Chapter 5 – Cold Engines, Hot Steel
---
Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School – January 2017
Year 2, Semester 1
The cold was no longer a guest. It had taken over the academy.
Steel doors froze in their hinges. Fuel lines cracked under pressure. The air itself had weight, a dense suffocating chill that wrapped around each cadet like a second uniform. Snow clung to the Yak-130s in hardened crusts. Technicians scraped ice from wing roots and nose cones every morning with gloved hands and steel brushes.
The school didn't slow.
It accelerated.
Second-year status meant no more simulation safety nets. No more pre-flight babysitting. Every mistake was logged, evaluated, dissected — and one too many could reroute a cadet's path from fighter stream to ground crew support.
And Leonid Vostrikov? He was still flying clean.
But clean wasn't enough anymore.
---
Their new instructors didn't believe in encouragement.
Major Dymov was one of them — a quiet, frost-eyed man who walked with perfect posture and spoke with measured precision. Rumor said he had flown Su-27s in Georgia and Su-30s over Ukraine in 2014. His callsign had been "Poltergeist" — not because of any stealth ability, but because his name rarely appeared in after-action reports. Just results.
He addressed the new class on the first Monday of January.
"You have survived the fog. You have survived the dark. Now we see who survives combat philosophy."
Behind him, a chalkboard showed four Cyrillic words:
Самостоятельность. Скорость. Давление. Решение.
(Autonomy. Speed. Pressure. Decision.)
"These are your gods now," he said. "Forget them, and you die. Remember them, and maybe you survive long enough to matter."
Leonid sat straight, silent. Yuri beside him looked far less confident.
"I miss the old days," he muttered. "When the worst thing I had to worry about was engine startup temps and Captain Sidorov's halitosis."
Leonid didn't respond. His focus was forward.
---
The next two weeks were a blur of new systems training. Gone were the general theory classes. Now they studied tactical doctrine and aircraft-specific transition theory.
The aircraft in question?
The Sukhoi Su-30SM.
Multirole. Twin-engine. Twin-seat. A beast of a machine compared to the light and responsive Yak-130s they had flown.
Leonid's first exposure came in Hangar 12 — a sealed facility reserved for high-level pilot candidates.
The Su-30 loomed before them like a sleeping monster: dark gray paint, swept wings, massive AL-31FP thrust-vectoring engines sitting like coiled muscles under the airframe. The cockpit ladders hadn't even been deployed yet. It sat cold, silent, regal.
Leonid stood near the nose and looked up at the twin canopies. The front seat — the pilot's seat — would one day be his. The rear, for now, would house the instructor. But not forever.
He felt the heatless chill in his bones and smiled internally.
He was ready.
---
The Su-30SM systems simulator was nothing like the Yak's.
It wasn't sleek, wasn't gentle. Everything about it felt rougher, heavier. The control stick had deeper resistance. The throttle pushed back. The avionics suite, borrowed and modified from both the Su-27 and newer Su-35 models, was complex enough to rival a bomber.
His first systems test was a disaster.
He misidentified the fuel transfer subroutine. Delayed flap retraction. Missed an emergency oxygen alert embedded in the right-side MFD.
It cost him points. A lot of them.
He didn't sleep that night.
Instead, he stayed in the study hall past curfew, tracing the full engine-startup sequence from battery engagement to final turbine RPM. He repeated the checklist twenty times. Blindfolded himself. Practiced again.
Yuri found him there at 0200, a steaming mug of tea in hand.
"You know, you could just… be average for once," he said.
Leonid didn't look up. "That's how you die in a cockpit."
---
A week later, he retested.
Passed.
Perfect score.
Major Dymov simply marked the sheet and moved on. No praise. No acknowledgement.
But that evening, when Leonid returned to his bunk, he found a sealed envelope placed on top of his folded uniform.
Inside: a typed note.
"Cadet Vostrikov – Pending practical assessment for Su-30SM handling phase. Report to Tarmac Six at 0600 Wednesday. – Flight Command"
It had no signature.
But Leonid knew who had arranged it.
---
He arrived early.
Tarmac Six was half-frozen, snow pushed aside in uneven piles by a fuel-slicked snowplow. The Su-30 sat waiting with its nose pointed east. The cockpit ladder was down. The engines were off, but the pre-flight team was already cycling power through the avionics.
Major Dymov approached in full flight gear, a sealed helmet under one arm.
"You've read the systems?"
"Yes, sir."
"Reviewed the HUD overlays?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can you handle her?"
Leonid looked up at the massive jet. Its fuselage still steamed slightly from the last heat-up cycle. It felt alive.
"I can try, sir."
Dymov nodded. "Then follow me."
---
They didn't fly far.
This wasn't a full mission — just a handling profile. A way for instructors to determine if a cadet could feel the Su-30, not just operate it.
