Casting Shadows: Shattered Sky


1600, March 16, 2047

Major Ionela Stoica

Off the coast of Southern California, Blue Zone 11

The coastal morning sky would've been beautiful, with a full sun shining on scattered clouds over the sea and drifting waves, but Major Ionela Stoica was too busy thinking about the most damnable thing a fighter pilot could deal with: an escort mission. For all her talent and dreams of flying the meanest, most powerful planes, the mission came first. But what dreams she had, and more importantly, accomplished.

Growing up near the old Baikonur Cosmodrome, going to space always was Stoica's destiny. Thousands of GDI personnel regularly traveled in and out of the atmosphere, but few could match her ride - a F-41B Firehawk, GDI's premier multirole fighter bomber, specially equipped with Stratofighter Boosters that could blast the eighteen-ton jet thirty kilometers straight up, far beyond the reach of any surface-based missile or gun, and then come screaming back down at Mach 5.

That was probably not going to happen today, not with the package she was currently protecting. Miles away and barely visible, the V-35 Ox was slowly making its way south, following the coastline all the way to its destination, San Diego. Stoica hadn't been told exactly who or what was inside. But a full squadron of Firehawks was not simply ordered to escort any random Ox, especially not by the commanding general of San Diego. He'd made it clear that he needed its cargo alive. Not intact: alive.

For this mission, her Firehawk was outfitted with a standard loadout of four Rattlesnake air-to-air missiles (AAMs) and a Mauser 25mm cannon with six hundred rounds. Combined with highly advanced avionics and an integrated EVA unit, the Firehawk was simply unmatched in air to air combat, and no matter how many aircraft Nod could commit at once, the Firehawk maintained an impressive kill-to-loss ratio of more than five to one.

Stoica wasn't sure what was the kill ratio of the Firehawk when they were escorting painfully slow and chubby (comparatively speaking) Oxen. But at least the Ox pilot was friendly.

"This is Poker Five to Saturn Squadron," the pilot said. "To who do we have the pleasure of meeting today?"

"This is Major Ionela Stoica, Saturn One." Stoica answered him. "Poker Five, we have your back."

"Glad to have you with us. The air corridors are never clear these days."

"Not since the war began, no."

"Well, I'm well trained for turbulence, so don't you worry, Saturn."

A few uncomfortable chuckles were shared across Stoica's squadron. Some turbulence, all right - as the first source it began to appear on long range radar.

"Saturn One, large Venom flight detected," Stoica's EVA reported. For bombing missions Firehawks sometimes had a weapons system officer, but for air-to-air, just the pilot and an top notch EVA unit were necessary.

"Get ready, squadron," she said. "Venoms inbound."

The little Nod attack craft, while quick and maneuverable, didn't pack missiles and had to close to gun range to do anything against the heavily armed Firehawks. Dozens had been destroyed in California alone, blown away at long range, no more able to save themselves than the Apaches or Harpies of wars past.

"Acquiring lock!" one of her pilots called.

"Hold your fire," Stoica told him. "Gotta know who's who first."

Recently, Nod had gotten clever, using signature generators to seemingly double or triple their numbers and force GDI pilots to get much closer before firing, lest they waste missiles on ghosts. That alone neutered GDI's range advantage and the kill count, although still skewed, was sliding in Nod's favor.

"Twenty-eight signatures on radar," her second-in-command, Major Ilya Voychek, a crusty Russian who'd been flying longer than some airmen had been alive, notified everyone. "How many do you think there actually are?"

"Six, twelve, or eighteen," Stoica answered. "They come in packs of six here."

"Here, yes. I've heard it's four in South America and five in Europe," Voychek noted.

"Nod is weird, okay?" Saturn Seven put it.

"Understatement of the century," Stoica said, still trying to resolve the signatures. No luck. They still lingered, stubbornly confusing her radar even as her EVA unit tried to differentiate them. Only five miles out, the ghosts rapidly faded as the Venoms suddenly split up to attack the GDI formation.

"Engage, engage!" Stoica ordered, firing two of her missiles at the lead Venom, destroying it within seconds. The rest of her Firehawks let loose as well, eventually claiming nine out of eighteen before they reached gun range.

Dogfighting time. Even at airborne knife range, the Firehawk retained a significant edge. The Venom that engaged her wasn't anything special and she didn't need anything special to take it down, just some hard maneuvering to get behind it and a two-second burst of cannon fire to blow the gunship away for good. The fact that the obviously outmatched Venoms tried again and again to bring down Firehawks said a lot about Nod's discipline or complete disregard for human life. Most likely both.

