Dalton
Langley AFB
The door slams shut behind me, and I’m running. Helmet pounding against my thigh, boots hammering concrete. I don’t think. I move.
The scramble alert blares through the corridors. Sharp, jarring bursts that claw up my spine and drag every nerve to attention. I cut across the tarmac. Major Cassidy is right behind me, sprinting hard. Owen and Porter are climbing into their jets.
My heart's racing.
The sun’s barely crested the horizon, bleeding orange across the hangars, but my Raptor waits in the gold like a promise.
I yank the g-suit off the rack and step in fast, tugging the zippers up with practiced hands. It’s second nature by now, muscle memory taking over as adrenaline spikes through my veins.
My crew chief’s already on the ladder when I sprint up. “She’s hot and ready, sir.”
I nod, lock eyes with him, and he offers a sharp salute.
“I appreciate you.” I salute back without hesitation.
Then I climb. I toss my helmet into the seat.
One hand against the fuselage. I reach up, brushing my fingers along the kill marks painted under the canopy, my quiet ritual.
A promise. A prayer. For the ones we’ve lost. For the ones we’re still here to protect.
Then I drop into the cockpit, strap in, power on.
Oxygen. Comms. HUD. The systems whine and hum like a living thing waking up. Everything inside me tightens.
The checklist runs smoothly, instinct taking over, but there’s this pressure building behind my eyes. Drones this close to the coastline? Someone’s getting bold.
“Charlie Flight, cleared for taxi. ROE is active defense. Shoot down on confirmed threat vector,” ground control calls in my ear.
The four of us taxi hard, wheels screaming. My blood’s already half adrenaline, half ice.
Afterburners light.
We launch. I slam back into the seat as my jet punches skyward, slicing into the blue with a roar that I feel in my teeth.
“Midas is up,” Cassidy says. Calm, focused. The kind of voice that makes people believe everything is under control.
I echo him. “Ghost’s airborne.” I bank left, fall into formation on Cassidy’s wing. We level at angels five, slicing east over the Atlantic Ocean.
Owen chimes in. “Titan is up.”
Porter rounds it out with a crisp, “Riot’s airborne.”
“Midas to AWACS, this is Charlie Flight,” Cassidy calls. “Request picture.”
“Charlie Flight, multiple drones inbound, bearing zero six zero. Altitude low. Speed one-fifty knots. Total count: four.”
Four.
That’s not a probe. That’s a goddamn test. I grit my teeth. Someone is watching us. Timing us. Seeing how fast we scramble, how we shoot, how our jets behave in a fight.
“Split the targets,” Cassidy orders. “Titan, Riot, take the east flank. Ghost, you’re with me.”
“Copy,” I say.
“Copy,” the others confirm.
I throttle back just enough to drop low under radar sweep. The Raptor’s stealth profile makes me a ghost—that’s the point—but four drones? They’re not just here to cause chaos.
They’re studying us.
"Visual," Cassidy calls.
My HUD pings four targets. Two of them moving irregularly. Testing patterns. Banking when they shouldn’t. Someone’s flying them manually. Watching through their sensors. Learning.
“Ghost, locking target,” I say. Box glows green. Missile away. Smoke and fire tear across the sky. The drone detonates midair, scattering fragments over open ocean. No secondary. Not a bomb. Just bait. “Splash one.”
Cassidy nails his target a split second later. Clean kill. “Splash two.”
To the east, Owen’s voice cuts in. “Splash three.”
Then Porter chimes in. “We have a runner.”
I snap my gaze right, eyes locking on the HUD. One of the heat signatures breaks formation—erratic turns, climbing fast.
“Riot, confirm ID,” Cassidy says.
I already know what Porter’s seeing. It’s twitchy. Unnatural. Like it’s learning how to fly in real time.
“Confirmed. Drone four just went off script. Speed’s spiking.” His voice is strained as he chases an unpredictable target.
My gut knots. They’re not just testing our reaction time. They’re watching how we hunt. “Midas, that one’s bait,” I say, voice low, calm. “Pulling us out of pattern.”
A pause. I can picture Cassidy’s jaw ticcing. “Copy, Ghost. Titan, you’re with Riot. Intercept. Don’t chase it BVR.”
“Roger,” Owen answers, tone clipped.
I peel back into the formation, watching the two of them bank after the runner. My heart hammers steady. Controlled. This isn’t just a drill. It’s an experiment.
And we’re the fucking lab rats.
Owen’s already after it, Porter right on his wing. Their Raptors slice through the early light, contrails splitting in perfect sync.
“Runner’s accelerating. Mach .9 and climbing,” Owen calls out. “No thermal drop. It’s not armed.” Not yet, I think. But that could change next time.
“Hard turn—bearing two-six-five, descending fast. It’s trying to drag us out,” Porter says, voice tighter now.
“Take the shot,” Cassidy orders. “Before it crosses the boundary line.”
“Fox three,” Owen calls out.
