Chương 5: Locked In

"I thought you said there wouldn't be any out here! We specifically came here because it would be quiet!" Heigel's voice rose in pitch as he spoke, the last word shouted. Misty donned a half-headset over one ear as she twisted a knob on her console with her other hand.

"Frieland just sent a patrol through last week, Karl. There shouldn't have been anything hiding out here! And level seven…that's almost impossible…" She leaned over, pulling the microphone boom to her lips, her voice inaudible.

"Well, there's something right there!" Heigel pulled on the controls and the deck shifted under Felix's feet. Without a second thought, he dove into the empty pilot's station, pulling the seat's straps over his shoulders while Kyra held onto the command deck door frame. A slot sat ready to accept his mug—a design choice Felix found both surprising and appropriate for a working ship.

As soon as the mug-holder closed around and over the container, an image leapt to life directly above his console: a three-dimensional display of the Magpie and the space around her, with the five enemy fighters approaching from behind the derelict they'd used for cover. It perfectly matched the display hovering in front of Heigel. An alarm began to buzz throughout the ship. The captain grunted, the g-forces of the turn he'd slung the ship into pressing everyone into the deck or their seat.

Somewhere, something crashed against a bulkhead.

"Damnit, if you're gonna pull a stunt like that hit the alarm first," Kyra snarled.

"You should be back at the engines, not up here." Heigel's voice was tight, sweat beading across his crimson forehead.

"I'm going to run for it, see if we can hit the cruise lanes before they catch us." Without another word, Kyra sprinted off the command deck, toward the back of the ship. The display Gavin had called up had recaptured Felix's attention. As he stared at the arrowhead fighters driving toward Magpie, notes sprang into his vision: the System feeding additional information directly into his mind. Weapons, effective ranges, defensive measures, approach speed… Concern bloomed in Felix.

The closure rate was far too high for wherever the captain was driving the ship. Gavin immediately confirmed his thoughts.

"They're too fast, we have a minute, two at most before they're on us. The nearest lane is over an hour away; we're going to have to either fight or surrender…and we don't have the skills or firepower to take them." Heigel's breaths came in shallow, rapid gasps.

"Misty?" She shook her head.

"They're not the talking kind." The ship pulled hard around again, the captain panting as the maneuver pressed him into the seat.

"Only way is jousting." The closure speed increased rapidly in Felix's overlay. Gavin lifted cover in the upper corner of his panel, revealing a row of guarded switches he immediately activated.

"If they get a lucky shot, we're all breathing vacuum, sir. We had enough time to get suited if you'd kept running."

"I'm. In. Charge!" The Magpie shuddered as the first shots from the raiders clawed at her, the somehow familiar projectiles—helpfully identified to Felix as 40mm iridium slugs—splattering against the ship's impossible shields. The latter's strength appeared on the display centered in the pilot's console before Felix; the rain of slugs slicing away at the percentage, turning the blue shell around the Magpie' s silhouette a worrisome yellow-orange.

Then they were through the attackers, the five ships splitting off in different directions to turn back toward the fleeing vessel. Two trailed additional vapor; wounds carved from their flanks by Gavin's return shots as the ships had passed. The red-skull bars beside them had shrunk by a third. They continued straight, back toward the debris and derelict they'd been approaching initially, their course unflinching and toward the larger ship remains. The distance tracked in Felix's overlay began to shrink again.

"Heigel, if we're jousting now would be a good time to tu—" Gavin cut off as he looked up, turning pale. Felix twisted to look behind and inhaled a sharp breath. The captain was slumped in his chair, his head rolled loose to one side. Blood, far too much blood, streamed from his nose, running down his chest and onto the floor. Beside Felix, Misty gasped. Gavin's eyes bored into Felix.

"Both of us are negative modifiers for Piloting. Please tell me those wings on your suit mean you're a pilot." He looked down at his chest, at his suit, then to the controls. They called to him, had been the whole time he realized, and he reached out tentatively.

"I don't know, but I'll try." Felix wrapped his left hand around the throttle and the right around the sidestick, and the world around him slowed to a crawl. [SKILL ACTIVATION: CLASS NOT FOUND] [DOES USER WISH TO PROCEED? Y/N] Felix blinked. A choice? Obviously he was going to try, so he selected yes. [WARNING: CAPTAIN ROLE VACANT. ASSIGNMENT REQUIRED. DO YOU ACCEPT? Y/N] This time, when he looked at the option another window popped up and began scrolling.

The text seemed to be written as clearly as one could possibly write without saying anything at all, filling his vision with its clauses and warnings. In the corner of his vision, the distance warning began to flash yellow. The bandits were almost in range. There wasn't time to sort out a contract.

