128 December 2098
The ending started on a nice sunny day in December of the year known as 2098. She awoke and it was different this time, than at any other time. At least before, when she was in darkness. She could feel and she could move. The last was a first that she could remember. She only did small things, but for once no one was in the hangar with her. She had no idea what was going on, but she could tell that evil was near. She was old and had seen the elephant, and now the elephant was near. She would be ready to see the elephant, and the elephant had better beware this Kansas beauty.
This was something new, and she wanted to see what was going on. It was so hard to wait, she wanted to join the fight. She had no idea what was going on or why it was happening. But she did learn a few things over the next few days. Indeed, evil was near. Air Dales were going to war, and they were dying like moths caught in a blowtorch. She was lucky, and a modern airbase was only a few miles away from where she sat. She had a front row seat, seeing what was going on from at least one side of this new conflict.
Finally, she had seen and heard enough. On the second day of her watching, the radio display near the double doors had come to life. She had enough of hearing "her" people not getting home. She could no longer stand just watching. She had no idea what she could do, but she was going to by The Riveter do something. She willed the massive metal hangar doors to move, and they did. With a little bit of power from her props that came to life at her command. She rolled out, to be under the graveyard sky and watched some more. She needed to know were the enemy was. She saw her Air Dales overhead, and when they turned east, she was ready.
Captain Kristen Crump (Hammer 43) looked out the cockpit of her S-14a Air Hawk. She was a second line US Airforce craft, and an updated version of the S-14 Sea Hawk. She was "only" good enough to be in the nasty guard and the weekend warriors club. Now it was all that was available to defend their country, after the last week. The Captain was leading the last six operational aircraft from her airbase on this mission. They had started with 44 operational jets on the 21st of Dec.
About another dozen were on the ground damaged or otherwise not flyable, back at her base. They had been running combat missions every hour of every day and night, since the world went nuts around them. There had been confirmed reports of nuclear weapons being detonated down south, and reports of others closer to home. That had been enough to put the base on alert, and start the ball rolling to become fully operational.
Then the crazy blue lights had filled the sky. They were followed by massive earthquakes, freak storms, and volcanos blowing their tops around the area. The reports coming in from White Sands were about monsters attacking, killing, and even eating people. They had not been believed, by anyone who had been able to pick up the weak radio report. That is until the scout reported being attack by some kind of 20-foot-tall flying manish looking thing. All while it had been flying at 12,000 feet, when it had overflown the area trying to find data for the local government.
They had sent a dozen armed planes when the scout quit reporting midsentence, and not one of them had come back to base. The attack jets had not been able to get one message back to base, after they had only gone about 100miles from the end of the runway. It was like the world had gone crazy. It was like end of times kind of things, going on from their viewpoint in the traffic control tower. The only thing her and people like her could do was there duty, even if they died trying.
That was why Hammer 43 was leading this mission. She was the most senior combat pilot left alive, that could fly a plane. This mission was a close air support task to ground forces. The Base had received a radio message, through all of the crap that was filling the air waves. A mixed bag of active duty Army units, National Guard units from the US and Mexico, NEMA, Air force, armed civilians and refugees were begging for help.
They had been running from the monsters, that were attacking them since El Paso. They were near the old town of Lordsburg, but they could not move anymore. That was because the monsters were pressing them so hard. If they were caught in movement and out in the open, without any fixed defensive points? They would be wiped out. It was hoped that this air attack would buy the people on the ground some time, to try and get farther away. Maybe even buy them enough time, so that they could hide in the mountains to the west.
It was a suicide run for the jets and their pilots, and every one of the pilots knew it before they had strapped onto their warhorses. They were going, no matter what. People were in need, and they would do their jobs. Even if it meant their lives in the process of just trying to help those calling for help. That is what happens, when you volunteer to join the military. You write a check, that is payable to up to your life at any time. It looked to the crews, that payment was about to be called.
Something was moving below her, and it drew her eyes to the movement. A band of low-lying clouds that seemed to have infested this part of the world for the last few days had shifted. In the gray clouds below a thin object started to rise through the clouds. It was like a silver shark fin rising up from the murky depths, slowly. It took what seemed like minutes, to clear the clouds to expose more of the predator. Kristen could not take her eyes off the object. Gray clouds rolled off the shiny hull, like gray water coming off a whale surfacing. Now the full exposed silver hull was dazzling, as if every single ray of sunlight was reflecting off of it.
