This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/theCoolthulhu on 2024-09-07 08:05:37+00:00.

Warning tones squealed in my ears, their harsh overlapping warbles and chirps formed a harmony straight from Hell. They were the last sounds many pilots ever heard. The beastly snarling of my own good lock tone carved through the cacophony and the reflex trigger cleared my last infrared missile for launch before the sound reached my ears, let alone before my clumsy human hands could have pulled the trigger. The half second growl was tradition however, and viscerally pleasing to my stressed hindbrain.

There was no time to confirm a splash as hypersonic shrapnel had already reduced my left engine to slag and done enough damage to the mechanics of the right engine's airflow management system that the ramjet had unstarted. I was sans thrust at Mach eight point nine sixty thousand meters above hostile soil and the fire sputtering deep in the left engine could spread up the fuel lines at any moment. In short, shit was fucked and it was time to bail.

However, that was easier said than done as I would need to bleed a lot of altitude and speed before I could eject. I hadn't been able to reestablish a datalink connection since I entered the maneuvering envelope and my aircraft's own sensors were struggling to pierce the hellish miasma clouding every spectrum. Infrared could get a decent picture out to five klicks, but only if I was looking for something high contrast like ramjet exhaust. Little else would stick out against the crackling background. So, not something I could use to fly by instrument. I would have to fly blind.

My focus was glued to the angle of attack sensor as I pitched up to slow myself and protect the compromised sections of my airframe. Still, I was rattling in an unnerving manner. Something was developing a dangerous resonance and the last thing I needed was to lose a wing at one of my damaged nacelles. I listened for the data link connection or radar contact alerts, but all I heard was that damned flutter going in and out, lasting a little longer each time. It didn't help that everything was shaking more and more as I bit deeper and deeper into the world's atmosphere.

Two very stressful minutes later more warnings screeched to life as the ruined embers of my left engine burst into full infernal life. I had been able to drop twenty thousand meters and get down to Mach five before that happened at least. Twenty seconds later I heard a loud pop and lost every control surface on my left wing, and the fucking flutter got worse. It ceased its little cycle and didn't subside after a few seconds like it had been. Just as the bow shock had begun to decrease in luminescence one of my engines and probably an entire wing had become a fireball, because apparently I had to be a shooting star the whole damn way down.

With positive control rapidly becoming a happy memory I pitched down again and did my best to keep level. That cut the flutter at least but it'd take forever to reach subsonic speeds and only the Void would know how far I'd drift until then. I was built more like an air superiority fighter than an atmospheric entry vehicle and suffered accordingly. If I was going to lose control I'd last longer as a bird than a stone, the bellyflop position would see me enter a death spiral almost instantly. If I still had engines I could have kicked in the thrust vectoring and told aerodynamics to go fuck itself, but that ship had undocked already.

When I was level I looked at my left wing and confirmed the damage. I had been expecting flames subconsciously, but at those conditions such a thing was impossible. I visually confirmed the damage though. More worrying than a fire was that the heat resistant paneling on parts of the wing were gone. I had lost roughly eighty percent of my velocity since kissing the top of the sky about half an hour before, but I was just dropping out of the hypersonic regime and compression heating still had fangs enough to tear me to shreds.

Long minutes dragged themselves by tortuously slow. I was still relying on purely internal guidance as the dull red hellstorm had yet to abate and thus I had no real idea of my altitude. Not much changed since leveling out and that uncertain mundanity was unraveling me.

I was ripped out of a distant reverie by developing a rightward roll. I tried to correct and realized I had the stick all the way to my left already. My conscious mind had been floating over the stress of the situation and being dunked deep into the sea of adrenaline again had my decision making lagging dangerously far behind. I had rolled nearly forty degrees by the time I figured out the problem. All the fuel in my left wing had combusted resulting in me being horribly unbalanced. I dumped the fuel in my right wing and began to level out again. I was just starting to feel better when I heard another dull pop, this time from my right side.

I had dumped hundreds of kilos of fuel through a shockwave. A shockwave which was by definition incredibly hot.

Fuck.

The flutter started again. It wasn't a rattling somewhere behind me any more, it was a full frame shuddering that hurt my head. In short order my left wing had caught the resonance and promptly ripped itself off. I began rolling left and there was no saving it. After about three and a half rotations the right wing went too, taking the right side stabilizers with it.

Fuck.

I was rapidly pitching down and lazily spinning. Losing half my fucking plane had also bled about a Mach's worth of speed and I was at the high end of Mach three according to my untrustworthy onboard sensors and rapidly descending. I was still going too damn fast and too damn high to eject though.

I kept a solemn watch at the altimeter. Thirty-five thousand meters. Thirty thousand meters. Twenty-five thousand meters. Twe-

The clouds broke. Those red radar-eating clouds were gone and below it, rapidly approaching, was a startling, eye-searing expanse of deep, deep green. I've never seen anything like it.

Before I could lose myself in the verdant expanse my radar finally touched something solid and gave me a much more accurate altitude. I was five thousand meters below where I thought I was and in twelve seconds I was ten thousand meters above the surface of the planet, low enough to eject. I worriedly eyed my speed; stubbornly at Mach one point five.

I let the seconds pass, watching that green ground come for me like the bruised fist of a drunken man who out-massed me by several orders of magnitude.

I checked my speed. Fluttering between Mach one point two and one point three.

Greedily I took a split second to glance at the world below.

Fuck it.

I yanked the ejection lever.

Pain.

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