December 17, 20XX
United States Airspace over Boston, Massachusetts
1015 hours, local time
"Magic to Misfile Leader," the filtered voice of the combat airspace controller echoed in her ears. "Bogeys are confirmed hostile on a direct course to Boston. You are clear to engage and destroy."
Colonel Emily McArthur, one of the few and most noted female combat pilot in the US Air Force, reached up her left hand and lowered the polarized visor of her helmet over her eyes, responding to Magic's update with, "Confirmed, Magic. Misfile Flight engaging. Three, Four, go have a party. Two, on me."
"Roger that, One," Three responded, his F-22A Raptor, the pinnacle of American fighter technology, banking away from the formation to engage enemies in a separate area. Misfile Four's Raptor followed.
"Misfile One, Misfile One," the voice of her wingman called, even as she looked down at her radar display to track enemy and allied aircraft movement and select her target. "Tally bogey at one o'clock."
Looking out her canopy, she spotted the bogey her wingman had picked out, a Russian Su-27 arcing toward the downtown area of Boston. Given its unhurried movements, it wasn't yet aware of them. A fatal mistake. Boosting her throttle, she listened to the building roar of her engines, muffled by the canopy and the aircraft frame, as she sailed in behind the enemy jet. "He's mine, Missi."
"I got your back, boss," and indeed she did. A bare glance at her radar screen showed Captain Missi Fuller's F-22A tuck in behind and to the right of her own jet, prepared to cover her should her target slip her, or another enemy angle in after her.
The enemy pilot was nothing if not quick on the uptake. With the distance between their two jets, the AIM-9M Sidewinder she launched should have traversed the distance instantaneously and taken the enemy pilot out, but his immediate reaction to the missile lock allowed him to dump flares to draw off the missile and cut hard toward the cityscape.
Emily glanced toward the skyscrapers looming up on all sides of them, then grinned as she refocused her attention on the Russian plane. "Want to play tag?" she murmured to herself, not transmitting over the radio. "Let's play. I can match any move you pull in that old crate."
It was as much a statement of fact as it was a boast of her own skill. The Su-27, first appearing in 1977, was a fourth-generation jet fighter, its counterpart being the American F-15 Eagle. The F-22A, on the other hand, was a fifth-generation plane, first appearing in 1997, and featured numerous design upgrades that the Russian jet lacked, first and foremost a two-dimensional thrust vectoring engine design that altered the direction of the exhaust, allowing for a much tighter turning performance. But as she knew well, pilot skill could more than make up the difference in aircraft specs.
Feathering her throttle forward, she closed the distance on the Russian pilot, moving toward guns range. Surrounded by buildings full of civilians, she wasn't willing to risk a missile shot that he might evade and cause to hit a skyscraper-
Almost as if underscoring her thoughts, a missile shot past her fighter and slammed into the corner of a skyscraper she was about to pass, blasting a significant chunk of the facade out of its side and sending the debris into her path. Her breath catching in her throat, she stamped down on the right rudder pedal and twitched her stick to the right, rolling her plane out of the way while keeping her nose oriented on the enemy pilot. Even as she shot past the building, her gaze was drawn back toward it, heart pounding in her chest. Who the hell fired that missile? Did they even know how many innocent people they'd just killed!
"Boss, building!" Missi's voice warned her, and she looked back front just in time to see that she was about to plaster herself into the roof of another building. Releasing the rudder pedal, she shoved her stick in the other direction, rolling her fighter onto its left wing, and pulled back to arc around the right side of the building. Once clear, she leveled back out and resumed pursuit, breathing harshly as she closed in again. She had no idea how close she'd come to scraping her vertical stabilizers on that building, and she didn't want to know. Missi was going to give her hell for her close calls later.
The Russian jet had slowed up marginally from its breakneck speed; it clearly had seen her going toward that building and had expected her to plow into it. A burst of 20mm high-explosive incendiary rounds chewing into his right engine and vertical stabilizer broke him of that notion. With smoke and flame trailing from the engine, his fighter slewed slightly before he punched back up to the fastest speed he could attain. She kept on him, feathering bursts of gunfire to spook him while being mindful of the damage she could do with stray fire.
Following him as he roared over an interstate highway that ran through the middle of the city, over the top of a parking garage, he cut in dangerously close to a glass-walled banking building before pulling away again, clearly trying to get her to paste herself into the building. It was a desperation move, because once she'd easily avoided the building, he had no more skyscrapers to hide himself in.
