The orange sun rose lazily above the horizon, casting its golden rays over the smoking chimneys and smoggy streets of New Asia. The massive hulking perimeter wall stretching over thirty kilometers around the city glowed with a dull white hue in the light of the sun.

A survivor of the extinction war and one of the two last remaining supercities, New Asia is a sprawling maze of layers upon layers of factories, residences and slums.

Just within the walls lie the slums: the dirtiest and poorest, yet most populous area of New Asia. The slums resemble more of a sewage pit than a place meant for human habitation.

Houses and shacks built primitively out of corrugated iron and plastic tarps piled upon each other like foam blocks in a children’s playground. The pollution from the factories higher up blanketed the entire area in a suffocating brown mist.

Just after the slums are the factories. Located one layer above the slums, propped up on huge concrete pillars, largely as a result of the need for expansion within the city limits, the factories worked and toiled endlessly. Their tall chimneys spewing out thick black smoke day after day. It is said that within those factories, are hidden some of the most terrible conditions and criminal activities in the entire city, but the government assures the people that that is not the case.

After that, and one more layer above, are the upper class housing. The pristine and clean buildings sat in organized rows and columns. It is anyone’s wonder how those walls are kept so clean despite the ongoing war. This is where the rich businessmen and factory owners live. Everyday they wake up, mow their lawn, have a coffee, and pretend like the war isn’t happening aside from the occasional bombs.

Then at the very top is the government building, the HQ, whatever you want to call it. All the important people live there, and all they do is make decisions for the future of the city and set laws which the people are forced to follow. No one really knows who the government is, but everyone knows that whatever they say must be followed.

The perimeter wall, which looks sturdy and solid, are actually quite hollow. Their real roles are just to contain the city, deflect shockwaves, keep out radiation, and make it harder for spies to get in.

Within the hollow walls are the military bases. Hangars filled with advanced and high-tech fightercrafts closed in by huge concrete blast doors ready to open at a moment’s notice. Gun and laser turrets hidden behind hatches waiting to deploy at the first sign of advancing enemies.

Lenn lives in the hollow wall. At the tender age of sixteen he was drafted into the air force because of a shortage of pilots. At the time it came as quite a welcome surprise, as he had just about had enough of living in the slums.

After half a year of training he graduated to the 45th Heavy Fighter squadron of the air force, and is now a commander of the cutting-edge VX-200 fightercraft.

“Lenn, you got an assignment,” Captain Yuki announced, handing Lenn a yellow folder. “If I am not mistaken, this is your first solo infiltration mission?”

“Yes, sir” Lenn replied.

"where's the rest of your team?" Captain Yuki asked.

"At the mess hall I believe, sir."

Captain Yuki nodded, satisfied with the information. “If you come back safely, you’ll be able to get this,” Captain Yuki pointed to a silver eagle pinned onto the collar of his black air force uniform. “Your airman’s eagle.”

The airman’s eagle is the first medal a pilot can gain after joining the Air Force. It shows that a pilot has enough skill to conduct missions on his own without a wingman. It shows that a pilot is skilled enough to be trusted with important and dangerous missions, and that a pilot has the experience needed to pull it off. In the Air Force, a new graduate would not be truly recognized as a “pilot” before he has gained his airman’s eagle.

A feeling of excitement and fear rose up in Lenn’s chest. He was ecstatic at the chance of gaining a medal, but also scared at the thought of having to infiltrate enemy airspace alone.

Captain Yuki noticed the glow in Lenn’s eyes and smiled. “Come on, gather up your team. Briefing will be in ten minutes.” And with that he left, closing the door gently behind him.

Lenn spun his chair around to face his computer. With a few clicks and gesture inputs, he connected to his teammate’s wireless earpieces.

“We got a new assignment,” Lenn said into his mic, quickly flipping through the pages of paper within the folder. “Solo infiltration mission to crash site of friendly spy plane, recover crew, secure confidential data and destroy evidence,” he paused, scanning the pages again for any details he may have missed. “Meet me at briefing in ten minutes.”

Then he closed the mic before his teammates could reply, hurriedly threw on his flying suit, and rushed out of his room.

*****

“Alright... engines one, two and three are ready to go, four is still warming up.”