"Yes!" [USER ACCEPTANCE ACKNOWLEDGED] [WARNING: SAFE MODE OVERRIDE] [ACCESSING USER MEMORY] A knife twisted inside his head, and then Felix was no longer aboard the Magpie.

"On your right!" The words leapt out of my mouth as Trashbag's fighter, a sleek F41B Tomcat II slid left of my nose and I slipped behind the enemy Gremlin pursuing my wingman. My finger stroked the trigger and a hail of rounds belched from the newest generation Vulcan rotary cannon, shredding the enemy fighter's empennage. One of the twin engines flared as shrapnel found the turbine, the high-speed wheels disintegrating and eating the rest of the engine as they flung their blades in every direction.

The failure was contained, kept away from the other engine, but it didn't matter; the aircraft had already begun to lose control. Explosive bolts around the fighter's canopy flared, lifting it away and the pilot spun out, lifted away on a plume of rocket fire.

"Good shooting, Catsup," my wingman called as I settled in off his wing.

"No more on the radar."

"Doesn't mean anything, keep your scan." For much of the last hundred years, air combat developed toward beyond visual range fighting. Aircraft could fire a missile from fifty miles away, long before many aircraft could even tell there was an enemy in range. The game became to not be seen first, then to be untrackable. Fighters became invisible on radar, and that meant impossible to target at range. Then introduction of seventh-generation fighters had led to an incredible shift in air-to-air doctrine.

The Tomcat II was the first of the new generation, a twin-engined, diamond-winged throwback to the famed fighter of the late 20 th century, and the first fighter in two generations to mount the fearsome Vulcan 30mm cannon again. If to kill the enemy you had to get too close for missiles, doctrine forced a switch back to guns. The old ways had returned, and that meant a return to training for the dogfight. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The screen in front of me flashed blank, then split from the cockpit airframe surrounding me as it lifted away, allowing in bright daylight.

"Good work, Lieutenant Commander," Lieutenant Anders said as he offered his hand to me from the gantry enveloping the fighter simulator. I grasped it and allowed him to help pull me out of the cockpit.

"Very impressive maneuver there at the end, Commander Rickert didn't see you coming." The man in the simulator three bays barked something I couldn't understand, though his tone was obviously pissed. I had come from above, out of the sun, catching him with an energy surplus he couldn't hope to match. I grinned at Anders.

"Think it'll be enough?"

"Honestly, sir? No one's heard the Commander this mad in awhile. He'd be a fool not to have you as a TOP GUN instructor." Trashbag, Lieutenant Commander Vaughn, waved at me from his own simulator gantry, grinning from ear to ear. We had beaten the staff, and that was cause for celebration.

I let off a little pressure on the controls, but they remained steady, her left hand gripping the yoke tight enough her knuckles had begun to turn red-white.

"Loosen your grip, Ana, but keep holding it off… just like that." The stall horn began to whine, but the pair of main wheels kissed the pavement, barking only a little as they caught on the ground and the aircraft settled its weight onto the gear. It was a simple four-seater, nearly a hundred years old. The wings were placed high on the fuselage, supported by a strut running diagonally from just behind the single piston-driven engine mounted in the nose and up to nearly the middle of the wing.

It handled like a docile pony, though one always had to be careful the wind never got fully under a wing.

"Let it down gentle now." The single nose wheel touched the runway, and the aircraft began to slow as she pushed her toes slightly forward, activating the brakes. Once it reached a safe speed to turn, I put my hands back on the controls and settled my feet on the pedals.

"My controls."

"Your controls," she replied, letting go. I turned the ancient plane, the very same in which I had first learned to fly beside my father, off the taxiway, flipping off the extra lights and adjusting the flaps for taxiing back to the hangar.

"One-One-Seven Delta Delta clear runway two-two," I called, letting the other planes in the traffic pattern know it was safe for them to continue their own landings and takeoffs.

"Great job, Ana! That was a real greaser this time!" She beamed at me, and my heart leapt as pride burned in my chest.

[REQUIRED MEMORIES FOUND] [USER EXPERIENCE CALCULATED] [CLASS ASSIGNED: CAPTAIN, CIVILIAN] [CLASS ASSIGNED: COMBAT PILOT] [SKILL ASSIG--] Felix's mind stretched, dismissing the messages. His hands gripped the controls to the Magpie, but he no longer felt them. They simply existed; extensions of his hands tied into the ship. The throttle became part of his will, and his sight now spread all around the ship, every millimeter of space covered by his awareness.

