Journal Entry, 30 June 2017

This entry will, by the time the day is out, be much, much longer than usual, and probably end up rambling on and on about whatever pops up in my head. But would you believe that, six months ago, I would have considered this shit exciting?

Sure, standing Scramble Watch is the easiest job in the world. Just you and your wingman lounging in a specially prepared "ready room", waiting for a klaxon that may - but probably won't - actually come and tell you to fly around and shoot. When it's your first time, it's the most high-stakes waiting game in the system!

Lieutenant James "Fox" McCloud, Jr. sat at the Ready Room's desk, at a loss for words. Here he was, cooped up in this room, two hours into this damnable assignment but already facing absolute boredom. He turned towards the smaller of the room's two doors. "Hey Falco!" he yelled.

From behind this door, the voice of fellow Lieutenant Sergio "Falco" Lombardi grunted, "You gonna ask me to just pull shit out of my ass for your journal again?"

"I thought that's what you're supposed to do on the head!" snarked Fox. "You've been in there for 30 minutes, I need to pee!"

But now? - "Now" being most decidedly after Falco finally got off the toilet so Fox could take a leak - Falco and I got 20 hours left on this one, and we're hating every minute of it. Standing this watch requires the absolute utmost attention; even as you're kicking back to watch some TV during the time you'd normally be doing PT or hitting the simulator, you have to be constantly on guard. Any second, that alert klaxon might go off, and once it does you better move your ass to the hangar and take off! Seconds count when you're in orbit above Corneria and have to scramble to intercept a threat to its security, even the three minutes it takes for our specially prepared craft to launch is an eternity in a fight.

Not like it matters, anyway. I thought we settled everything 20 years ago, when all the rebel factions and the elements of the Cornerian Alliance slugged it out in the Great War. It was before my time, sure; after all, I only know what we covered in Military History, but ever since the Treaty of Sorrows, the worst thing we've had to intercept was the occasional passenger craft that lost instruments and ended up too close to a military installation. Besides, cramming two pilots - men who, by their very nature, are restless and eager - into a room together for 24 hours and never letting them leave isn't exactly the greatest thing for morale. After the first few times, the novelty and excitement from graduating the Academy and actually getting your first posting wears thin, replaced with a growing claustrophobia and impending cabin fever. As well as Falco and I have gotten along for...well, pretty much our entire lives, not even we can find quite enough things to pass time with that we can instantly drop or that we don't have to leave the room to do.

Fox turned to Falco, who had taken to streaming his entire music collection to the room's modest sound system. "Could you please turn that down, Falco?"

"What, are you writing another short story in that journal of yours?"

"They're not short and they're not stories, Falco. I just write about all the weird shit we think of when we're bored on duty."

"Damn straight, 'they're not short'! Seriously, I could think of several publishers that would love to get their hands on the stuff you put down in here."

Fox immediately replied, "I can think of several TV networks that would love to get their cameras on the stuff that happens in here."

"You just want to see exactly what caused Peppy to go so hardass on everyone lately," Falco retorted.

"Don't let him catch you calling him that!" Fox briefly flashed back to the first time Captain Hare had meted out punishment to him. Running the entire circumference of the circular, half-mile-diameter space station in full flight gear certainly beat it into him that, outside the cockpit, Hare didn't particularly care to be addressed by callsign by those that hadn't flown with him in combat. Despite this, Falco did have a point. Fox couldn't help but to think of some of their fellow pilots on the station with them, and how they managed to make Falco of all people look like a halfway-proper military man.

And to think of some of the other pilots in this wing...judging by the NJPs Captain Hare's had to hand down recently, I'd say a hidden-camera show would be a smashing hit back home. There's plenty of reality television potential in watching a bunch of flyboys slowly going insane. Just secretly tape us airheads in here and sell the edited highlights to any given TV station, and the royalties alone could more than easily pay for-

Fox snapped upright with a start, the sound of the alert klaxon recoiling him away from his tablet where he'd previously been typing away in his journal. "Speak of the devil!" yelped the vulpine as he nearly stumbled over his own chair in his sprint towards the Go Lockers by the exit door.

Falco vaulted over the couch, his sheer speed and distinctive blue feathers leaving a Technicolor streak through the air as the pilots arrived at their lockers. Their flight suits lay on the deck before them, where they'd opened and bunched the suits up around the ankles of their flight boots beforehand. The two pilots stepped into their boots mid-stride, picking up the suits by the ankles and pulling them over their shoulders with movements endlessly practiced and drilled into them back at the Academy. From this point, all they had to do was grab their helmets and make a mad dash to the hangar deck.

"Ensign Toad, Launch Control. Zephyr Flight is scrambling to intercept that threat you found. They'll be on your channel after launch, over."

