by Tom Jones
Monarch 2 no longer had any air-to-air missiles left in his Su-57, and he now only had his aircraft’s machine gun to even stand a fighting chance against the three Raptors which were still flying. The AWACS spoke over the radio to the remaining Felon, “Monarch 2, this is Hammerhead. You are the last allied fighter. The nearest base agreed to send in a new unit to bomb the facility, but they will not get there for another hour.” Monarch 2 did not even reply to his AWACS; he was too busy trying to avoid an infrared-homing missile fired by one of the F/A-22As closely following him. Monarch 2 deployed flares to hopefully throw off the infrared tracking, and he was actually successful at doing so. The flare redirected the missile’s tracking, and the missile ended up impacting the ground after losing sight of a strong infrared signal it could home in on. Monarch 2 then pulled the stick to the left and pulled it aft once his craft was sideways, and he engaged the throttle once he was turning enough. Though the pilot was attempting to evade a numerous amount of threats at once, he was unable to evade all of the current threats: One of the MJ12 agents fired a FIM-92 at his aircraft, and the Su-57 was struck just as the turn completed. The starboard wing of the Felon took the brunt of the damage, and the aircraft was actually still somewhat flyable. Unfortunately, the nearest C-RAM turned and proceeded to put bullet holes all over the fuselage of the Felon. The aircraft was climbing as the C-RAM shot the fuselage and wings up, but the barrage subsequently ended when the C-RAM battery was destroyed by a rocket fired by Rattlesnake’s Mi-35.
Monarch 2 looked at the instruments in his aircraft, and he was quickly losing oil pressure. He heard another warning message in his craft, and this time, it was the warning letting him know that his airspeed was too low to maintain altitude; his craft was stalling. The pilot looked at his rearview mirrors, and he could see that he was now flying directly above the center of the facility; However, the aircraft was now beginning to fall out of the sky since the oil pressure was now too low for the engines to properly operate. The engines stalled, and the stalling aircraft began to gain airspeed, albeit in the wrong direction. The Su-57 plummeted to the ground, and the pilot reported his status over the radio with a rather nonchalant tone, “This is Monarch 2. I’m going down.” As the khaki-colored stealth fighter completely lost control in its rapid descent, Monarch 2 decided that he had two choices: He could either eject and see if he would live, or he could simply do nothing and not have to deal with anything ever again in the next couple of seconds.
The pilot decided that he would take his chances with ejecting. After all, even if he did not survive ejection, he would still ultimately be in the same situation as if he did not even bother to eject in the first place. Being the only pilot who was able to pull the ejection handle, Monarch 2 flew from the cockpit as the canopy blew off the doomed aircraft. The boosters underneath the seat engaged immediately, but since the pilot had not ejected while the craft was upright, the ejection seat sent him plummeting towards the ground at an even faster speed than if he did not eject at all. Monarch 2 impacted directly into the MAV-29, and the reactive armor engaged in response to the human projectile. The reactive armor shredded the human’s body, and it sent gore all over the surrounding area, though there was already plenty of human gore on the ground from the bloodbath that was still occurring.
The doomed Su-57 finally slammed into the ground, and it exploded upon impact. One of the CDI LAV-25s was unfortunate enough to be in the general vicinity of the crash, and it was disabled by the ensuing explosion. The LAV-25 opened its rear door to allow the crew to evacuate, but they were almost immediately gunned down by the C-RAM batteries which were now targeting CDI infantry since there were no more CDI fighters in the sky. Though there were no more CDI fighters that were giving the facility’s defenses a hard time, there were still quite a few helicopters performing strafing runs on the facility. The C-RAM batteries seemed to be rather uncoordinated: They were prioritizing targets that were close, and they did not seem to care whether or not those targets were airborne or ground targets.
