Lieutenant Commander Julian "Hawk" Reyes
12th Tactical Fighter Squadron – Callsign: Skyhunter
36,000 feet above the North Sea – Scramble Response Mission
From the moment he first sat in the cockpit of a jet, Julian Reyes had understood something most people never would—there was nothing like the feeling of soaring at the edge of the world, pushing past the limits of speed, gravity, and fear.
He had flown combat sorties, intercept missions, and long-range air patrols, had danced along the edge of sound and speed, had trained for every possible aerial threat.
But today, something felt off.
The squadron was twenty-four strong, a full tactical response team roaring through the sky in perfect formation. The air was filled with the steady hum of engines and the constant chatter of comms, each pilot locked into their role, primed for engagement.
But despite the numbers, Julian only focused on one person—his wingwoman.
Captain Maya "Blaze" Carter flew just off his right wing, holding formation with the kind of precision that only came from years of experience. She was one of the best pilots he had ever flown with—calm under pressure, ruthless in the cockpit, and just paranoid enough to never trust a mission briefing at face value.
And right now, that instinct was nagging at both of them.
"Skyhunter, this is Control. You are cleared for intercept. Stand by for further details once you have visual."
Julian frowned inside his helmet, his visor tinting slightly as he banked his F-35C Lightning II into a shallow turn. The order felt rushed. Usually, for a scramble like this, they'd get at least a basic rundown of what they were intercepting.
"Control, Skyhunter. Confirm intercept details? What are we chasing here?"
A pause. Too long.
Then, the clipped, professional voice of the mission coordinator returned:
"Unidentified aerial contact. Origin unknown. Flight path erratic but accelerating. Possible experimental aircraft or—" a pause, too deliberate, "—something else."
Something else?
Julian shot a glance toward Blaze—though at these speeds, it was nothing more than a quick flick of his eyes toward her jet. She didn’t say anything, but he could feel the tension through the radio silence.
They had both heard that tone before—the kind that meant higher-ups knew more than they were letting on.
"Copy that, Control," Julian said, voice neutral. "Engaging intercept."
Blaze finally spoke, her voice dry. "I swear to god, if this is another stealth drone test and they just forgot to tell us—"
"Yeah, yeah," Julian cut in. "Let's just see what we're dealing with first."
Julian pushed the throttle forward. The jet surged ahead, twin engines roaring as he breached Mach 1.2, cutting through the sky like a blade. Blaze followed effortlessly, keeping formation as they closed in on the target.
Then—the first warning blip appeared on his radar.
Contact.
But it was friendly.
Then eight more. All friendlies, all flying erratically below the cloud cover.
All moving fast.
Too fast.
Julian’s brow furrowed. What the hell was going on down there?
“Control, Skyhunter. I’m only picking up friendlies in the clouds. Please advise.”
A brief pause. Then Control responded, voice clipped and professional.
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“Friendlies are currently engaging the contact. Target is radio, infrared, and radar silent.”
Julian’s frown deepened as his HUD flickered—not just a momentary blip, but a sustained interference. His systems were glitching, his instruments flashing erratic data, like something was pushing back against them.
And then—the music started.
It was faint at first, barely there beneath the engine noise and comm chatter.
Then it grew.
A deep, pounding rhythm.
A guitar riff that sent a chill down his spine.
He knew this song.
"The Only Thing They Fear is You"—Mick Gordon.
His eyes widened as realization hit.
This wasn’t coming from his comms. It wasn’t coming from Control.
It was being broadcast directly into their systems.
The contact was broadcasting it.
Julian’s stomach clenched. Their systems weren’t just failing—they were being compromised.
“What the actual hell…” he muttered under his breath.
“Control, Skyhunter. I'm losing tracking data—”
“Same here,” Blaze cut in. “It’s scrambling our systems.”
But the rest of the squadron was silent.
No chatter. No status updates. Just the two of them.
Like they had been cut out.
The music thundered in his helmet—louder now, sharper, deliberate.
The contact knew they were wingmen. It had isolated them.
And then—it broke through the clouds.
A colossal wedge-shaped shadow erupted from the storm layer below, piercing through the dense cover of rolling black thunderheads.
Julian’s breath caught in his throat.
His mind scrambled for explanations—experimental hypersonic craft? Some classified orbital deployment? But deep down, something primal in him knew the truth.
It wasn’t an aircraft.
It was a ship.
It moved with impossible grace, its metallic surface shifting like liquid under the light. The sheer scale of it dwarfed their jets—it was monolithic, otherworldly.
Lightning snapped and arced behind it, crackling through the storm clouds like the fury of a god.
And then—it climbed.
Straight up.
A 90-degree ascent.
Julian had seen every kind of flight maneuver imaginable. He had seen experimental aircraft pull insane vertical climbs, watched rockets launch into the sky.
But this was something else.
No afterburner trails.
No heat distortion.
No visible thrust.
Just pure acceleration.
Like gravity itself had been dismissed.
The shockwave hit them a second later—an expanding white halo of condensation bursting from the ship’s edges as it punched through the sound barrier, leaving behind a deep, rolling boom.
The jet shuddered violently.
Warnings screamed in Julian’s helmet as he fought for control. His F-35 bucked against the pressure wave like a leaf in a hurricane.
Blaze cursed over comms. “Come on, come on—”
Julian gritted his teeth, his hands locked on the stick, forcing the jet back into stability.
By the time he steadied, the ship had already climbed an impossible distance, accelerating at a velocity no known human craft could achieve.
For a long, stretched moment, neither he nor Blaze spoke as they both pulled up, throttling hard to try and catch up.
Then—a flash.
It wasn’t just bright—it was blinding.
A second sun ignited in the sky, 30 kilometers away. The cockpit darkened instantly as his auto-dimming visor engaged, shielding his eyes from the sheer raw fury of the detonation. Even through the visor, the light burned into his vision, imprinting ghostly afterimages across his retinas.
Then came the silence.
For a fraction of a second, there was an eerie stillness—a moment where the world seemed to hold its breath. As if reality itself hesitated to comprehend what had just happened.
And then—
The shockwave came.
It hadn’t reached him yet—but he saw it.
A monstrous, expanding wall of writhing plasma and ionized air bloomed outward from the detonation’s core, pulsing with unnatural energy. Arcs of electricity danced along its edges, a violent storm of impossible colors—violet tendrils lashing at the sky, emerald-green flares twisting through the turbulence.
The clouds beneath him never stood a chance.
The once-solid white carpet of the storm system was ripped apart, vaporized in an instant, exposing the endless ocean far below.
The storm itself ceased to exist.
And then—his jet buckled.
The shockwave caught up.
The aircraft lurched violently, yawing left as if struck by the hand of a god.
His heads-up display flickered—warning lights cascading in rapid succession. His airspeed fluctuated wildly, and his entire airframe groaned under the strain.
“Jesus!” he snarled, gripping the stick with white-knuckled intensity. He countered the roll, fighting against the turbulence, against the sheer force of the atmosphere being rewritten around him.
And all he could think was—
Did they just try to nuke it—with us still in the air?
