Warriors are a superstitious lot and aerospace fighter pilots are no exception. If anything, they're the most superstitious of all. Take me. My family is pure-blooded Irish--as far back as we can trace--2,000 years of southern Irish Celts, and when I climb into the cockpit of my Corsair, I take with me all the lore, the myth, magic, and belief in the power of other worlds that that heritage has laid upon me.
My grandmother used to tell me all kinds of folktales about the ancient Irish heroes. Even now, I can still remember most of them. The one that really stuck with me was about an ancestor of ours named Kensie. Grandma used to say that I was named for him. I guess that's why I remember that particular story so well. Kensie was a great warrior and hunter. Grandma said that he even served Cuchulain for a while. The story says that he got killed fighting the chief of a rival clan, whose druid had turned him into a gigantic red eagle for the combat.
Though I always felt a bit of a chill in my Celtic soul at the thought that my long-ago namesake had been killed that way, I liked that story, liked the way it sang to my blood... until a couple of months ago.
I'd been assigned to the 10th Sky Rangers Aerospace Division right out of flight school. I was so proud to be serving with a combat unit. Everything was fine for the first 8 months of my tour. I'd even managed to shoot down 3 enemy fighters--2 Marik and 1 bandit. It looked like nothing could stop me. I was aiming to get my fifth kill and make ace before the year was out.
The fifth kill--ace--the dream of every fighter jock since Richthofen! The number five took on a whole new meaning for me, a kind of talisman drawing me on. Was five a lucky number for me... or unlucky? Would I make it to five... or die trying?
See? As superstitious as my ancestors, with their Druids and red eagles.
Just this past July it was that an officer from the Commonwealth's Military Intelligence section arrived on Wyatt with new intel reports about units we might be facing in the near future. Listed under the 4th Division of the Defenders of Andarien was a Major Dmitri Pawoloski, a onetime Kurita pilot who had defected to the Free Worlds League. The file had no detail on the specific type of ship he was currently flying, but it did mention one quirk of his.
He always painted his fighters to resemble a gigantic red eagle.
That's when it started. A couple of nights after that briefing, I began having nightmares... not every night at first, but then more and more frequently. They were always the same. My squadron was scrambling to engage invaders from the Free Worlds League. At first it was like any of a dozen previous dogfights, Lyran technology and training winning out over Marik's numbers. My buddies and I were burning Marik ships out of the sky, score after score, like we couldn't miss.
Then the Red Eagle Came
The bloody wings of that bird filled my dreams, outstretched, impossibly huge. Its outthrust talons ripped apart one ship after another. Nothing seemed to touch it-lasers, missiles, autocannons-nothing could hurt it. That bird torethrough the ships of my squadron, shredding them like they were made of cardboard. One by one, the eagle destroyed my friends until I was the only one left. Just before its talons closed over my ship, I heard a voice in my head say, "You'll never win your fifth kill... never! You are going to die... now!" Then the eagle's claws ripped my ship apart.
I always woke up at that point, soaked with sweat and with that voice ringing in my ears.
I shrugged off the first few dreams, laughing at the bizarre way my mind had linked my ancestor's encounter with a magical eagle and the double ace Marik pilot who just happened to like to paint his ship in the likeness of a giant red bird of prey. But by the time I'd had about a dozen of them, I stopped laughing.
We flew several combat missions against bandits shortly after that, and I couldn't shake the feeling of uneasy dread which gripped my stomach like a frozen lead glove every time I climbed into my cockpit. While I didn't exactly freeze or fall apart, I didn't act like a combat veteran either. With my hands shaking whenever we went into combat, I missed easy shots, slipped out of formation, overshot the landing strip. Finally I managed to get myself shot down by a pirate in a battered old Sparrowhawk because I forgot to watch my tail. Luckily I was in atmospheric flight at the time, and Aerospace Rescue found me. After a couple of days in the base sickbay, I went back on the line.
