Northwest of South Island, some miles from the coast, an endless coat of blue colored the sky above the seas. It was nothing short of a fine day, free of any clouds.

Except for a large black one rising from the sea. Something on the sea, actually.

The aircraft carrier had sustained a direct hit to its aft, pitching part of its end structure into the watery deep. Huge chunks of debris littered the space in its wake as it trundled on slowly, port-side gun arrays booming in a thunderous explosion of noise. For many GUN naval operators, it wasn't a very fine day at all; such had been the case ever since the fighter squadron zeroed in on them and turned an otherwise calm ocean scene into a very deadly one.

Several of Chimera's advanced-looking fighter jets blazed into the carrier's personal space over and over, strafing runs doing a little more damage with each pass. In bright, deafening display, the numerous aircraft spattered its side seemingly every passing moment, with virtually no rest allowed in between the continuous bursts. What few bombs they'd already been carrying had mostly been depleted, and it was surprising to one of them the vessel continued to stand, or float rather, weak as it was. But its last legs were fast approaching.

"I feel the need," said Zesty amid a flurry of flak, "the need for speeOHSHIggghhohgosh hooo hahaaa that was too close. Again. Ahem I feel the--"

"You made your point several near-death experiences ago," came General Green's voice.

"Oop"

So it had been for the last five minutes or thereabouts. Slowly the fighters harassed the carrier toward its literal breaking point, with just enough of them present to totally throw off any kind of attempt at a coordinated attack the gunners would make, and also to force the sheer confusion of battle to turn heavily in their favor.

HUDs in each of the aircraft's cockpits displayed a digitally-enhanced radar-like view that frankly looked like it was straight out of a video game. Colored triangles laid over a full-color map represented enemies and friendlies; their point determined whether they were at higher or lower altitude, and the tiny number next to each indicated by how many meters.

"Don't miss the forest for the trees, boys," said a familiar voice, mildly overdriven by a close microphone, probably inside a helmet. "Got another shooting gallery knockin' at the door."

The horizon was dotted with incoming Blue Eagle fighter jets. There were at least sixteen new triangles on the map, all pointing up.

Despite his own warning, Rock's fighter was not to be seen making any move away from the action to greet the fresh hostiles. Instead, it arced in a big, lazy loop straight over the carrier and its escort ships, then tightened its turning circle with unnatural crispness into an impromptu dive through the smoke pillar.

It was one of those things that no right-minded pilot would do without a compelling reason, but time had shown that Rock wasn't the sort to need trifling things like "compelling reasons" to do any-damn-thing he felt remotely inclined to and confident about, and the cockpit was easily where he felt most dangerously, recklessly comfortable.

"Let's burn the rest of it down fast."

Orbs of blazing plasma streaked from the smoke like rain and lightning from a pitch-black stormcloud, bursting, exploding, sparking, and spitting on impact. The stream of fire missed the mark at first, steaming up seawater and dotting some comparatively harmless patrol boats, but ended up veering and connecting with one of the larger vessels in the naval squadron in a well-concentrated onslaught.

When the fighter burst out of the smoke, pulling the blackness in its wake like some sort of hellish tornado, it looked like it was on a good trajectory to pull a lawn dart maneuver right into the ship. The variable vector of the fighter's thrust pitched its nose up unnaturally, though, and a full-throttle blast caused it to plane out just meters above the deck, buffeting all the equipment, debris, and personnel with a great rumble and as it roared by in scalding wind. Rock assumed a near-vertical, full-throttle climb immediately following; either he was very nearly immune to G-forces, or he just liked the feeling of blood getting pulled out of his brain.

As his vision cleared, with some seconds left before the Blue Eagles were in engagement range, he ascended inverted over the battlefield to evaluate their collective handiwork out the top of his ship's sharp, angular canopy.

"Huh."

Not anyone's favorite word to hear over the radio in combat.


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Some distance from the carrier assault, General Green continued his course. Two other aircraft roamed near, flanking the lead Chimera fighter, aside from Rock's anyway. "Garudas 3 and 4," he said as he eased the jet into a long looping port-side turn with its boosters thrumming (he had found it awkward to call them by their nicknames during flight, so they had adopted relatively appropriate squadron call signs, though far too many of them wanted to be called Maverick), "break formation. All units, trail and stay close to engage the inbound bandits."