The three remaining aircraft from the Vulture Squadron were now completely empty of all of their armament. They had used all of their missiles, and they had even run their machine guns dry from shooting at CDI helicopters and armored vehicles. For them, there was only one thing they had in mind: Their aircraft were their last weapons. The highest-ranking Vulture Squadron member who was still alive spoke over the radio to the remaining two Raptors, “This is Vulture 3. Who’s still up? Over.” Vulture 4 replied next, “This is Vulture 4. My aircraft’s winchester.” Vulture 7 spoke after evading autocannon fire from Rattlesnake’s Mi-35, “Vulture 7. I’m out of ammo as well. I think it’s finally time for us to do our part.” Vulture 3 gained some more altitude; his mind was already made up, “I guess so. Pick your targets. I’m going for the tanks on the ground. Over.” The pilot engaged his afterburners, and he flew straight into the air while trying to get as high as he could possibly get. He knew that the faster he impacted into the ground targets, the more damage he would do. After all, F/A-22As were pretty massive objects that were capable of traveling at high speeds. The other two MJ12 aircraft also ascended as well, and they had the same idea in mind.
“I’m going for one of the helicopters,” Vulture 7 said as he was about to reach an altitude that would give him enough time to build enough speed on the way down. Vulture 4 was not flying as high as Vulture 7, and he did not see what CDI targets still remained; However, that did not stop the pilot from claiming a target for himself, even if it was rather ambiguous as to what he was specifically going to target, “I’ll go for whatever you guys don’t get.” Vulture 3 was the first to turn his aircraft over in order to begin his rapid descent, and he immediately engaged his afterburners again as he started plummeting directly towards the ground. The pilot felt his stomach turn over when he did his maneuver to point his aircraft at the ground, but he knew that in a few moments, he would not even need his stomach anymore. It was now his turn to sacrifice himself for the Illuminati. Vulture 7 turned his aircraft over as well, but he was already a pretty great distance away from his now de facto squadron leader. By the time the pilot of Vulture 7 was able to engage his afterburners to begin his final descent, he could see that Vulture 3 was already preparing to impact the ground. The pilot of Vulture 7 looked to the left out of his cockpit, and he could see Vulture 4 was still climbing to get a higher altitude before beginning his own descent.
Vulture 3 was now hurtling towards the ground at the speed of sound, and the sonic boom emitted from his plane was loud enough to get some of the attention of the ground forces. Unfortunately, the sonic boom was not enough of a warning for the crew of one of the T-14 Armatas. The F/A-22A crashed directly into the tank, and the explosion rocked the ground even more than it normally did when a regular aircraft crashed. Though the Raptor was not carrying any armament when it crashed, it was travelling at such a high rate of speed compared to the other aircraft, and it still had a decent amount of fuel left in the fuselage. The ground shook violently, and many of the infantrymen from both sides of the battle collapsed due to the sudden impact of the jet. The CDI personnel driving the ground vehicles were not affected as much by the jets impacting the ground since they were technically more massive than most of the people not driving vehicles, so they were able to fire upon the Templars and MJ12 agents while they were disoriented yet again by the crash.
The pilot of Rattlesnake looked up, and he saw an F/A-22A flying directly towards his helicopter. The pilot gave a warning to his gunner before violently yanking the stick to avoid getting hit by the suicidal Raptor pilot, “Hang on!” The Mi-35 Super Hind moved out of the way, and the pilot had just enough distance between his aircraft and the F/A-22A that he was not struck by the plane. Rather, the Raptor impacted the wall surrounding the facility and sliced a decent gash into the wall before exploding. The gunner exclaimed as he saw the Raptor crash into the wall, “Holy shit! What the fuck?! What the fuck was that?” The pilot replied as he stabili
zed the helicopter, “I think he fucking tried to kamikaze us! Damn, those guys are fucking determined!” The gunner was still in amazement, but he already took back control of the weapon systems in order to destroy yet another one of the railgun emplacements. The pilot looked back in the sky, and he could see the last Raptor was going down. However, Vulture 4 did not seem to be targeting Rattlesnake specifically.
