CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

...Sarah Cunningham looked down through the canopy to the massive shape of the
NSC “ESV” below. She‟d heard whispers of the North Sea Confederation building their own
„Deep Submergence Vehicles‟ supposedly named the “Polaris” class, but nothing concrete
had ever surfaced. As best she knew, Polaris herself was the only active ship of the class,
and it left her feeling very uneasy about the one now beside her. The lines were a curiosity –
a tapered, arrowhead bow heading back to a narrow „neck‟ separating the forward planes
from an enlarged mid-section that had to be the ship‟s hydrosphere.
To say it was a ringer for the seaQuest DSV was an understatement.
“Rapiers - Warseer. Be advised we‟re mobile. Orders are to escort Commonwealth
and Vengeance, waypoints and nav data pending. Flight Ops is coordinating with the
Vengeance CIC presently. Stand by.”
“More escort, fantastic,” moaned Rogers over the radio. Cunningham allowed herself
a small smile as she waited in anticipation for the inevitable rebuke from Roberts.
“Rapier Nine, cut it.”
There it was.
Cunningham continued to wait as she watched the two massive submarines slowly
heel about, the escorting Tripoli and Fall River pulling back momentarily to allow them
passage. There had been no more shuttles moving between the flotilla of warships since
Stiles, Hayes and Barker transferred to the Commonwealth herself, and whatever was
happening... it was clearly being decided from a single place.
“Rapiers, heads up. Transferring navigational data to you now. Assume flank escort
immediately.”
The squadron immediately broke up in to three groups, with Roberts leading the first
flight to the head of the fleet. This left Schrader on the fleet‟s right, and put Tomlinson‟s flight
three – including Cunningham and Rogers in their positions to Vengeance‟s immediate port
quarter. Cunningham cut her throttles to twenty percent, feeling the fighter decelerate
rapidly. Nav data had the fleet moving off at a speed of seventy knots, and she matched it
easily before coupling the waypoint data to her autopilot, letting go of the controls.
She watched as Jeffrey Tomlinson‟s Raptor slipped in to formation ahead of her, his
engines visibly winding down as the trails of cavitation steadily disappeared from his wake.
The flight leader waggled his wings twice, and continued to sit at her ten o‟clock at a
distance of barely fifteen meters. Cunningham double checked that her fighter was slaved to
Tomlinson‟s own autopilot system, and then sighed. This, by definition, was hands-free BFM,
and from here out, all the twelve pilots could do, was wait.
That was until Roberts decided otherwise.
“Very sloppy,” the squadron leader observed. “All units disengage your autopilots. I
don‟t know when you forgot Basic Flight Manoeuvres, but this isn‟t good enough. We‟ll do it
by the numbers, until you get it right.”
“Oh, fuck that,” a voice replied. Cunningham wasn‟t sure, but it had sounded like
Rapier Ten, the American Lieutenant J.G. Edwin Bruckmeyer.
There was silence for an awkward moment, and Cunningham cringed – just as she
was certain every other pilot in the squadron was doing – as she imagined the storm cloud
brewing over Rapier One‟s cockpit.
Cunningham watched as the communications status display showed Roberts
disappear from the squadron frequency momentarily, undoubtedly referring it to the nearby
SEWACS. As Roberts‟ signal returned to the board, it was Warseer that gave the order.
“Roadrunner, you are ordered to break formation and return to base.”
There was silence for another moment, and then Rapier Ten responded. “...Yes sir.
Breaking formation, RTB...”
Roberts watched in her rear-vision mirror above her head as the Raptor that was
trailing her broke away, and peeled off towards the Commonwealth. No one said a word, but
the implication was clear, and Cunningham just shook her head as she obediently took hold
of the throttle and stick again, and disengaged the autopilot with a quick flick of her right
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