CrossoverthingIuno

The countryside rushed past beneath them; hills, homes, trees. A canvas that shifted constantly as miles were crossed in scant seconds. People two thousand feet below craned their heads to catch a glimpse of the squadron that tore through the air as fast as they might travel.

Not every day you get told your capital city is burning.

“Three Squadron is on approach, we’ll be entering the combat airspace within a few minutes,” came the voice of Squadron Leader McIntyre; clipped, sharp, humourless. Nice arse though.

A response came moments later: American, tight and controlled. “Nice of you to join the party, Three. So far, conflict’s been contained around the mouth of the Thames–those ships of yours are putting up one hell of a fight. We’d start dropping bombs but there’s got to be a carrier out there, we’re engaging a swarm of hostile fighters and we’d really appreciate some extra help.”

“You’ll get it Larkin. 493rd Squadron is minutes behind us, but we’ll let our sparklies go on ahead.”

“Fuckin’ A,” the American replied. He sounded almost -relieved-. Must be rough up there.

 “Meredith, take your lot and help 494. The rest of us will raise altitude to deliver our payloads and then circle around to lend an extra hand.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Flight Lieutenant Francesqa Meredith murmured, a predatory grin spreading across her face. “Come on, ladies. Let’s show our American friends how Three Squadron tangoes.”

With that declaration, she lit her afterburners and streaked forward out of formation. Seven more shapes followed suit, engines blazing bright as they ripped towards London at speeds in excess of Mach 1. Meredith cut a brilliant figure in-flight; silken gold hair lashing through the air, hazel brown eyes alight with passion, dazzling white teeth bared like an ancient predator. She was born for this.

She could make out the outline of London on the horizon. Closer with every moment that passed.

Close enough to make a difference?

Two Meteor missiles hung from hardpoints on her Typhoon strikers. Long range, fast, accurate. Anything hit by one of those would swiftly find its day irreversibly ruined. The Abyssals, however, had a knack for playing up radar to even the odds.

So when Meredith realised that she did indeed have a lock, her surprise was matched only by a ferocious urge–a need–to let fly. So far, the war for Earth’s oceans had been waged by navies and those strange girls who had started appearing some months previous, and often was the case where the battle was finished by the time the RAF made an appearance.

Now London was under siege, and she and the rest of Three Squadron would live forever in shame if they were late to -this- party.

“Target locked,” Meredith affirmed, and then, with more relish than she’d meant to inject, followed with the magic words: “Meredith, Fox Three.”

The missile detached from the pylon and shot forth like it was possessed, screaming through the skies towards its target: an Abyssal plane hounding one of the Americans. Sleek, ugly, carapace of midnight black, and utterly alien. The Meteor accelerated to Mach 4 in moments, and by the time the ugly creature realised it was in danger, it was far too late.

All around her, Meredith’s witches unleashed their own payloads. All bar one reduced a slender, dark fighter to mulch. She watched the bleeding chunks fall with her magically-enhanced vision and nodded in satisfaction. First blood to Three Squadron.

She checked her weapon–an L85A2–over, making sure the safety was off, and that the magazine was loaded correctly. They were closing rapidly with the furball over London and soon it’d be far too close for long range warheads like the Meteor. Meredith saw American F-15Es dive and jink to lose their pursuers. Guns flared, vomiting forth streams of tracers that shredded metal and carapace alike.

Meredith sighted on one fighter that had flown underneath the combat space, no doubt singling out a target to cut with its guns. The Abyssals were slower than the jets, but could perform much tighter manoeuvres for it, and they never stopped attacking.

Not foes to take lightly then.

Meredith mapped out a rough course in her mind and squeezed the trigger. A three-round burst spat from the barrel of the assault rifle, each shot charged with a little witch magic.

The effect was gratifyingly immediate.

The Abyssal fighter had no idea it was even in peril, flying in more or less a line as it hunted for an easy target. The first bullet blew its back open; the next ripped a gun from its housing. The third shot was wide, but it hardly mattered. The thing was dead, its baleful green eyes dimming as it tumbled earthwards.

“Splash one,” Meredith crowed, immediately seeking out her next victim as she screamed through the dogfight, her fellow witches only milliseconds behind her, their own guns barking and reaping a fearsome toll.