With mercy a quality temporarily absent in her mind, Emily watched a targeting reticle settle over the fighter in her helmet-oriented heads-up display and burn red, indicating a lock-on. "Fox Two," she announced, depressing the fire button beneath her thumb.
As the missile shot off on a plume of smoke, she kept on the enemy, ready to jump in and finish it with guns if it evaded again. It certainly tried to, cutting hard to the right while leaving a glimmering trail of burning red flares in its wake, but the missile was not fooled, streaking on an intercept course that left it slightly ahead of the enemy fighter. Once its sensor package detected proximity, the missile detonated, filling the sky around it with a shrapnel haze that the enemy flew directly into. The shrapnel obliterated the control surfaces of the Su-27 with the same ferocity of a shotgun blast hitting a newspaper. Out of control, its pilot probably dead, the enemy fighter spun toward the ground below.
"Misfile, bandits are heading toward the stadium," Magic alerted, just as another pair of fighters shot across her forward arc from left to right.
Immediately, she rolled onto her right wing to pursue, angling toward the leftmost of the two planes. "Missi, take his friend."
"On him, One," the younger pilot responded, the radar screen showing her jet gaining separation.
Emily took little time to lock onto this target, sending another Sidewinder toward his engines. This pilot was a little braver or a little more experienced than the last, waiting until the last second to dump flares before gaining altitude and banking to the right. The Sidewinder exploded in the midst of the flares, some of the shrapnel biting into the enemy's engines. As he trailed smoke, she closed in to finish with guns, and didn't realize he had lost control of his plane until he plowed into the scoreboard of the stadium.
The explosion pitched parts of the scoreboard into the sky, and Emily knew some had been sucked into her intake when she heard the dreaded screeching beneath her and a shudder ran through her entire aircraft's frame. Praying beneath her breath, she fought her stick to regain control of the aircraft, concerned right now with keeping herself from faceplanting into the city. A glance behind her showed black smoke trailing from her engines.
"Colonel?" Missi's voice called over the radio, concern clear in her tone. Her wingman fell back into place behind her, keeping pace as she tried to recover her jet.
She looked down at her diagnostics. Miraculously, the engines weren't glowing red to indicate massive damage, but the stick was still having trouble responding. "I took some shrapnel. Engines seem good but the stick feels a bit sluggish."
It wasn't until that report of not being in immediate danger of death that Missi barked out a laugh and responded, "Shrapnel? You ate half a scoreboard!"
Despite herself, Emily laughed as well, then shook her head and continued, "I'm going to run a flight check. Watch my rudder."
"Eyes on you, boss."
"Turning," she announced, tugging her stick to the left and then pulling back. The world around her rotated, and the jet didn't respond as quickly as she would have liked, but at least it didn't fall out of the sky. Leveling back out, she repeated the maneuver to the right, and it responded a little better. She went back and forth a few more times until it was responding to her liking. Not perfect, but close enough.
"Magic, this is Shooter One," she heard over the radio while running her checks. "I've sighted our downed airman but be advised, there's a major fire in the area."
"Ascending," she alerted Missi, leveling off and pulling up on her stick. The nose of the jet lifted with only a slight wobble, and she held it for a few moments before leveling off.
"Magic, roger," the air controller answered Shooter One.
"Acceleration," Emily said, and this was the one that had her worried. She opened her throttle all the way, engaging her jet's afterburners and kicking her airspeed up over eight hundred knots, no where near the jet's maximum, before deciding that her forward throttle was fine. "Deceleration," she noted, pulling the throttle back. She watched her airspeed drop, holding it until the computer in her cockpit alerted her of a stall warning.
"Everything looks good from back here," Missi reported. "Want to break off?"
"No, I'm good. Let's get back to the furball."
"Misfile One, what's your status?" Magic asked.
"Looking for action," Emily answered, scanning the skies and turning toward where there still seemed to be fighting.
"Second flight of bandits approaching from the south."
She turned in that direction just in time to see two more Su-27s shoot past her, and she hauled her jet around to the left until she was behind them. "Have them on radar and visual, Magic. Engaging."
The two enemy pilots, having underestimated the F-22's turning rate, never knew the danger they were in. A missile each from Emily and Missi scrubbed those two from the combat board. "Where the hell is Tiger?" Missi remarked. "By the time they get here, we'll have hosed the whole crowd."