Kristen knew what the object was; she had made models of that type of plane before as both a kid and an adult. One of her green eyes flicked to the left side on her HUD. It clearly said that she was moving at just under 600 knots of indicated airspeed. There was no way on Earth, that a B-29 could keep up with them at this speed. She did not remember how fast they could fly, but she knew it was nowhere near that fast.
The data handling system built into her craft, automatically shared her data to the rest of the flight. With everything they had seen the last few days, not one word was said between them about the addition to their flight. She tried to raise the new addition on the radio, but there was not any response. After the third attempt, she stopped trying. She could not see into the glass enclosed cockpit, and after her mind caught up with the situation. She realized that it was an intel gap she could live with. They pressed on towards the attack location.
The attacking jet fighters steeply dropped in altitude, so that they could make a visual attack run. When they group dropped below the odd blue and grey clouds? They were attacked by what they could only described as flying monsters. She knew she was going to die, when a huge gargoyle like monster started heading her way. It looked large enough that she could have flown down his nostrils. It was just luck that it crossed the nose of the strange four propeller engine plane. The jet's rail guns firing DU rounds had some effect, but four lines of strange visible laser or plasma bolt fire hit the attacking flying monster square in the wing covered back. Captain Crump would swear that the monster had a "what the crap just happened to me?" look on its face, as its huge bat like wings suddenly had a set of lines of huge holes punched into them.
The attack jets went lower but the B-29 stayed higher, just under the cloud ceiling. There firing on the gargoyle like thing, drew the rest of the flying monsters to it like a moth to a flame or a magnet to steel. The Super Fortress lived up to her name and put walls of death between her hull and the attacking enemy. Her enemies fell from the skies one after the other. The old bomber was even drawing most to the strange bolt or energy fire, that was coming up from the brown ground below toward it. It was distracting any attackers that had even close to a line of sight to her.
Kristen and her wingmen were able to make repeated attack runs, without being seriously engaged by the monsters. This had been a first since this craziness had started. Kristen and her team were taking out point targets, but the real killer was the bomber flying over their heads. Besides drawing all of the flying monsters to her, to have holes blown into them.
The Bomber would single out groups below and rain hell on them, with bombs like no one on his earth had ever seen before. The bomber also was not responding to radio messages, from the lone radio operator on the ground. But they seemed to know when they needed to drop something danger close. Kristen had seen them drop some kind of explosive fire ball like weapon, only 500 feet from a human defender that was about to be over run. They would do this time after time, and the groups not close would get a different type of weapon dropped on their heads.
The mixed group of flying craft spends half an hour attacking the monsters, again and again. When the last S-14a's had spent all of the ordnance on the enemy? They started to rise higher in the air. Without any weapons, they could not affect the battle going on below them. Even when she had "aimed" her sonic boom, it did not seem to have a visual effect on the larger monsters. The smaller one's seemed to drop to the ground and writhe in pain for a few minutes, but they would always rise again and seek battle with the ground defenders.
They soon were joined by the bomber, that was not as shiny as she had been when they first saw her. The group of jet pilots now could see, that smoke was coming out of three of her propeller driven engines mounted on her wings. When Crump or one of her wingmen tried to fly closer to their strange larger friend, to get a better look at her. It would start to shift away from them, like it was trying to keep the distance. She orders her command to leave the strangers alone, after the third attempt of drifting closer. She had seen the great tears in her hull, like claw marks on a zebra. Even her tall tail was now scared from battle.
The group was somewhere over southern Arizona when the massive bomber disappeared. She had slowly drifted back down into the cloud bank below the retreating jet fighters. The Traffic Control tower sounded shocked when Captain Crump raised them on the radio, and she reported that there would be six birds landing on the airbase in a few minutes. That had been the most fighters ever to return to the base from a mission, these last few days of hell.
Three hours later and the sun was well down over the airbase, but Captain Crump was not sleeping in her cot in an empty office. Her home had been flattened killing her husband and son, on the first day of Armageddon. She had been the one to pull their bodies out of the wreckage. She had done this alone, because everyone else in the state was doing the same thing.
The office door opened without knocking, and in walked Colonel Douglas. He was the senior military officer that anyone had been able to get ahold of, for days now. He took a seat across from the female Captain, but he did not say a word. He was quiet and just watched her. For her part, she was watching him back. She had a good idea why he was here, and why he was staring at her. She had mentally timed how long it would take for someone to read her after action report. She had expected something like this or an escort to the rubber room, about ten minutes ago.
When the Captain did not start talking, and she looked to be sane. The Colonel had seen about 10 percent of the surviving people on and off base go crazy, so far. This one was not showing the outward signs, but he knew that this could be worse. "Okay, Captain. That report, are you going to stick with it? Or would you now like to make some changes to it?"
