Amvrosiy sat in his new fighter, the seat covered in an aramid fiber blend - pristine and untouched by the thousands of hours of use he was accustomed to. It held him snugly, almost uncomfortably so. Under different circumstances, he might have found it comfortable.
Behind him, the large-diameter Jaguar engine hummed. He pushed the throttle forward past the detent into low afterburner, hoping to keep pace with his Commonwealth allies - even though, to his annoyance, all of them flew aircraft that were significantly faster. While the powerplant produced enough thrust to launch the Ovod he had trained on to speeds exceeding Mach 2, the Voron was a much larger machine. It weighed nearly twice as much, further burdened by twin lift engines and aerodynamic compromises for vertical takeoff. He watched as his companions accelerated - first slowly, then rapidly - pulling away as his own plane struggled across the sonic barrier.
Just as he went to move the afterburner forward another notch, the SRP-15 radar warning receiver on his instrument cluster emitted a shrill chortle, several directional notches on the display illuminated. Although the unit was a notable improvement over the SRP-10 he had grown accustomed to during training, he still couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the returns were - just that at least three were off his nose and the primary threat was above.
Ground control radar vectored his squadron in this direction after detecting unidentified fighters, presumed to be Basilian in design. The ground radar couldn't identify the specific type. However, he knew the jets he was lining up to fight were of a much more prestigious lineage than his own. They had extensive military records compared to his Voron, which had so far participated only in exercises against simulated aggressor squadrons.
Whether it would be the single-engined interceptor “Cooker” or the twin-engined fighter “Griller,” he wouldn’t know until his radar got close enough to pierce their onboard ECM. By then, he would be well within their firing range, and they within his. Despite their somewhat comical call signs, neither was a machine he wished to face. The smaller Cooker, though limited in munitions by its compact airframe, made up for it with agility that far surpassed his own. The Griller, conversely, was a much larger aircraft than any in Desovan service, with a weapons payload that, by all accounts, exceeded even the generous arsenal at his disposal.
Although facing either of them was a prospect he didn’t find very palatable, he thought that, between the two, he would much rather face a Cooker. His training had predominantly involved Ovods, given their similar size and flight characteristics; he believed he was better suited to such a scenario.
In the short time he had been contemplating his near future, the scope of his radar lit up. Although it lacked the capacity to identify specific airframes as some of the other Commonwealth models could, it was able to differentiate, to a general degree, contacts by their size. His radar was rather confident that three medium-sized fighters were heading toward him at an alarming rate. “So it’s not Cookers then,” he said to himself.
Just as he was able to train his radar on the nearest contact and loose two of the long-range missiles underslung on the wings, the unpleasant tone that had been ringing from the RWR turned into a wailing scream. His plane began to speak to him in a monotone woman's voice - a feature he was still unaccustomed to and somewhat unnerved by. “Missile threat. Missile threat.”
In response to the scream of both his RWR and the robotic voice, he slammed the throttle as far forward as it would go and put his plane into an angled weaving pattern to drain the missile of its energy. He deployed a series of countermeasures, hoping the seeker would become distracted enough by the thousands of aluminum-coated glass fibers he was now leaving behind to fly harmlessly by. This was a maneuver all Voron pilots had been extensively trained in. If executed correctly, instructors believed it would defeat any munitions the Griller carried.
As he continued his harsh alternating path, he watched thin smoke plumes dart towards him, flying just behind his tail and out of view - each one representing almost certain death. At the same time, he awaited a tone from his missiles, indicating their fuses had gone off and found their target. As he finished the first maneuver, it was time for his missile to confirm a successful journey. However, to his displeasure, no response arrived.
He repeated the acrobatic maneuver, launching two more projectiles while etching an erratic path across the sky - narrowly avoiding death once again. The weapons missed their mark, much to his dismay. With all four of his onboard long-range missiles expended, he switched to the intermediate-range set mounted on the second-most-outboard pylons. Although these munitions lacked the range of their predecessors, their greater agility offered him hope as the distance between the planes steadily decreased during their deadly dance. He released the payload and watched it dart toward the Griller, but like all those before, it too was expertly evaded.
Amvrosiy’s window to act was rapidly closing; soon, he would be locked in a close engagement with an opponent boasting nearly twice the thrust-to-weight ratio of his own machine. And if he survived, two more would be waiting.
As both aircraft careened toward one another, they exchanged lances of high-velocity, high-explosive rounds, each missing by mere feet. Amvrosiy hauled at the yoke, struggling to bring his nose around for another cannon burst. His adversary was doing the same, but neither could line up a shot. Just as he was about to give up hope, he remembered his two close-in heat-seeking missiles. He pitched the radar dish up, got a lock, and cued the seeker to his target. The moment he got tone confirming a lock, he fired. The missile arced into the Griller’s spine, detonating and sending the enemy aircraft up in flames.
Just as he started a turn to engage the other two fighters, the screech of the RWR began to blare yet again, and mere moments later, a missile struck the center of the Voron, ripping it in half at the hollow section of the fuselage to fit the ductwork for the lift engines. As he lost consciousness, he felt the jolt of the ejection seat launching him upwards before his vision faded out entirely.
