Chapter 6 – Fire in the Veins
---
Krasnodar Air Base – June 2017
Year 2 – Final Evaluation Cycle
The summer heat didn't spare anyone.
By midday, the tarmac shimmered like molten steel. The Su-30SMs, grounded between sorties, radiated trapped heat like sleeping dragons in metal skin. The smell of scorched rubber, kerosene, and sweat hung heavy over the barracks. Uniforms clung wet to backs. Boots baked. Oxygen masks were wiped three times a day to keep the sweat from shorting the comms.
But no one complained.
This was combat air readiness evaluation week, and heat stroke was just another variable in the gauntlet. The instructors didn't mention the stakes anymore. Everyone already knew.
Two more eliminations and a reassignment — not to helicopters or transport squadrons, but to non-flying roles.
The unspoken truth: you fail this round, you leave aviation.
For good.
---
Leonid stared at the mission board, jaw tight.
"VOSTRIKOV – STRIKE SORTIE – LIVE ORDNANCE"
Aircraft: Su-30SM #91
Loadout: 2x Kh-29T missiles, 4x FAB-250 bombs, internal GSh-30 cannon
Mission: Simulated cross-border strike with BVR (Beyond Visual Range) engagement en route
He had studied the flight path the night before — a real stretch of airspace rendered hostile through layers of instructor-injected variables. The ground targets were dummy trucks set along a decommissioned railway spur in the foothills. But the threats? SAM sites, patrolling fighters, false radar locks, and jammed comms — all run by instructors through real systems.
He would fly solo.
But every decision would be watched.
Yuri stood behind him, silent, chewing a piece of stale bread he'd smuggled from breakfast.
"They're giving you the heavy ordnance already?" he said.
Leonid nodded.
"Means they trust you," Yuri said.
"Or they want to see what I do under pressure."
Yuri chuckled. "Same thing, Ghost. Same thing."
---
The prep room was cold. A concrete box with harsh fluorescents and a single wall-mounted fan. Leonid sat alone, dressed in his flame-retardant flight suit. Helmet on the bench. Gloves folded beside it. A printed map of the mission grid lay in front of him, already annotated.
Major Arsenyev entered without knocking.
He held no clipboard.
"Vostrikov."
Leonid stood. "Sir."
"You'll be flying through three active jamming zones. We've layered drone interference, weather clutter, and aggressive radar ghosts."
"Yes, sir."
"Don't trust your instruments after checkpoint Bravo. Trust your head."
"Yes, sir."
"Also — you are weapons hot. If you get a clean tone on the aerial threat en route, you fire. Simulated or not."
Leonid's voice was steady. "Yes, sir."
Arsenyev studied him for a moment.
"You're not afraid of the sky anymore."
"No, sir."
"You should be."
Then he turned and left.
---
On the runway, the Su-30 waited.
Aircraft #91 had flown in Syria in 2015. Faint burn marks still scarred the underwing panels where a near-miss MANPADS round had charred the fuselage. Mechanics had patched it with new titanium composite, but the story was still etched into the skin.
Leonid climbed the ladder in silence.
Inside the cockpit, the checklists came fast.
Engine start — green.
Avionics — normal.
Targeting pod calibration — complete.
Weapon systems — hot.
Navigation — locked.
He taxied out.
The voice in the tower came calm and clipped.
"Vostrikov, cleared for takeoff. Maintain altitude under 6,000 until sector two. Report any faults immediately."
He didn't answer.
He just rolled onto the runway.
Full throttle.
Heat roared behind him.
And he was gone.
---
The first 15 minutes of flight were quiet.
Altitude: 5,400 meters. Speed: 1,050 km/h.
The terrain below blurred into green and brown mosaics. Farmland. Rail lines. Tree cover. The horizon shimmered under a humid haze. Clouds gathered near the edge of the zone.
He hit Checkpoint Alpha at 0924.
Nothing yet.
Then — the first ping.
Low-strength radar contact. Vector 280. Altitude match. Speed unknown.
Leonid toggled his EW system.
No response.
Fake contact?
Maybe.
He ignored it.
A minute later, it vanished.
---
At Checkpoint Bravo, the world broke.
Comms: gone.
HUD: flickering.
Radar: blank.
IFF: non-responsive.
And then, worse: missile warning tone.
Leonid's spine stiffened.
He banked hard right, dumped flares, throttled back, and pulled into a steep climb, breaking the lock through raw maneuvering.
No visual contact.
A bluff.
The instructor radar system was spoofing threats.
He leveled out, found his bearing again using terrain references: the M5 highway, the old cement factory, a bend in the dry riverbed.
He adjusted course by instinct.
Then flew on.
---
The strike zone appeared on the horizon.
Four boxy shapes — target trucks — marked with orange panels.
Leonid dropped to 2,000 meters. Armed Kh-29T.
Locked on the leftmost vehicle.
Tone steady.
Fired.
Then veered hard, lined up second target, toggled cannon. One-second burst.
Brrrrrt.
Pulled up, watched the impact site bloom in a simulated orange flag on his HUD.
Direct.
Circling back, he released the FAB-250s over the final grid.
Two flashes below.
