Dash One, this is Two, we’re at about three cherubs and really booming here; how we going to keep this all together with the slow-movers back there?”

“Don’t work your thinkbox too hard, Billie. That’s just the way it has to be. This isn’t exactly the most sophisticated mission we’ve gone on so we’ll just have to make it work.”

“What are we doing, boss?” Billie spoke through his mask as the scenery-some 300 feet below-whizzed by in a blur and the slower-moving of the phalanx of aircraft drifted further to the rear.

“Weren’t you at the meeting with General Brewer?”

Billie heard the sarcastic tone but replied, “No,” before he could stop himself.

“Guess not,” Dasher One answered with the obvious connotation of you don’t need to know.

“Dash-One this is Viking One, aren’t we do for a course correction?”

“Roger that,” Dasher One radioed the Prowler’s pilot, “turning on my mark.”

The planes-the army of jet fighters-banked to the northwest as they flew low and fast over the western suburbs of St. Louis. Below them scattered units of infantry gave the fleet a quick look. While the foot soldiers had grown accustomed to wearing a mixture of uniforms and carrying a diversity of gear, they had never seen such an eclectic collection of air power before; certainly not flying in one flock.

As impressive the aerial profiles and as ear-splitting the sound, the earthbound men and women who saw the sight knew it to be a formation of desperation.

“Dasher One to all wings, listen up. Follow I-80 below until we hit our next waypoint for Alpha target. Flight leaders, you know our instructions. Follow them.”

“What instructions?” Dash Two let his familiarity with this superior officer overcome the need to remain quiet.

“Billie, you just do what I tell you and be ready to jink, copy that?”

“Um, copy that Dash One.”

The attackers followed the interstate westward across Missouri. They flew over the hamlet of Pilot Grove, startling a band of civilian stragglers hurriedly transferring canned goods from an overturned and abandoned Deuce-and-a-half into a wagon pulled by two aging horses. Two of the civvies-carrying burlap sacks-actually fell over onto their rumps from the vibration and wind gust caused by the fast-movers.

Shortly thereafter, the historic town of Sweet Springs drew the attention of the flyers as a stream of thinning black smoke rose from a reconnaissance Eagle crashed nose-first next to a sagging gazebo in Gusher Park. A trio of gigantic Rat-like creatures-one of the first and most persistent alien monsters to invade Earth-clambered over each other to stick their snouts in the cracked-open transport module.

Dasher Two-‘Billie’-tapped his thumb against the flight stick nervously. He had flown hundreds of sorties with Dash One, including knocking Screamers out of the sky in support of Stonewall McAllister’s push into South Carolina during the Hivvan war and later the aborted strike on the Witiko’s Stealth Field Generator as the opening salvo of the California campaign. In each case he knew the mission, knew the goal, and understood the stakes.

Things felt different this time. He could not remember a mission when Dash One kept the details so murky. He did not understand how so many diverse aircraft-including several now miles behind the formation-should be tightly formed and used together in such a fashion.

But he did know The Order’s main battle force waited outside Kansas City. He knew them well-guarded by anti-air Spooks that would outnumber the strike force exponentially. He knew that all of the F-15s not born with Vulcan cannon received said cannons in wing-mounted weapons pods because fighting spooks with missiles made for losing the economics of this war. Still, he wondered if he carried enough bullets on board for the hell that would great them at Excelsior Springs. Of course he also wondered why the Spooks-not potential ground targets-appeared the priority of this mission.

And that led to the tapping of his thumb against the stick. A nervous tapping filled with questions as to why they should run a kamikaze mission for no apparent gain.

“All wings, we’re coming up on Odessa. Bank north, grab some altitude, and proceed toward Alpha target. Take a moment to review Bravo target before things get hairy.”

Billie did as commanded. He turned his fast-moving F-15 to starboard and remained on his leader’s flank as a loyal wingman should. But the questions refused to yield.

In the distance he saw the line of puffy white clouds stretched across the horizon turn black; like smoke boiling in the heavens.

They crossed the Missouri River, whooshed over the waters of the crescent-shaped Cooley Lake, and bore in on the flattened, rotted land that had once been Excelsior Springs, Missouri. The sky turned dark and twisted.

Each pilot in the formation gasped or closed their eyes or felt a nauseous lurch in his or her belly. No matter how often they came upon The Order’s legions a human soul could not become accustomed to the sight, one akin to kicking over a rock and finding the slimy, squirming bottom-feeders hidden beneath.

Tendrils of white smoke newly-birthed from egg-shaped mounds tried to hide the army in a sheath of unnatural fog but the job had just begun. In fields to the south of Route 69 assembled row upon row of shell-covered hover tanks with gun barrels of various design. Dozens of slithering turtle-things serviced the vehicles with lines feeding ammunition and energy.

A little further to the west on the far side of an access road, the boxy industrial buildings of Excelsior Plastics had succumbed to Voggoth’s dominion. The walls of the factory drown beneath a cover of dark metallic roots. Sizzling steam escaped from tubes atop the roof and instead of manufacturing injected moldings the plant now housed legions of once-human monks and the mutation chambers that attached and re-supplied the bio-weapons affixed to the arms of these damned souls.