Emily opened her mouth to answer, but her radar warning receiver lit up like a Christmas tree, the warning tone loud in her ears as she snapped hard to the left, glanced down to see what kind of lock was on her, and then dumped chaff to throw off the radar-guided missile. She watched it pass by on her right, then turned back to lead her pursuer toward Missi.
"Shit, he's turning inside my arc," her wingman reported. "He'll be on your six, give me a second."
That second could mean the difference between living or dying, but Emily was determined not to die here today. Tracer fire snapped over her plane, but instead of diving as many would have instinctively done, and got her engines shot out for her troubles, she snapped up on her right wing and cranked her throttle back, turning at a much tighter radius than the Su-27 could follow. She looked back over her left shoulder to see the enemy falling behind, struggling to catch up, and further back, Missi's F-22 coming around to finish it.
The enemy pilot, demonstrating his experience, broke to avoid being taken down by Missi, and Emily came back around, keeping her eyes on the enemy jet while she flipped her weapon selector over to the AIM-9X Sidewinder. Unlike the 9M, the 9X model was even more advanced, its tracking systems designed to be used along with her helmet HUD to lock onto targets she wasn't even facing. She painted the enemy with a missile lock, but held off on firing, even though the 9X was rated with a 90-degree off-boresight—the front of the plane—targeting capability. Spooked by her lock, the enemy moved to break off her lock, and was thereby unaware when Missi locked a standard 9M and fired. Thinking that it was Emily that had fired, the enemy pilot executed a turn that would have protected him from a missile from her, but allowed Missi's to make a gentle arc to course correct and detonate just below his right wing, shearing it off and sending him spinning out of control.
"Good kill," Emily praised, coming around to let Missi form up with her and head back into battle.
"Bandit approaching at high speed," Magic warned the combat pilots. "We've already lost two allied aircraft to it. Be careful."
They were out over the harbor area now, their flight path carrying them parallel to the shore. Their radars picked up new enemy contacts coming in from the sea, moving perpendicular to their course on an approach into the city. At the same time, Magic, spotting them nearest the target, contacted them. "Misfile One, bandits approaching Boston Harbor area. You are cleared to engage."
"Copy that, Magic," Emily answered, moving to intercept. Missi automatically chose the bandit she wasn't targeting, allowing the older pilot to follow when the enemy, detecting them, cut in toward them and passed too fast for either side to get a good shot off.
Emily turned in his wake, g forces crushing her into her seat, locking on and sending a missile after his engines. The enemy dropped flares and didn't even really move to get out of the missile's flight path, testament to either his bravado or his skill. It had to have been skill, Emily knew; bravado got pilots killed. She was up against a skilled enemy now.
Closing the distance, she opened fire with her M61A1 Vulcan cannon, her shots cutting into his left wing as he broke right to evade. She stayed on him, attempting a close range missile lock, but his constant maneuvers made it difficult to lock onto him. Four more Su-27s, pursued by their equal number of F-16C Falcons, shot past her left as she chased her target, their sudden appearance distracting her for just a moment.
The flash of an explosion ahead caught her attention again, a skyscraper construction crane having been hit with a missile and now falling into her path. As she dipped down to avoid it, she had to grin and give the enemy some credit; the four enemy pilots had deliberately cut close enough to her to draw her attention, allowing a fifth to hit that crane and hope she'd fly into the falling obstacle before she realized it was there.
But even as she cleared that obstacle, she knew she'd fallen into another level of their trap as an enemy jet dropped into her tail, sending tracers flying through the air around her. This one was hungry, he wanted a guns kill, and she knew that with Missi wrapped up with other enemies she'd have to get creative to save her ass from this one. So she took advantage of his hunger, feathering back her throttle while evading his cannon fire; he was remarkably bad at leading her plane. Once he was close enough, she cranked her throttle all the way to nothing and pulled back on the stick, sending her nose into the sky. Her plane inverted in less than fifty meters, completing a full rotation as she slammed her throttle forward again and nosed in, their positions now reversed.
Glancing down at her radar, she spotted three more Su-27s coming toward her, apparently to pass by her engagement and get somewhere else. Flipping her weapons over to AIM-120C advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles—AMRAAM—she waited until the three enemies had caught up with the one she was pursuing, her radar locked on to all four at once, and she launched. The three newcomers, not expecting her to attack them, had no chance, and the one she had been chasing, expecting an infrared missile, was unable to recover from dumping the wrong countermeasures and failed to evade in time, his shredded plane joining the others on their descent into the bay.
"Nice kills!" Missi praised, sliding back in on her wing, her own quartet of enemies dealt with. "And people thought we were lying about our adventures in Iraq."