That's when the dreams started coming every night. It got so that I was afraid to go to sleep. I started drinking cup after cup of coffee and popping anti-fatigue pills by the handful. But I couldn't hold out forever, and eventually I'd fall asleep. And the dream would come again.
Flight Leader Entz pulled me off the line and sent me back to sickbay for a series of tests.
"You know, Kensie, I realize that getting flamed is a bad experience," Entz told me, as she gave me my orders. "I've been shot down twice, so I know. To be suddenly confronted with your own mortality in such a cold and impersonal way is really a shock. It's hard to deal with the fact that the universe will be able to go on without Maria Entz... or Kensie Shaneyfelt."
Entz put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Go get some rest, Irish. Let the guys over in medical do their jobs." She laughed. "But you better get your skinny butt back over mainside as soon as they get done with you. If I find out you're laying in bed harassing the nurses, I'll send you up in a kite, next mission. Got it?"
Well, they ran a whole battery of psychological and physiological tests, but they didn't come up with a bloody thing I didn't already know. I was exhausted, worn to a frazzle... and that damned dream refused to go away. Sure...I knew it was only a dream, I told the psych boys so, but it had gotten to the point where I couldn't shut my eyes without seeing that blood-red bird, without feeling the terror burning my soul.
After a couple of days, the flight surgeon came into my room. "Captain Shaneyfelt, I'm sorry, but due to the lack of improvement in your condition, I have no choice but to ground you."
"But...," I began to protest.
The flight surgeon cut me off with a wave of his hand. "No 'buts,' Captain. You've been walking around like a zombie. When you do sleep, you wake up screaming. If I let you fly, you'd probably kill yourself. Do you think any of your buddies'd want to fly with you on their wing, in your condition? Until your condition improves, you are grounded."
Grounded
The only thing I'd ever wanted to do was fly. Now, because of a couple of bad dreams, I couldn't even do that.
How do you mingle mind-numbing depression over the loss of your greatest dream with the sheer, grating relief over not having to face your greatest fear? Grounded, I was safe... but my comrades were flying without me.
And the nightmares kept coming.
They discharged me from sickbay and sent me back mainside. Marla Entz put me to work in the radio shed, ostensibly to keep me working with the squadron. I think her real reason was to keep me away from the fighters. Eventually she had to pull me off that duty too, because the combination of lack of sleep and nightmares made it impossible for me to function.
For two weeks all I did was lie on my bunk, torturing myself over being grounded while my buddies were flying, happy to be alive, and guilty as hell about it. Images of the red eagle filled my mind even while I was awake. I was a nervous wreck. The higher ups were beginning to talk about discharging me on grounds of mental instability.
Then All Hell Broke Loose
On 25 September we got the word. "All squadrons scramble! Incoming fighters! Incoming DropShips! This is not a drill! Repeat... this is not a drill!"
The time was 1627 hours. The voice on the loudspeaker was still yelling about incoming fighters when I arrived at the catapult station. By God, if they were going to keep me grounded, I was at least going to see my buddies off. As my onetime wingman Lucas Kurtz ran through his preflight check, I leapt up on the wing of his CRS-V12 Corsair.
"Take care, Luke," I shouted over the piercing whine of the huge Wangker engine. "You know I'm not going to be there to bail you out if you get in trouble."
"I know, Irish." He patted the lucky grofelder's ear he had glued up on his console and grinned. "Don't worry about me. I'll be OK."
"Lieutenant Shaneyfelt," Kurtz's tech yelled. "You'll have to get down now, sir, we're hooking up the 'cat."'
"Luck, Luke!" I yelled at Kurtz as I jumped off the stubby wing. Even though he couldn't have heard me through his closed canopy, Kurtz smiled and gave me a thumbs-up sign.
When Kurtz and the rest of my squadron had gotten off the ground, I ran to the radio shed. I couldn't be up there with them, but I couldn't just go back to my quarters and wait, not knowing what was happening.
