Black Squirrel

God damn F-35s¹ caught me napping! Rolling upside down from fifty three thousand feet and diving straight down, I must lose them. Or die. High altitude wasn’t enough. Their AESA² radar defeated my stealth and they found me. I dodged their Mach 4³ AMRAAM⁴ missiles by doing steep S-turns; big yellow flowers of High Explosive reached out for me and missed. I swear I saw red hot chunks of titanium shrapnel zip past! Jamming the hell out their radar, only partly worked. I wondered, could they track the slipstream from my warplane? No, how was that possible? But flight was once impossible, two centuries ago.

Wish I was able to climb to ninety thousand feet and avoid the damn F-35s but my bird won’t go that high. Not without a bigger wing and a spacesuit for me. Diving down we go earthwards. I admit my big thrill isn’t battling the enemy jets hunting me, nor the destruction my single nuclear bomb will cause. It’s simply rolling upside down and feeling pure fucking joy, as my pink (yes, you heard right. Is that a problem? Pastel colours match the sky, not matt black) warplane follows my moves and goes inverted, straight down. Away to freedom, I dream. My Radar Warning Receiver⁵ picks up enemy radars. My jammer jams their arses. For awhile.

Speeding down to earth, vertically, I shove the single throttle to maximum. My bird accelerates like the Devil is after her. He may as well be; F-35s are his chariot and guided missiles his reach.  G-force grips me like my ex wife’s sister. A forbidden touch of need and longing. I know I could close my eyes and dive straight down, going supersonic now. Slight buffet as we pass the sound barrier. Straight down from 53k, right into the ground. And for a few seconds, I do close my eyes. Would my single nuclear weapon detonate when I flew into the earth? Would it? Maybe I should do it, commit suicide. No more pain... a dark seductive temptation.

I open my eyes. Numbers appear on my Helmet Mounted Sight⁶, always changing. And on my computer screen and Head Up Display⁷. Seven hundred and seventy knots, soon passing eight hundred, in the thin upper air. Which thickens as I dive lower and slows me, a little. I look out of my gold plated cockpit canopy. A distant sun sparkle, no two, on far off airplanes, shows my enemy is there, visible. Real, not just a blip on my radar screen, if it was on. My set can pick up F-35s, like they can me. Who are we kidding in this high tech chess duel? Only ourselves in the huge blue vista of the sky. Come and get me, you fuckers!

Suddenly, I wish my ex wife was with me. Why do I think of her at this exact moment? Because I’m in dire peril and actually enjoying it? She always was a mad bitch which was why I made love to her sister. And let her catch us. I have a death wish! Yes, if she was here, in my front cockpit with a disabled ejection seat and tied up, I’d drop my single one megaton nuke and fly us into the blast. What fun! Laser! Laser! Laser! screams the warning voice. Damn! F-35s have come down and zapped me with their ranging lasers. Can’t jam a laser. I reduce power to idle and corkscrew my warbird. It works! 20mm gunfire sparkles past ahead. A hundred metre miss. Too close!

Stick to my balls and pull till my eyes pop out of my Frankenstein skull. To a Satanic God in Heaven we fly some crazy arc in the sky. With a slow engine, on idle, I feel g-force crush me into my seat. Must be eight or nine. G-suit gives me tolerance, an extra two g. I pull back even more, damn I love my bird! Russia makes good planes. Upwards I go, still with a touch of my earlier speed. Radar online, pick up two F-35s a mile apart and coming downwards to get me. Lock them up, click, select missile, click, launch, click, click and two Bright Stars launch. Speed finally slowing, making me an easy gun target. No need. Two missile hits, two kills!

Reverse my turn, on idle throttle. In effect a stall turn. So damn slow! What a beautiful flying machine. Blue sky turning to a dark green richly coloured earth. Throttle to cruise and tree top height. Behind me, two F-35 jets disintegrate and fall earthwards. So fucking what if I killed two men? They had family. So did I. Till they bombed my hometown and stole my second wife. By flying like Waldo Pepper and being as evil as Stalin, I’ll get them. Revenge keeps me warm, like Ffionna’s embrace. Hell, I miss that girl, my girl. Snap out of it Nik or you die. Emotion in battle will kill you. Check my jet over, my route, my weapon, my fuel. For her. My dead wife.

F-35 pilots fought like demons. They had top jets and hit me good and square. Four shrapnel holes in my wings and a slow fuel leak. Time to jettison my drop tanks; they’re empty. Everything else is fine, except one thing. The four holes in my jet increase my radar cross section and they can see me on their scopes. Got to be even more cunning. Fly dog leg courses, nice and slow. Come in from the east, where they won’t expect me. Be a real cunt! As they were, using a B-4 Batwing bomber to kill my wife at St Petersburg. It’s not her fault she was a biological weapon scientist. She was my WIFE! My FUCKING wife. You KILLED her!

Target coming up. Numbers counting down, fuel burn and loss will come before target destination. Only one thing to do; full throttle and zoom climb! Here we go, speed increasing, height climbing, up we go. Now they see us on their radar horizon in my damaged jet. Ah, I see our target, all laid out like on my training flight. I did two of those and was never picked up. I thought I’d get away with this. I was wrong. Bomb armed, engine sputtering now. Nose down to use our speed and height. Here we go. No need to drop the bomb, it detonates on height above ground. Fifteen hundred feet over Manchester. I’m so sorry, really, I am. Zero.

DETONATION...

Notes

1. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, 5^th generation multi role fighters.

2. Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), also known as active phased array radar is a type of phased array radar.

3. Mach 4, supersonic. 760 mph at sea level. Multiply by four for Mach 4. Speed varies with height.

4.  AMRAAM The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM (pronounced "am-ram"), is a modern beyond visual range air to air missile (AAM) capable of all-weather day-and-night operations.

5. Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) systems detect the radio emissions of radar systems.

 6. A Helmet Mounted Sight (HMS) is a device used in some modern aircraft, especially combat aircraft. HMS project information similar to that of head-up displays (HUD) on an aircrew’s visor or reticule, thereby allowing him to obtain situational awareness and/or cue weapons systems to the direction his head is pointing.

7. A Head-Up Display (HUD) is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their forward viewpoint. The origin of the name stems from a pilot being able to view information with the head positioned "up" and looking forward, instead of angled down looking at lower instruments.
Author’s note. The attacking warplane is an Aeroprogress T-720 Kahlia Akasha turboprop powered multi-role warplane. Top speed is over 600 mph with a 4,500 shp turboprop engine. She is built in Russia and can carry all weapons including nuclear.