Vulture 4 took one last look at Earth as he flew straight towards the ground. The human wondered what would happen to him once he died, but he knew that it probably would not look too good for him since he did so much for the Illuminati. He knew what the Illuminati truly stood for and what he was doing for it, but at the same time, he had a bit of a feeling that he was not going to beat God like he wanted to. There in the moment, Vulture 4 thought about everything that he did while working for the Illuminati, and he was starting to believe that he was fighting for the losing side. Though the Illuminati would eventually rebuild their forces and influence before successfully conquering the world and ushering in the New World Order, they would ultimately lose on the Day of Judgement. Though they would definitely have a victory on Earth in due time, they would have no victory in eternity. When the New Earth is created after God’s judgement over all of the Earth has been completed, the people of the Illuminati would not have their victory. Instead, they would be sentenced to damnation, and Vulture 4 came to realize that everything he did in life was just adding to his punishment that he would get on Judgement Day. For a split second, the human contemplated repenting, but at the same time, he knew that he took an oath against God, an oath that he was not going to break. Vulture 4 kept his eyes open as he flew directly into an M1A3 Super Abrams.
The last black F/A-22A impacted the ground, and the shockwave generated by the explosion seemed to be greater than Vulture 3’s impact. Perhaps the shockwave was so massive thanks to the M1A3’s fuel tank rupturing during the explosion. The tank had burst into flames itself and sent a giant fireball into the sky. At this point, the infantrymen fighting the ground battle had just about enough of being knocked to the ground by aircraft impacting into the ground, but they still had to pick themselves back up to finish the battle. At this point, all of the MJ12’s aircraft had been destroyed, and the remaining C-RAM and railgun batteries were being taken care of by the few remaining helicopters and armored vehicles that CDI still had left. Though the MAV-29 was still active and fighting, it had lost a great deal of its reactive armor, and some of the hull was even damaged thanks to HE cannon rounds fired by the CDI BMP-3s. The MAV-29 had used almost all of the missiles which it had on its vertical launching system, and its Shipunov 2A42 autocannon was running low on ammunition. CDI infantrymen had also been able to breach the interior of the facility at this point, and they were clearing the rooms and terminating any MJ12 or Templar personnel they found with extreme prejudice.
For the MJ12 themselves, they mainly had the MAV-29 as their last remaining combat vehicle. Of course, they had some infantrymen left, but most of them had been wiped out by CDI’s forces. The overall gunfight that was fought between CDI and the Illuminati was still rather violent, but it did simmer down a good bit from when the battle first began. Only four CDI helicopters were left: Rattlesnake’s Mi-35, two Mi-28 Havocs, and one other Mi-35. A giant plume of black smoke had blotted out the sky, and the remaining four helicopters were trying to fly in such a manner that they would not be blinded by the smoke but protected from the Arvak’s laser at the same time. The gunner of Rattlesnake opened fire on the last operational railgun, “Railgun destroyed. That has to be the last one, right?” The pilot replied, “It better be. We’re running low on munitions. How much more do we have?” The gunner checked the armament system information on his aircraft, and he replied once he had the answer, “Two more unguided rockets, and about one hundred rounds left in our autocannon. We better use it sparingly if we still have stuff to shoot at.” The pilot strafed around the facility, but the two of them could not see any more active railguns or C-RAM batteries still remaining.
With all of the air defenses taken care of, there was only one major target left, the MAV-29. The Arvak was still operational, although it had slowed down a considerable amount since the battle first began. The prototype’s laser was practically useless at this point; there was way too much smoke clouding the sky for the laser to maintain enough power for it to do damage to anything, and the laser itself was even a bit damaged from the battle. The Arvak fired the last of its vertically launched missiles, and they were able to destroy the rest of the lighter ground targets such as the LAV-25s and BTR-80s, but there were still 2 BMP-3s, 1 BTR-90, and even an M1A3 Super Abrams still operational. Nevertheless, the MAV-29 still proceeded forwards despite the treads on its tracks falling apart and severely hindering the vehicle’s mobility. The MAV-29 was becoming slower and slower, and it now only had the Shipunov 2A42 as its only remaining piece of offensive armament. However, at this point, the MAV-29 was now playing defense since practically all of the other MJ12 and Templar units had been completely dispatched by CDI.