By the end of the minute, all eight remaining Venoms were destroyed or sent fleeing in retreat. Stoica grinned. Everyone in her squadron was an ace now, if she'd remembered right. Seeing them all get up to five kills each was a milestone worth noting, even as the Ox kept chugging along, undisturbed by the brief but violent skirmish.

"Great job, squadron." she told everyone. "Status?"

"Ma'am, one of the Venoms got my wing," Saturn Seven reported, quite irritated with himself. "I think I have to land."

"Understood, Saturn Seven. RTB now. Eight, watch him."

"Yes, ma'am!" both pilots replied. Well, that wasn't so bad. Perhaps Nod might get the lesson that they weren't welcome in GDI airspace this time, or -

"Alert: unknown bogies detected," her EVA spoke up out of nowhere, bringing Stoica to check her long-range radars in the same heartbeat. Unfortunately, EVA was right. A faint but definitely visible group of contacts was rapidly approaching.

"Squadron, be advised, new contacts on long-range."

"It might be some kind of phantom," Voychek hopefully suggested. "Nod might be fooling us again."

But Stoica had been flying in combat long enough to take any suspicion seriously. Whatever that thing was, it was moving much faster than a Venom. And if it didn't have a GDI IFF tag, then she had to treat it as a potential threat. The jets came closer and closer, coming just beyond Rattlesnake missile range before disappearing entirely, four little grey dots gone from radar sight.

"Uh, where'd they all go?" another Saturn pilot asked.

Stoica watched and listened for any hint, but heard and saw nothing more. It was a novel and extremely uncomfortable feeling for a GDI pilot accustomed to knowing everything before the enemy did.

"Squadron, stay behind me. I don't like this."

Her Firehawks obeyed, letting their Stoica take the lead in facing the disappeared bogies. One eye on radar and the other eye outside, she could only wait, wait and be ready to jump back into action at a moment's notice.

The moment didn't come, or more accurately, Stoica had no time to prepare for it. There were only a few flashes of light - and then utter chaos.

"Saturn Three is down!" Voychek frantically reported.

"Six is down, too! I repeat, Six is down!"

"Everyone, evade!" Stoica screamed into her comms net, even though every survivor was frantically jinking already. Four incredibly fast aircraft briefly appeared through the clouds, splitting up in an airshow-like formation to engage the surviving Firehawks.

"What are those things?"

In the brief moment Stoica saw them, she processed some rather familiar looking forward-swept wings and canards. But those jets weren't quite like her Firehawk. Because Firehawks were not colored black and red, and didn't attempt to lock onto her.

"Contact type unknown," EVA advised. "Advise extreme caution."

Stoica could agree with that, especially as one got on her six, forcing her to evade. To maintain her own speed, she was forced to dip to lower and lower altitudes, trading height for energy as she tried to keep ahead of these 'phantoms'. They were difficult to track, and though her EVA was getting better and better at resolving static from the very real and dangerous Nod jets, Stoica was out of time. She had to act on instinct if she wanted to live in this different world.

Finding a particularly open section of sky, she halted her descent and began to pull back up. Her lock-on warnings began to ring at full volume, so she quickly deployed flares and executed a quick 180-degree flip. Sure enough, one of those Nod fighters was still behind her, now fully exposed. She could see it was more sturdily built, with two canted vertical stabilizers and a slim red cockpit standard to Nod vehicles. But more importantly, it was sitting directly in the center of her radar crosshairs.

One heat-seeking missile later, the Nod fighter was trailing smoke and losing altitude, and Stoica bore a smug grin on her face.

"Not so tough are you?" Stoica said, watching her enemy fall. Satisfied that it was done for, she shifted her attention and engaged another one of the phantoms. The Nod fighters were excellent planes and could put up one hell of a dogfight. But she was an aggressive, skilled pilot, and with some clever maneuvering, managed to slice the next phantom with an long burst of cannon fire.

But despite the serious damage, the phantom executed a series of counter maneuvers that put it right behind Stoica. She was forced to wildly evade a series of increasingly accurate laser shots that pricked her wings and then main body, making all of her damage alarms shriek. Too many laser hits and her entire craft might overheat and spontaneously burn. Or maybe they'd just cut an entire wing off. Stoica had seen both happen to Firehawks. As far as she knew, the pilots of those craft didn't make it.

Finally, Stoica got her chance. The phantom pushed itself too far and she let loose a second burst of cannon fire, cutting off the damaged wing entirely and sending the Nod fighter into a wild spin on its five thousand foot drop towards the ground.

"Splash another bandit," Stoica said, more satisfied with that phrase than ever before. Two "phantoms" down, not bad for a GDI pilot who'd never seen one before.

"This is Poker Five, there's a Nod fighter all over us!"

Shit!

"Hang on Poker, I'm coming!"

