Senbazuru | Chapter Three 18.1

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Senbazuru
千羽鶴
The year is 2105. War has erupted between the nations of Tang and Wa over a disputed island chain. Air superiority is key. Every day fighter jets scream across the waves, trying to buy enough time for naval units to maneuver into position. Guai Shangu is just one pilot amongst thousands locked in an endless dance across the skies.


Contents
Reconnaissance
Off Duty
Neighbour

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Reconnaissance

“Break left!”

Guai Shangu jinked his jet to the left, as a stream of bullets flew past the wing of his plane. Bracing himself for the inevitable G-force, he rolled the plane against the sun and sent the jet screaming down towards the sea below. Casting a quick glance behind him, he saw his pursuer do the same; the black silhouette against the azure skies copying his every movement.

“Crane Two, he’s still on your tail!” a crackly voice spluttered over the radio in his helmet. His wing leader, Yong Shoubing, could obviously see what was going on, but Guai had no clue as to where his ally was. The ambush had quickly separated them.

“I know!” Guai replied through gritted teeth. He was losing altitude quickly, diving towards the blue seas below at an alarming rate in his Split-S manoeuvre. Yet he was a veteran pilot, with thousands of hours flight time. He knew the limitations of his aircraft, as well as that of his enemies’.

His vision blurry and blood pumping thick in his veins, he saw the rolling waves barely a few hundred meters below. In one motion he pulled back away from the sea and ignited the afterburners. His jet jerked out of the dive and accelerated back away from the sea. The enemy behind him matched the movement successfully, staying on his six and sending machine gun rounds past him.

Yet Guai knew what he had to do. Although the enemy J-16 jet had a higher operational ceiling, greater fuel capacity and stronger armour plating, it was slower than his own Mei-35r – especially in the climb and in the turn. As Guai used the speed of his dive to boost his own ascent back up into the cloud strewn skies, he saw his enemy slowly fall behind. Before his opponent could stall, the J-16 opted to level out and break off of Guai’s tale. Guai smiled. His enemy must have been a rookie pilot. A veteran would have never sacrificed altitude like that with a slower craft. This duel was his.

Gently rolling his Mei-35r jet around and out of the climb, he let gravity manoeuvre him onto his opponent’s six. The J-16 was trying to keep low, heading for a nearby island where he might use the natural terrain to his advantage. At this speed, he’d be there in a less than a minute. Guai wasn’t going to let him escape that easily.

“Acquiring target…” a soothing female voice spoke calmly in his ear. On the targeting terminal in the front of hic cockpit, Guai watched the crosshairs attempt to track the jinking J-16 ahead of him. A rapid beeping sound rang in his ears as he tried to stay behind the enemy jet, before a flat tone rang out and the crosshairs finally aligned. “Target acquired.”

Guai grinned vindictively and let him gloved thumb hammer down on the missile button atop his joystick. Two missiles screamed out from beneath the wings of his Mei-35r and towards the J-16. The distance was too short and the speed too much. The J-16 would never have time for any evasive manoeuvring. The missiles sang through the sky and spiralled into the J-16, sending it crashing towards the waves below in glorious fireball.

“Scratch one,” Guai uttered calmly over the radio, although he couldn’t help but let the smile stretched across his face colour his tone.

“Good hunting Crane Two,” Yong Shuobing’s voice sounded in his ear. “We’ve got three left. Wait…make that two!”

As Guai turned his jet against the sea and began his climb back into the sky, he saw another flaming wreck floating towards the waters below. “Nice shooting Crane Leader,” Guai applauded. “Where are the others?”

“At 30,000 feet, heading north-east at one o’clock.”

Guai glanced up to see a twin pair of vapour trails snaking across the sky to the north. “Are they heading home already?”

“Who knows,” Yong replied and Guai could just picture his wing leader’s accompanying shrug. “Perhaps we scared them off. They seemed pretty green to me.”

“Yes sir,” Guai assented. Even though the pair of them weren’t the highest acclaimed aces in the empire, they had still become accustomed to a better class of adversary those past few months of war. “Perhaps they were just a training flight who thought they could bounce us. Remember when we were like that? All adrenaline and itchy triggers fingers?”

Yong laughed, a scratchy sound over the radio. “Has anything changed?”

It was Guai’s turn to laugh this time. “Touché! Still, we never make mistakes that lethal.”

“True,” Yong conceded. “Anyway enough chatter. Did you eyeball the troops ships around Pinnacle Seven?”

Pinnacle Seven, one of the tiny atolls that formed the island chain beneath them. “Photographs and all. This recon bird isn’t half bad you know?”

“Don’t get too comfy, we’ll be back in our interceptors soon enough,” Yong chuckled. Even in the reconnaissance variant of the Mei-35 jet fighter they had no trouble in dispatching two enemy craft. “Let’s head home; our mission is accomplished. Command will need to see those photos before sunset if we want to be able to defend Pinnacle Seven.”