It was about 1645 when we got the message that my squadron had sighted the enemy. Flight Leader Entz identified the invaders as the 4th Division of the Defenders of Andarien. Even in the air-conditioned radio shed, I began to sweat. The 41h Andarien was the unit to which Major Dmitri Pawoloski was attached.
The Red Eagle Had Come to Wyatt
My hands shook and my heart pounded. My mind screamed at me--He's here! He tracked you down, and now he's going to kill you! I stood up and tore off the headphones.
He's coming for you. The Red Eagle is here, and he's coming for you. I burst through the door of the radio shed and ran. Blindly, neither knowing nor caring where I was running to. I just had to get away.
Somehow I ended up in the ready-room. The radio traffic from the dogfight above was blaring from the speakers there too. My squadron was in in the thick of the fighting, directly in the path of the incoming DropShips. I could hear Entz, Kurtz, Haring, and the rest, all shouting at each other. Marik fighters were everywhere, pushing us back towards the planet by numbers alone.
The dream was there, in my mind, with all its terror and vividness. I sat huddled in a corner of the ready-room fighting the images that crowded me, threatening to rip my sanity away from me. Concentrate! Concentrate! I could hear my squadron mates as if they were in the room with me.
"Blue Three! Blue Three! Get these guys off my tail!"
"Roger that, Five! Hold it! Blue One, roll left!"
"Blue Three, Blue One! Rolling left! Nail this guy, will you?"
"Hold tight, One! Your bogey's in my sights... painted like a big red bird of some kind... damn! Missed!"
My blood chilled, my stomach twisted in an icy knot. He was there... Major Dmitri Pawoloski, the Red Eagle!
I knew what would happen to my squadron. They would all die while I cowered here, safe on the ground. Safe. Safe from the Red Eagle. Safe from everything. Everything except my nightmare, my own mind.
Move! Move! Don't think! One last flight suit hung from the ready-room rack--mine.
Don't think! Move!
Moments crawled. Fear threatened to paralyze me, made my hands shake so hard I could scarcely close the pressure seals at my wrists and collar. How I crossed that 40-meter space between ready-room and hangars I will never, never know.
Dieter Jurgens, my Tech, was there.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Irish?" he shouted. "You're grounded. Look at you! You're in no condition to fly!"
"Fire her up, D. J." My voice croaked like an asthmatic Tharkadian tree frog. Swallowing hard to force down the lump in my throat, I repeated the order. "Fire her up. The Red Eagle is up there. I've got to go!"
He looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was. "No, Irish, you'll kill yourself!"
"Dammit Jurgens! Fire up the dammed engines!" My voice cracked. "Do it, Corporal!"
"Kensie...," he began, but I grabbed his elbow and spun him around towards the hangar bay housing my ship.
She was there, cool, gleaming and silent... and ready to grab blue.
"Kensie, I can't let you..." He stopped himself. Maybe he saw murder in my eyes. Maybe he just knew there would be no stopping me. "They're on frequency three double oh-niner," he said. He shook his head. "Luck, Irish."
Adrenaline surged through my system as I pulled the handle which dropped the pilot's boarding ladder. Climbing into my cockpit, I could hear Jurgens detaching the power leads and safety lines from the ship. The roar of the Wangker engine igniting as D. J. fired the cycle converters was a shotgun blast even through the helmet battles. The last thing I saw before I taxied out of that hangar bay was Dieter Jurgens standing against the wall of the bay. He rotated his finger around his temple, then shrugged and grinned and gave me the traditional thumbs up. You're crazy, but good luck, he was saying.
Damn right I was crazy. The Red Eagle was up there, waiting for me.
I shoved the thought aside. Ignoring repeated calls from the tower, I taxied onto the launch ramp and slammed the throttle wide open. Without the benefit of a catapult, I would need every gram of overthrust I had to get 50 tons of aerospace fighter off the ground. Finally, less than 20 meters from the end of the runway, my ship lifted. Switching on the HUD and transponder/ receiver, I picked up a heading for the battle in space.
