Operation Pacifica: On the road again! (part 2)
by Trooper Charcharadon, Doberman Empire

        Charcharadon was blazing through the Rockies in his Viper
  Mark 2, avionics surfaces deployed to conserve fuel, when he encountered the
  first signs of trouble.  A high warbling tone from the threat computer
  announced the presence of an aircraft that was not civilian, commercial, or
  military.  The unknown purple blip on his sensorscope closed slowly and he
  smiled, more at the fact that the blip was purple than at the blip itself.
  He'd forgotten these older model threat computers identified unknown and
  hostile targets with Barney Purple.

        [settheme = KMFDM "Ultra" Nihil]

        He flipped a communications switch.  "Unidentified aircraft
  heading 68 degrees, who are you, over."

        A crackle of static answered him and he repeated his
  transmission.

        "Oh, um, that's how it works *hehe*.  I'm Mikey, over."

        Charcharadon made a painful grimace.  The voice was high-
  pitched and grating, and sounded as if its owner had been ingesting nitrous
  oxide and prozac in unsafe quantities.  He made a few adjustments in his
  demodulation filters to take the edge off it before continuing.  "Hello
  Mikey.  What brings you up so high in the air so late at night, over?"

        "Oh, gosh mister, I'm not supposed to say that, over."

        "You do realize that it's not safe to keep that sort of
  information a secret.  I mean, if other people were flying around up here
  and didn't know what you are doing, they might accidentally get in your way
  and get hurt, over."  Charcharadon was trying very hard to keep the grin on
  his face from creeping into his voice.  Checking range, relative altitudes,
  and closings speed, he made a minor course adjustment.  The mecha dropped
  several hundred feet of altitude to hug the face of a mountain as he swung
  around it.

        "Oh, wow, you're right.  Well, I'm piloting one of these
  Stuuuuuupendous Barney Luv Fighters, and I'm trying to stop those bad Jihad
  people from getting past, but I think they all did already, over."

        Charcharadon hmmed thoughtfully for a few seconds, and
  powered up his weapons systems.  "Well Mikey, I can tell how disappointed
  you are, so I'll let you in on a little secret.  I'm one of those bad Jihad
  people, and I'm trying to get past you.  You're welcome to try and stop me,
  over."

        "Gee thanks, Mr. bad Jihad person.  I was beginning to think
  I had missed all the fun.  Say, ...aren't you a bit late, over?"

        *Oh for the love of Grimace, the sponges are getting on my
  case now?* Charcharadon thought.  He glanced at the sensorscope, the purple
  blip now very close to his location.

        "Let's play hide and seek, Mikey," he said as he switched
  off his boosters and retracted his avionics surfaces.  Without lift or
  thrust, his mecha succumbed to the force of gravity and made a graceful
  parabolic arc down to the snow covered mountainside.  It landed with a
  muffled metallic clang and  skidded to a stop in an explosion of white
  powder.

        "Hey!" said Mikey as Charcharadon's mecha suddenly
  disappeared from his radar display, "Where did you go, over?"  There was no
  answer, and he banked around again to come back past the location where
  Charcharadon had disappeared.

        Charcharadon saw the Luv Fighter streak past and ignore him
  completely.  As it banked around to come past a second time, he carefully
  judged speed, distance, and altitude, and began to slide rapidly down the
  slope, a gigantic robotic luge rider with no sled or course.  Mikey's Luv
  Fighter came out of the radar shadow of a secondary peak just as
  Charcharadon's mecha reached a giant rock outcropping.  Pushing off hard,
  firing up the boosters and deploying avionics again, Charcharadon's Viper
  went sailing by a scant couple yards above Mikey's Luv Fighter, feet pointed
  skywards and the barrel of a 30mm auto-fluffer-nutter pointed at his
  cockpit.  Mikey's eyes expanded in almost the same fashion that Wile E.
  Coyote's did whenever a rather large heavy object was about to smash him,
  and Charcharadon howled, "Boo!" over the radio as the auto-fluffer-nutter
  opened up.

        30mm shells ripped through the Luv Fighter, injecting it
  with several hundred pounds of marshmallow fluff (and nuts).  The entire
  cockpit disappeared in the white cloud, but Charcharadon could see Mikey
  flailing around in it for a second before the two vehicles streaked on and
  made direct observation impossible.  As Charcharadon resumed course for San
  Francisco, the Luv Fighter went wobbling off in the general direction of
  Utah, neither in nor out of control.

        *He'll probably eat his way out of that mess,* Charcharadon
  mused.  The survival instinct was pretty strong, even in Sponge Minions, and
  anyone who consumed that much fluffy confection was bound to despongify.

        [settheme = The Revels "Comanche" Soundtrack to Pulp
  Fiction]

        He entered the airspace of the Doberman Naval Yards in San
  Francisco at about 0650 hours local and got clearance to land.  Climbing out
  and loosening some of the more uncomfortable portions of his flight suits,
  he was greeted by a couple guards, to whom he showed his ID.

        "Trooper Charcharadon, huh?" said one of them.  "You've been
  assigned quarters on base for the duration of the layover."

        "Thanks," Charcharadon said.

        "A little late, aren't you, trooper?" The other one asked,
  indicating a whole bunch of TARAVs parked off to one side.  "Everyone else
  has been here at least an hour..."

        "Oh shut the hell up."

        The two guards smiled as they walked away, and Trooper
  Charcharadon stomped off to grab something to eat and then get some sleep,
  muttering under his breath what he was going to do to the next person who
  mentioned being late.

[to be continued soon...]