As the rest of her Firehawks, surprised but adaptive, forced the surviving phantoms into retreat, she went full-afterburners towards the Ox, a single red contact buzzing around it. Her radar acquired a lock but then lost it thanks to a burst of flares from the enemy jet.

Coming closer, she could see a telltale trail of smoke emitting from the black-red fighter, currently peppering the hapless Ox with brief laser shots.

Of course. Of course it was the jet that she thought dead, that had come back to life and engaged the one aircraft that couldn't fight back. A more reasoned side of her figured that they weren't phantoms for nothing. The soldier side of her went to work, dancing into position until she heard the constant tone of a target lock.

Her last Rattlesnake missile dropped off and hurtled straight for the Phantom. There was nothing in its way, no ghosts, no flares, only a straight line to the engine core, melting it and sending the fighter burning towards Earth for the second and last time.

But there was no pride in the kill, no warm feeling or joy, only revulsion. How'd she miss it? And had her mistake cost the mission?

"Poker Five, what's your status?" she called. With some fifty miles left until it reached San Diego, she could not afford any technical trouble from her ward.

No response. Coming closer to the damaged Ox, she gasped upon seeing the cockpit - both canopies had been scored by laser fire, and there was a splotch of red on the side.

"Poker Five, respond!" she repeated herself. Were the pilots dead? "What's your status? Are the pilots alive?"

"This is Poker Five to Saturn One," a new voice crackled from the stricken plane. "Both pilots are critically wounded."

"Wait, the pilots are wounded? Who's in control now?"

"Yes, they are. I was one of the passengers, but I have some flying experience." That voice sounded like a military man, Stoica could tell, but just how many Ox passengers knew how to fly an Ox? Was he Air Force?

"Some flying experience? With what? Carryalls? Ilyushins?"

"Thirty hours in Massivesoft Flight Simulator 2040. It was a present from a good friend of mine. Does that count?"

Somehow, Stoica just knew it didn't. "Poker Five, can you land the plane?" she dared to ask.

There was silence on the other end. "I know how to slow down and deploy the landing gear. That should do."

A muffled 'what the hell man' came from Poker's end, apparently one of the other passengers dissenting. Stoica agreed. There was no way this guy was serious, and if he was, then he was going to die, along with whatever VIP she needed to protect. If this "pilot" really tried, her precious cargo would die, smashing into flaming bits when he careened into the runway nose-first. If only V-35s carried EVA units - but damn GDI bureaucrats never approved it, deeming the military-grade AI "too-expensive" to install on the ubiquitous cargo aircraft.

"Dear God, please tell me someone has a computer at least," she said.

"I do," the new "pilot" replied, before suddenly turning his attention. "Hey, Rick, you get it. It's in my bag. And shut up when I'm talking to the Firehawk. She's a nice lady."

Stoica ignored the other comments. "Look up the V-35 Ox, Flight, Operations, and Diagnostics Manual, Second Edition. Oh, God, please, please, don't let me down."

She wasn't the type to pray, even for her own life, but at that moment, and many more to come, Stoica was desperately clinging by a mustard seed of faith that the new pilot had a lick of common sense.


The guards stationed at San Diego International Airport were never surprised to see V-35s come in for landings, but a few alert ones would notice this particular one coming in fast. A rookie pilot, they'd figure, and absolutely correctly.

If only their comms were set to the right channel, then they would've been treated to the spectacle of a desperate Firehawk squadron leader cajoling a ironclad Lieutenant General to properly land a cargo plane. If they could listen any more intently, they might have also heard confusing screaming coming from the Ox's cargo bay, like Stoica could.

"Your angle of attack is too high, Poker! You're going to stall!" Stoica tried to warn the pilot.

"Ah, thanks." The Ox tilted down just a little bit, even as Stoica could hear faint screams of "we're all going to die!" and "well of course, everyone does!" in the background.

"That's not enough, Poker! You'll kill yourself if that's all you do."

He ignored her. "Airspeed is one hundred twenty miles an hour," he reported. Someone else from the plane yelled "not helping!".

"You're going to die, Poker Five!"

"I've heard that many times. Don't worry."

The Ox was losing altitude fast. Stoica half-expected one of its engines to explode at this point. Really, it couldn't get worse, not with such a broken plane and idiot pilot who wanted to figure out the efficacy of its shock absorbers by any means necessary.

Turning away, berating herself for imagining such a thing happening to her charge, Stoica suddenly heard Poker Five speak up.

"I just lost an engine. Got any advice?"

The Ox, its rightmost engine on fire, was dipping to the side, badly.

