Highway to the Danger Zone
Vi had read her mission briefing ten times over, beaming from ear to ear like a kid on Christmas, unable to contain her excitement.
The actual mission itself was straightforward; some ground divisions needed help advancing over enemy lines, and Vi and Ekko were to go in and help soften up the ground resistance with a couple other pilots. A reasonably straightforward hit and run.
That wasn’t the part that was getting Vi going, though. It was the big bold letters telling her and her wingman which vehicle they’d be piloting into the fight.
RECOMMENDED AIRCRAFT: AH-64 APACHE
If it were a simple matter of shooting a couple dug-outs, the Chinook could handle it. In fact, it would probably be more effective to bring the transport chopper, as it meant any casualties could be medevaced and ferried off away from the gunfire.
Being told to take an attack helicopter usually only meant one thing. There would be enemy air resistance at the point of contact, and enemy air resistance meant a dogfight.
There was nothing more that Vi loved about being a helicopter pilot than getting in a good grisly dogfight.
Bringing the Chinook would be like bringing a sword to a gunfight.
Ekko and Vi had been in their fair share of head-on attacks with enemy choppers before. During their first training run as junior pilots, they were traced and chased down by Noxian Eurocopter Tigers, and through divine intervention or sheer dumb luck they’d evaded and taken down the aircraft, even when outgunned four choppers to one.
After that, Vi had insisted her and Ekko focus on attack training more, which their superior officers had been slightly confused at but authorised the flight time nonetheless. Any air hours were good air hours.
Ekko mainly focused on piloting their Apache, sitting in the rear seat of the cockpit, whereas Vi was front and centre manning the guns and various weapons sitting in the arsenal beneath the chopper’s fuselage.
Once again, it was a dynamic that just… worked. Both Ekko and Vi were more than comfortable taking control in the pilot’s seat, but Vi disagreed with how her wingman fired his shots. Everything had to be perfect, timed just right, down to the exact millisecond.
For Vi, it came naturally, shooting first and asking questions later. And so far that philosophy had worked out swell for her.
On the morning of the mission, the young pilot had gotten up and dressed extra early, spending additional time stretching out every muscle in her legs to stave off the inevitable cramps she’d get from sitting cooped up in the cockpit for so long. Her flight suit was laid out ready on the dresser from the night before, and Vi had elected to wear a plain light cotton T-shirt as opposed to the standard issued shirts given to her.
That’s one thing she could never get used to, how damn hot it gets in those chopper cockpits. In the midday sun, it was like sitting in an oven, the glass bubble over their heads cooking their skin and burning the backs of their necks.
Ekko was already out on the tarmac when Vi had arrived, chattering amongst the other pilots who’d be joining them. She jogged over to the gaggle, a slight skip in her step as she became unable to control her excitement.
“Mornin’ Little Man!” she crooned, wrapping an arm around Ekko’s shoulder and pulling him close. “Ready for today?”
“You bet,” Ekko replied, chuckling gently as he pulled away from Vi’s vice-like grip on his neck. “I was just discussing with the rest of the guys, we’re going for triangle formation. We’ll be middle left.”
“Fine by me.” Vi reached into her left thigh pocket and pulled out a pair of battered aviator glasses, glancing along at the row of Apaches neatly lined up. “You good taking rear seat for this one?”
“Always.” Ekko followed her eyes before finally looking back at her face, noticing her new accessory. “Take those off, you look ridiculous.”
“Never.” Vi shot him a shit-eating grin before heading over to their bird and clambering into the front seat. She performed her normal pre-flight checks, routine and muscle memory kicking in, and she felt a slight weight shift as Ekko took his seat at the rear.
Ekko pulled the glass canopy and flicked a couple of switches on his control panel. The engines roared into life, a deafening growl as the blades slapped overhead.
Both pilots slipped on their olive-green comms helmets and Ekko’s distorted voice crackled in the headset. “Eagle Leader, this is Eagle-2, radio check, over.”
“Eagle-2, this is Eagle Leader, hearing you loud and clear. Out,” a second garbled voice drawled through the speaker.
Vi stuck her thumb in the ear back to Ekko, indicating that all her checks were done and she was good to go. A groundsman threw his marshalling baton into the air before beckoning the chopper forward, and it lurched ahead, groaning as it lifted off out of the row and into the skies overhead.
***
The Apaches churned through the sky, chugging along at lightning speeds, their rotor blades slapping the air ferociously as they neared their target.
Beads of sweat had started to form on Vi’s forehead already, slipping into her eyes and stinging her vision. She popped another piece of gum in her mouth and chewed nervously, savouring the taste on her parched tongue. Old habits die hard.
