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"032, eject! 032, eject immediately!"
The voice of the base commander blared through the headset.
The cockpit spun. The roar of the wind and metal rattled inside his skull. Lei Tian's vision had almost gone dark under a crushing 9G overload. Blood drained from his brain. But now—he was waking up.
And everything felt wrong.
The cockpit in front of him… wasn't his.
This wasn't the J-11 he was flying moments ago.
---
Lei Tian was a test pilot with the Shenyang Aircraft Industry Group, operating out of an old Chinese industrial base. The J-11, a modern domestic fighter adapted from the Su-27, was undergoing final performance checks before front-line deployment.
He'd been running a tight set of maneuvers, pushing the jet to its limits. But during a vertical loop, something failed. The anti-G suit didn't engage. Without pressure to counteract the Gs, Lei Tian passed out — his body could handle 5Gs max. Test pilots like him were rare; most blackout at 4G. Astronaut candidates train at 6. But in this loop, he hit 9.
He blacked out.
Now he was conscious again — and nothing around him looked familiar.
---
Instead of modern LCD displays, the panel in front of him was littered with analog gauges. A round cathode-ray screen glowed faintly — radar, maybe. Every dial was labeled in… Russian?
His hands flexed instinctively. The anti-G suit he was wearing was bulkier. His helmet was fully enclosed — no oxygen mask, no typical visor goggles. Just a narrow viewport.
And the cockpit's glass canopy… no rear vision. Three forward panels only. Old-school. Second-generation. Soviet.
What the hell is this plane?
---
"Andre, eject! The altitude's still 500 meters!"
The voice snapped again in his ear.
Andre?
Suddenly, memories crashed into his mind.
Kyiv. Soviet childhood. A father in engineering. A mother at home. Long days reading aircraft manuals. Flight school. Fighter command. The MiG-25.
He was Andrei Vladimirovich Tolstoy, a Soviet pilot in 1976.
Lei Tian had transmigrated.
---
Andrei had been flying in a two-ship formation during a training exercise south of the base. At 10,000 meters altitude, he pulled a steep vertical climb — too steep — and then dived hard. The plane stalled.
And not just any plane — the MiG-25. A high-altitude, high-speed interceptor with a massive vertical tail for stability in thin air. At altitude, it's rock solid. But at low altitude? That same tail becomes a liability. Too much aerodynamic torque. Easy to lose control.
Modern jets have fly-by-wire and telex systems that compensate. But in 1976? No such luck.
---
Now, the MiG-25 was falling like a brick — vertical spin, nose down, tail whipping.
Andrei's vision flickered again. The delayed response of the suit nearly knocked him out a second time. When he came to, the altimeter was in freefall.
Parachuting was no longer an option.
The aircraft was too low. The K-36 ejection seat — old, limited in envelope — couldn't save him from this altitude. Eject now and he'd splatter on impact.
"Recover it. Recover it now!"
---
Andrei had done this before. In his previous life, he'd practiced stall recovery more than twenty times. And although this was his first time in a real MiG-25, the steps were burned into his brain.
Stick opposite the spin. Rudder opposite the spin. Hold it.
He reacted fast — hands steady, training taking over.
Still not enough.
"Drop landing gear! Deploy parachute!"
He reached left, flipping five clunky switches — Soviet ergonomics at their worst. But the final one did it. A loud thump behind him. A drag chute burst open — a bright white streak trailing behind the tail.
Spin chute deployed.
The MiG shuddered violently.
---
Only during test flights were MiGs equipped with these chutes — but they worked. The deceleration parachute acted like a stabilizer, slowing the spin. Combined with the drag from lowered landing gear, it gave the aircraft the aerodynamic resistance needed to recover.
The altimeter spun wildly. The ground was too close.
"God help me…" Andrei whispered.
At the very last second — the plane leveled.
---
A monstrous shriek of air and metal tore through the cockpit as the MiG-25 stabilized, wings horizontal, still flying — barely.
"Sokolovka base, 032 recovered. Aircraft stable."
Andrei's voice was hoarse but calm.
"031 and 032, return immediately."
The commander's voice came through. Calm now. But tense.
Training was canceled. There would be no more flying today.
There would be an investigation.
But none of that mattered right now.
Andrei was alive.
And his new life — in a new body, in a different country, in a different time — had officially begun.
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