Fox Three

Fox Three was born at 1.5 times the speed of sound.

His spring-loaded launcher ejected him down mother's spring-loaded rail with sufficient force to snap the umbilical cable, severing him away.

Fox Three's birthing cry was the ignition of his solid fuel engine.

He knew only what mother had taught him before letting him go.

Mother's lessons were all Fox Three had left to go by now that he was fired and forgotten.

Focus ahead; don't look back.

Don't forget to breathe.

Don't get distracted.

Reach Bandit One-One at all costs.

At that moment, even at sharpest magnification, Bandit One-One was just a flickering speck on the horizon that glimmered above the setting sun with a long twisting thread of contrail tailing behind it.

Mother's words rang in his mind, as if from the dream he had just woken up from, cold and alone in the lower stratosphere.

Only a momentary parting flicker of a decoy flare remained of where he had come from.

He followed that trail with what little he had, no matter how impossibly far away it seemed.

He only had enough stage one fuel to go a fraction of that distance.

Don't forget to breathe.

He knew that he had been born with some, but not all, of the nourishment he would need to complete his journey.

He would have to eat what he could to make it the rest of the way, but for the next few seconds, he tried to breathe but could not.

He simply wasn't going fast enough, not yet, not in that especially thin cold air.

His fuel continued to burn away at an alarming rate and he burned it quicker still to try again, and again, to kick into stage two.

Did mother ask the impossible of him?

Don't forget to breathe.

His ramjet finally gulped enough air, all at once, to roar to life at just about the exact moment that his first stage fuel had burned entirely away.

Fox Three's nascent cries had now become a rekindled roar.

His toddler-like stumbling had now become a sprint, faster many times over than mother's first push, and getting faster.

The more air the ramjet took in, the faster still Fox Three went.

The faster Fox Three went, the closer Bandit One-One came.

Bandit One-One wasn't trying to outrun him; it couldn't.

Instead, it was coming at him, head on, tugging its own contrail tail along behind its change of course.

Fox Three continued to breathe.

He acknowledged more incoming data without letting it distract him.

There was an entire squadron of Bandits ahead, but only one of them was One-One, and there was only one of him.

He could only rely upon himself, and all he had been born with, and all he could take in from the air around him to complete his journey.

There was an entire volley of fellow Fox Threes, freshly birthed from their respective Friendly mothers, now chasing behind him, following his lead.

All he could do for them now was set an example.

With no prior warning, the wake of another hypersonic vortex suddenly rattled Fox Three's brittle thin body, almost to pieces, as it emerged, screaming, out of the gloom itself, a Bogey, undoubtedly born from Bandit, had just passed by.

That Bogey meant him no harm. It, like himself, had been so fixated on its own purpose that it not adjusted its own course any more than Fox Three had done.

It was chance alone that brought them so close together, amid so much open sky.

During the miniscule but necessary course correction needed to close the remaining distance to Bandit One-One, he wondered about that close encounter, as unlikely as it had been between such tiny speedy travelers amid the unfathomable vastness of the darkening sky.

Not a decoy, not a flare, not a Bandit, but born from a Bandit.

Not alone, but first in its charge, not unlike Fox Three.

There was nothing Fox Three could do to stop or even hinder that stranger's ongoing journey, but he could not help noticing how alike they were...

Don't get distracted.

Fox Three fixed his attention forward and confirmed Bandit One-One's evasive manuevering through the glare of its decoy flare, the sight scattered amid a glitter of popped chaff.

That light, that warmth, reminiscent of mother...

Focus ahead; don't look back.

Under Bandit One-One's wing, another fledgling bogey snapped its umbilical and cried out with stage-one ignition, as if witnessing the birth of a brother from another mother.

That first second was a signature so close, so similar, to Bandit One-One's own, slow and lumbering, that it could be mistaken for...

Reach Bandit One-One at all costs.

Fox Three made the fine but necessary adjustment to make way for that Bogey's passing.

The nascent Bogey's own ramjet then gulped its first breath and sped well, screeching past.

Fox Three shivered as if pride as well the accelerating wake turbulence of the near-miss passing.

Another journey had just begun down the way he had come.

A brother from another mother was on its way back the way he had come.

Would that one remember him, remember his tiny act of kindness?

Would that one realize where the fellow traveler had come from?

Would he bring a little bit of his love back to mother?

Focus ahead; don't look back.

Speed well, Bogey.

Reach Bandit One-One at all costs.

At last, Fox Three reached Bandit One-One.