The thump of helicopter blades rose over the sound of battle.

The pilot reached to the console and flicked the switch for the running lights to the off position, then pulled a night vision headset into place and turned it on while the copilot flew the helicopter.

The night vision equipment worked on the principle of detecting heat. Forward looking infrared vision. A brick would not show in the vision unless it was part of a wall that was subject to a heat source, while a human body would glow brightly as a beacon despite the amount of foliage between the helicopter and the ground. Creatures with a thick fur would seem like ghosts flitting across the ground while a house light would only be a speck of heat to ignore. Countless excursions in the night sky had brought the pilot to a point of perfection in his understanding of the equipment and its use.

He used night vision equipment to fly the helicopter and searching for ground targets. The men who used the goggles for a deadly purpose were in the rear with both doors wide open and machine guns slung from either side of the craft.

“Target area in sight,” the copilot reported over the intercom.

The pilot looked ahead of the helicopter and saw the bright blur of heat spread over a wide area. “Is there a fire?”

“No,” the copilot knew his pilot could not see the lights of the house in the typical sense. “There is a lot of light coming from the target.”

“I see heat blooms all over the place.”

The pilot remembered the layout of the home from his over flight in the afternoon. Ghost trees raced below the helicopter, vague shadows that seemed to fit a preconceived idea of what the woods would look like during the day. There would be a road in front of the property, then cars parked in semi neat rows, and finally the house. Could the people have been out racing the cars?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The closer the helicopter came to the house, the more he worried. This was not a normal scene he would see at night.

“Holy...” the copilot almost shouted into the intercom. “There’s an honest to God UFO sitting in the front yard.”

“There’s supposed to be a UFO.” a man in the rear said sarcastically.

“In the ditch to the east of the house.” The pilot hoped the copilot was mistaken, but it was an emergency and he had orders to follow. “Lock and load.”

“I saw the fake one when they pulled the cover off it this morning,” the copilot said as the helicopter swung down to ride just above the treetops in an attack posture. “This thing’s ten times bigger.”

The light resolved in the night vision as they closed on the house. The pilot could see the blooms of heat from men in the woods to the northeast of the house and two more people to the south.

“Hard targets east and west. Looks like the east ones are in woods. The others are standing next to the road.” He considered the options as he flew and decided on a direct confrontation. “When I give the word, I will cut due south. Watch for the road. The targets are close to it.”

“Affirmative,” the men in the back replied, then swung the machine guns out and into position.

Image wavering in the pilot’s eyes and the helicopter engine stuttered.

The road passed below the helicopter and the guns stuttered at a volume the pilot felt in his bones while he tried to understand why his engine was losing power. The helicopter slipped to one side, and he corrected with sluggish controls. In a matter of seconds, they were in trouble as the helicopter oscillated wildly while flying forward on momentum.

The copilot helped struggle with the controls while watching the UFO pass beneath the helicopter and the roof of the house suddenly become a danger. He pulled back on the collective and heard the gunners curse as they tumbled about their compartment, saved from pitching out the doors by their safety straps.

With his right hand, the pilot pulled the night gear from his head and wildly tried to orient himself to the helicopter’s plight.

They cleared the house in a rapid series of stutters from the engine, the rotor wash blowing shingles from the roof, and the power ceasing entirely.

Looking out the windows of the dark cockpit, the pilot had enough time to auto-rotate the helicopter to the ground when it sank into a ravine and hit the wall opposite the vague forms of three people.

There was no explosion, only the scream of metal as the aluminum airship rolled down the wall in a tight ball of wreckage and the remains of the rotor blades whistled off into the night sky.