Little Birdy

**Key Features** | »WWI Vickers MGs (x2)»*Spirit of Lindberg* AA rocket racks (x6)»Air-Burst shrapnel mines (x3)»Flight map»Medicine for motion sickness

## Tactical Analysis

* **A little birdy told me:** Self-proclaimed defenders of the skies, the Little Birdy pilots have decided that strapping cheap anti-armor rockets and vintage machine guns to a Sparrow chopper is the best way to fight for their beliefs.

* **A sky jungle:** Their ineffectual primary weapons don't matter compared to the little birdy's ability to release stealth air-burst shrapnel mines over an area, capable of heavily damaging any aircraft that flies nearby.

* **Too little, too late:** Their pilots amateurs and their weapons barely qualified as such anymore, the little birdy is best used to support whoever hired the pilot. Direct combat against dedicated anti-air forces will destroy it.

* **Track their movements:** If there's a supply, little birdy pilots will often take Hellfire missiles and a grenade launcher to replace their previous weapons.

## Background

"*Hello? What? Those conspiracy theorists are gonna attack you? They're using those 'awfulcopters' again? Hold on...*"

- A transcript of an intercepted phone call being sent to a Legion Security base.
The sky is seen as a free place. Free air, free wind, a free bird flying overhead as a slow summer day drifts by. Everyone loves the skies, for the promises they hold and the sights they offer. Sadly, the skies are dangerous now. Various no-fly zones are strictly enforced by the Allies, Soviets, Empire, and other powers due to everything from weapons testing zones being put off-limits to the reality that any plane flying in these zones that isn't automatically associated as friendly is probably looking to do some damage. Though warnings are constantly broadcast to ensure civilian and research aircraft don't wander into these zones, many pilots chafe at these restrictions.

Some have taken enough, and want to prove a point by flying over these zones as often and as long as possible. They rig their planes and helicopters with cameras and fly overhead to prove that there's no reason to enforce these "ridiculous" no-fly zones. The Allies typically arrest these daredevils once they've landed, though the Soviets and others take no chances and just comb the wreckage after. Unlike most of the Network, these men and women were typically rather isolated from one another due to the nature of their devotion. A large plane makes a large target, so the fewer people get involved the better.

Often it was the Third Eye contacting these people. They were mailed pictures of grainy Allied testing zones showing runways with strange aircraft about to take off from the isolated launching pads. Pictures of the Incredible Mobile Fortress Tatsu, and the reason behind the Empire's ever-shifting no-fly zones. Alleged "drone sightings" captured in Newark, New York and New Bedford. The Third Eye offered these people a chance to aid their quests by giving them a place in the Network, analyzing the information sent to them in exchange for a safe place to track their obsession.

Everyone but the Third Eye was shocked when they offered to help in their own way. Already skilled pilots (in extremely shoddy interwar civilian bubble choppers), they simply decided to strap on a pair of WWI Vickers MGs and six anti-ground rockets to a set of wing pylons hanging off the sides. Continental liasons sighed and went to start filling out more burial notes, but the Network felt that they now had a vital ground-attack aircraft that would put them on an even footing with other factions.

For the pilots of the Little Birdy "fleet", this new lease makes them feel like they have a punch to give against the forces that would shrink the skies. Now they feel they have a way to force the truth behind these no-fly zones out into the public consciousness, and now "anti-aircraft batteries" will stop them in their glass and tubing sky chariots circa 1953.

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