Five Gs of acceleration mashed me back in my seat as the sky turned dark blue and the stars came out. Just what the hell was I doing, anyway? D. J. was right. I was going to die, just like the dream said.
But the alternative was running and hiding and leaving my buddies to die out in the thin, cold vacuum.
No!
Blue deepened to black as I cleared Wyatt's atmosphere. Ahead, I saw the flare and fade of explosions and engine-burns, as fighters wove and spiraled in a swirling dogfight. Determination and adrenaline had burned through the panic, but the underlying fear remained. I knew that blind, unreasoning terror still lay just below the surface. It wouldn't take much to bring it boiling to the top, where it would destroy all logic and training, sending me running again. Only out here there was no place to run.
Soon I was in the middle of it. Most of the enemy fighters were Marik-built F-90 Stingrays, with a few Liao Thrush and Kurita Sholagarfighters thrown in for good measure. I spotted a pair of F-90's closing in on the tail of a Corsair. Kicking my ship into a right wingover, I pulled out above and behind them. I jiggled the controls a bit. My heads-up display signaled a hard weapon lock. Pressing the trigger, I sent paired bursts of energy into the Marik ship from my Corsair's large lasers. A stream of glittering ice crystals billowing from his shattered canopy told me that his armor had been breached. He was losing atmosphere. My combat sensors showed that his cockpit had been destroyed.
A kill!
"Blue Leader here! Nice shooting, whoever that was." Maria Entz's voice sounded over the comlink.
"I'll confirm that one."
She must have looked at her transponder display screen then, because she began yelling. "Shaneyfelt, what the hell are you doing up here? By God, if I didn't need every ship right now, I'd flame you myself! You'd better hope that nothing happens to that ship, or you'll wish I had shot you down."
Another voice broke in. "Hey, Irish! Glad to have you back." Lucas Kurtz pulled his ship alongside mine. "That was number four, right? Let's go see if we can't get you your fifth kill!" At that thought my fear became a living thing, crouching in the cockpit with me. With almost a physical effort, I shouldered it aside and growled into the comlink, "Right, Luke. Let's get 'em!"
Incoming Marik DropShips painted themselves across my display screens. Kurtz and I rolled starboard and vectored for them. My lasers cut loose a volley which cratered hull metal. All the pent-up horror and fear and guilt was burning through me now in a red blood lust. It was several moments before I realized that the curdling banshee's scream I heard over my helmet speakers was my own.
We lanced through the formation, slowed, end-for-ended and accelerated back towards the planet.
"Blue Leader to Blue Five! Watch it! Red Eagle on your tail!"
The terror flooded back. My head jerked around. Blue Five was Kurtz's call sign...There!
The ship had come out of nowhere, an SL-15 Slayer painted midnight black except for the image of a huge eagle, the color of blood, painted across fuselage and wings. It was him, the Red Eagle, my nightmare, visible now in carballoy and steel and so close astern I could nearly see Pawoloski's grin through his helmet.
Panic shrieked in my ears. I slammed the throttle wide open and hauled the stick back so hard I thought I'd torn it clear of its moorings. My pressure suit tightened around my legs and hips, preventing a high-G blackout as I twisted into a tight, tight half loop. Half way around I rolled the ship upright. As I came out of the Immelman turn, I noticed that Luke had split off from my tail when the SL-15 appeared, diving towards Wyatt rather than climbing with me.
In my aftervid, I saw the Slayer coming up right behind me. My Corsair lurched as laser fire ripped across both wings, and I caught a glimpse of wreckage spinning off from my starboard side. A quick glance at my ship's status display showed that most of the armor on my right wing had been shot away by that laser blast. You don't need wings to maneuver in vacuum... but landing was going to be decidedly interesting.
If I lived to land.
I shoved my stick down and to the right and kicked in left thrust. The Slayer hung with me through the split-S, firing the whole time. I tried for a lock with my rear lasers, tried and failed as another hit savaged my starboard wing. Another hit! More damage was revealed on my SSD: fuselage armor damaged, engine hit. Even a Corsaircan't take that kind of pounding for long.