Leonid climbed into the front seat, heart pounding but movements steady.
Canopy closed. Comms check cleared. Engines spooled.
The roar of the twin turbofans rattled his ribcage. The cockpit shook slightly. The HUD blinked to life.
"Taxi," Dymov ordered.
Leonid taxied.
"Throttle up. Cleared for takeoff."
He pushed forward — not too fast. The aircraft responded with a surge of power so different from the Yak it nearly startled him.
They lifted off like a boulder hurled into the sky.
No delay. No hesitation.
Climb rate: brutal. Acceleration: violent.
Leonid had to reorient his sense of control in real time.
But he did.
"Bank left. 30 degrees."
He banked.
"Roll right. Pull 3 Gs. Level out."
He obeyed.
"Simulated engine failure: right side. Compensate."
He hesitated a second too long.
"Faster!" Dymov barked.
Leonid adjusted thrust balance, corrected yaw, trimmed for drag loss.
Stabilized.
"Now give her a soft left barrel. Nothing fancy."
He rolled. Smooth. Slow.
No panic.
Just flying.
---
When they landed, the frost had returned.
Leonid stepped off the ladder last. Dymov removed his helmet and set it on the wing.
"She's heavier than the Yak," the major said, "but she liked you."
Leonid blinked. "Sir?"
"You didn't fight her. You moved with her."
Then he looked him dead in the eye.
"We'll begin real training next month."
---
That night, Leonid made a single entry in his notebook:
"Today I flew something born for war."
"I made mistakes."
"But I didn't fail."
"This isn't the sky I knew before. It's louder. Faster. Meaner."
"It demands more than just discipline. It demands loyalty."
Then, beneath it all:
"I'm ready."
---
Krasnodar Air Base – February 2017
"Welcome to hell with wings."
That was how Yuri described the Su-30SM tactical transition course, and no one argued. If Year One was about survival, and Year Two was about mastery of systems, then this phase — fighter integration — was war in everything but name. The instructors stopped treating them like students. They began treating them like liabilities.
Mistakes weren't corrected anymore.
They were punished.
---
Leonid's first practical module was the High-Speed Combat Entry Drill — a controlled high-G maneuvering sequence designed to simulate rapid airspace penetration under hostile detection. It started at 3,000 meters. Full afterburner. Rapid dive. Barrel roll. Reorientation. Pullout at 400 meters.
Twice, cadets blacked out.
Once, a stabilizer limiter failed in the sim, and a trainee ejected — a false ejection, of course, but the shame stayed.
Leonid didn't black out.
But his vision narrowed to a tunnel at 5.5 Gs, and the simulator recorded a six-second delay in response time.
Major Dymov reviewed the footage and pointed at the timestamp.
"If this were real, you'd be dead before your brain caught up."
Leonid replayed the footage three times that night. Then ran G-tolerance breathing drills in the gym until his abdomen cramped.
---
Three days later, they began weapon systems orientation.
The Su-30 was no longer just a plane. It was a flying weapons platform — carrying beyond-visual-range (BVR) missiles, air-to-ground ordnance, and an internal 30mm GSh-30 autocannon capable of ripping apart a Mi-8 helicopter with a two-second burst.
The instructors walked them through every hardpoint.
Leonid took notes with clinical focus.
R-77 active radar missiles. R-73 infrared-guided. KAB-500 laser-guided bombs. Kh-29s. Cluster munitions. Anti-ship variants. Tactical nuclear payload compatibility — only mentioned, never demonstrated.
Everything had to be memorized.
Fuzing delays. Lock-on protocols. Arming switches. Release tolerances.
Then came simulated engagements — tracking multiple targets across a cluttered radar field, all while managing radar pings, fuel calculations, and spatial awareness under time pressure.
One cadet froze when presented with a four-target split.
Leonid didn't.
He prioritized by velocity, aspect angle, and threat proximity. Engaged the two high-threat fighters first. Tagged the strike drone next. Marked the trailing transport for delayed engagement.
It was a drill.
But the instructor behind the glass noted it silently.
---
Their next module was squad-based intercept.
Each cadet flew as a two-man wing — leader and wingman. Roles rotated. Success depended not on individual skill but on coordination: callouts, timing, and shared kills.
Leonid was paired with Yuri for the exercise.
They briefed quickly in the concrete bunker, heads together over a black-and-white map of the simulated conflict zone.
"Two contacts. Su-27 aggressors," Yuri said. "We break wide, you push high. I bait."
Leonid nodded. "When they turn, I roll vertical. Aim for close lock."
Yuri smirked. "Let's see if this Ghost knows how to scream."
In the sim, Yuri took a hard climb, feigning retreat. The aggressors chased.
Leonid waited.
Slid into altitude, throttled down.
Then turned in.
Two pings. Acquired. Locked.
He fired.
One contact eliminated.
The second broke off, chasing Yuri again.
