Into The Air

June 7th, 2531
Green Fields, 60,000 Feet MSL
1130 Hours
"This is Edan reporting to Ground, all systems clear on the aircraft."
"Roger Edan, give the aircraft a test or two up there."
"Understood, will do."
60,000 feet in the air, inside an F-210 that had been given to the Green Fields Colonial Army by the United Rebel Front, Andrew Edan was putting the aircraft through its paces, up nearly at its service ceiling. Yanking the aircraft into a series of turns and loops, Edan put it through every possible dogfighting maneuver he could think of. As he finished off a Split-S, he keyed his COM again. "This is Edan, aerobatics completed. Airframe holding steady so far. Current altitude now fifty seven thousand feet above sea level."
"Roger that Edan, we read you. Put her into a spin and stall out will you?"
"Gotcha."
Drawing back the throttle, Edan positioned his aircraft's nose at the F-210's critical angle of attack, and waited for the aircraft to begin shuddering as its nose dropped from the loss of airflow over the wings. "Aircraft stall characteristics as expected. Putting it into a spin now" Edan transmitted. Pulling back on the stick again, he once again positioned the aircraft at its critical angle of attack, but this time, he yawed to the left, and sure enough, the F-210 entered a spin. Calmly applying full rudder to the right, Edan quickly recovered from the spin. "Spin characteristics normal." he once again transmitted.
"Good, good. One last thing Edan. We want to see how fast the aircraft will go at high altitudes for recon. Push power to full for seven minutes."
"Seven minutes?"
"Correct."
"Good. This has been quite the enjoyable flight. Makes me almost want to stop fighting so I can just hotdog around the skies forever."
"You and your trainee already got in trouble for wasting fuel less than a week ago."
"True as that might be, that was training."
"Huh. Sure it was. I know how you pilots are."
"Yeah, yeah, we'll bicker later when I'm on the ground. Pushing power to full."
"Wilco."
Grabbing hold of the throttle, Edan pushed it to its limit, and within the cockpit of the aircraft, could feel and see that it was quickly accelerating. "Mach one reached." he transmitted. "Mach two reached, I think I'll begin-what the fuck!" Edan shouted into his COM as he heard two distinct thumps in the rear of the aircraft. Turning the engines off, Edan saw that it did not help the escalating engine temperature any. "Beginning emergency descent, aircraft on fire!" he transmitted as he decreased his angle of attack further and further to begin descending. But, as he attempted to level the aircraft out, he found his controls unresponsive. "Shit!" he yelled. "This is Andrew Edan, Green Fields Colonial Army to any friendly forces! I am out of control in a steep dive with a crippled aircraft!"
As the F-210 began to shake as it exceeded its maximum speed, Edan struggled to even turn his head to look at it black and yellow striped handle between his legs. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn't eject. The G forces and speed would kill him anyway. And so he continued struggling, pulling back on the stick, trimming the aircraft. At 20,000 feet Edan felt the aircraft spin around in conjunction with a series of metal screeches, and, looking out of his canopy, he saw his left wing had been ripped off from the stresses of overspeeding the aircraft. He struggled to key up his COM as the ground rushed to meet him. "This is Andrew Edan. I am now unable to recover from my dive. I am going down at coordinates-" were the last words anyone on the ground heard from the pilot.
----
June 16th, 2531
Green Fields, Andrew Edan's Crash Site
0753 Hours
"We've got a find!"
Edward Francis looked up from his seat in the passenger side of a Spade pickup as the shout of a GFCA fighter echoed through the morning sky. "What is it?" he yelled back. "Come and see for yourself!" the rebel said as he approached the Spade, holding a gray helmet chunk, handing it to Francis. Pulling out a pocket flashlight, Francis placed it on the dashboard and studied it closer. It appeared to be from the back of a standard pilot helmet, but it had something different on the back. There were a series of hash marks, twenty flat to be exact, lined up exactly vertically on the helmet chunk. Only one person he knew marked kills like that, and that was his former instructor, Andrew Edan, the man who they said had crashed, but he didn't believe it. "Any-anything else?" asked Francis. "Not right now sir, guys are still looking. From what the controllers said, his aircraft could be scattered everywhere. It plowed into the ground at terminal velocity according to them." responded the rebel.
"Jesus Christ."
"I know. You knew him?"
"He was my instructor back in '14 or so."
"Oh. I see. My sincerest condolences."
"Thanks. Anyone see his aircraft hit?"
"We're questioning some of the settlements around here. Someone may have gotten a video that showed us what exactly was happening to his aircraft. The data recorder's gone."
"You're sure of that?"
"We found it, or to be more specific, parts of it. It had to be shoddily constructed to fail like that. At this rate, we won't know what actually happened till we can find parts of the aircraft. And at this point, we haven't found anything."
"And what about the other F-210's we received?"
"Grounded. For now at least until we find out what happened to Edan's."
"I see. I'm going to head back to base. You're under orders to bring evidence back there, right?"
"Yes. You on the investigation team?"
"Unofficially, but so are the rest of the pilots and mechanics who've been here for more than seven years."
"I see. Well, I'll report to you if we do find anything. I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thanks."
As the Spade turned back towards base, Francis' blood ran cold. He knew that, as an experienced pilot, he too would be forced into flying an F-210. He was scared, he didn't want to fly an aircraft that had killed his mentor, a man who, in his eyes, was a far better pilot than he'd ever be. He didn't want to fly it, and he'd rather die fighting against the UNSC or even the Covenant than die in a crash of a faulty aircraft. He'd do anything he could to make sure he didn't fly it.
Category:Tempests