Mission complete.
He pulled out of the valley and punched north.
---
Mid-return, radar came back.
So did comms.
But a new contact was waiting.
Simulated Su-27 Aggressor — 40 km and closing fast.
Leonid gritted his teeth.
He'd practiced this in sims.
He prepped the BVR system, armed the R-77.
Set radar to track while scanning for terrain cover.
Tone lock: achieved.
Target jamming: active.
Still, he had a solution.
Fired.
Missile simulated — shot.
He banked hard.
Dropped to the deck.
Thirty seconds passed.
"Kill confirmed," came the dry voice from control.
Leonid exhaled.
---
He landed thirty minutes later.
The ground crew swarmed the jet. A technician reached up to help him down.
Leonid didn't need it.
Arsenyev waited by the hangar.
"You got locked twice."
"Yes, sir."
"You stayed on course."
"Yes, sir."
"You killed your target and your hunter."
"Yes, sir."
The major gave a small nod.
"Final flight assessment — passed."
Leonid's shoulders sank slightly. Just slightly.
Then:
"You're being reviewed for immediate Su-35S transition."
Leonid blinked.
"Sir?"
"We've watched your performance. You're already too fast for the Su-30's frame. You think ahead of the system."
Leonid didn't know what to say.
So he simply saluted.
Arsenyev returned it. Then added, "Don't let that go to your head. The Su-35 doesn't forgive sloppiness."
---
That night, Leonid opened his notebook and wrote slowly:
"The Su-30 was not just an aircraft. It was my crucible."
"It taught me silence. It taught me decision. It taught me that hesitation kills."
"I have survived the evaluation."
"And now, I am no longer a student."
Then, in one final line:
"I am becoming what I was meant to be."
---
Krasnodar Air Base – July 2017
Year 2 – Fighter Track Transition
The Su-30 had forged them.
Now the Su-35 would define them.
It wasn't automatic. Even Leonid's performance — pristine as it had been — didn't guarantee advancement. But the instructors knew what they were looking for, and Leonid had shown it: a pilot's instinct born from discipline, not ego.
When the transition list was posted on the hangar wall, a crowd of cadets formed like flies on glass.
Twelve names.
Only five for Su-35S transition.
Leonid's name was first.
Yuri's wasn't on the list.
He didn't say anything when he saw it. Just stood there a long time, staring at the paper.
Later that night, he dropped onto the bunk across from Leonid's and exhaled hard.
"Well," he said. "Guess the Ghost finally became a weapon."
Leonid didn't answer.
"I'll probably get looped into rotary-wing or an AWACS controller role," Yuri muttered, trying to sound casual. "Still flying. Just not the sharp end of the spear."
Leonid finally looked up.
"You'd better be my eyes when I'm up there."
Yuri cracked a crooked grin. "Only if you don't get too high and mighty in that glass cockpit."
---
The Su-35S was a different creature.
Where the Su-30 was powerful and stable, the Su-35 was violent and precise — like a sword designed by engineers who hated forgiveness.
Everything about it screamed performance.
Single seat.
More thrust.
Reduced drag.
A fully digital flight control system with thrust-vectoring so sensitive it could turn on a dime and pirouette around most modern fighters.
Its radar — the Irbis-E — could detect targets at over 400 kilometers. Its avionics were tuned for electronic warfare, sensor fusion, and high-G evasion maneuvers.
Where the Yak and Su-30 taught them to fly, the Su-35 taught them to dominate.
---
Leonid's first time stepping into one was quiet.
No instructor waiting.
No classroom lecture.
Just the aircraft and a laminated checklist, left clipped to the canopy latch like a challenge.
Blue 84 — the academy's flight-ready Su-35S — had been stripped of active war ordnance but still retained its full ECM and radar packages.
As he climbed in, the cockpit sealed around him like armor.
The controls felt tighter, cleaner — no slack.
He powered up the systems.
The digital panels sprang to life with the familiar hum of readiness, but their response was sharper. The HUD floated closer to his vision, overlays clearer, brighter. Everything responded with barely a whisper of delay.
It felt like the jet wanted to fly itself — and kill everything in the airspace along the way.
---
Takeoff was brutal.
Leonid had expected acceleration — but not this.
Throttle to 80%, brakes off.
The thrust pushed into his chest like a battering ram.
Wheels off the ground at 270 km/h.
Climb rate exceeded 300 m/s.
He hit 3,000 meters in under a minute.
Once airborne, the instructor's voice crackled over the headset.
"Try not to break it, Vostrikov."
"Copy that."
"Run flight checks. Manual input. Then we go into maneuver eval."
Leonid complied. Flaps, rudder, roll, pitch — smooth. The jet was balanced like it had no weight. The thrust-vectoring system reacted to his every twitch. The Su-35 flew like a thought.
Then came the test.
---
"Execute Cobra maneuver. Full throttle. Manual override."
Leonid took a deep breath.
He throttled up, pulled back, then slammed the stick forward.
The nose rose.
The jet stood nearly vertical — then arched back over itself before returning to level flight in under three seconds.
No stall.
No sputter.
Just the sound of air cracking past his canopy.
He heard the instructor chuckle.