She spotted a pair of fighters on the heels of one of her witches, bullets rattling off her shield. It was Foster; brown-haired, freckled, jittery, young. She wouldn’t last long under a sustained assault. Meredith dove down towards her, rolling aside as a Strike Eagle screamed past with a trio of Abyssals in hot pursuit. She swung around to fly inverted and loosed two more bursts. Two more fighters died. The last peeled off.

She felt a sudden strain, and realised that she was taking fire. Another fighter was bearing down on her, guns spitting death. Meredith let her shields soak up the damage, taking time to level her weapon and put the offending creature down with another squeeze of the trigger.

Meredith rolled back into her dive and searched the space for Foster, relocating her after a quick scan. The young witch had downed one of her pursuers, but the other hounded her relentlessly, appearing almost to dance around the girl’s shots. Foster’s gun stopped firing. Empty. The girl tensed–no time to reload.

Meredith fired.

She had to dump what remained in the magazine to do it, but Foster’s pursuer was nothing more than black, bloody giblets when the weapon clacked empty. She reloaded with deft ease; the familiar action practised time upon time in exercises and now finally put to proper use.

“T-thanks,” said Foster, sounding quite rattled.

Meredith ignored her, blitzing past the young witch–who had paused to reload her own weapon–and snapped to the side to dodge another American fighter with a smoking engine. She snapped off another trio of bursts that swatted another two of the buzzing abominations from the skies. She realised dully that she was a few kills past being acknowledged as an ace. Not that it really meant a whole lot when there were so many bloody targets to choose from.

A voice fizzed into life through her earpiece, a woman’s; strained, hurt, desperate. “–rham requesting immediate air support, they’re slaughtering us down here!”

“Say again?” came the response from McIntyre. “Squadron Leader Ian McIntyre of Three Squadron requesting the last contact to repeat their message, out.”

“I -said- this is HMS Barham of Battlegroup Barham requesting immediate air support at the Thames Estuary! The Abyssals are throwing shells everywhere and we’ve taken heavy losses–Terror and Havock are dead and Manchester’s taking on water. I… I have a man onboard, he’s wounded but I can’t leave my post to get him ou–”

“Calm down ma’am, Three Squadron is overhead and targets are painted. Deploying ordnance in three, two, one, mark.”

There was a tense silence over the radio waves as the guided munitions dropped towards their marked targets. Meredith occupied the time by flying alongside one of the Americans, using it as a shield while saving it by blowing another fighter out of British airspace. She flashed the pilot and his WSO a grin, who returned the gesture with a quick thumbs up and a nod respectively.

“Targets hit!” the woman from before cried. “Three of them are sinking while rest have taken heavy damage! You’ve just saved our lives, Three Squadron.”

“Happy to be of service ma’am,” McIntyre replied in his usual calm voice. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him. Probably why he was in charge. “Three Squadron, turn and engage the aircraft above the London airspace.”

A chorus of affirmatives followed the command, which was in turn followed by another affirmative from the 493rd Squadron, who preceded their arrival on the scene with a barrage of missiles that wiped fully half the remaining abyssal fighters from the face of the earth.

“Ah, clear skies,” one of the Americans sighed in relief.

“Much obliged 493,” Major Larkin, “you Witches too. We’ll peel off and drop our own ordnance and be back before you know it.”

They needn’t have bothered. By the time the last bomb was dropped, the battle was over. What remained of the Abyssal strike force was in full retreat. Unfortunately, what naval assets remained were unable to pursue, owing to heavy damage. The only casualties of the joint US-British air wing were three F-15s, one Typhoon, and two witches who suffered severe magic exhaustion and were forced to land (badly).

Ground and navy casualties, unfortunately, were much higher. Much of Southend-on-Sea was reduced to rubble. Thousands were presumed to have died and more bodies were being dug up each day. The Prime Minister and–later on–the King, addressed the nation, giving the population the expected ‘fortitude in the face of aggression’ speech and thanking the brave men and women who had fought on land, sea and in the skies above to prevent the damage from being worse than it was.

One of those shipgirls–Barhum or something–stood with His Maj when she made her broadcast. She looked half-dead; red, sleep-deprived eyes, sallow skin, stitches on her temple. Meredith hadn’t quite made up her mind on them if she was honest; something about them all just creeped her out. She could never explain it, not in any way that made sense.

For the time being, she guessed she was glad they were on their side.

For however long that might be.