Veneto sounded uneasy. "Should we have Alaska and St. George help with AA?"
"They're both level 100—strap on AA and they can clear a slice of sky. Especially Alaska, she's an air-defense missile battleship," she added.
Bismarck waved it off. "We also need AA in reserve. If the Abyssal center pushes its carriers over us, what do we use to pivot?"
She'd already arranged it that way: even facing nearly a million incoming planes, she hadn't called the "guests" forward—and neither the Vanguard team nor Missouri swapped to heavy AA.
From behind, Missouri snipped, "Sounds like you just want Lexington's group to get bombed."
Bismarck smiled. "If they don't see how strong Vestal is, they won't panic the way I need them to."
"Four hundred black-eagle fighters—closing head-on," Ranger warned, voice steady.
"Contact imminent. Follow my lead!" Lexington's order cut crisp and clean.
Thirty thousand meters up in the stratosphere, five hundred sixty rainbow-sheened carrier planes tore north, contrails blazing.
Most were olive-drab B-25s; the rest were jet-powered A-2s.
On the bomber scale, the six-star "Planet" (+12 Bomb, +2 ASW) is elite; the A-2 (+21 Bomb, +5 ASW) is also six-star.
Bluntly, A-2s and B-25s leave the "Planet" in the dust—the gap from these to "Planet" is larger than "Planet" to the scrappiest one-stars. Among six-star bombers, what Hikaru's carriers had launched were the emperor-class.
Now, 560 of the strongest bombers in the world were sprinting at the three-million-strong Abyssal center.
It was a spectacle: below them, at only a few thousand meters, roared ink-black stormclouds—lightning, rain, thunder, the whole sky smothered in weather. Five million Abyssals squeezed so much "ink sea" into one theater that everything for hundreds of miles lay under that sable lid.
But weather lives in the troposphere. The bombers flew the stratosphere—the isothermal calm: bone-dry, changeless, a hard blue vault. Sunlight hammered straight down, glazing the black cloud-carpet with gold. Beautiful. Unreal.
The stormdeck below shattered under fountains of orange-red flak, then struggled to knit shut again—arcs of seven-colored bursts stitched the ceiling: Abyssal AA at full fury.
At thirty thousand meters, it was fireworks—pretty filigree and nothing more.
The Abyssal fighters that had been straining behind finally peeled away; they'd try a turn-back strike on the base.
Ahead, a knot of black hawks ripped out of the clouds, spiraled up, then dove straight for the bomber phalanx.
The human formation didn't scatter; it tightened, accepting Lexington's unified control.
Through the eyes of her four hundred eagles, Airfield Princess studied the oncoming swarm.
So much six-star rainbow that it hurt to stare.
Greed surged—hot and sharp.
Then she clocked their speed, and a sliver of disdain curled her lip.
Roughly Mach 2.5—about 3,000 km/h, ~950 m/s. Not that outrageous.
"Hero planes… so that's all?"
WWII fighters worked around ten thousand meters altitude, most topping out around 400+ km/h. These carrier bombers were skimming thirty thousand and pushing 3,000—those old birds wouldn't even taste their exhaust.
But she was a carrier girl too, and up here her four-star fighters could peak at Mach 3.5.
Fighters are built to kill bombers; speed is the first blade. If a fighter can't run down a bomber, that's the joke of the century.
She bared her teeth. "Let's see you outrun this."
[End of Chapter]