ACM

by Jeff Okamoto

Carla zoomed into the combat zone. Behind and slightly below her flew her wingman. Ahead of her lay the enemy.

Her ship was an F-43B Chickenhawk. It carried four Touchdown missiles, which homed on the magnetic properties of enemy targets. A 50mm cannon that fired caseless Teflon-coated shells was mounted in the nose. It also had one trump card: a single rearward-firing Slow Missile mounted between the twin tails. If an enemy ever got behind her, it would pay for that.

With its vectored thrust nozzles, the Chickenhawk was the most maneuverable fighter ever built. Those nozzles allowed it to perform decoupled maneuvers; flying in one direction, she could point the Chickenhawk up to 25 degrees in any direction. She could also translate while still pointing straight ahead. Both made the Chickenhawk especially vicious. But the best thing about the nozzles were that they could push the Chickenhawk into an extremely tight turn. The maneuver was called "pulling a bootlegger".

Carla's long blond hair was tied back into her flight helmet. The helmet had special sensors implanted which picked up changes in her brain's electric field. Thoughts changed this field. Thoughts that allowed her to control her ship quicker than her hands could. But the technology was not yet perfected and the cockpit retained its set of manual controls, just in case. "What a way to test a combat system", she thought to herself.

She called her ship Brynhyld, which reflected her Nordic heritage. No one, however, would mistake her for the Valkyrie that her ship was named after.

Her radar painted three enemy interceptors. Her targetting computer rather dully named them Bogeys 1 through 3. In the middle of a complex war, their mission was extremely simple: destroy her. Hers was to destroy them.

The range quickly decreased as the five planes approached head on. Carla could see the enemy planes growing, menacing black dots that were trying to kill her. As they were approaching head on, missiles and cannons were useless for the moment.

The five planes flashed past each other. Carla thought her fighter into a 9-G climbing right turn, her wingman still following. The three enemy fighters split three ways, one pulling left, another right, and the third going into an Immelman. They were sacrificing mutual safety in order to surround her and get one of them into a good firing position.

Carla flashed across the nose of Bogey-1, which had made the left turn. Bogey-1 reversed its turn and Bogey-2, which had completed its Immelmann, strained to lock onto Carla's wingman.

She ignored them and concentrated on Bogey-3, which was still turning. Carla's targetting radar began the lock-on process. A warning tone sounded in Bogey-3's cockpit, and the pilot rolled over and pulled into a high-G dive. "Not good enough", she said as she imitated the maneuver. Bogey-3 rolled out of the dive just as Carla's radar locked on. She launched one Touchdown.

The missile quickly closed to five meters, where its proximity radar detonated the warhead. The fragments sliced through Bogey-3. A fuel tank was slashed open. The wound was too large for its self-sealing mechanism to contain. JP-12 bled from the tank and contacted the hot engine. Bogey-3 vanished in a fireball. Carla let out a war-whoop.

But in that time, Bogey-1 had positioned itself on a vector parallel to Carla's wingman on a reciprocal bearing. In other words, Bogey-1 was directly behind her wingman. Bogey-2 acted as Bogey-1's wingman.

"Split left", ordered Carla. "They may not expect that."

Carla barrel-rolled down and left while her wingman split-S'ed to the right. But the two enemy pilots were prepared for that. Bogey-1 continued to pursue her wingman, while Bogey-2 pursued her.

Despite the warning tone sounding in her helmet, she pulled her fighter into a vertical climb, then broke in the direction of her wingman. She tried to latch onto Bogey-1's tail, but the combination of her wingman's maneuvers and the persistence of Bogey-2 prevented her from getting into a good position.

All at once, she felt her ship shudder and heard the scream of depleted-uranium cannon slugs tearing through her ship's body. A jolt of feedback shocked her and the Chickenhawk refused to respond to her thoughts. Carla switched the controls to manual. It would slow her reaction time. She fervently hoped that that delay would not be fatal.

"Launch your Slow", she ordered her wingman, then pushed the fighter over into a negative-G dive. As soon as Bogey-2 followed her, she launched the Slow missile. The missile ripped into Bogey-2's canopy, and Bogey-2 began to fall out of the sky.

As she pulled out of her dive, she looked for her wingman. She only saw Bogey-1. She didn't know if her wingman had even fired the Slow missile. "You'll pay for that", she promised.

As it turned out, she and Bogey-1 were head-to-head again. As soon as they streaked past, Carla pulled up, intending to complete the inside loop. Looking up, she could see Bogey-1 following suit, so she simply continued vertically. Bogey-1's canopy pointed towards hers.

They streaked for the stratosphere, both fighters slowing down as neither wanted to pull past the other. Then Bogey-1 threw out its flaps and slats. It was dangerously close to stall speed, but for now it was behind Carla.

The warning tone sounded again, and Carla chopped the throttle and threw the stick hard left. She went into a hammerhead stall while Bogey-1 continued straight up. Carla firewalled the throttle and engaged the afterburner. A blue blaze belched from the twin engines of the Chickenhawk.

"Time for some fancy flying", she said to no one in particular.

Carla flew some S-curves while inverted, hoping Bogey-1 would fall for her trap. It did. She pushed down, climbing into an outside loop and triggered the afterburners again. The Chickenhawk climbed over the top, Bogey-1 struggling to follow. Apparently it could not perform that maneuver as well as the Chickenhawk.

Once she was horizontal, she rolled over and dived in an inside loop, the Chickenhawk's nozzles brutally pushing the tail down and forcing the nose towards the enemy. Bogey-1 realized the danger it was in and rolled to get better performance. But for a brief moment, Bogey-1 was spread-eagled in her sights. A burst from her cannon, and Bogey-1 was nothing but fragments of metal.

Carla disconnected the leads to her deck. The new fighter simulator in the public area of the Net had gotten ecstatic reviews. Already Net pundits were proclaiming A.C.M. to be the best simulation yet created. And this was just the preliminary version. The official release would allow multiple players, better missions, and player-customizable fighters.

Three kills, she thought. One more time through and she would be an ace. She was exhausted, but she resettled the leads and thought her way back into the Net.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License and is Copyright © 1988 by Jeff Okamoto.