"Misfile, be advised," the F-16 flight leader—Tiger One—warned as Emily and Missi moved back toward the city. "Bandits running north in your direction over the Longfellow Bridge."
"Roger that, we'll take them," Emily responded, spotting the enemy flier heading in their general direction and moving to engage. With just the one target, Missi hung back once more to cover her flight leader.
The enemy jet shot past Emily's nose at a distance of less than twenty meters, and she came around hard to pursue. Missi, from her position, painted him with a missile lock, spooking him back in toward Emily so that the older woman wouldn't have to turn so harshly to get on his tail. Even as she came around and closed to guns range, Magic made an announcement to all of the combatants that chilled her blood, "Magic to all allied aircraft. The King of the Mountain has been sighted."
That announcement spooked her just enough that she triggered a missile before being fully locked-on. The enemy jet slipped down to lure it, then pulled back hard again to get out of its path. She unconsciously watched her missile sail off into the distance before exploding harmlessly. Physically shaking herself out of the grip of cold fear, she adjusted herself in her seat and dedicated herself to the chase of the enemy before her. If she had to fight the King of the Mountain...
Well, she'd deal with that when the time came.
The enemy before her had led them back into the harbor area, and was now skimming dangerously close to loading cranes and massive cargo tankers in an attempt to get her to crash into one of them. Clearly, this one hadn't seen her downtown skyscraper chase earlier in the fight. Her superior maneuverability, plus the fact that she was behind him and could take easier moves to avoid the obstacles he was putting before them, drained her far less than it drained him, and it was beginning to show. He just barely managed to avoid clipping the last tanker in the row, and now, just like the last enemy who'd tried this, he had nothing to hide behind. She waited for a missile lock and fed a Sidewinder up his tailpipe, rolling left to avoid the flaming jet debris falling into her path.
"Looks like they're targeting I-95," Misfile Three remarked over the radio.
Once clear of the debris, another jet was immediately before her, and she fell into his wake, her tracers lighting up the air around him. This one was fairly nimble at evading fire, and so she settled into observing his evasive patterns as she chased him back over the city. Once she got him figured out, she'd down him. Off to her left, a burning Su-27 slammed down into the center of I-95, the explosion tearing massive chunks out of the highway.
That had apparently caught the enemy's attention as well, as his evasive maneuvers ceased for the briefest of moments, but it was all she needed. Lining her jet up, she shredded his engines with cannon fire, pulling up and away as his canopy burst off and he was propelled out of his plane by the ejection seat.
"Magic, have we identified which aircraft is carrying Trinity?" Tiger One asked.
"Still unknown, Tiger One."
"Understood."
"Aircraft approaching at high speed!" Missi warned, the beeping of the radar warning receiver audible in the background of her transmission.
Another Su-27 shot between Emily and Missi, close enough for her jet to rattle from the wake of enemy's passing. She and Missi curved in opposite directions to pursue him, even as the radio went active again with the voice of Shooter One, "Misfile, careful. We've got a downed pilot and civilian casualties."
Knowing that Emily was busy getting into killing position on the enemy jet, Missi answered, "Sorry, I'll owe you a tune-up later."
Shooter One chuckled. "Yeah, just as long as it's you doing the work and not that good-for-nothing brother of yours."
Pursuing the enemy down to a low altitude, Emily listened as Missi, true to form, took the time to fill the radio waves with nonsense. "Hey, did any of you guys watch that race yesterday? Was the Kamikaze really in bounds when she cut that guy off?"
"Radio discipline, Misfile Two," Magic admonished, though the amusement was obvious in his tone.
They were back over the Longfellow Bridge again now, the distance between Emily's jet and the enemy's closing with every second. She had a good read on him now, and so fired past his left side, then immediately stamped on her rudder pedal and rolled partially, lining herself up on where he was going to evade to and firing before he even moved. He realized his mistake too late, the side of his jet peppered with 20mm rounds as he spiraled out of control and crashed into the bay.
"Missi, fuel status," she asked.
After a moment's delay, her wingman answered, "Enough for two or three more."
"Roger. Wing, let's finish this."
"Magic to Misfile One. Four bandits coming north at very low altitude. Heading is zero-two-five."
"Moving to engage. Missi?"
"I got enough fuel for these guys."
"Roger, Misfile Two," she said, moving down to get on the bandits' rear quarter. "Keep an eye on your fuel status."