Leonid swung wide. Reacquired. Fired again.
Kill.
---
After the mission, their instructor leaned against the debriefing table.
"Who took lead on the plan?" he asked.
Yuri glanced sideways. "We shared it."
The instructor nodded.
"Vostrikov. You're improving."
Leonid didn't respond.
He didn't need to.
---
By mid-February, they started practicing low-altitude terrain masking — the art of using the land to shield from radar detection. It required flying under 100 meters at 900 kilometers per hour. One mistake and the terrain owned you.
The route ran through the Caucasus simulation: jagged ridges, shifting wind, simulated civilian air traffic nearby.
Leonid entered the valley at dawn, virtual frost forming on his canopy glass.
He watched the terrain rise before him, flipped to manual throttle control, and let the Su-30 glide low and fast, hugging the land like a hawk. His hands worked the stick with micro-corrections — not by logic, but by feel.
He nearly clipped a tower on turn three.
But recovered.
The instructors called it "riding the blade's edge."
Leonid called it coming alive.
---
Outside of training, the fatigue set in.
Every night, cadets collapsed into their bunks, uniforms still on, boots half-removed. Blood blisters. Stress migraines. Internalized rage.
Yuri started drinking protein shakes in secret — not for muscle, but because the mess food wasn't enough anymore.
Leonid took to writing less.
His notebook entries were shorter. More like fragments.
"G-tolerance improving."
"Need to recalibrate IR lock sequencing."
"Eyes burning during night-flight debriefs."
"Yuri got 1.2s lock-on time. Beat him by .3."
One night, he wrote only:
"I am becoming the jet."
---
Then came his first live fire mission.
It wasn't in the sim.
It wasn't with instructors behind glass.
It was real.
Krasnodar's weapons range opened once every six months for controlled live-fire evaluation. Each cadet would fly with an instructor in the rear seat, target dummy vehicles and bunkers using unguided and semi-guided munitions.
Leonid's loadout was simple:
2x FAB-250 general-purpose bombs
1x Kh-25ML laser-guided missile
Gun pod enabled
The objective: eliminate three stationary targets on a marked ground lane at 1,800 meters altitude, no higher.
The Su-30's roar filled the range.
Leonid flew clean, locked into the bombing line, calculated release timing to the second, toggled laser designator at precisely 2,100 meters, fired the Kh-25ML at the command post replica.
The camera feed confirmed:
Direct hit.
He looped around.
Released both FABs over the vehicle column.
One hit short.
One direct impact.
Two of three targets destroyed.
When he landed, his knees were shaking.
Dymov watched the replay without a word.
Finally: "Good."
Then: "We'll see if that holds under return fire."
---
That evening, Leonid finally opened his notebook again.
He wrote more this time.
"The bomb hit, but my first drop was late. I hesitated."
"Even two seconds can mean a full convoy escapes."
"I need to feel the pressure more. Simulate it in my sleep."
Then he paused.
Wrote:
"This plane wants me to become a weapon. I want that too. But only on my terms."
---
Three days later, the instructors called a meeting.
Major Arsenyev stood at the front with a clipboard.
"No more pairs," he announced. "From now on, you'll fly solo. Your backseats are dead. You command. You decide. You kill."
Leonid sat up straighter.
This was what he had been waiting for.
Finally — no corrections. No safety.
Only judgment from the sky.
---
Krasnodar Air Base – March 2017
Year 2 – Su-30SM Solo Operations Phase
Solo.
No instructor. No safety net. No calm voice in the backseat guiding corrections. No simulated radar lock that came with a warning label. The instructors called it "independent pilot judgment evaluation." The cadets just called it "The Gauntlet."
Of the 42 cadets who had begun the Su-30SM tactical transition stream, only 18 were cleared for solo operations.
Leonid Vostrikov was one of them.
So was Yuri, though he barely passed the physical G-force tolerance test the week before.
"You realize they're about to let us fly 34-ton fighter jets with live power and no adult supervision?" Yuri said as they stepped onto the icy tarmac before dawn. "This feels like state-sponsored madness."
Leonid didn't respond. His eyes were already fixed on the aircraft lined up across the apron. Four Su-30SMs stood under the floodlights like statues — twin fins high, wings gleaming with frost, nosecones angled skyward as if impatient to fly again.
One of them had his name beside it.
---
Leonid's aircraft was number Blue 92 — a training-configured Su-30SM stripped of certain weapon systems but otherwise fully operational. The armorers had removed the R-77s and KAB-500s but left the 30mm cannon online.
The flight plan was coded LUNA-17. A solo flight across a simulated interdiction zone mapped out on a real stretch of southern Russian countryside. No instructors. No pre-fabricated threat responses. Just one jet, one pilot, and a lot of silence.
Briefing was short.