The formation approached the contact point, and from their position in the sky, the men and women on the ground looked no bigger than toy soldiers. A giant groove ran through the earth, as if a giant finger had drawn out a trench for them, and bodies sat huddled behind the rudimentary cover, occasionally popping their heads out to throw a grenade or blindly fire their rifles at the enemy.
A second trench had been dug just a couple hundred metres in front of the Piltover cover, Noxian soldiers sprinting up and down frantically, their red uniforms staining the muddy ground it contrasted against. Even without being down there, Vi could see that Piltover was dangerously outgunned. Noxus had brought out a full force of tanks and various missile-firing weaponry, launching unrelentless barrages into the Piltover trench, scattering land debris and dirt everywhere.
“Eagle Squad, this is Eagle Leader, prepare to- shit, break break break!“
The commander’s order was interrupted by a shaking explosion to the rear of them. Vi turned in horror, her eyes wide, at the chopper to the right of her – or the lack of chopper there now.
She watched as Eagle-4, the Apache in the middle right of the diamond formation, hurtled towards the ground, black smoke billowing from a missile wound on its right fuselage. Flames erupted across the metal, creeping into the cockpit, and Vi ripped her headset off just in time before she could hear the voices of the two pilots screaming as they burnt to a crisp. The helicopter collided with the ground with a thump and thunderous detonation, sending metal shards and scraps flying into the air around it.
“Fuck!” she heard Ekko scream in the seat behind her.
Yeah, fuck.
Without missing a beat, the Apaches broke formation, briefly forming an angel of death in the sky before sprinting off into their pre-determined roles.
Eagles Leader, 1 and 3 were to soften up the ground defences, whilst it was up to Eagles 2 and 4 to sweep the sky and take care of any aerial resistance.
Now it was just Vi and Ekko against whatever aircraft Noxus decided to throw against them.
Fuck, indeed.
Ekko jolted the Apache left and began circling the battleground, his eyes darting frantically across the horizon as they both kept watch for the inevitable. And there it was.
Three Eurocopter Tigers emerged from the smoke behind enemy lines, blades batting furiously in the air, a dark dagger penetrating towards the Piltover pilots.
“Ekko, 11 o’clock!” Vi shouted over their comms. She grabbed the control column between her legs, white-knuckling the handle as she prepared to take the first shot. “Take us in!”
Ekko obeyed and drew their bird closer to the danger. Noxus weren’t expecting a second team to be sweeping the air, so the pair managed to get the jump on one of the choppers, Vi launching a barrage of missiles into the chopper on the left.
She watched in victory as it tailspun through the air before landing in a heap into the earth below.
“One down!” she cried behind to Ekko, who was too focused on getting them out of missile range to acknowledge the first target being down.
The Eurocopters broke their own formation, one charging towards the second Eagle crew and the other beelining for Vi and Ekko’s bird. Ekko swung the chopper around in a full 360 and led the chasing helicopter away.
A signature relentless beeping echoed through the cockpit; they hadn’t been fast enough. The missile lock system was alerting them that they’d now been locked on and would be hit with a wave of hellfire if they didn’t shake it.
“Flares, flares, flares!” Vi bellowed, and shoved a button frantically to deploy the onboard flares into the sky. The enemy missiles collided with the new target, the aircraft shuddering as the blast impact rippled through the air.
“They’re still on our tail, Vi,” Ekko shouted desperately over the comms. But Vi wasn’t paying attention. Her mind raced, calculating their next move with milliseconds to spare, wasting precious time to snap her neck around and look at the chopper hot on their heels.
A plan finally sprung into her mind and she envisioned each careful step before communicating it back to Ekko.
“Ekko, bank right!”
The pilot obeyed. The Apache swung to the right as the Eurocopter bombed straight through their flight path, not acknowledging the sudden shift in dynamic until it was too late.
Down low, too slow.
Eagle-2 rounded on the Eurocopter and Vi sent a double round of Sidewinder missiles into the rear of the enemy chopper. They detonated on collision and the entire chopper imploded, gravity pulling the metal mass down to its final resting place.
“Two down, one to go!” Ekko whooped, before frantically shouting, “Vi, heads-“
A clattering noise ran out through the bubble, the gritty grisly noise of metal-on-metal impact. The third enemy chopper open fired on Vi and Ekko, bullets ripping through the fuselage and tugging off the metal plates lining their helicopter’s fuselage. Wires rippled in the wind, exposed to the air, sparking and twitching.
“Missile system’s down,” Vi grunted defeatedly. “Ekko, let me take control.”
