Second Leg

Kaihi

Hours pass.

The landscape shifts - rolling forested hills, wide empty plains, tall mountains, a patch of desert, and back to hills again. No contacts. Nothing. The radar sweeps the sky like an invisible hand reaching out in the dark, feeling blindly for a pulse that never comes.

But my mind never stops. The ground is always one accidental push of the stick away.

Fiya keeps me updated on our progress. The music helps keep me sharp. Still, it’s exhausting - more draining than some of the three-day continuous missions I’ve flown. Zyla, bless her, occasionally yanks me out of my own head with completely random questions.

“What’s your favourite treat?”

“Umm... probably chocolate. I like chocolate.”

“Ah. Yup.”

No follow-up.
Just silence again.

She does that sometimes. Strange, spontaneous questions, with no attempt to continue the conversation. I don’t mind, though. It’s oddly comforting.

I fly through the center of another nav ring.

Then Fiya’s voice cuts in, sharp and clinical.

“I’ve detected an enemy radar. It hasn’t locked us yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

My heart rate jumps.

“Where from?”

“Three-three-nine.”

I squint into the distance but don’t see anything. Check the radar.
There it is - a scanning signature. Not active fire control. Probably mounted on a truck.

Which means…
Missile battery nearby.

We're flying low, but the terrain’s against us - the hills are too shallow to use for cover. I ease the throttle forward, tapping into the Sanan’s best asset: raw acceleration.

I keep following the nav rings, eyes flicking between the HUD and the patch of terrain where the signal came from.

“Zyla, we may be about to enter combat. Make sure you’re strapped in.”

Her reply comes fast, nervous.

“Got it!”

Then-

Two pink plumes erupt from behind a hill. Then another. And another.

Fiya screeches:

“Missile lock! Missile lock!”

Four missiles.
Unknown variant.
Too late to hide.

My chest tightens.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
In.
Out.

The Sanan shakes violently as I shove the throttle forward.
The engine - once a steady hum - rises into a distant, tortured wail.

My eyes flick between the closing missile signatures and the terrain ahead.
What do I do?

I can probably dodge the first. Maybe, maybe the second - if I’m lucky. But the third and fourth? No chance. Not with them staggered so tightly.
Any evasive move I make to fool the first will be anticipated by the others.
They’ll adapt.

Sweat pours down my forehead like rain on a windscreen.
Fiya’s voice cuts through the pressure, clinical as ever.

“Same tracking method as the first missile. But these have larger control surfaces. Likely capable of high-G turns - possibly 20G.”

Fantastic.
Now I’m not even confident I can dodge one.

The Sanan might be fast, but she’s no acrobat. Not like my old fighter.
Not nimble.

The missiles spiral closer.
Five seconds to impact.

Two options.

Statistics flash through my head like flickers of lightning: bigger fins, tighter turning radius, lower top speed.
That’s my opening.

Three seconds.

My hands move without conscious thought, slamming a glowing red button on the dash.

The Sanan howls.
The engines scream - an unearthly, feral noise that drowns out everything else.
I’m thrown back in my seat as the G-forces clamp down on my chest.

900 km/h.
1000.
1100.

Faster than I’ve ever flown.
My heart’s trying to break through my ribs.

1200.

The airframe shudders, rattling like it's about to fly apart. I wrestle the stick, fighting the wind resistance locking up the control surfaces.

1250.

A thunderclap. We broke the sound barrier.

“The missiles are dropping away!”

I snap my eyes to the rear view.

Sure enough - there they go. Smoke trails stuttering, guidance lost. One by one, they spiral off and slam into the earth.

But the Sanan doesn’t slow down.

She accelerates.

1300. 1350.

Warning lights flicker across the dash - one after another in a blur of red and amber.
We’re approaching VNE. The maximum speed the Sanan can structurally handle.

I fumble with the controls, trying to kill the afterburner as she bucks and rattles like a thing possessed.
Fiya yells something - but it’s swallowed by the noise, by the sheer violence of the speed that races inside my mind.

I slam the airbrake toggle.
Nothing.

They don’t deploy.
The Sanan roars louder, shaking like it might disintegrate.

1400. 1450.

The stick feels like it's submerged in wet cement. I’m practically yanking it just to get a response.
When it does respond, it’s like trying to steer a boulder through the air.

The wings begin to flutter.

Panic rises in my throat - cold and absolute. The engine screams, far past tolerable levels.

1500. 1550.

The speedometer needle punches through the bright red VNE marking.
Every warning system onboard explodes at once. Lights. Buzzers.
A mechanical wail floods the cockpit - wordless, but clear:

SLOW DOWN.
YOU’RE GOING TOO FAST.

But there’s nothing I can do.

1600. 1650.

And then-
A sudden heaving groan. Like metal tearing its own skin.

The afterburner cuts out.

The Sanan drops back through the sound barrier. The violent shaking eases. The air thickens around us.

The airbrakes finally deploy, screaming against the wind. Too late to help. I close them again, my hands trembling.

The warnings fade. The siren dies.

I let out a shaky breath. If Fiya had lungs, I’m sure she’d be doing the same.

Then Zyla’s voice crackles through the intercom, shrill with excitement.

“Wow! That was so fast! I had no idea anything could go that fast! Can we do it again?”

I don’t have the heart to tell her how close we came to losing a wing.

I try to settle back into rhythm.
But my heart’s still pounding. My hands won’t stop shaking.

Who thought it was a good idea to add a system that accelerates you well beyond the safe limit - and can’t even be shut off?

According to Fiya, the afterburner works by opening a series of belly-mounted intakes and forcing the electric motors into overdrive. A simple concept, in theory. But it comes with two major drawbacks: power consumption, and heat.

So it can only be used once every hour.
And once it's engaged, it can’t be turned off.
No throttle. No modulation.

Those were planned features apparently.
Experimental, they called it.
Now I know what they meant.

But one question keeps clawing its way back into my thoughts, louder than all the rest:

How did that missile battery acquire a lock from behind a hill?
Radar doesn’t work through solid ground.

And yet - it did.

Fiya’s skeptical. She doesn’t think the battery even had a radar.
But that only deepens the mystery.

If there was no radar… how did they know we were there? How did they launch?

The questions spiral through my head like aircraft in a dogfight, twisting and turning, refusing to land.

Behind me, the engine hums steadily again. The nav rings drift across the HUD, each one a small point of hope pulling me forward.

My arms ache. My mind won't quiet.

But I keep flying.