Kurtz yelled over the comlink, "Hang on, boss, the cavalry is coming." Two CRSV12's flashed past toward the Marik ship on my tail--his and Judy Haring's. I glanced at the after vid, expecting the bastard to break and turn, saw instead the Slayer lift its nose and fire.
A long burst from its autocannon blew through Kurtz's fuselage armor and chopped into his hull. Chunks of debris broke free in a tumbling cascade of wreckage. "Punch out, Luke!" I screamed into my mike. "Punch out, dammit!" Luke's fighter, what was left of it, was tumbling now. The Slayer hauled around and burned him with lasers and cannon fire. I was watching when his fuel tanks blew.
"No!" Kurtz had been my wingman ever since I'd joined the squadron. "No, you bastard! You bloody red bastard ... !"
The Red Eagle skimmed atmosphere. I tried to line up on his tail, but he slipped away, as insubstantial as a dream.
Or a nightmare.
He was on Judy Haring's ship now, close behind her, laser fire searing into her wing and tail fins. I could hear her screaming as her fighter began falling to pieces around her, could hear her screaming as I tried for another shot and realized the Red Eagle was just out of range.
Looking wildly around, I saw that my entire squadron had been scattered by the enemy. I was all alone. In my HUD, I saw the blip that was the SL-15 turning to attack my ship again. Pawoloski must have been listening to our tac frequency earlier, for over the comlink came a voice, heavily accented, full of malice.
"So, you want your fifth kill. I'm sorry, my friend, that you must die before you achieve your goal."
Then, just like the eagle in my nightmares, the Slayer stooped for its kill. The Red Eagle dove past my ship, its autocannon blasting hole after hole in my ship. Red lights on my console warned of damage to internal structure, of fuel leaks, of pressure leaks...
I pushed the throttle open and nosed over into a steep dive towards Wyatt, raw terror gnawing at the edges of my mind. Off my starboard side, I saw the Slayer looping back for another pass. Slayer? Or the red bird of my dream?
The nightmare was becoming merciless reality
I knew that if I didn't pull out of my power dive, I'd burn up when I reentered Wyatt's atmosphere. I knew that I had to ease off on the throttle and pull the stick back. I just couldn't move. Death was staring me in the face, freezing bones and blood and mind with fear.
"Good-by, Lieutenant Shaneyfelt," Pawoloski's voice came again. "I am tired of playing with you, so now you die."
My ship's nose and the leading wing edges began to glow with the first signs of reentry heating. The ship shuddered as I hit atmosphere. A line of tracers streamed past my cockpit, the near miss revealing that the Marik pilot was suffering the same difficulties that I was.
A warning buzzer told me that my power plant was approaching shutdown temperature.
"Do something," my mind screamed at my immobile body. "Anything. Don't just sit there and die!"
I would die... like in the dream. Like in the story...
No! No! By the blood of Celtic ancestors... no! To die helpless... whimpering... no!
I jerked the throttle closed and pulled the stick back violently. My vision narrowed to a red-tinged pinpoint as the high-G forced the blood away from my brain. The Corsair's frame shrieked protest at the sudden turn. When my vision cleared, I was looking at the stars again... and at the Red Eagle twisting away just ahead.
Convulsively, my hand tightened on the firing grip. At less than 100 meters, the intense energy from all six lasers tore into the Slayer's armor. The Marik pilot hauled his ship into a vertical climb, spinning wingtip over wingtip, but I hung with him, firing again and again and again.
My lasers ripped up the armor along his ship's fuselage and nose, and I saw a burst, of light erupt from the Slayer's nose forward of the canopy. Wreckage spun into spacel as his autocannon blew apart, armor spilling away in molten fragments.
He turned, but I turned tighter, staying inside his arc. A bolt of laser fire from his rear gun melted another hole in the nose armor on my ship. The SL-15 whipped into a Shandell turn to the right and pulled out of the climb with a barrel roll. Praying that my ship would hold together, I went into a fast climbing turn, following the Red Eagle. Again the shutdown warning sounded, and again I slapped the override. Stay with him! Stay with him!