Objective: Navigate from Krasnodar to Grid G-8, perform mock strike on designated training target, then return through a simulated hostile zone monitored by radar units and deconflicted civilian aircraft.
Minimum altitude: 1,200 meters.
Speed cap: 1,100 km/h.
Expected intercept risk: High.
Radio use: Passive only.
---
Leonid strapped in with mechanical precision.
The cockpit was familiar now. Not like home — there was no comfort here — but like a battlefield you knew every hill and trench of. He ran through the checklist line by line, each switch flicked, each display verified. His hands didn't shake.
Turbines ignited with a slow-spooling roar that grew to a deep thunder.
Blue 92 taxied under its own power. The other cadets stood at the perimeter of the flight line, watching as the first true solo pilot rolled into position.
Leonid didn't look back.
Tower cleared him for takeoff with a single phrase.
"LUNA-17, runway clear. Wind west-northwest. Good hunting."
He throttled up.
The engines howled.
Brakes off.
And then, he was airborne.
---
The first ten minutes were routine.
Climb to 4,500 meters. Level off. Course correction at the river bend. Maintain altitude. Confirm waypoint near the abandoned rail station. He could almost feel the aircraft relaxing into the mission — like a horse stretching into a gallop.
The Su-30 wasn't light.
But under his hands, it felt responsive, nimble, like the jet knew it was being handled by someone who had earned the seat.
As he passed Grid F-7, the first simulated radar lock appeared.
A soft beep. Then a tone shift.
Tracking radar — 50km — vector 240.
Leonid didn't evade. Not yet.
He altered course five degrees left, rode the terrain shadow below a cloud bank, reduced his radar cross-section by cutting angle and tucking his wing profile tighter.
The lock disappeared.
He kept flying.
---
Grid G-8 approached fast.
He reviewed the target area — an abandoned fuel depot mockup, painted in bright orange to help the ground crew track hits. He locked onto the marker with his electro-optical system, triggered the simulated targeting solution, and dove into a low-speed pass.
He didn't fire. There was no real ordnance.
But the system beeped in confirmation.
Target locked.
Strike simulated.
He pulled up — hard — and reversed course.
That's when the surprise came.
Second radar lock. This one close. 12km. High angle. Missile simulated — inbound.
No warning from the instructors.
No setup.
Just sudden, unexpected contact.
Leonid reacted on instinct.
Throttled down. Dumped simulated chaff. Cut to the right and dropped altitude to 2,200 meters, letting terrain mask his rear quadrant.
He rolled the jet into a spiral, climbed through his own wake, and broke to the east.
The lock faded. The system registered "Simulated Missile Evasion – Successful."
He gritted his teeth and throttled forward.
No hesitation. No second-guessing.
This was flying now.
Pure flying.
---
The return leg brought high crosswinds and low visibility. Patches of fog over the foothills made navigation more about terrain familiarity than instruments. GPS signals were intentionally scrambled. He switched to backup compass, confirmed heading, and trusted the contours of the land like he had been trained to.
At 300km from base, a civilian jet passed overhead at 7,000 meters — a Tu-204 cargo flight. He spotted it by silhouette and contrail.
Leonid adjusted course and maintained deconfliction.
He reached the approach vector to Krasnodar twenty minutes later, fuel still above 35%.
Landing gear down. Flaps extended. Descent angle perfect.
Touchdown.
The Su-30 bounced once — slight — then settled.
He taxied in.
Cut power.
And sat in the silence of the cockpit.
Alone.
Alive.
Complete.
---
When he climbed down the ladder, Arsenyev was waiting.
No clipboard. No notepad.
Just folded arms.
"You took a risk on the second radar lock," he said.
Leonid removed his helmet. "It was closer than expected."
"You didn't run."
Leonid shook his head. "I turned into it."
Arsenyev paused. "Why?"
"To confirm the angle. Make sure it wasn't a bluff."
"And if it wasn't?"
"I'd have survived anyway."
Arsenyev stared for a long moment.
Then nodded once.
"Good."
---
Later, in the debrief room, Leonid sat alone at one of the steel tables. No other cadets were allowed in during solo review.
The video footage from Blue 92's flight played silently. Every move. Every adjustment. Every radar contact and correction.
He watched without blinking.
Watched himself fly.
Watched himself become something more than just a cadet.
---
In his notebook that night, he wrote:
"There was no voice in my ear."
"No instructions. No backup."
"Only me, the aircraft, and the sky."
"I didn't flinch."
"I didn't question."
"I decided."
"This is what I was made for."
---
At the foot of his bunk, someone had slipped a folded note beneath his flight manual.
It was anonymous.
Scrawled in tight Cyrillic letters:
"Welcome to the real war. No second seat from now on."
Leonid folded the note and tucked it into the cover of his notebook, next to Grigori's faded MiG-21 patch.
The war hadn't started yet.
But he knew now — he was ready for it.