Operation Pacifica: Furball Fever
by Admiral J-Rock, TRES Corps




"...A sneak attack is the first resort of a coward."  -- Com.
  Jeffrey Sinclair, "Babylon 5"


"Bring a stick to a fistfight. Bring a knife to a stickfight. Bring
  a gun to a knifefight. Stay out of a gunfight."  -- Kris Overstreet's First
  Law of Tactics



DOBERMAN F-14 (CALLSIGN: TIGER 200)
SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN
DAY SIX OF OPERATION PACIFICA


 "Aw sneck," J-Rock muttered as fifteen blips resolved themselves on
  his radar screen. Any further ruminations on his part were cut off by the
  lock-on warning beeper going off. 'Make that HOLY SNECK!' he thought before
  shouting, "Jett your drop tanks now! They're locking on!"



# Iron Maiden "Aces High" _Powerslave_



 J-Rock released his drop tanks and broke high right, looking for a
  target lock of his own. He got a lock-on as soon as a boiling swarm of
  missiles flew from the fighters towards his flight. Firing his own Phoenix
  missiles, he reversed his turn into a full barrel roll, crying "Break and
  attack!"


 The enemy had not been able to lock on to J-R due to his sudden
  movements, but that didn't keep them from getting locks on everybody else.
  The swarm of missiles was soon met by chaff packets as the rest of Tiger
  flight started to twist wildly in an attempt to evade the missiles. While
  that was going on, two explosions lit the night sky, telling J-R that his
  Phoenixes had found their marks. 'Two down,' he thought.



 Persephone managed to evade all but one missile. That one hit her
  left wing, severing it completely and setting off all sorts of alarms in the
  cockpit. She didn't waste any time in ejecting, and soon hung from a
  parachute harness. Meanwhile, Jim was already calling the rescue mission in.
  "What the hell is she doing?" he asked as she cut the straps connecting her
  to the 'chute. A minute or so later, he had his answer.


 As she fell to the water below, her body started to shift its
  outline while taking on a blue tinge. Within seconds, a big blue dragon was
  hovering where Persephone once was.


 Zaphyre flapped her mighty wings, sending her towards a pair of
  enemy fighters that were turning around slowly towards her. A huge tongue of
  flame enveloped one of them as she opened her mouth, literally flaming out
  the engine and charbroiling the hapless Spongin pilot. *Don't mess with the
  original masters of the sky!*, she mentally shouted.


 DarkSide and Charcharadon were having a rough time of it. They had
  weathered the storm of missiles, but were set upon by the fighters almost
  immediately thereafter. Charc had nailed one, and DarkSide had spent two
  Sidewinders already. However, B'Harne must have been smiling on them, for
  both had either missed or had been successfully evaded.


 "Charc, you got one coming around behind you!" DS exclaimed.


 "Urrgh.. I can't seem to shake him," Charc grunted.


 "Break left -- now!"


 Charc stood Tiger 204 on its left wingtip, making a sharp left
  turn.  As the B'Harnate fighter moved to maintain its advantage, it flew
  right into DarkSide's waiting gunsight. A rolling burst of 20mm shells sent
  the fighter into its last dive, smoke trailing from its fuselage.


 "Thanks, DS," Charc said, rolling around to get a missile lock on
  the fighter presently tailing DarkSide's Tomcat. He got his lock at the same
  time as another Luv Fighter got a lock on him.


 Both fired their missiles at the same time.


 To his credit, Charc's missile flew straight and true right up his
  target's tailpipe, thoroughly waxing it. By the time he knew there was a
  missile flying at him, it had already closed the distance substantially.
  Charc brought the fighter over into another sharp turn, popping a copious
  amount of flares, but it was too late. The missile exploded within 50 feet
  of the Tomcat's tail section, shredding the control surfaces and engine
  nozzles.


 "I'm hit! Bailing out!" Charc cried, pulling the ejection lever.


