Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

“Suspicious object to the upper left, azimuth 220, altitude 30!” the wingman reported. The lead pilot looked in that direction. The earlier snow had washed the winter sky clean and blue, and the visibility was excellent. The two planes ascended toward the target to investigate. It was flying in the same direction as them, but much slower, and it didn’t take long to catch up.

Their first good look at the target was a bolt out of the blue.

That was a NATO E-4A early-warning aircraft. For a fighter-plane pilot to encounter one was like seeing the back of their own head. An E-4A could monitor up to one million square kilometers, completing a full sweep in just five seconds. It could locate targets two thousand kilometers from the defensive area, providing more than forty minutes of advance notice. It could separate out up to a thousand EM signals within one thousand to two thousand kilometers, and each scan could query and identify two thousand targets of any kind, land, sky, or sea. An early-warning aircraft didn’t need the protection of escorts when its all-seeing eyes allowed it to easily avoid any threats.

That was why the lead pilot naturally assumed it was a trap. He and the wingman searched the surrounding sky carefully, but there was nothing in the cold, clear sky. The lead pilot decided to take a risk.

“Ball lightning, ball lightning, I’m going to attack. Guard azimuth 317, but be careful not to leave range of sight!”

Once his wingman flew in the direction he thought most likely for an ambush, he activated the afterburner and yanked at the controllers. Trailing black exhaust, the Su-27 lunged toward the early-warning aircraft above like a striking cobra. Now the E-4A discovered the approaching threat and turned to rush southeast in an escape maneuver. Magnesium heat pellets popped from its tail one after another to disrupt heat-seeking missiles, the trail of little fireballs looking like bits of its soul startled out of its mortal shell. An early-warning aircraft before a fighter plane was as helpless as a bicycle trying to outrun a motorbike. In that moment, the lead pilot decided that the order he’d given the wingman had turned out to be terribly selfish.

He followed the E-4A from above at a distance, admiring the prey he’d caught. The pale blue radar dome atop the E-4A was lovely in its curves, charming as a Christmas ornament; its broad white chassis was like a fat roast duck on its platter: so tempting, yet too lovely to violate with knife and fork. But instinct warned him not to drag this on any longer. He first fired a burst with the 20 mm cannon, shattering the radome, and watched scraps of the Westinghouse-made AN/ZPY-3 radar antenna scatter across the sky like silver Christmas confetti. He next severed a wing with the cannon, then at last lashed down the fatal blow with the 6,000 rpm double-barreled cannon, cutting the already tumbling and falling E-4A in two.

The Su-27 wheeled downward to follow the halves in their plunging descent. The pilot watched crew and equipment fall from the hold like chocolates from a box, a few parachutes blooming against the sky. He remembered the battle earlier, the sight of his comrade escaping from his hit plane: an F-22 had purposely flown low over the parachute, swooping past, three times, to knock it over. He’d watched as his comrade dropped like a stone, disappearing against the white backdrop of the ground.

He forced back the impulse to do something similar. Once he regrouped with his wingman, the pair abandoned the area at top speed.

They still suspected a trap.

The two weren’t the only aircraft separated from their unit. A Comanche armed attack helicopter from the US Army First Cavalry Division flew with no target in sight, but its pilot, Lieutenant Walker, felt a rush of adrenaline all the same. He’d transferred from an Apache to the Comanche recently, and had yet to adjust to this sort of attack helicopter with troop-carrying capabilities, an innovation from the end of the previous century. He was unaccustomed to the Comanche’s lack of foot pedals, and he thought the headset with its binocular helmet-mounted display wasn’t as comfortable to use as the Apache’s single sight. But most of all, he wasn’t used to Captain Haney, the forward director sitting in front of him.

“You need to know your place, Lieutenant,” Haney had told him the first time they met. “I’m the brain controlling this helicopter. You’re a cogwheel in its machinery, and you’re going to act like one!” And Walker hated nothing more than that.

He remembered the retired navy pilot who’d toured their base, a WWII vet pushing a hundred years old. He had shaken his head when he saw the Comanche’s cockpit. “Oh, you kids. My P-51 Mustang back in the day had a simpler control panel than a microwave today, and that was the finest control panel I ever used!” He patted Walker’s ass. “The difference between our generations of pilots is the difference between knights of the sky and computer operators.”

Walker had wanted to be a knight of the sky. Here was his opportunity. Under the Russians’ berserk jamming, the helicopter’s combat mission integration system, the target analysis system, the auxiliary target examination and classification system, the RealSight situation imager, the resource burst system, whatever, they were all fucking fried! All that was left was the two 1,000-horsepower T800 engines, still loyally churning away. Haney normally earned his spot with his electronic gewgaws, but now his incessant orders had gone silent with them.

Haney’s voice came through the internal mic system. “Attention, I’ve found a target. It seems to be to the left and front, maybe by that little hill. There’s an armored-car unit that seems to be the enemy’s. You… do what you can.”

Walker nearly laughed aloud. Ha, that bastard. What he would have said in the past was, “I’ve found a target at azimuth 133. Seventeen 90-series tanks, twenty-one 89-series soldier convoys, moving toward azimuth 391 at an average speed of 43.5 klicks per hour and an average separation of 31.4 meters. Execute the AJ041 optimized attack plan and approach from azimuth 179 at a vertical angle of 37 degrees.” And now? “It ‘seems’ to be an armored-car unit, ‘maybe by’ that little hill.” Who the hell needed you to say that? I saw it ages ago! Leave it to me, because you’re useless now, Haney. This is my battle, and I’m going to use my ass for an accelerometer and be a knight! This Comanche’s gonna fight like its namesake in my hands.

The Comanche charged toward its open target and launched all sixty-two 27.5-inch Hornet missiles. Walker watched rapt as his swarm of fire-stingered little bees buzzed happily toward their target, swamping the enemy in a sea of fire. But when he turned to fly over the results of the encounter, he realized that something was wrong. The soldiers on the ground hadn’t tried to conceal themselves. Instead, they stood in the snow, pointing at him. They seemed to be cussing him out.

Walker flew closer and clearly saw the destroyed armored car’s insignia for himself: three concentric circles, blue at the center, white in the middle, red on the outside. Walker felt as if he’d dropped into hell. He started cussing, too.

“You son of a bitch, are you blind?!”

But he still had the wisdom to fly away in case the enraged French returned fire. “You son of a bitch, you’re probably thinking of how to pin the blame on me in military court right this moment. I’m telling you here, you won’t get away with this. You were the one in charge of identifying targets, are you clear?”

“Maybe… maybe we’ll still have the chance to make up for our mistake,” Haney said timidly. “I found another unit, right across—”