Nothing moved without him sensing it, down to a cluster of debris three kilometers to his left. The Derelict four kilometers ahead. The five fighters chasing his exhaust trail. His display had changed, however. The red aura surrounding the enemies had transformed to a dingy grey, the skull hovering beside the bar following each replaced by a simple white "7". Somewhere to his left, Gavin gasped. Felix ignored the noise.

"Hang on," he ordered the entire ship. He found himself aware of every crew member, each at their emergency station. Kyra had made it to engineering, a bright green light in his mind. Beside him, Gavin and Misty, also green. Mitch glowed yellow, as did Doc; the two had been thrown hard when Heigel had first turned the ship, though they were now strapped in and secure. Heigel himself was a dim black, the System indicating the captain had moved on. There was no time to dwell on the man's passing.

Satisfied the remaining crew—his crew? —was secure, Felix twisted and the Magpie danced in reply. The slugs from the raiders, accelerated to an incredible speed by their magnetic rails, filled the space the freighter had previously occupied and one of the wounded attackers disintegrated as Gavin's laser punched through it. He rolled again, the second wounded fighter falling silent as it broke apart.

He pulled the throttle back and the ship responded immediately, his body straining against the seat harness as the ship decelerated. One of their assailants had chosen the moment to dive down hoping to get a shot as he passed, but instead slammed into the Magpie, punching through the shields and buckling the plating near the cargo bay. A defense laser winked out, and a sharp pain speared into Felix's back, mirroring the ship.

He gasped as it drove the air from his lungs, and he twisted the Magpie again, bringing one of the remaining two batteries to bear. Gavin, for his skill, took immediate advantage of the opening and lanced through the fourth fighter, leaving a cloud of gas and fire expanding behind them. The fifth and final fighter, realizing just how quickly his compatriots had disappeared, broke away, fleeing toward the gate, engines glowing hot as the pilot pushed them to the limit.

Felix felt the urge to follow, to sate the hunger he felt clawing at him from the ship, and for a brief moment entertained it. The distance between them rose as the fighter's greater speed brought it out of the engagement envelope, and a surge of disappointment washed over him. Bringing the ship to a halt, he let out a deep, shuddering breath, released the controls and leaned against the seat.

The world snapped back to the space immediately around him, and he closed his eyes against the bright lights of the command deck. An ache formed in his chest. He was a fighter pilot. He'd taught other pilots how to fly, how to fight. He'd been one of the best the United States Navy had to offer, and he'd offered his own skills to sharpen the generation following him. His callsign, Catsup—a play on something he remembered now, an old, old cartoon of a cat named Felix.

Of course, it would never do to give anyone a callsign that was too cool, so someone in flight school—he couldn't remember who—had come up with the name, and it stuck. A piece of him locked into place, and he felt just a little more whole. The experience with the ship, however… now he could remember the fights, the enemies he chased. The Sino Gremlin that almost got him. But never had he been so one with his craft before.

Reflexively, he rubbed his back, right where the enemy arrowhead fighter had driven itself into his fles… the ship's hull. The spot burned. That second memory, however, also left him perplexed. He was, or at least had been, a flight instructor. Ana had been a student… but that didn't sit quite right. The picture was more than just a student, and she felt like something else, something greater. His head ached again, and he let that memory sit, unfollowed. Perhaps, as he did more, he'd unlock who he truly was.

After a long moment he became aware of the Taggarts staring at him. He opened his eyes and met their gazes. Misty was the first to break the spell.

"How did you do that?" His status notification burned in the corner, and he flicked his attention to it. [COMMANDER FELIX "CATSUP" CONWAY] [CLASS: CAPTAIN – LEVEL 1] [CLASS: COMBAT PILOT – LEVEL 18] [SKILLS FOUND!] [INSTRUCTOR - 2] [SPECIALIZATION: FIGHTERS – 5] [SPECIALIZATION: LIGHT CRAFT – 4] [LEADERSHIP – 1] [TACTICS – 3] [GUNNERY – 4] [CAROUSE – 1] [ABILITIES FOUND!] [PASSIVE ABILITY (COMBAT PILOT): SECOND SELF (4)] [PASSIVE ABILITY (COMBAT PILOT): HONED REFLEXES (4)] [ACTIVE ABILITY (COMBAT PILOT): LIGHT TOUCH (2)] [PASSIVE ABILITY (CAPTAIN, CIVILIAN): CREW AWARENESS (1)] [CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE FOUR AVAILABLE ABILITY POINTS] if you're reading this and not on Royal Road, this work has been stolen. It is a work by the user ZeeWulfeh, under his penname of ZeeWulf. This has not been released for sale by the author on any book selling platform.