"Holy shit!" she wanted to scream, but it instead came out in a contemptuous whisper as the landing gear lowered. Given the pilot's performance thus far, Stoica seriously doubted that he could pull it off. At least there was an ambulance and a fire truck were already waiting on the runway, there to pick out the bodies and clean up the ashes when he inevitably crashed and burned. And then what? Would the general of San Diego, the one who'd made very clear that he needed the cargo alive, personally call Stoica inside and chew her out? Demote her? Relieve her?

Caught in a rip current of bad possibilities, the Firehawk pilot failed to notice how the Ox appreciably slowed down, further reduced its angle of attack, and actually followed the procedure to land while missing one engine. When she finally remembered to look back at the Ox, it was on the runway, being doused with a fire truck. Blinking her eyes, she couldn't believe what she was seeing - it was in a single piece.

She could only ask one question. "How are you still alive?"

A sincere laugh echoed in her headset. "Never bet against me, Saturn."


As medics frantically ran towards him, Lieutenant General Joshua Mitchell stepped out the carcass that could barely be called an airplane and grinned at his savior in the sky. It looked like she was wagging her wings; whether as a friendly gesture or due to the Firehawk's dynamically unstable airframe, it was a pleasant sight.

"If you want to try, play me anytime," he added, not that she could hear him any more. Brushing off the medics and directing them to the original pilots, Mitchell shook his head in relief. What a hell of a ride.

Watching the Firehawk double back to the tactical Airfield, sure to get a well-deserved break, Mitchell resolved to invite its pilot to a poker night some day. She'd fit right in. If he could learn how to "land" an Ox thanks to a computer game gifted to him by an Air Force friend, then surely she could learn Texas hold'em from the best of the best - the commanding officers of the 30th Armored Division.

Yes, she'd fit right in with Parnell and the guys.


Nod Advanced Aircraft Development

GDI Intelligence Operations Report

October 18, 2045

Years after the aptly named "Harpy" and "Banshee" strike fighters first terrorized the skies of Earth, Nod splinter factions apparently remain on the forefront of aerospace research. While limited numbers of these vintage aircraft might still be in service, GDI Intelligence Operations has confirmed that Nod, or at least its successors, are continuing to develop advanced aircraft, potentially rivaling GDI's equivalent multi-billion credit R&D projects. Their complexity of functions and reasons for such development, are troubling but remain beyond the scope of this initial report.

The two most frequently reported combat aircraft have been designated as the "Venom" VTOL gunship and "Vertigo" tactical stealth bomber. In some respects, they are clear-cut successors to the Harpy and Banshee of old - light and heavy ground support, perfect for Nod's typical hit and run doctrine of quick, devastating attacks. However, several additional projects have been at least rumored; they include a long range strategic bomber, heavy-duty cargo transports, and dedicated aerial superiority fighters.

The strategic bomber, apparently known as the "Armageddon", has been reported to have an unusually flexible weapons bay, along with powerful supercruise-capable engines. Just what munitions it can fit are unknown - we speculate that air-dropped landmines or other area-denial weapons are a likely option, to differentiate from the direct ground support of its brethren.

Civilian transports have seen a resurgence in the post TW2 era, with improved anti-Tiberium shielding allowing for high-altitude passes of Red Zones, permitting worldwide air transportation again. InOps suggests that some airline companies may be fronts for Nod, recalling their corporate origins, and are using their civilian research to improve potential military transports.

Nod's fighter project is most shrouded in mystery, to the point where many agents believe it is nothing more than a phantom to throw off GDI. Regardless, InOps Command believes it is a real, if low-profile, attempt at building the ultimate air-to-air platform. Its armament and technical specs are mostly unknown, but the recent hacking of the F-41 "Firehawk" testing center strongly suggests that someone is interested in our own top-of-the-line fighter design, perhaps as a basis for something else...


Author's Note: Welcome to the first chapter of Casting Shadows!

Inspired by games such as Ace Combat and Battlestations: Pacific, I've tried writing air and sea based pieces relating to Under the Shadow. Since I found it hard to directly link them to the main story, I've decided to instead put them into a separate Fanfiction entry entirely. You can certainly read still UtS by itself, but I humbly believe that these entries will serve as entertaining supplements to the main course. This first chapter is best read alongside my main story Under the Shadow, in between Chapters 5 and 6 (Ground Assault and Roll Call), so check that out if you haven't already.

The Phantom featured in this story is based off the Nod aerial superiority jet in Command and Conquer: Rivals. Yes, the "free-to-play" mobile game. It actually isn't that bad, at least for the first few hours until you hit the paywall. More importantly, it's got a number of interesting unit ideas that I'll probably use later. In future chapters, you'll see the naval side of things, and then more of Stoica's Firehawk ace combat. Stay tuned!