“Copy that Crane Leader, setting course for Great Tang.”

[Asdrubaal]

Hmmm, I like planes, and I have read very few pilot stories so I will be following this, but poor newbies, they were going to eat the world and found two veterans ready to fight.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Thanks Despite having grown up on flight sims I'm sure I'll completely mess up the physics of it all when I'm writing! Any errors will be met with the answer: 'because sci-fi jets'

[Asdrubaal]

sci fi can answer everything, "they can't do this because inertia would kill them!" "yes, they can, I+D invented an inertia compensator last year"

[McScottish]

I like it! Not really keen on air-centered tales, but I'll make an exception for this awesomeness.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Off Duty

The shoreside metropolis of Shuilu was forever bustling. Hundreds of people swarmed the streets in the midday sun, whilst the wide roads were thick with automobiles. In the western district of the city, Guai Shangu sat at a small table outside a café. At the corner of a busy intersection, he enjoyed watching the world go buy. Everyone was so busy and so rushed, thinking they were moving at a hundred miles an hour. Having flown far faster than that, Guai found it soothing to watch their relatively slow movements.

“Shangu!”

Guai craned his neck to see a pair of men approaching, scything their way across the busy pavement with charm and good looks. Yong Shoubing gracefully flung himself into a chair opposite Guai, whilst his companion went to fetch a third, for Guai’s small table had but two.

“Crane leader,” Guai raised his cup of tea in respect. The other pilot laughed and waved an errant hand.

“No need for formalities my friend,” Yong chuckled, as his companion threw a chair down next to them. “We’re off duty now.”

They certainly were. Away from the airbase, they each wore their own summer outfits– rolled up jeans and a white tee shirt for Yong and khaki shorts plus a colourful floral shirt for Guai. The third man was equally adorned in garish attire, sporting yellow shorts and a grey vest. “Jiaxiang, it’s been a while,” Guai hailed the other newcomer.

Xu Jiaxiang flashed him a wide grin, as a waitress came over to take his order. “Indeed it has,” he replied, pausing momentarily to order a pot of tea for himself and Yong. “I heard you had an exciting time the other day?”

Guai smiled and rolled his eyes. “Is that what Shoubing told you?” he threw an exasperated glance at his commander, who in turn looked away abashed. “Nothing out of the ordinary. We got bounced by a couple of rookies over Pinnacle Seven in a recon op. Easy pickings if you ask me.”

Xu’s wide grin dissipated a little into a nervous smile. Perhaps his language had been too technical, Guai thought to himself. Xu wasn’t a military man, just an old friend of theirs from childhood. They hadn’t had chance to see him much since enlisting, so Guai always treasured these meetings. “Anyway, how are your marks?” Xu inquired.

Kill-marks; at least Xu knew some of their flyboy lingo. “Not too bad my friend.Counting that one from earlier this week, I’m on twenty seven now I think. Shoubing will always be better than me though. What are you on now? Fifty?”

Yong and Xu shared a glance. “Something like that,” Yong replied, clearing his throat. “I lose track.”

“You should get the engineers to paint up your kill-marks on the hull of your bird,” Guai advised his friend. “I’m not sure why you haven’t done that yet.”

Yong smiled sheepishly, obviously a little uncomfortable with boasting about his impressive record. “Anyway, what else is going on? We’ll send poor old Jiaxing to sleep talking about the war all the time.”

Xu allowed himself a laugh. “You want to know about the civilian life ey?”he spoke, flashing the other two a wink. “I can’t say much has changed. I’m still working at the university, trying to finish all my work before the end of the semester.”

As Xu and Yong began to talk more in depth, Guai felt a sharp stabbing pain in his head. A headache? As he glanced around, more and more people were swarming across the intersection around him, all talking animatedly to each other. Cars were blaring their horns and the whole place was so noisy. He realized that the three of them perched outside the café had been shouting their conversation the entire time, just to make themselves heard. The pain in his head refused to subsist, so, apologizing to his companions, he made to leave for his apartment.

[Asdrubaal]

headaches? he's pregnant! Wait, what?
headaches are never good, let's hope he doesn't turn into a zombie o or something, he should see a doctor.

good, good, and the civilian guy provides a good counter to the military guys, I like him (gosh, that sounds like I understand something about literature, amazing, if only this worked for exams...)

[NCR]

This is my first time seeing a sci-fi story on this site. It is well-written and I love the combat scenes. I hope to see more!

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Neighbour

Guai lived in a high-rise apartment building in the eastern district of town – close to the airfield. A towering building, not quite modern, yet not too traditional, it was a suitable home for Guai. His apartment was small and sparsely decorated, but he didn’t need much. Yet, the closer to the sky he could live, the better, which was why he rented an apartment on the top floor of the building. In actual fact, it wasn’t a popular place amongst prospective homeowners in Shuilu. Because of the extreme height of the building, the top floors suffered low temperatures all year round, whilst even a slight breeze would cause the rooms to wobble dangerously. As such, no one else inhabited the top floor with him. That was why, returning home that afternoon, he was surprised to see a young woman moving a heavy box into the apartment adjacent to his.