I unleashed another fusillade of laser bolts at the Slayer's exposed belly. He was slipping to the side, angling towards Wyatt's atmosphere. He was going to get away!
I gave my Corsair all the side vectoring thrust I thought she could take... and then some more. The Eagle was trying for a bounce off atmosphere, and I knew from the shriek of protesting hull struts and stress supports that my Corsair would never be able to follow him.
Instead, I shoved the throttle full forward, angling down, the Slayer filling my HUD targeting brackets. It was my last chance. If I missed now, he would escape. Whether I hit him or not, I was plunging too steeply into the atmosphere to have a prayer of skipping off again. It was all or nothing, with a fiery, reentry Death clinging to my hull with bloody talons.
I was so close I could read the lettering on his tail fins, so close I could distinguish individual feathers in the painted design that blotted out the looming, cloud-decked mass of the planet ahead... FIRE!
The Marik ship exploded.
My Corsair plunged through the explosion as it unfolded in a flaming white flower of detonated fuel and ammunition. Fragments rattled across my hull and scored wings already torn by fire and explosion.
It was too much for my already-damaged fighter. Warning lights and tell-tales were coming on all over my SSD. My power was failing, my vector thrusters freezing as I jockied for control. Somehow I brought her nose up enough to drop into a long, ragged glide as atmosphere thundered around my cockpit and what was left of nose and wing armor glowed cherry-red with reentry. Then my power went dead completely, and I found myself trying to make a burned-out pile of junk glide. I did. Barely.
My ground crew still can't figure out how I managed to reenter safely, let alone land in one piece. My aft armor had been breached in three places. My right wing was nearly shot away. My engine shielding was almost completely destroyed, my power plant feed was half melted, and my undercarriage was bent. On top of all that, D.J. spent the next couple of days picking pieces of Slayer out of my Corsair's hull.
It turned out I didn't miss much of the fighting after I grounded. Blue Squadron had been able to form up and hit the DropShips again, throwing enough of a scare into them that they looped the planet and headed back for the JumpPoint and home without even bothering to try and land. So maybe we'll get to keep Wyatt for a little while longer.
Luke made it back. He'd ejected after all, and Aerospace Rescue picked him up from Wyatt orbit. When he gets out of sickbay, he'll be back on my wing again.
Yes, the grounding order was lifted. Marla Entz decided not to have me, in her words, "first shot, then court-martialed," which I thought was rather nice of the lady, all things considered. Intelligence confirmed the SL-15's pilot to be Major Pawoloski. My gun cameras confirmed my kills on the Stingray and Pawoloski's Slayer.. my fifth kill.
And I never had another nightmare. The psych boys figured that since I faced my fears, the dreams won't come back.
Am I superstitious? Of course not! Just because my Celtic ancestor and namesake was killed by a giant red eagle... just because I almost followed him the same way... hey, why should that make me superstitious?
Oh, sure, I wear this twisted little chunk of metal on a chain around my neck, now, sure, but that's not superstition. It's one of the chunks of the Slayer that D. J. dug out of my fuselage, and I keep itto remember what fear will do to a man's soul if he lets fear ride him into the blue... and what's possible if he doesn't.
My squadron-mates, on the other hand, are something else. They seem to think that my dreams were some kind of warning, that I'm some kind of good luck charm.
Well, come to think of it, they could have a worse good-luck talisman than the Lyran Commonwealth's newest ace!
Captain Kensie "Irish" Shaneyfelt is an aerospace pilot still serving with the Lyran Commonwealth's 10th Skye Rangers Aerospace Force. At the time of this writing, he hadjust scored his seventh kill, putting him well on his way to the title of double ace.
Greggson DuVall is a military historian and author. He is currently compiling data for a textbook on aerospace fighter tactics.
by Thomas S. Gressman
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