“Break! Break!” someone screamed over the enemy frequency.
Too late.
The damaged fighter slammed into the far ridge and vanished in fire.
Two down.
Four left.
My throat felt dry. My arms burned. Sweat ran under my helmet. The cockpit smelled like hot wiring, fuel, and fear, though I refused to decide which of those belonged to me.
“Captain Riley,” Overlord said, quieter now, “what the hell are you doing?”
I glanced down at Ranger 7. Enemy trucks were closing on them from the south road. If I spent too long playing with jets, the soldiers died anyway.
“I’m buying time,” I said. “Move extraction now.”
“Extraction cannot land while those fighters are active.”
“Then tell them to come in low and trust me.”
There was a pause.
No commander likes hearing trust me from a pilot already presumed dead.
Then Ranger 7 Actual broke in, his voice ragged. “Reaper, if you can hear me, we are nearly black on ammo. Wounded are fading. Whatever miracle you’re working up there, ma’am, we need it fast.”
Ma’am.
He sounded so young.
For a moment, I thought of my father’s funeral. The folded flag. My mother’s trembling hands. The silence of officers who praised his courage but buried his ideas with him.
I thought of every man who had smiled at me in briefing rooms and said,
“That can’t be done.”
Then I saw the third fighter lining up behind me.
Close.
Too close.
The missile warning did not sound.
That meant guns.
I snapped right as tracers ripped past my canopy, bright and furious, close enough that I saw one round spark against the frame. The impact jolted my left side. A warning light flared. Hydraulic pressure dropped.
The Apache lurched.
For the first time, pain sliced up my arm as the controls fought me.
“Reaper, you’re hit!” Overlord shouted.
“No kidding.”
The enemy flight leader came back on the radio, breathing harder now. “You are finished.”
I looked at my father’s photo again.
A bullet fragment had cracked the plastic sleeve across his face.
Something cold moved through me.
Not fear.
Not rage.
Something cleaner.
I keyed the mic.
“You just scratched my father.”
Then I pulled the Apache straight toward the cliff wall.
The fighter followed, thinking panic had finally taken me.
But panic jerks.
Panic flees.
Grief calculates.
At the last possible second, I rolled hard left into a narrow side ravine hidden in shadow. The fighter behind me tried to follow, but his turn radius was too wide. His wingtip clipped the cliff, and his entire aircraft cartwheeled into the mountain in a bloom of orange fire.
Three down.
The sky was no longer laughing.
PART 3 — The Wrong Woman Came Home
The remaining three fighters changed their formation.
They stopped mocking me.
That was how I knew I had truly scared them.
No more jokes. No more lazy threats. No more open-frequency laughter. They circled above the valley like men standing outside a dark room, suddenly unsure what was waiting inside.
My Apache limped low over the rocks, wounded but alive. The left hydraulic system was failing. Fuel pressure flickered. My cannon was nearly dry. I had one Stinger left and two Hellfires that were never meant for this kind of fight.
Below, Ranger 7 was moving.
A black extraction helicopter skimmed into the valley from the west, hugging the terrain so low its rotors kicked dust into violent spirals. The trapped soldiers started pulling back toward the landing zone.
Almost there.
Then I saw the fourth fighter turn toward the extraction helicopter.
Not toward me.
Toward them.
My stomach dropped.
He had stopped trying to win glory. He was going to kill the rescue bird and everyone inside it.
“Overlord,” I said, my voice suddenly flat, “enemy fighter targeting extraction.”
“We see it. Reaper, can you intercept?”
Could I?
My left side was half-dead. My aircraft was bleeding power. My hands were slick inside my gloves.
But below me, six men were running with their wounded.
And above me, a fighter had mistaken them for easier prey.
I pushed the Apache forward.
The helicopter shook like it wanted to come apart.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Not yet.”
The fighter dove.
The extraction pilot screamed over the radio, “Missile warning! Missile warning!”
I had no angle.
No clean shot.
Only one terrible option.