A second later, “Fox three,” from Porter.
I glance toward the western edge of our radar range, where the drone’s blip flickers, then vanishes, just as two white trails cut across the sky.
One heartbeat. Two.
Then a clean pop. No fireball. No shrapnel. Just a sudden absence, like it was swallowed whole. “Splash four,” Porter confirms.
But Owen’s still talking. “Ghost, Midas, there’s something else. As soon as that drone went active, my radar lit up. Brief ping. High-frequency sweep, not ours.”
My blood chills. I don’t say it out loud, but we’re all thinking the same thing.
That wasn’t just a test.
It was a trigger.
I exhale, a beat too soon. Because then my RWR pings, short and sharp. Another one. South. No radar signature till just now. Must’ve been shadowing the others or flying dark.
Fifth drone.
Cassidy doesn’t need to say it. I’m already peeling off.
“Visual. One-seven-five, angels three,” I call. “Fox three.” I track the drone through the HUD, heart in my throat. It twists last second, too late. The AMRAAM rips it from the sky.
“Splash five,” I say, voice flat. Silence on comms for a second. Just breathing and engine noise and the aftershock of adrenaline.
I take a few deep breaths but they do nothing to ease the pulse in my throat. That wasn’t random. They wanted to see how we fly. How we kill. And they’ll be back.
I bank west, eyes scanning the horizon. Ocean stretching out below like a battlefield that hasn’t happened yet.
Then Cassidy speaks, even-keeled. “Charlie Flight, threat neutralized. RTB. Good work, boys.”
***
The second we walk inside for our debrief, I yank my gloves off and drag a hand through my sweaty hair, pushing it off my forehead. My flight suit’s still zipped to the collar, g-suit clinging tight around my legs, boots scuffed and streaked with tarmac grime.
I can feel heat trapped in all the layers.
Cassidy walks over and stands near the table, arms crossed, jaw tight.
His flight suit's soaked through at the shoulders, the salt crust already drying at his temples. Owen leans forward on his elbows, forehead pressed to his fists like he’s trying to slow his breathing without anyone noticing.
Porter’s pacing, slow, measured steps like he's still taxiing a jet in his head, helmet dangling from one hand, hair matted flat on one side.
No one’s saying much. Just the hiss of the cooling unit and the distant whine of engines out on the flight line.
Five confirmed kills, no damage to any of us.
Still the air in here feels heavier than it should.
Like we all know this wasn’t just a test of our reflexes.
It was a probe. A message. And whoever sent it is still watching
The door creaks open behind us. Colonel Abrams, our squadron XO, walks in with a clipboard and a storm cloud brewing on his face.
A lieutenant from ops steps in with two mugs, sets them down on the steel table without a word, then disappears.
Cassidy glances toward the hallway. No one else is coming. No projector. No full room of brass.
“All right,” Abrams says, voice like sandpaper. “Five drones. Zero ID. No recovered wreckage.” He eyes each of us in turn. “Anyone want to explain what the hell they were doing that close to our coastline?”
Owen snorts, but Cassidy speaks first. “Sir, they weren’t just loitering. They were maneuvering. Banking hard. Reacting to our approach. Not on autopilot.”
Abrams doesn’t blink. “You’re saying they were controlled?”
Cassidy nods. “Yes, sir.”
Porter leans back in his chair, arms folding over his chest. “Somebody was flying them. Not guessing. They were baiting.”
“Baiting what?” Abrams asks.
I speak before I can stop myself. “Us.”
All eyes turn to me.
I clear my throat. “The spacing. The altitude. They weren’t armed, and they didn’t run. They wanted to see how we’d respond.”
Abrams’s jaw tightens. “You think this was a test?”
I nod once. “Yes, sir.”
Silence settles like static.
Cassidy rubs a hand over his jaw. “Could be a foreign actor trying to map our ROE. Timing. Response. Radio chatter.”
Owen mutters, “Felt like a dress rehearsal.”
Porter glances toward the door like he expects someone else to walk in. “No insignia, no payloads. Just eyes.”
Abrams exhales through his nose. “We’ll put in a request to scrub the wreckage, but at this point it’s ocean salvage. Not likely we’ll get much.”
I meet his gaze. “Does intel know?”
Abrams gives a humorless half smile. “Intel’s pretending not to know until they’ve got something to cover their asses.”
That lands like lead in my gut.
“Get cleaned up,” he says. “Don’t talk to anyone outside this room. We’ll log your flight records, but this debrief stays off the books until further notice.”
We all nod. No one moves.
The colonel steps out, door swinging shut behind him.
Owen lets out a slow whistle. “So we’re just...supposed to sit on this?”
Cassidy stands straighter. “We did our job. We flew clean, we fired clean. The rest is above our paygrade.”
Maybe. But I can’t shake it.
Someone flew those drones into our airspace. Someone watched the way we scrambled, the weapons we used, the way our Raptors moved. And now they know a little more than they did yesterday. And they’re coming back.