The remaining BTR-90 was the first vehicle that challenged the MAV-29. The APC fired its cannon at the prototype, damaging its hull, but the MAV-29 was already firing its own gun back at the attacking BTR. The APC was unfortunately not strong enough to withstand the sustained fire dished out by the Arvak, and it exploded. With the last BTR-90 up in flames, the MAV-29 slowly continued, but it stalled after just a few seconds of driving. The operators of the Arvak knew that they would be unable to move the prototype since it had simply taken way too much damage to continue regular combat operations. All they had was the autocannon on top of the first compartment, and they were going to use it as long as they could. Peering through the smoke, the MJ12 team inside of the MAV-29 could see one of the Mi-28s flying overhead which was in the process of trying to locate the Arvak. Though they knew that they would give away their position to the BMP-3s and the Super Abrams if they fired, they knew that they would be found out anyways. They fired upon the helicopter.
The Mi-28 was struck down with the same model of autocannon which was affixed to its airframe, and the helicopter was sent spiraling out of control after sustaining critical damage from the high-explosive rounds fired from the Arvak. Spinning out of control, the Havoc collided with the only other operational Mi-28 in the air, and the rotor cut directly through the airframe and engine of the helicopter. Both helicopters now plummeted to the ground, and they proceeded to burst into flames upon impact. One of the Havocs crashed outside of the facility, but the other one crashed directly into some of the facility’s infrastructure, starting yet another fire. The MAV-29 was running low on its autocannon ammunition, and it still had two infantry fighting vehicles, a main battle tank, and two attack helicopters to deal with. The crew knew that fifty-eight rounds of their 30mm autocannon was insufficient to deal with all of these threats, but they would do as much as they could to disable the vehicles if they were able to. The Arvak was stalled and badly damaged, but the MJ12 operatives piloting the vehicle had a death wish. They knew they were not leaving their MAV-29 alive.
One of the two BMP-3s finally rolled up through the smoke and began firing at the MAV-29’s hull. The BMP-3 targeted the middle compartment, the compartment containing the laser weapons system, and the 30mm cannon rounds fired by the CDI infantry fighting vehicle were now able to punch through the already damaged hull of the Arvak. As the autocannon of the BMP-3 fired at the MAV-29, the Arvak began firing back using its own autocannon. The BMP-3 was struck numerous times by the HE autocannon, and the sustained gunfire broke through the armor of the BMP-3 and effectively destroyed the vehicle. Though the vehicle did not burst into flames like some of the other vehicles the MAV-29 went up against, it did let out a great amount of smoke as it fell silent from its sustained damage.
Outside of the larger smoke plume, the gunner of Rattlesnake was briefly able to see the MAV-29 and its exposed laser generator. The gunner was not sure if he was really looking at
the Arvak or if his mind was playing tricks on him, so he decided to ask the pilot, “Is that the MAV-29 directly ahead of us?” The pilot turned his attention to the cloud of smoke himself, and he was definitely able to make out the prototype while looking directly at the smoke. The pilot replied, “Yup. There it is. Let’s use our last two rockets. That oughta put a dent in it.” The gunner waited until the pilot aligned the Super Hind with the Arvak; he knew that the rockets were unguided, and he did not want to miss and accidentally fire upon allied CDI forces. The pilot held the aircraft steadily, and the gunner waited until the aircraft was perfectly lined up with the Arvak before firing. The pilot held his position, and he spoke to the gunner, “We’re good. Fire away.” The gunner toggled the controls to fire the aircraft’s rockets, and he pulled the trigger once he was confident that the rockets would indeed impact the target.
The last two rockets left the Super Hind, and they flew directly towards the Arvak. Though the rockets were indeed unguided, the gunner had actually waited for just about the perfect time to fire upon the MAV-29: The first rocket impacted the laser weapon system itself, dismounting it from the compartment it was attached to, and the second rocket landed directly in the center of the laser generator itself. The explosion caused by the rockets rocked the MAV-29’s hull, and the laser generator was now unable to operate at all. Since it was now becoming unstable from the severe damage it sustained, if the generator were to be struck by another explosive-based weapon, then the resulting explosion would likely be enough to destroy the entire vehicle. The MAV-29’s position had been given away by the BMP-3 which was immobilized, and the last two ground vehicles were now making their way over to the MAV-29 to finish it off. The crew of the Arvak was not too concerned when they saw the BMP-3 pull up through the smoke, but they were a fair bit concerned when they saw the M1A3 Super Abrams slowly come through the smoke as well.