 "Sh*t!" DS exclaimed as he saw Charc rocket away from his doomed
  airplane. Looking behind him, he saw two Luv Fighters come in behind him.
  "You wanna play Follow-The-Leader?  Well, that's just fine with me. Let's do
  it, bungholes." And with that, he broke off from the main combat, Luv
  Fighters in hot pursuit.


        "Mayday, mayday," J-Rock radioed. "We lost Charc, repeat, we
  lost Charc. Over."


 "Roger that, rescue team already en route."


 'What the hell is DS doin'?' he thought as he saw said bird break
  off with two B'Harnate fighters in tow. His eyes then looked toward Zaphyre
  going toward the falling parachute. 'Get him, and get the hell outta there,'
  he thought, hoping Zaph was listening. If she was, she gave no indication.
  J-Rock doubted if she was anyway. 'Just something I need to work at, I
  guess.' Looking down, he saw the Luv Fighter that had shot down Charc close
  in on DarkSide's bird. "DS!" he shouted as he turned turtle and dived down
  on the fighter. "Check six!"


 DarkSide broke hard right as J-Rock opened up with his guns. The
  shells stitched a line from the cockpit to the beginnings of the rudder
  before the whole thing went up in a blaze of glory. "Thanks, J-R!" DS said
  as J-R righted his plane and pulled out of the dive.


 "No autographs, please." J-Rock looked over his shoulder, only to
  find another Luv Fighter coming down on DS from left (or in this case,
  right) field, all guns blazing. "DS!" J-R shouted, turning towards the
  fighter.  "THREE O'CLOCK!" He opened the wings as he turned, but it was too
  little, too late.


 The Luv Fighter's guns pockmarked DS's Tomcat in various places on
  the starboard side, holing the fuel tanks and other important components.
  "F*ck!" DS yelped. "Now you tell me!"


 "Now you die, you Jihaddi meanie," the Spongin pilot taunted. He
  did not see Jim come up behind him until he heard his missile lock siren go
  off.


 "Why does somebody in these battles always say, 'Now you die'?"
  Yearnshaw asked as the missile erased the Luv Fighter from the sky. "It's so
  uncreative."


 "They're Spongin, jry," DarkSide said. "Go fig."


 "I just shot my last missile. How's everybody else doing?"


 "I have one left," DS said.


 "Let's get the hell outta here," J-Rock said. "There's five
  fighters left, and I'm Winchester." [1]


 The Tomcats disengaged, heading back for the _Freedom_. J-Rock
  cursed inwardly as he looked back at the Luv Fighters swarming behind him.
  They had gotten so close..


 "Shigata ga nai," he muttered. [2]



...



ABOUT TWO HOURS LATER


 "You sure you can make it back?" J-Rock asked DarkSide as the
  ragged survivors of Tiger flight formed up at the pre-approach point.


 "Yeah, I'll be OK," came DS's terse reply.


 "All righty then, see you on the ground, or what passes for it out
  here," J-R replied. Keying the radio again, he said, "Tower, be advised,
  DarkSide took a coupla hits. It'd be a good idea to have the safety safari
  on standby... just in case."


 "We copy, Tiger two-oh-oh."


 "Paddles is up," came the LSO's (Landing Signal Officer) voice a
  half-second later.


 "Paddles, this is Tiger two-oh-oh, 1.5, over." J-R gave the amount
  of fuel remaining in his tanks (in thousands of pounds) so that the wire
  crews would know how taut to pull the wires.


 The process of landing on a carrier is amazing when it doesn't
  screw up. The pilot must land the plane on a rolling deck, relying only on a
  light (or the "ball") at the far end of the runway and the instructions of
  the LSO.  It has been described by Navy pilots as the most intensive flying
  they had ever had to do.


 This particular landing went well in the extreme, and within a few
  minutes, Yearnshaw was joining J-Rock in leaning against the tower wall.
  Now, it was DarkSide's turn. 'Here comes the tricky part,' J-R thought as he
  inserted a comm-earpiece and watched Tiger 202 come in with a pair of
  binoculars.


