Starfire
Copyright© 2025 by Mark Randall
Chapter 3
“Warning, Warning, Warning. Hostile craft in range. Take immediate evasive actions.” The buzzers and seat tingler demanded attention.
The pilot slapped the silencer toggle and gave the voice confirmation. “Pilot copies, Hostile position?”
The computer continued, “Hostiles at 180 Degrees, Mark 0, range 5000 meters.”
“OK, that’s close enough.” He muttered.
Again, the buzzers and seat tingler went off. “Vampire, Vampire, Vampire. Missile inbound. Impact in 25 seconds. 24, 23,
Slapping the toggle again, responded. “Computer, kill the countdown.”
He reached over and punched the activator for his new toy. He could feel the thumps as three of them released. He then pulled the stick back to the stops and powered the aft thrusters. He activated the radar and watched the returns. When he saw the inbound missiles change course to track him, He fired his chaff and flares. Then threw the stick clear over to the left and down. There was a tense couple of seconds. Then he could see that the decoys had worked. The inbounds were deviating to the right of his course.
He then shut down his radar and powered down all of the active emitters and went passive, with visuals only. After a minute, all hell broke loose. There were flares and fireworks to the right of his original position when all this started.
The triumph was evident in his voice. “Gotcha, sucker.” He then flipped the cover off his missile arm switch, and everything went black.
“Damn it, I wasn’t finished. Give me a break, Ops, I still had time on this simulation.”
An unexpected voice came over the headphones. “Sawyer, get your butt out of my simulator and into my office NOW!”
Oops, the jig was up. That voice belonged to the senior instructor, the man in charge of the simulators. As the hatchway opened, the tech was standing there with an apologetic look. “Sorry, Thad. He wasn’t expected until later. I think he may have gotten wind of this one. Maybe we can schedule something for later?”
Thad shrugged out of his restraint harness and said, “I don’t know Mitch. I don’t think he’s going to let this one go, this time.”
When Thad got to Lieutenant Commander Morse’s office, His yeoman was at his desk, trying VERY hard not to look embarrassed. “Don’t worry, Slim,” Thad said, “This one’s on me. I’ll keep you and the others out of it.”
“Thanks, Thad. Be careful, I don’t think I’ve seen him this mad before.”
From the open door to the Lieutenant Commander’s office, His unmistakable baritone yelled, “If that’s Sawyer, get your butt in here, boy, NOW.”
As Thad stepped into the room, He said, “Close the door, Sawyer.”
“Boy, what am I going to do with you? You are, by far, the best fighter pilot we’ve got, maybe the best I’ve ever seen. But that’s the problem. We don’t need fighter pilots. We need truck drivers. We need safe, slow, and smart pilots. Those kids out there are watching you, and all of them have stars in their eyes. Stars named Thad Sawyer. They all have dreams of blasting through space.”
“I won’t deny it. If this were the Navy, you’d be a Lieutenant Commander right now and have your own wing. As it is, I’m half a step away from grounding you. It’s bad enough you’ve got everybody mesmerized, but you’re also taking up simulator time. For every minute you are playing ace on the simulators, there is a wanna be pilot standing around wasting time waiting on you.”
“That brings me to the next point. You keep writing bigger and more complex programming for these sim flights of yours. It’s gotten to the point that the other simulators are seizing up, which ties up even more training resources. I can’t prove this, but I’ve even gotten a complaint from the mainframe guys that someone was trying to hack into their system. If I find that you are doing this, or you are getting someone else to do it for you, you’ll be begging for a mother’s counsel. You’ll never see the control panel of anything more complicated than the water regulators in hydroponics.”
“We have talked about this before,” He continued, “and I thought you understood that any sim time you wanted, you needed to go through me. I also thought we agreed that any new programming had to be reviewed by the computer geeks and, again, approved by me. Could you tell me what was so important that you felt the need to disregard our agreement?”
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