I have seen this movie before,
I know how it ends, with troops in the streets,
and the charred
...
[+]
The sea burned beneath them. Columns of smoke rose from shattered hulls, blotting out the horizon. The sky, once blue, was now a black lattice of flak bursts. Where their squadron had been moments ago, there was only wreckage scattered across the waves like so many broken birds.
Their planes were the last two still flying.
His fighter rattled and groaned, a wounded thing. The engine coughed and stuttered like a dying heart. His bomb racks were empty, his guns jammed, his fuel gauge hovering on empty. Beside him, his wingman's plane limped through the haze, trailing a thin black ribbon of smoke.
Below them, it was chaos. Ships listing, gunfire flashing across the murky water. Distress signals blinked from the horizon, where destroyers fought to conceal capital ships in smoke. The ocean itself seemed alive with wreckage and flame.
Static hissed in their headsets. Then Command's voice cut through the noise, strained and desperate.
"All airborne units, all friendly airstrips disabled. Disengage immediately. Abort and return to the retrieval zone, over."
Both squeezed the mic after the other.
"Falcon Three, roger."
"Falcon Two, roger."
Both banked away, weary and wordless. It should have ended there.
But through the drifting smoke, a shape loomed. A colossal shape emerged below the flak bursts and choking smoke. The enemy aircraft carrier, vast and gleaming, its deck crawling with aircraft refuelling and rearming for another strike. If those planes launched, their fleet was finished.
More smoke dissipated. Falcon-3 noticed the absence of escort vessels. The carrier had been separated from its strike group amidst the chaos. She seemed to be maintaining her course. The two airborne planes hadn't been spotted. Yet.
Falcon-3 stared for a long second, a heavy feeling settling in his chest. He glanced at the fuel gauge. No fuel to limp home.
He squeezed the armament trigger. No weapons left. Or was he truly harmless?
He could see men prepping the enemy planes for take-off on the carrier deck. They could be airborne in minutes.
He considered for a moment more. Then he made up his mind.
He pushed the throttle forward and turned back.
His wingman's voice cracked through the radio.
"Falcon Three, what are you doing? We're aborting!"
No answer. Just the curve of the fighter banking into the wind.
Realisation bit the other pilot like a bullet.
"Falcon Three, break off! That's an order!"
He saw Falcon-3 turn his head and raise his right hand in a slow, deliberate salute. A farewell.
"Falcon Three, COME BACK!"
But his mind was already quiet. The engine's roar, the rattle of the fuselage, even the pounding of his heart was fading. He reminisced about the sea at sunrise, the laughter in the mess hall, of his instructor's hand gripping his shoulder. The fleet comes before the pilot.
He thought of the first time he'd launched from a deck, how the horizon had looked endless and clean. Now it was nothing but smoke. If this was the sky's end, he would meet it head-on, for he had stared Death in the face enough not to fear it.
He steadied the stick and lowered his goggles over his eyes. He stole a glance back at Falcon-2.
Then he dove.
The sky erupted in orange tracers and black blossoms of flak. Shrapnel tore through the wings, the canopy, his leg. Smoke filled the cockpit. The carrier swelled in his sight. He was close enough to the carrier deck to see the shock, fear, and regret in the sailors' eyes.
He felt a sharp pain pierce his right torso. One gun turret had found its mark. The cockpit glass starred and cracked. He tasted blood, salt, and oil. They got him, but it's just a flesh wound. The sea and sky blurred into one bright field of light, and for an instant, it felt almost... peaceful.
Falcon-2's eyes burned as the impact flashed across the sea. A rising inferno engulfed the ship's deck, the smoke obstructing his view of the target. As it dissipated, the carrier still stood, but listing, wounded, its flight deck obliterated. Some planes tumbled into the crashing waves, with several sailors and airmen dropping with them. The once-intimidating capital ship had now been reduced to a tangled mess of flesh and steel. But it still didn't sink; it wasn't that easy to sink one.
He stared in silence.
"Falcon-2 to Command. Enemy carrier damaged, but Falcon-3 is down."
The reply came, almost a whisper.
"Roger. All units, begin withdrawal."
He turned homeward, alone. Behind him, the sea churned with oil and wreckage, the carrier burning against the horizon. The enemy strike group faltered, their launch deck crippled, their timing broken. Those few minutes were enough.
The battered fleet turned with the tide, hobbling with the wind. Crippled ships still scrambled to keep formation, firing their guns at will in a fighting retreat. At least, for a moment, every sailor was clear of his duty: to cover the retreat before the enemy seeks vengeance for its burning carrier. Every man knew they could, and should, have died out there. But no one knew that one pilot had bought them a way out for the time being.
The fleet, already turning for home, slipped beyond range before the next wave could rise.
But a war of words continued back in Command. Several young, zealous officers adamantly requested that the fleet seize the opportunity to launch a swift counterattack to finish off the enemy carrier. The more experienced officers scoffed at their suggestion, one that could work back in cadet school, but not in the real world. It was the Fleet Commander who ended the war of words with a fist on the table.
"The enemy outnumbers us by six-to-one. We have no air support and low ammunition supply. We've lost half our fleet by seventeen-hundred hours today. Let's not lose the other half."
Only silence remained in Command, until a radio message blared.
"DD-4 to Command, smoke screen set. All ships concealed, permission to navigate to home."
"Wilco."
It wasn't victory. But it wasn't defeat either.
Far across the water, the enemy escorts had reached their wounded carrier. Tug lines bit into the torn steel, and the ship began its slow crawl home. Stubborn flames still flickered along her deck. No one spoke on her bridge; even her captain watched the sea in silence, unsure if she would survive the journey and be repaired. Or sink before dawn.
Years passed. The war was over, though victory felt hollow. A quiet cemetery overlooked the same sea that had once burned. Rows of white stones caught the morning light.
He came each year, never in uniform, just another aging face among the graves. At the end of one row stood the stone he always sought.
It bore a name, a rank, a date, and a callsign carved deep in the marble:
FALCON-3
He crouched beside it, resting a hand on the cool surface.
"You crazy bastard, you actually did it," he murmured, "you didn't sink her, but you held them back. That was enough."
In the years that followed, new pilots spoke of him in briefings, as a legend and as a lesson; proof that courage exists without hope. His call sign was painted on training fuselages, a reminder that sometimes, duty meant loss.
The wind came off the sea, carrying salt and the distant cry of gulls.
He rose, saluted once, and turned toward the shore. Behind him, the stone gleamed in the sun, standing quiet against the wind.
Among the flock of seagulls circling the shore, he swore he saw one that looked just like a falcon. It flew higher, broke away from the flock, and climbed toward the sun.
He watched until it vanished.