"Roger," replied Slippy Toad from his position at the Early Warning and Control console. Several enlisted men milled about around him, each manning several monitors and controlling the base's myriad arrays of radars and sensors.

As the unidentified craft moved towards the station, its corresponding radar blip inched towards the center of the monitor – but its earlier movement patterns and motion towards Corneria's main orbital defense platform already cemented it to the center of Slippy's attention. Amidst the crowded, seemingly endless clutter of civilian space traffic flowing to and from the planet below, this lone bogey could have blended right in. Hell, the reason Slippy found it in the first place was because he'd overheard space traffic controllers complaining about an unknown vessel flying right through their approach vectors, forcing several craft to abort and sending major ripples throughout the entire civilian traffic pattern.

Could just be a lost civ with radio trouble, Slippy thought to himself about the developing situation that, to his bulbous amphibian eyes, appeared as a dance of dots and lines. But they're headed directly towards us…

Slippy's train of thought was promptly derailed by a radio transmission from Fox. "AWACS Slippy, Zephyr One. We've cleared the station, over." This was accompanied by two blue dots appearing at center screen, indicated by an arrow. The monitor, after a couple of seconds, then spat out a series of numbers and blinked a corresponding line linking the dots.

Falco pulled his Arwing into formation to the left of and behind Fox as Slippy said, "Zephyr Flight, unidentified spacecraft at bearing zero-two-five, 220 kilometers, headed directly for Cornerian Orbital Defense One. Continue northeast to intercept, over."

"Roger," replied Fox as they swept their Arwings into a banking left turn, leveling off on their given intercept course.

"So, Fox, this going to be yet another wild goose chase?" Falco spoke with the impatience of a man who'd been sent out over nothing several times.

"When we get there, you can see for yourself," was the response Fox gave as the Arwings continued on at full throttle.

"Well, it's certainly better than staying cooped up in that room all day," remarked Falco.

"You can say that again. Oi, we should be in visual range of that bogey pretty soon, let's identify 'em."

Falco looked through the Arwing's head-up display out at where his radar told him the target should have been, but at this range all he saw was a faint glowing speck against the space backdrop – in these near-sunrise conditions, probably reflected light from the planet below striking the ship. "Hey, his radar is working at least."

"You got spiked by it, too?" Fox's Arwing gave a short beep, its radar warning receiver giving its pilot an audio cue and a helpful arrow on the displays telling him where it came from.

Slippy's voice joined in on the conversation, "Zephyr Flight, pass in front before coming around to the rear. Identify vessel and attempt to establish contact with bogey, over."

"Wilco. Falco, you've got me covered?"

"Affirmative, Fox. Let's get this over with." Falco took his left hand off the throttle momentarily, stretching his neck which tended to get stiff with time in the cockpit. In doing so, he accidentally flicked the toggle switch for the Arwing's infrared camera, and, "Oh, fuck me running. Fox, we got a problem here! I'm not picking up one heat signature, I'm picking up eleven. Repeat, possible eleven bogeys!"

"You hear that, Slippy? Possibly eleven bogeys." He hadn't turned on his infrared search-and-track yet, and wasn't quite in visual range, but something in his gut told him that this might not be just another random scramble mission.

"I hear. Cannot confirm at this time, though, carry on." Slippy saw the IR images just the same as Falco had; after all, the Cornerian military didn't spend billions on a networked-battlefield system for nothing. Eleven heat signatures glared back, daring the toad to disobey his rules of engagement and order weapons-hot.

"Tally ho on that bogey. Falco, do you recognize that ship type? I sure as hell can't."

"Negative, Fox. Looks like a cruiser of some kind, unknown markings…wait, are those turrets moving?"

Fox and Falco passed by what appeared to be its bridge, directly in front before flying past its starboard side. Fox twisted the radio dial, tuning into the standard civilian hailing frequency. "Unidentified vessel, this is Zephyr Flight of the Cornerian Naval Air Force. Please identify yourself and state your mission, over."

The two Arwings swept in a right-hand turn around the stern of the vessel, which gave no response.

"Unidentified vessel, you are in restricted airspace. Identify yourself and turn to heading two-seven-zero for escort or you will be destroyed." Fox rolled his craft slightly to the left and right, waving the wings of his fighter in a bid to attract attention. Falco, seeing the wagging signal, opted to one-up Fox by deploying some flares in a show of force as they came past the front of the vessel.

"No response, Slippy," reported Fox.

"Roger, standby for orders."

Fox took a glance down at his radar display, and instantly knew that today was going to be a long day. "Multiple radar contacts closing in! I think those are your eleven, Falco."

Falco missed the congratulation, or perhaps ignored it in favor of even more pressing news. "Oh, shit! One of 'em has radar lock on me!"