These enemies were either stupid or focused on their mission, not noticing Emily and Missi drop down behind them. They were flying in a tight formation, a fool's errand in a live battlefield, and they wouldn't live to learn from the clinic she was about to put on. "Missi, lock 'em."
Knowing the plan, Missi simply answered, "Two," and painted them for Sidewinder locks. Before they could break formation, Emily locked them with another quartet of AMRAAM missiles and fired, watching with satisfaction as the four multimillion dollar Russian jets turned into very expensive scrap piles falling toward the harbor.
Emily's radar warning receiver lit up at the same time Missi announced, "Colonel, it's him! The king bastard!"
Her breath hitching in her chest, she looked out to see an Su-35, a Russian jet on par with the F-22, in a head-on approach toward her. She couldn't see it due to the angle of approach, but she knew that the vertical stabilizers of the enemy jet featured a king's crown and a Merkur XR4Ti race car. She saw light flare from beneath its left wing pylon at the same time her onboard computer began to tone, "Missile. Missile."
Her conscious mind shut down, locked up in fear from having to face down the most feared ace in the jet fighter world. It was by instinct alone that she managed to pull out of the missile's path and dump the appropriate countermeasures to break its lock on her. Coming back around, she whipped around in her seat, frantically trying to see from where the King would attack her next. When she finally found him, she was surprised to see that he wasn't attacking her, instead tucked into Missi's rear quarter and closing in with every second.
With shaking hands, she moved in to protect her wingman, barely able to hear the lock-on tone over the sound of her ragged breathing in her ears, and launched a Sidewinder at the enemy jet. Red flares fell from the tail of the King's Su-35 as the enemy ace broke away from the contact. Missi wasted no time in coming around to repay the favor, growling out over the radio, "You're mine, king bastard."
Tracers from Missi's cannon cut through the sky, hemming in the Su-35 on all sides. Despite this, not a single one touched the enemy's plane, and Emily realized after a few moments of watching that the King was toying with Missi. Her wingman seemed to come to this same realization, and with an inarticulate noise of anger over the radio, sought a missile lock.
Tiring of the game, the King stood his Su-35 on its tail, throttle back to zero. For the briefest of instants, the Russian jet hung in the sky before Missi, exposed to a cannon strafe, but the younger girl was not expecting the maneuver and overshot, allowing the King to snap his nose down again and set back on her tail. With a harsh efficiency, the King opened fire, the more powerful 30mm cannon of the Su-35 nearly bisecting the F-22. Missi's left engine fell out of her plane entirely, and the flaming aircraft spun out of control.
"Misfile Two is hit!" Three cried over the radio. "She's going down! Get out, Missi! Eject!"
Fire blossomed from the cockpit of the F-22, and for a moment, Emily feared that the fire from the engines had gotten into the cockpit, but the canopy fell away and Missi was launched skyward by her ejection seat. Emily had no time to watch for a parachute; she had to get on the King before he tucked in on her, and she knew the tricks she'd used to get out of enemy pursuit until now would serve her no purpose here.
"Good chute, good chute!" Three reported, and Emily breathed a sigh of relief. She was in the hands of Shooter One and the combat search and rescue boys now, and safe from the King.
Ahead, the King was on a course perpendicular to her, cutting in and out of other combats and burning down the vastly-inferior F-16s with casual ease. Something in her gut told her that the King was just passing the time, waiting for Emily to come after him again, and that infuriated her. Opening her throttles to maximum, she set off in pursuit of the Su-35, seeking a missile lock for Sidewinders.
The moment the enemy pilot detected the attempted lock, he broke from harassing the other pilots, and the entire rest of the world dropped out of Emily's mind. It was her and the King now. No one else mattered. No one else was even there.
She closed to guns range, firing several bursts to see how the King would react. Furrowing her brow in frustration, she couldn't get a read on him at all. Opting for missiles, she selected the 9X instead of the 9M Sidewinder. Another advantage of the more-recent missile was advanced counter-countermeasures, systems that allowed the missile's tracking system to differentiate between flares and the heat of the aircraft. The higher rate of maneuverability due to the same kind of thrust-vectoring in the F-22 was yet another bonus; the Su-35 was more maneuverable even than the F-22.
Achieving her lock, Emily fired, then readied her finger over the guns trigger, waiting for the King to try to counter-maneuver her as he had Missi. She wasn't disappointed. With flares spreading out from either side of the King's Su-35 like a horrible facsimile of an angel's wings, the nose of the fighter came up. Unlike the tail-stand maneuver that he had used against Missi, the King was using the complete loop maneuver that she had used previously to evade one of the other Russian fighters.