For the record, if any of them saw what Rock had just done, no one mentioned it. Whereas other, less... experienced people may have had to spend a few seconds putting their eyes back in their skulls upon witnessing something like that, such was not the case with Green and his merry men. With a mindset based on fighter jock bravado and veritable veins full of jet fuel, they probably just wanted to one-up him somehow, now.

Moving away from the naval group, Green put his aircraft close to the sea (so ridiculously close that it was one of those things someone might film and put up a video website with a title like "psycho fighter pilot low level flying nerves of steel" and so on), the rest of his crew speeding after him in his wake, not in any kind of real formation but clearly stringing after one another. After a few moments of this, he seemed to slam back on the yoke because the jet pitched its nose skyward, every afterburner thundering, and up he went just as Rock had. They would meet the Blue Eagles in seconds.

Of course, somewhere around here was his friend's... observation.

"Huh what?" They hadn't missed anything. Right?

"Of course there were two carriers. Don't be silly. There's one, the one we just blew up, and there's that other one. Which is, wait, that was the one... with the water that's on fire? Water doesn't burn, right? Except for that one time when Dizzy tried cooking. I thought..."

"Uhhhh," said Spaz.

"Piss," echoed Green.

"Ohhhhh crap," said Magnet, "ohh crap aw that's bad. Oh man. Do you know how many flickies we're gonna be cleaning gunk off of--"

"I'm not doing that!" said Spaz. "Flickies suck."

"Flickies are awesome, what did they ever do to--" In the background one might have been able to hear something feathery smash against Magnet's canopy in grisly fashion. "AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH"

"Piss in a bucket and screw it just ugh," repeated Green, "ugh, damn it. Okay--"

"In other news, scientists have developed a car that can run on water. The catch is that the water has to come from the South Island ocean--"

"Everyone shut up. It's still floating, it's not totally destroyed yet, maybe it's salv--"

The "carrier" exploded in brilliantly explosive display as one of the Chimera jets buzzed it with a beautifully-executed strafing run.

"I'M HELPING??" said Giggles.

"Arrrrgh piss. Ass." All this with incoming enemy bogeys, mind you.

"Just forget it," Rock piped up, "we'll deal with it when we deal with MISSILES."

That last part was actually not anything he was trying to convey through the rest of the sentence, and in fact coincided with rapid beeping and "MISSILE LOCK" indicators in most all of the fighters' cockpits. It was an active infrared lock, from the looks of it, and, out at sea with a squadron of fighter jets incoming, it definitely wasn't a false alarm.

Daring or not, Rock didn't play dodgeball with the threat coming toward his tail. He immediately dumped flares, cut throttle, and used his already high-and-inverted attitude to tuck into a split-S, a downward, looping turn back toward where the threat was coming from. He rammed the throttle forward again at the bottom of the maneuver and checked his reserves: good on fuel, plasmas cool, rotary cannon still half-loaded, and missiles entirely gone. It was time to handle things the old fashioned way.

Chances were he'd be entering the dogfight low and head-on, but a little late, since Green and his wingmen were already smack in the fray.

For their part, neither Green nor his men had anything to chime in with regarding the status update Tau brought. They were busy enough with the strain of being outnumbered in the biggest fur ball that ocean had probably seen in a long time, though despite the inferior numbers they seemed to be doing a mighty fine job of putting the opposing force in turmoil. What had been a brilliantly blue sky was becoming increasingly dirtied with black smoke, remaining missiles birthing long white plumes and tracer rounds blazing every which way.

The tailwing of one Blue Eagle burst apart, shredding and sending debris into its wake, forcing one of the CTs to break hard so as to avoid getting caught up in that. The enemy fighter rolled into an almost lazy flat spin, on a one-way ticket to the waters.

Another Blue Eagle inverted and broke hard toward the sea to avert a missile, which continued out into the open sea air. As it did so, it was trap-shot by the pilot who'd originally gotten the missile lock, a quick burst of gunfire shredding its right wing. The wing seemed to almost cling to life for a moment, then snapped and put the whole aircraft into a hellish spin. The instant the spin began the canopy burst and out jumped the cockpit seat, shooting the strapped pilot into the sky above his doomed machine. Several seconds later a white parachute unfurled, snapping open.

Some of the Chimera fighters got a little too close to it for comfort, but they let the ejected pilot be and seemed to deliberately take care to keep from shooting near him. Enemies the two sides might have been, but fighter pilots harbored certain codes and senses of respect one often failed to find on an otherwise conventional battlefield in modern times. And fond as he was of battle, General Green was fonder of his sense of honor.