“Good afternoon,” he called to her. His headache had subsided somewhat now he was away from the busy streets below. The quiet was definitely one of the benefits of his abode; a welcome respite from the screaming cycles of jet engines and machines guns he enjoyed on a near daily basis.

The young girl jumped in surprise, turning to look at him. The large box in her arms obscured his view of her however. “Hello,” she replied, slowly, but confidently. Guai could immediately tell that she was foreign. Her Tang language was slightly broken and her inflections were unpolished.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, unable to believe anyone else could be moving into an apartment on his floor. Perhaps she was just a postwoman? A menial job such as that would make sense if she were an immigrant.

The girl sighed and placed the box down at her feet, as if she had been wanting to escape conversation. Guai however was immediately glad to see her place the box on the floor. She was beautiful. Her black hair was cut sharply across her face, running asymmetrically from one temple to the opposite cheek in a dangerous fringe. Her eyes were haughty, yet deep, as if obscuring some greater emotion. Her jaw was angled as sharply as her hair, which only served to accentuate the rich red lips beneath her dainty nose. She wore a high-necked woollen jumper of cream shades, whilst a short skirt revealed long, pencil thin legs astride high-heeled shoes. “I’m moving in,” she answered bluntly, as if offended. “I guess I’m your new neighbour.”

“You’re not from Great Tang are you?” he asked, more to himself than to her. She was obviously foreign. Suddenly, a realization hit him. “Are you from Wa?”

The girl simply raised an eyebrow. Perhaps Guai has spoken too fast; she was foreign after all. However, before he could repeat his question, she snorted contemptuously. “Wa?” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “Is that what you call my country now? I guess times never change. Yes, I’m from Wa.”

“So you’re a refugee?” he pressed her. “Or a defector maybe?”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “I just came here to study,” she revealed, obviously uncomfortable with his questions. “Yet of course I’m a second class citizen. Hence why I’m living here, in the cheapest flat in the city, away from society. I’m surprised anyone else even lives here.”

Guai laughed at this. “I’m surprised more people don’t live here!” he cried. “The views across the city are incredible.”

“Really?” the girl asked doubtfully. Perhaps the skyscrapers in Wa were even taller, Guai thought to himself; maybe the view across Shuilu wasn’t as impressive to her.

“What’s your name?” Guai asked, changing the subject. If this was going to be his new neighbour, he had better get to know her. Although living alone gave Guai peace of mind at times, he was somewhat excited now to be living with someone else so close by.

The girl was stooping to pick up the box she had been carrying. “Kyusai,” she answered briskly. “And you?”

“Guai Shangu,” he replied, almost stretching his arm out to offer a handshake, before realizing the futility of such a gesture.

“And are you a student as well?” Kyusai inquired, not sounding particularly interested.

Guai laughed again. “No, no,” he spoke hurriedly. “I’m a fighter pi…”

Suddenly he realized what he was saying. This was a woman from Wa – his enemy! Every day he shot down her countrymen over the Pinnacle Islands. He couldn’t let her get close to him, what if she were a spy? Quickly he scurried into his own apartment, leaving Kyusai standing alone, slightly bemused, in the corridor.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

I must confess I only started writing this story in order to get the MCWC going again. Since it won, I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do with it! Many thanks for everyone who voted though. I have a few chapters I wrote last month, so I'll upload them intermittently, for anyone who's enjoying this story

headaches? he's pregnant! Wait, what?
headaches are never good, let's hope he doesn't turn into a zombie o or something, he should see a doctor.

good, good, and the civilian guy provides a good counter to the military guys, I like him (gosh, that sounds like I understand something about literature, amazing, if only this worked for exams...)

He might be pregnant, you never know

This is my first time seeing a sci-fi story on this site. It is well-written and I love the combat scenes. I hope to see more!

Thank you! Most kind There are however far better science fiction writers than I here, I'd suggest reading theirs' above my humble efforts.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

I see my repped worked?

[Merchant of Venice]

Don't know why I had been putting off reading this because it's the usual Hitai- great writing, nice dialogue, an interesting protagonist. I hope you do indeed to continue this, I like it a lot. I haven't read many air-centric stories but this has definitely got my interests up in this genre.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Don't know why I had been putting off reading this because it's the usual Hitai- great writing, nice dialogue, an interesting protagonist. I hope you do indeed to continue this, I like it a lot. I haven't read many air-centric stories but this has definitely got my interests up in this genre.

Thanks! I grew up on flight sim games, so I've always really enjoyed this kind of thing. It's not super high up on my list of priorities, but I'll update when I can