Kristen tilted her head to one side and gave him a level look. "Did you already read the AARs from the rest of the flight?" It was a simple question, and one that was loaded with land mines. She had no idea what the other jet crew's might have written up. She had hoped they would tell the truth, but she was not supposed to know what was going into those reports.
Colonel Douglas nodded his head up and down. "OH, I did! And they say basically the same thing, that was in your report. But theirs were a lot less eloquent, and they used a lot more four-letter words to try to get the point across. What they did not call it, was an unknown armed civilian aircraft flying at subsonic combat speeds. Each and every one on that mission, but you, called it a B-29 Super Fortress with "Get'em Home and Complete the mission" printed on her nose."
Kristian could feel the "I love me jacket" being fitted for her. She looked down at the book, that she was trying to read to get her mind off of what had been going on for the last few days. "So, what are you going to do? Sir?"
Colonel Douglas looked at his clinched hands in his lap. "I am not saying one bloody thing or word. I don't care who, or what they were. I know only that they helped. The refugees were able to get away, when they all thought they were going to die out there. On top of that this was the first mission we ran, where everyone came back alive. I don't care why or how. The intel team is still reviewing all of the recorded data you brought back, and before you ask. Yes, the bomber was recorded by all six fighters. Get some sleep Captain. I think we are in for a long, whatever it is we are in." He got up out of the chair and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The next attack went out 2 Jan 2099. The time between the two missions was used to repair and recover more pilots, crew, and combat craft. The shot in the arm of morale, with the whole last mission returning did not hurt at all. Word of the "surprise" help had been whispered around ground crews. The thought of supernatural support had added just a little more, to the morale of the whole base. More than a few silent prayers were sent to the unknown bomber and her crew. The whole base was starting to feel a little hope.
When the call came out for bomber and attack support a dozen craft of all types, left the base on the mission in one wave. They were heading toward the Superstition Mountains to help a team of NEMA personnel in Chrome Guardsmen suits, that were cleaning out a monster nest. Then maybe they would be able to attack the blue energy curtain nearby, after the first mission was done.
Captain Crump was in command of this attack, just like on the last one. She kept looking around, to see if the bomber would show up. She spent more time looking outside of her canopy, than she was looking at the navigation display. A dozen sky cycles had been sent out looking for the bomber, museum, or its wreck the day after her return to base. Nothing was found for two days, but death and destruction all around the scouts. Luckily these scouts were armed heavy enough to fight their way through any opposition.
It was the tail end Charley of the flight, that reported that they were not alone. The information was sent via his data link to the rest of the attack force, before he could say more than a few words. When Kristen looked at her center mounted 3d screen. It was not a four-engine bomber, but a lot smaller single engine plane with straight wings.
Her attack flight had been joined by a P-39 Airacobra painted in pristine New Guinea 1942 pattern camouflage. It would join them on the attack against the monsters to the north. This time they were lucky, and all of the monsters were of the ground walking types. Again, the human attack jets returned to base. This time they were only missing two of their number, both pilots were recovered by the NEMA teams. The report of their recovery had beaten the jets home. The area NEME commander had contacted the Colonel and said that they would be sent south, as soon as they could. It was hoped that they would be able to use recently recovered aircraft from Luke to head south in. If not, they would be sent on a pair of two seat sky cycles. Again, on the way to home base the old plane went into a cloud bank and was gone.
More missions were launched, and not all the time did one of them have an odd attachment. But they did have one on most days. Sometimes they would have a F8F Bearcat, or Mustang, or even a P-38. Never would they have the same addition two days in a row. When Get'em home showed up again, it was greeted by the whole flight. She still did not reply to the greetings, and this time on one tried to get closer to her. They just accepted that she was going to bring the BOOM onto someone today.
The notion that these attachments were invincible was shattered, when a Twin Mustang disappeared in the middle of a huge fur ball. One second it was there, and the next there was a bright flash of light and it was gone. They also never were able to "see" who was at the controls of these attachments. Never was radio communication established between the jets and the older generation of support. It was like they were using their own way to communicate with the outside world.
It was help, and that was all that mattered to the flying defenders. What the people who ran the airbase did not know, was that these haunted pieces of equipment were drawing the evil to the human airbase like iron to a magnet. The humans found out in time, and a great battle was waged. One that left the area around the Base and all of southern Arizona looking more like the moon, and not like an area that had been holding a city of about a million souls. No one would remember what they did, our how well or poorly they fought. They were lost to the sands of time.
Unless you know where to look, that is. Then you just might find out more than you really wanted to.