This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/GIJoeVibin on 2025-05-11 21:46:02+00:00.

He’s climbing, climbing, climbing.

The jet’s engines are screaming to their absolute limit. This was a strenuous job even when the plane was new and well-kept: this one is neither, though it has at least been tuned for this occasion. The sound barrier has broken not once but twice today, and everything aboard is paying the price.

He has steady hands, even when the jet shakes. Clarity of purpose amidst the most confusing of missions, the most chaotic of wars.

Up above, in the heavens, a target. He knows not so much about it, only who is aboard, and how it can be killed. So does the jet. More importantly, the missiles too.

Supersonic speed, and the mother of all climbs. The light on the instrument panel is blinking furiously, weapons begging for their chance to launch. Not yet.

Thirty thousand feet, forty thousand feet. There are more jets in the black, half a squadron clawing skywards at once. More are flying and dying elsewhere today, a distraction for any radars, and fighters, that might otherwise be drawn to some mysterious climbing F-15Cs.

Gauges twirl in the fading light, altitude and speed and g force. There’s five hundred pounds on his chest, more than Earth would ever dare put on him itself.

Earth. What this is for. He doesn’t look down, for he has only one mission, but outside the quaking cockpit is a world that is fighting and burning for freedom. A blue marble spinning below a raging bull of a jet, itself racing towards an aberration, a monster, a metal creature that should not be here, must be repelled. It has come from across the stars to kill and maim and enslave, and in minutes it will be no more.

Fifty thousand. The plane cries in rage, half at an enemy, half at a pilot uncaring of its needs and ability. She is a fast girl, the F-15C, but she is old, and tired, and yet must fight in this most cataclysmic of wars.

But it delivers.

Sixty.

Blood pounds in his ears, his breaths tightly controlled to a rhythm drilled into him. He could see the stars, if he cared to look, but he does not.

Sixty-five. Sixty-six. Sixty-seven.

Sixty-eight.

A laser flashes from the sky above, and a F-15C disappears.

Sixty-nine.

Seventy.

His jet lurches, a pair of telephone poles detach from below it. Shimmering silver, their rockets instantly ignite, and they scream into the darkness.

The jet yells, as he performs a loop, man and machine racing for the ground they hope to safeguard. Mother Earth holds up her end, reducing strain on the near-emptied fuel tanks on their charge downwards.

The missiles give no gratitude for the effort they have been saved from. They are crude, ungraceful next to the machines that have delivered them. They have been hurried into service, a ghost of a weapon that was, a phantom of a weapon to be, a banshee that is racing high in righteous fury. A simple seeker on a not-so-simple warhead plus rocket, and this combination has its results. One fails and dies, falling when its stage should have, but its brother carries on. In total, there are fifteen missiles reaching up from this strike, less than planned.

More than enough.

Lasers blast away, but warheads have begun to separate. Empty stages become targets, and now there are thirty objects closing fast. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven. Twenty-four. Nineteen.

The missile is not grateful, but it is obedient. The target is intelligent, but not enough. Shields are up, but they have never faced anything like this before.

Twelve objects. Eleven. Ten. Nine.

The missile’s sensor detects the first detonation, the attack plan precisely calculated. If it hadn’t known the enemy spacecraft was there, the ignition of a neutron bomb upon its shields would perhaps have given it away. But it is so close, and it is not lost. It is right where it desires to be.

Seven. Six.

The shields are gone, and there is so much hell left to arrive.

The missile pierces through the point defences, and an ultra-near contact detonation ensues. Unbearable light blossoms within the sky for a split second, a tidal wave of neutrons flood through a starship, and an alien crew dies instantaneously. Then the next missile arrives, and the next, and the next, and there is no more anything to obliterate, there is nothing but dust and rads.

And down below, a relieved pilot and plane nose closer to a tanker, thousands of feet above a planet that smiles at the new star it briefly witnessed.

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