“Vi, I don’t think-“
“I need control of the fucking bird!” she growled. Ekko swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded. He flicked a few switches on his control panel and handed over pilot’s control to Vi, who grabbed the steering column and veered towards the final target.
Vi’s heart hammered in her chest, adrenaline spiking through her system, firing every neurone and nerve up dangerously. She spared a few previous seconds to look down in the cockpit.
Wind whistled loudly through a bullet hole on the right, the edges of the wound jagged and twisted. A single round had penetrated the metal, embedding itself in the panel to the left of her, grazing her left thigh as it passed. Dark blood seeped silently from the cut, oozing into her flight suit.
“Ekko, I’m hit,” Vi announced breathlessly as she rounded the bird onto the last target.
“Shit, bad?” her wingman called back. Concern danced in his voice.
“Nah.” Vi grunted as she shifted her weight. “I’ll be good. Let’s get this fucker.”
The third bird thundered into their crosshairs, a menacing dark splodge on the horizon roaring fiercely towards them, its blades a blur of movement as it banked closer and closer to the pair.
“Come on, Vi,” Ekko muttered.
“Just a second.” Vi was making the tiniest adjustments to their pitch and yaw, jerking the control column frantically as she lined up the Eurocopter in the ironsight. She had to get the timing, the positioning, the angle, just right…
Vi wasn’t religious but she found herself praying to whatever higher power there was as she squeezed the trigger.
Time seemed to slow around them as two Sidewinder missiles dropped from their holdings, whistling through the air.
The rounds embedded into the bird, one in the canopy and another right where the left wing joined to the fuselage.
The chopper burst into a ball of flames and stopped dead in its path before plummeting out of view beneath them.
Ekko cheered in the seat behind Vi, feeling the cockpit shake as he thrust his fists into the air victoriously. The other pilot said nothing, however, leaning back in her seat to suck air back into her chest. She didn’t even realise she’d been holding her breath.
Everything else was a blur for her after that point. She’d switched control back to Ekko, heard the buzz of chatter on her headset, heard Ekko’s voice in the distance telling her they were going home. But she couldn’t focus on any of it.
The dull throb in her thigh had turned into a burning, stinging sensation, the pain no longer masked by the adrenaline that had been gushing through her system earlier. As the four choppers formed up again to retreat back home, Vi felt her eyelids slipping as she fell unconscious.
***
The first thing Violet noticed when she woke up was the overbearing scent of ammonia and disinfectant attacking her nostrils.
Her eyelids shifted lazily, slowly peeling open to reveal blurry white artificial light infiltrating her irises. Her neck craned as she strained her eyes, vision gradually coming to as she scanned her surroundings.
How the fuck did she end up in the medbay?
“Hey, Vi,” a gentle, softly-spoken voice said to the right of her.
Vi snapped her gaze to the sudden source of noise. Ekko was sat back in a blue plastic chair, a comic book perched in his lap, small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He was out of his pilot uniform now, sporting yet another brightly coloured T-shirt and pair of grey tracksuit jogging bottoms.
“Hey, Little Man,” Vi croaked. Her voice was hoarse and she felt a scratchy, dry feeling down her throat.
Ekko scooped up a glass of water with a straw in it and handed it over to her, Vi nodding thankfully as she sucked the liquid down greedily.
“Brought you flowers,” Ekko added casually. He pointed to a vase by the side of her hospital bed filled with gorgeous multicoloured lillies. Their bright playful colours clashed with the backdrop of the white room.
“Such a gentleman,” she mumbled, still groggy. “Thank you. How long was I out?”
“Only a day,” Ekko explained, leaning forward and placing his comic on the side table. “Your leg was pretty bad, the doctors said any lower and the bullet could’ve hit an artery. You would’ve been dead before we landed. They were shocked that you were still flying after that anyway, let alone what you did for us back there.” Finally, he pointed to a clear bag of liquid suspended over their heads. “You were super dehydrated too, so they put you on fluids.”
Vi traced his finger and followed the IV line from the bag into her arm, now hyper-aware of the needle digging into her flesh. “How are the guys?”
Her wingman shook his head and rubbed his face. “Pretty bad. Johns and McTavish were good pilots. They were-“ Ekko caught his breath. “-they were good people.”
“Yeah,” was all Vi managed to say. She looked up at the blank ceiling and licked her dry lips. “Yeah, they were.”
“I’ve done all the paperwork for us too, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just get some rest, Vi, you need it.” Ekko’s voice was gentle but assertive as he stood up to leave.
“Thank you, Ekko,” Vi called after him quietly.
Ekko flashed her a toothy grin before closing the door shut behind him, leaving Vi alone with her own thoughts.