 The doors opened on Tiger 202 as the landing gear came down, only
  to stick halfway down. "Aw sh*t," J-R muttered before he keyed the earpiece.
  "Tiger two-oh-two, EJECT-EJECT-EJECT!" The loud roar of DS's plane passing
  overhead drowned out the immediate reply.


 J-Rock regained his hearing in time to hear DS say, "Well boss, I'd
  love to, but not even that's working. I'm gonna have to bring it around."


 "If you're a praying man, DS, I suggest you start. J-Rock clear."
  J-R removed the earpiece and said to Yearnshaw, "He's got a lot of problems
  on his bird."


 "Thank you, Master of the Obvious," Jim replied as Tiger 202
  lowered its tailhook and came at the crash nets low, hard, and fast.



# Basil Poledouris "Plane Crash" _"The Hunt For Red October" soundtrack_


 Tiger 202's tailhook touched the deck, trailing sparks behind it.
  Half a second later, the entire right side exploded, turning the rest of the
  airplane into a huge fireball!


 "Christ!" Jim exclaimed as he assumed Boom Coming Over [3]. He
  wasn't exactly religious, but the word escaped his lips anyway, the product
  of a typical American upbringing. J-Rock silently joined in, biting back a
  "Leave Him outta this."  'If DS is gonna live through that,' he thought,
  'he'll need divine intervention.'


 Subsidiary explosions shook the deck and sent even more debris into
  the afternoon sky as the rest of Tiger 202's stores exploded, including one
  unused Sidewinder. The force from that explosion sent the doomed plane
  sideways, where it collided with the _Freedom's_ second Hawkeye. That plane
  was soon engulfed in flame as well.


 "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE ON THE FLIGHT DECK!" shouted somebody over the
  loudspeaker. "ALL HANDS PLEASE RENDER ASSISTANCE!"


 The safety safari was already battling the blaze and combing the
  wreckage, looking for any sign of DarkSide.


 J-Rock took one look at the devastation wreaked by the crash and
  said, "Fuuuuuuuucccccccckk meeeeeeeeee..........."


 Just then the ship's XO, Fred Tolkan, came rushing down from the
  tower. He stopped momentarily to take everything in.


 Tolkan shook his head and said, "This will get out of control. It
  will get out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it." He then
  headed off towards the wreck to help in the fire-fighting, leaving the two
  wondering whether that prediction would come true.


 The scary thing was that it just might.



...



A HALF-HOUR LATER


 "The doctors say DarkSide'll pull through," J-Rock said as he took
  a seat in Captain Geoffries' wardroom. "But Tolkan said something about
  things getting outta control, and that's got me wound up."


 "Don't mind Mr. Tolkan," Geoffries said as he poured some strong
  Navy coffee into a mug for J-Rock. "He's a bit of a doomsayer. He thinks
  we're all going to be sunk or suffer some serious misadventure, even though
  we've weathered every storm that's come our way."


 "But paranoia can be channelled into making the ship extra-safe,"
  J-Rock pointed out.


 "Yes, to be honest, I don't know how the _Freedom_ goes on sailing
  without him. But let's dispense with the pleasantries. Did you find the
  surface contacts?"


 J-R shook his head. "Negative. There was heavy cloud cover over the
  waypoint, and we were bounced by fifteen B'Harnate fighters before we could
  descend through the clouds. These were short-range interceptors. Either they
  took off from an island somewhere, or there's a carrier loose out there."


 "Which means the devils will be searching all over for us,"
  Geoffries declared grimly. "How long before they could find the fleet?"


 "Two to four hours. Recovering planes may be a little difficult due
  to losing an arrestor wire in the crash. About the only thing I'm sure of is
  that B'Harnate planes are coming this way, and Hell is riding in with them."



...



THE OBSCURE

[1] Winchester: Radio comm meaning "I am out of ammunition."

[2] Shigata ga nai: Japanese expression meaning "It can't be helped."

[3] Boom Coming Over is another name for the duck-and-cover drill many people 
learned in elementary school, either for tornadoes or nuclear attack.



To be continued in "All Alone In The Night"...