Kerbal Powers Forums

The flight deck of the IRN Emperor Horatius at 0200 hours was a masterclass in sensory deprivation, punctuated by moments of sheer, controlled violence.
Strapped into the cockpit of his K-71 Stealth attacker, the world outside the pilot's canopy was nothing but pitch black, broken only by the eerie, dull red glow of the deck crew’s wands slicing through the sea spray. The storm system they were hiding under battered the carrier.
Inside the cockpit, it was a different world. The ambient lighting was dialed down to a bare whisper of green across the digital displays. The K-71 didn't idle like the older jets; it hummed, a low, predatory vibration felt in the teeth rather than heard.
He checked his tactical link. Ninety-nine other green icons populated the localized fleet network. One hundred K-71s, loaded to the maximum gross weight with precision bunker-busters and standoff munitions. The objective was simple in concept, monumental in execution: penetrate Basil’s airspace and systematically dismantle the industrial spine feeding their unbeatable military capacity.
The yellow shirt on the deck below gave him the aggressive, sweeping motion with his light wands. Run up the engines.
He pushed the throttles forward. The K-71’s thermal baffles engaged, masking the exhaust heat, while the radar-absorbent fuselage diffused the ambient radar waves from the carrier’s own defense net.
He braced his helmet against the headrest and keyed his external lights off. Complete blackout. The catapult officer touched the deck.
The catapult fired.

In less than two seconds, the aircraft went from a standstill to 100 m/s, the sheer kinetic violence of the stroke slamming the breath out of his lungs. The nose of the K-71 punched through the edge of the storm, leaving the steel deck behind, and immediately, the chaotic rumble of the carrier vanished, replaced by the smooth, quiet hiss of slipstream over his wings.
"Gear up," he breathed into his mask, feeling the heavy thud as the doors sealed shut, locking the aircraft into its radar-defeating profile.
He pulled the stick back, climbing hard through the cloud layer until they breached the stratosphere. Above the storm, the night was crystal clear, a canvas of brilliant stars. To his left and right, though he couldn't see them with the naked eye, his sensors whispered that the rest of the strike package was falling into formation. One hundred shadows moving at Mach 1.6 in absolute radio silence. EMCON Alpha.
Their trajectory didn't take them directly into the teeth of Basil's coastal defences. Instead, the formation executed a massive flanking maneuver, sweeping down on a long vector from the high north. The flight path dragged them straight across the sovereign airspaces of Fegeland and Pippakistan. It was a calculated territorial violation, but a safe one, neither nation possessed the advanced, multi-band sensor networks required to detect a standard stealth fighter, let alone a hundred sixth-generation stealth attackers. To their antiquated ground stations, the night sky remained perfectly, blissfully empty.
This was the grand deception. By bypassing the coastal shields and slipping through the northern back door, the strike package was plunging into the less heavily defended inland north.

As they finally crossed the Basil border, his passive threat receiver woke up. Sweeping bands of electromagnetic energy washed over the canopy, search radars and early warning systems scanning the dark.
He looked down at the sprawling, blacked-out landscape below. Somewhere down there, sitting in hardened bunkers, AA operators were staring intensely at their glowing green screens.
His threat receiver chimed softly, a Basil long-range radar wave had just hit the jet and scattered into the night, returning absolutely nothing to the dish that sent it.
He smiled grimly behind his oxygen mask. Down there, the operator was likely sipping a lukewarm coffee, watching the sweep of his radar arm paint a beautifully empty sky. He had no idea that dozens of aircraft were currently passing within LORAD range.
The pilot armed the master switch, verified his target coordinates for the primary munitions plant, and pushed the stick forward, beginning the silent descent into the dark.