The Dogfight

The enemy craft was nowhere in sight. Only seconds ago it was on their six unloading what must have been its full arsenal on the small group of fighters patrolling the outskirts of their borderline. The blue skies, save for sparse cloud coverage, as well as the radar were all clear.

Max Metcalf of Patrol Unit Four was not so convinced that the fighting had ended for the day. Though his protests drew heavy criticism from his other four compatriots.

"I think you're being a little too paranoid up there, Number Four," Pilot Two, Barry Clarke, said with an air of amusement in his voice. "They had to have gone through all of their ammo on that go-around." His laughter finally came out. "I've got about a quarter of my supply left, and I'm sure you do as well."

While, truth be told, Max had more than three quarters of his ammunition left intact, he hadn't wasted a healthy portion on shots that merely penetrated the clouds their craft had danced around minutes before in combat. And a cloud is much, much larger than the broad side of a barn, Max did not reply aloud. His sparsely-used weaponry had either dealt some damage or completely taken out his intended targets; not much could be said about Unit Two (or even One and Five for that matter). The others in his squadron hadn't a clue how to engage an enemy ship it seemed. Pity.

It was especially a shame that Unit Three had to be blown away. Celia Daives, like himself, actually tried to conserve shots instead of throwing them away like cheaply-made toys. She hadn't been a slouch either; her maneuvering abilities were second to none. Max himself had a time keeping up with her positioning, she had him scoping his radar more often than personally observing her assassin's dance with the enemy. The group they were engaging never stood a chance. Between the two of them, Max reckoned, the opposing squadron were as good as dead—with Barry and the other two (Max hadn't caught their names in the emergency scramble minutes before, his hands shook while he fastened and buckled himself into his cockpit, heart racing, knowing that the real pros would be watching—and judging—his every move in the craft) serving as little more than a distraction from the other pilots swarming their territory.

Pretty soon they will only be a diversion, Max took the second to muse. Without any weapons at their disposal, they'd otherwise be completely useless. Though that wasn't entirely true; if the enemy craft made it perilously close to base or to the civilians, a bit of self-sacrifice was an appropriate option. He doubted very much any of them even so much as toyed with that notion. After all, what good was an evaluation if you ended up dead in the midst of the fray? Even if they were to eject nearing the impact, there would still be the matter of a multi-million dollar fighter to answer for.

"If Command was so sure there was no longer a threat, they'd have called us in by now," Max spoke up. "There's nothing on our short-range radar, but I'm sure there's at least one left—the one that took Celia—"

Barry interrupted with a raspberry into his mic, "Celia hardly engaged and wasn't willing to fire out rounds, she took too long lining up her shots, of course she got blown away. Besides, it was the only one left. It ran out of ammo and retreated."

"Didn't you notice anything different about it?" Mike questioned, praying that one of his remaining squad took the effort to observe in addition to the fighting.

Silence.

Max sighed. "The one that just let off on us, none of you noticed how much that thing was firing throughout the entire battle?"

Not a word.

"Or how much damage it was able to take compared to the others?"

Number One replied, "Maybe it was a different model. Different specs."