Chapter Text
The F-18 carried enough fuel for 2,000 miles. Far enough to reach dry land, not much, if they were to find an airport where they could set down. Without communications, the plane to plane intercom suspended, Maverick chased the red burn of Kazansky's exhausts across the night sky. They went high, the thin air conserving fuel, and straight, driving west.
Maverick's go bag held a toy binnacled compass Goose had pulled out of a Christmas cracker, one New Year. Eyes on Kazansky's jet, he reached down, fumbled for it, and checked: west. The compass was cold and hard in his hand, held too tightly: he tucked it into the pocket of his flight suit. He'd left his watch behind, but the clock on the dashboard still worked. At ten minutes out, they were two hundred miles from the carrier. At twenty, four hundred, Kazansky balancing fuel consumption and speed, giving them the best chance possible of reaching land and being able to bring the jets down safely when they got there. Six hundred miles. The cloud cover seemed lighter, wispy in the reflected light from Kazansky's F-18. There was a moment when Maverick glanced down and thought he saw a brief glimmer of moonlit sea beneath the jet. Eight hundred miles.
The radio crackled. Instinctively, Maverick's finger snapped to the switch, but dead air was heavy in his headphones. He hesitated, watching the display on the radio, which showed, as it had done for weeks, a blank. No transmission on any radio length. Nothing out there. He and Kazansky were alone.
When he glanced up, the clouds had cleared from the moon. It hung above them, looking larger in the emptiness of the sky, glimmering silver net reflected in the shifting sea.
The radar flickered. A electrical crackle jumped across the headphones. They were nine hundred miles from the ship, almost outside the exclusion zone, and the displays were flickering back into life, light after light turning a pale green on the control panel, the AWCS beacon powering up, the GPS online.
Maverick pulled his mask into place. "Hey, Ice," he said, finger on the switch, plane to plane. "You out there?"
"Maverick," said Kazansky. Ahead, his F-18 waggled its wings, slow and graceful. Moonlight glinted from the smooth curves of its bodywork. "What's it looking like?"
The radio showed a long wave transmission. Another one. The military wavelengths started to appear, sparse and flicking, but still there. Still transmitting. Civilian broadcasts began to cluster at the lower end of the dial. There were active radar warnings. Primary and secondary airport surveillance radar transmissions. The F-18's computer began to reply to pings from bases in Israel, and a Saudi airfield transmitting USAF recognition codes.
"I dunno," Maverick said. He touched the compass in his pocket, smiling. "But it's looking good so far."