An interceptor pilot is kept in a state of high readiness at all times. The soporifics in their system leave them in a half awake daze twenty four hours a day; their bodies and brains doing the reparative work of sleep without ever fully allowing them to rest. All it takes is a change in their drip feed, sedatives traded for stimulants, and they're ready to work.
Practiced and steady hands hold the trembling girl still. Her flight helmet seals around her face in parts. First the visor, blinding her for a moment before the passthrough kicks on. Next the integrated communication gear; bone conduction pads unfurl from the headset and slide around her ears. Then the retention system and shell. Finally, the oxygen mask.
The intubation tube slides down her throat with ease; forking as it reaches the back. One tendril extends into the esophagus, the other, the trachea. The mask pulls itself in to cover her face, locking in to the rest of the helmet with a click. A rubberized bulb inflates in her mouth, ensuring the mask won't be knocked loose no matter how rough the flight.
She gives the bulb an experimental chew. Cherry. Ms. Alia remembered to get her a flavored mask nub like she asked for.
Klaxons wail.
She's lowered in to the cockpit, the opaque canopy hissing shut. The moment she's seated, the armored coffin floods with a rush of force-diffusion fluid. In a bath like this, 40 Gs feels like 20.
It's as dark as the grave in there, at least til her helmet UI finishes its handshake with the jet. Three boops and a beep later she sees through the walls of the craft as though encased in glass. Avionic readouts nibble at the peripheries of her vision, glancing their ways pulls them into focus.
Warning lights on the second deck bay flash.
She speeds through startup with machine precision; battery switched to main power, JFS switch to Start 2, engine rpms revved and observed, sec light out, throttle advanced to idle position, INS knob to stored heading position; on and on until the jet feels as though it's shivering with anticipation. An IAC-98 Estoc fighter yearns to hunt.
Interception window narrows.
Chewed-to-the-tip nailed fingers white knuckle grip the center stick through worn in plugsuit gloves. Every cell in her body screams that they should be in the air by now. She resists the urge to shake out the restless energy with the ailerons as the Estoc and she are lifted up to the launch runway.
At last, after a fifteen second eternity, the communication line crackles to life.
A professional voice, clean and clear as spring water, fills the airwaves. "This is Alia Dawkins of the HRF Horn of Victory, speaking for callsign Spare-Change," - the pilot wiggled in her seat hearing her name - "preparing to launch interception sortie against unidentified intercontinental carrier rocket."
There is no countdown.
"Launching."
The pneumatics of the ship roar to life, pulling the jet with enough force to turn biology into physics as it's hurled down the runway. Spare-Change grins behind her mask, her eyes reflexively watering from the acceleration.
Her Estoc clears the lip of the carrier and she pulls back hard on the stick, wrenching the jet into a rapid ascent. Afterburner plumes tear a trail of haze behind her climb.
Spare-Change barely knows what she's hunting today, and she doesn't care to learn much more than that. All that matters is that by the end of the day, she'll have made a pretty sunset with two suns.
CONTINUED HERE