Despite herself, Emily caught herself looking up as the King's jet passed over her own. It was probably due to the adrenaline of the situation enhancing her perception, but time slowed to a crawl as the King's jet came into its nose-down position directly over her. From here, he could have raked her with cannon fire, but-
Wait a minute.
She could clearly see into the cockpit of the King's fighter, and though the oxygen mask obscured her enemy's mouth and nose, the helmet visor was raised, allowing Emily to clearly see her enemy's eyes, and those were not a man's eyes. The wide, expressive green eyes staring back down at her seemed to be equally-surprised to find a woman sitting in the cockpit of the F-22.
"The King is...a queen?" Emily murmured to herself, for a moment forgetting she was in a life or death battle.
For being just as caught off-guard, the King recovered faster, slipping in on Emily's tail and painting her with a missile lock. Swearing, she snapped her stick to the right, but the missile was already in the air. Her computer didn't even have time to warn her of its presence before it shot underneath her and exploded just behind the engine intakes, the blast kicking her jet up and filling her vision with fire.
Unbidden by her, the F-22 banked up and into a rightward spiral, smoke and flame trailing from her crippled aircraft. "Shit!" she cursed, hammering switches on her dying console, trying to force the system into a restart cycle, to shut the most heavily-damaged engine off and try to limp home on one, to do anything to take back control of her plane. "Panel, dead..." she muttered to herself. "Engines, dead."
"Get out of there, Colonel!" Three called over the radio. She looked up to see other jets, still engaged in the furble, streaking past her.
Four's voice came next, panic evident in his voice, "Hit it! Get out! You're on fire!"
That meant that there was nothing more she could do. Reaching down between her legs, she gripped the yellow-and-black striped loops with both hands and yanked with all her might. Explosive bolts in the canopy blasted it clear of the plane, letting in the shrieking, bone-chilling gale of the high-speed wind in to surround her. Miniature rocket engines in the seat fired next, boosting her up and out of the plane. She looked down at her jet as she was thrown clear, the massive holes torn into the wing structure, flames crawling up its body from the engines. That was all she had time to see before the F-22 exploded, the blast pitching her head over heels.
"Magic, be advised," Three reported as she struggled to right herself. "Misfile One is going down. Colonel McArthur is out."
Finally managing to turn her feet back toward the ground, she unsnapped her seat restraints at the same time she yanked the ripcord. Gripped by gravity, her seat fell away beneath her and she slowed even further as her parachute deployed, reaching up to grip the steering handles.
Now she had nothing to do but wait and watch the battle she was no longer a part of until she landed. At the very least, she was over home soil, and wouldn't have to worry about evading enemy capture. Listening to the remainder of her flight reporting on the presence of her parachute, she looked around, seeking the King's jet.
It wasn't hard to find him, or rather, her. The Su-35 was the fastest jet in the sky currently, threatened only by Misfile Three and Four's Raptors, and now that Emily was out of the fight, the King didn't even seem to care about Three and Four, going back to sailing through the fights and picking off unsuspecting allied planes. Now that she was no longer at a head-on angle, she could see that tail emblem that struck so much fear in the hearts of herself and others. To think, a simple crown and a specially-tuned racing car could portend so much ruin. But the crown and the car were the symbols of the King of the Mountain. As the enemy pilot passed, she watched it, and was left with the unnerving sensation that her foe was staring right back at her. And then the wake of her passing rocked her as it moved on, tossing her around but at least not getting her tangled in her parachute.
Once she stabilized, she looked around once more for the enemy ace, the unmistakable sound of its 30mm cannon—sounding for all the world like a protracted fart—directed her attention ahead just in time for an F-16 to explode before her, its spinning wreckage missing her by maybe ten meters. The King moved across her vision in a gentle arc, passing beneath a smoking F-16 that wasn't registered as a threat. A burst of cannon fire heralded another explosion before the Su-35's arc tightened, the pilot coming around to pursue some other target, and bringing it on a direct course toward her.
Her eyes widened, her heart hammering in her chest, and she feebly raised a hand to ward off the speeding jet as it began to course correct, its pilot actually trying to avoid her, but too close for it to make a difference now. She caught a glimpse of her foe's panicked, green eyes once more before everything went black.
I blame TVTropes. Both for my starting reading Misfile and for the mental image of the girls as Ace Combat pilots.