“Roger that, catapult is hooked up, waiting for clearance,” Lenn said, flipping some switches and going through the preflight checklist.

The VX-200 has a crew of four, who are seated in a diamond arrangement with the captain in the back, the flight engineer who also doubles as a systems specialist in the left seat, the mission specialist in the right seat, and the gunner in the front.

“All engines in the green, go for cat launch,” Rei, the flight engineer called out.

Less than a hundred meters or so in front of them, the massive solid concrete blast doors of the catapult chamber began to slowly lift up. As the bottom edge of the massive slab of reinforced concrete rotated upwards, it revealed the brilliant blue skies beyond.

The opening got bigger and bigger, until there was nothing in between them and the boundless sky.

That is where they belong, for they were blessed with wings of steel with which to own the skies and soar as high as they wanted.

“Green light!” Lenn called out when he saw the warning light on the side of the chamber switch from red to amber then to green, signaling that the catapult launch will happen in three seconds’ time.

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Without hesitation the four leaned their head backs against their headrest; an action which has been drilled into their brains since the beginning of training.

“If you don’t want to shatter your neck, better sit up straight!” Was what their instructor had said during training.

“Whoever loses their lunch will be cleaning up!” The mission specialist, Kang, shouted jokingly.

“Shut your mouth, K…” The other three said simultaneously, but before they could finish, the powerful electromagnetic catapult activated, sending their fightercraft forwards at breakneck speed.

Lenn felt himself get crushed into his seat by the acceleration and his lungs tighten up, making his breath get stuck in his throat. His eyeballs felt like they had spun around in their sockets as the mouth of the chamber sped towards them.

Then it was gone; the crushing, suffocating, yet addictive feeling of a catapult launch.

They were airborne.

Immediately Lenn wiggled the joystick in his right hand to get a feel for the aircraft, and picked up the nose so they were climbing away from the terrain. He pulled the throttle levers in his left hand back, since the engines of their fightercraft were so powerful, setting them on full power for anything besides a catapult launch or outrunning missiles would be a waste of fuel.

In less than a minute they had climbed to their cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet, and were speeding towards the frontlines at close to twice the speed of sound.

After less than an hour of flying, they were beginning to near the edge of friendly airspace.

“Nearing the divide. We should start descending soon. Start warming up the visual masking unit.” Kang called out, as they closed in upon the boundary between friendly and enemy forces. Soon they would fly within the detection radius of enemy early warning radars, and so they had to descend to below treetop level to stay undetected. Even though it might sound impossible, the brilliant minds higher up have carefully planned a route through the river system, where they can traverse to stay well below treetop level.

“Roger that,” Rei replied, flipping a little switch which caused a loud mechanical whirr to stir up deep within their craft.

The visual masking system is one of the most advanced additions to their fightercraft to date, able to change the color of the skin of their plane like an octopus to blend into the background. In single target mode the system can even create a image to mirror the scene behind them in order to become virtually invisible to the naked eye and imaging systems.

However, the system took up an incredible amount of energy, and took quite a while to warm up in order for the projectors to work properly.

“Switching off radar and data link, we’ll be navigating purely on inertial guidance and by compass from now on.” Lenn said.

In order to prevent detection, they have to cut off all incoming and outgoing signals from the fightercraft, which could be intercepted and decoded by the enemy and reveal their position.

He rolled the fightercraft over upside-down to get a better view of the ground below. He saw deep green alpine trees, some jagged mountains far away, and a silvery river winding into the distance ahead of him. From up here, the river looked like a string laid down on a map, probably just barely enough to fit three fightercrafts side by side.

“That looks awfully narrow,” Lenn mumbled to himself as they descended towards the ground rapidly, slightly unnerved by the upcoming challenge. “Ying, keep your head on a swivel for bandits, me and the others need to focus on flying and navigation.”

“Roger,” their gunner, Ying, said with her soft voice which never seemed to go much louder than a strong whisper. Her inward personality would make people think she’d prefer to sit behind a desk and design stuff, but for some reason she found a strange synergy with blowing stuff up, and that’s why she’s sitting at the front of the cockpit right now.

But to be frank, Ying is probably the person Lenn knows the least well out of his team, and by a very large margin. Ever since they were put in a team during basic training, they’ve never really communicated with each other outside of conducting missions. The rest of the team will probably agree with Lenn too, since even Kang’s jokey personality had failed to have an effect on Ying.

Carefully, he guided their craft into the narrow channel of the river, the belly of his fighter just barely skimming above the waves, and their powerful thrusters sending up a cloud of spray as they leveled out.

“Watch the spray, too much of it could return visual signature and reveal our position,” Kang said, not lifting his eyes off a map on his display which he was intently staring at.

“What’s my altitude margin?” Lenn asked, gently nudging the joystick with the tips of his fingers in order to make tiny adjustments.

“Uhh…” Kang thought for a moment, opening up another window on his display with a whole array of constantly changing numbers. “Five meters plus minus four on the radar altimeter.”

Lenn whistled, “That’s not a lot is it.” He said.

“It certainly isn’t, as we approach it’s gonna reduce even further. We're currently two hundred clicks from our target site, that’s around twenty minutes of flight at our current speed, which by the way you should probably slow down a little unless you want to pancake into the riverbanks.” Kang added jokingly.

They flew along the meandering river system, the trees growing thick along the banks speeding past them in a blur of green and brown. It amazed Lenn how nature seemed to not care no matter what humans do, even through an almost omnicidal war like this one.

“Ten clicks out from target site,” Kang called out after a while, “There should be a patch of sand along the banks where you can set down.”

“Copy,” Lenn said, stretching his neck to look a little farther down the length of the river, looking for the patch of gold Kang had mentioned.

Sure enough, ahead of them, on the interior of a corner, there was a large open patch of sediment left there by the slow flowing water along the inside of the turn. He eased back on the throttle, gradually bleeding off their airspeed as they got closer to their landing site.

A landing like this wasn’t hard, all Lenn had to do was keep the velocity vector on his helmet display centered on the landing site, and they should gently set down right where he is aiming. The VX-200 has swiveling thrusters which allows the craft to hover and land vertically when not heavily loaded with cargo.

“Transitioning to vertical flight mode.” Lenn said, flipping a large switch to his right.

The powerful thrusters threw up a huge amount of steam, water and sand as they descended directly on top of the outcrop. A pale blue hue shone off the exhaust of the thrusters and leaked into the cockpit as they swiveled forwards to slow their craft to a complete stop.

More and more dust and sand were thrown up into the air, completely obstructing their view out of the cockpit. Lenn has heard stories from veterans about the early days of the war, when nations still operated helicopters. A so called “brown-out” like this often led to pilots losing situational awareness and crashing their helicopters into the ground.

But right now that wasn’t a worry for him, as the advanced suite of sensors and computer systems aboard the VX-200 meant the craft could project a simulated model of the terrain inside of his helmet visor, and allow him to “see” without actually being able to.

Lenn felt the landing gears of his craft gently contact the soft upper layer of the sandbank, and pulled the throttle all the way back to allow the craft to settle its weight onto its wheels. The soft sandbank gave away under the weight of the craft, and they sank a little ways in, perhaps up to the spokes of the wheels.

“Touch down!” Rei reported. “Thrusters off, trim and fly-by-wire set to vertical takeoff mode, infrared masking off, cockpit lights off…” Rei said partially to himself, as he went through the checklist for a field switch off procedure. “We’re ready to go.”

“Alright,” Lenn said, a sense of relief washing over him as he shook off the sweat on his hands. The river run wasn’t easy, and he had to use almost complete concentration for almost twenty minutes. His mind felt tired, and his arms felt like lead, yet the adrenaline made him want to run a marathon without stopping. “Canopy opening… unbuckle guys, let’s get going.”

With a throw of a switch and a mechanical whine, the wide bubble canopy began to hinge upwards at the back. A little folded ladder extended out the right and left sides of the craft, allowing the crew to climb down with little difficulty.

Once everyone had hopped onto the sand, Lenn opened his mouth to speak. “Ahead of us in the trees should be the wreckage, a half mile or so away. We’ll traverse our way to it, scramble any software left on the computers, destroy sensitive mechanical systems and classified tech. And, if there are any, recover the bodies of the crew. The bandit who shot them down should be long gone already, but figuring out the tech should take them longer."

“Roger that,” everyone said.

They pushed past the bushes surrounding the sandbank, and made their way into the depths of the forest.