"Didn't think you'd land it that clean."
Leonid responded flatly, "The jet wanted it."
"Good. Let it want you too."
---
They moved on to simulated dogfight drills.
Radar sweeps. Beyond visual range locks. IR tracking.
The Irbis-E lit up four virtual contacts at 270 kilometers.
He selected two, programmed R-77s for staggered fire, simulated release.
Both targets registered as splashed.
He switched to infrared, toggled close-range seeker mode, pulled into a high-G climb with vectored thrust, flipped into a barrel roll, and marked the tailing fighter with a virtual R-74 lock.
Tone. Fire.
Kill confirmed.
The instructor didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
---
Later, on the ground, Leonid stood beside the jet while the ground crew cooled the engines.
He removed his helmet and ran a gloved hand along the intake cowling, still warm to the touch.
Yuri approached from the service hangar.
"I watched from the tower," he said. "You turned that thing into a damn ballet dancer."
Leonid stared at the fuselage.
"No. It let me dance."
---
The Su-35 phase was fast, brutal, and unforgiving.
Each flight was a stress test.
Each landing a recalibration.
The cadets were trained in electronic counter-countermeasures, anti-AWACS stealth profiles, and ambush evasion through vertical climb breaks.
They learned how to kill drones at 40 kilometers.
How to ghost past NATO-style radar nets.
How to use weather as camouflage.
And every day, Leonid sharpened.
---
One afternoon, he was pulled into a private briefing.
Arsenyev waited inside.
On the screen behind him: footage from Syria, 2016.
A Su-35 climbing over Aleppo.
Engagement with Turkish drones. Close call with Israeli jets.
"That was me," Arsenyev said. "We had no satellite feed. No AWACS. No backup."
He pointed at the screen.
"You're about to train for this. It's called 'contested autonomy.' It's what happens when your command vanishes and you still have a war to fight."
Leonid nodded.
Arsenyev stepped closer.
"You're going to be alone up there, Vostrikov. The air will lie to you. The enemy will hide behind terrain and drone swarms. The battlefield won't wait for your confidence."
Leonid's voice was calm. "I don't need confidence, sir. Just clarity."
Arsenyev paused. "Good. Because the real war's coming."
Leonid stiffened.
Arsenyev nodded toward the screen again.
"Russia's preparing for it."
---
That night, Leonid didn't write in his notebook.
He stared out the barracks window, listening to the faint howl of a Su-30 on night patrol slicing through the clouds above.
Then, finally, he wrote:
"The Su-35 isn't just a machine. It's a challenge."
"It wants a killer with patience. Not pride."
"I will be that pilot."
Then, underneath:
"They're preparing us for war. I'll be ready."
---
Krasnodar Air Base – Late July 2017
Year 2, Week 26 – Su-35 Tactical Finalization
The sun over Krasnodar was sharp now — not warm, but piercing. It reflected off the wings of the parked Su-35s like molten steel, casting jagged streaks of light across the airfield. Heat shimmered off the tarmac, but the academy operated with clinical indifference. The Su-35S stream had entered its final stage: freeform tactical evaluations — unstructured engagements built to strip away rote procedure and reveal the pilot beneath.
Each sortie was unique. The instructors set loose simulated threats, gave vague mission parameters, then watched to see if the cadet survived.
Some didn't.
Not physically, but mentally. One pilot misidentified a civilian airliner as a hostile. Another disobeyed altitude caps and was forced to abort. One cadet panicked during radar jamming and flew himself into simulated ground fire.
They were reassigned.
There were no second chances.
---
Leonid's assignment came via envelope, slipped under his flight manual with a wax seal and a single word typed at the top:
"RAVEN'S TEST."
No briefing. No instructor notes. No time listed.
Just a mission map with coordinates and a launch window:
Takeoff: 03:40
Area: Sector Delta-5 to Sector Juliet-9
Duration: Up to 90 minutes
Underneath, scribbled in black ink:
"No questions. No errors."
---
At 03:00, he stood alone on Runway 4.
Su-35 #74 was prepped in total silence. The ground crew said nothing. They fueled, calibrated, and handed over the board like they were prepping a weapon for a sniper.
Leonid suited up in the dark.
His helmet was sealed. His gloves tight. His heart, steady.
Inside the cockpit, there was no ceremony — just the familiar glow of the HUD, the hum of electrical systems coming to life, and the low rumble of the AL-41F1S engines warming beneath him.
The moment the last green light blinked on, tower control called in:
"RAVEN-ONE, cleared for departure. The sky is yours."
Leonid rolled onto the strip.
Pushed throttle to military power.
Then to afterburner.
The ground fell away beneath him, and he climbed into a sky still painted with stars.
---
0403 Hours – Sector Echo-7
The first phase was silent.
Flat clouds below. Stars above. Leonid flew at 8,000 meters with no radar emissions, cruising dark. Below him, farmland passed in dim outlines. No radio contact. No threats.
Then — a blip.
Very faint.
Trailing him.
Leonid didn't react.
Just glanced at his side monitor.
Unknown aircraft. 60 km. No transponder. Shadowing altitude.
Could be a drone. Could be a simulated adversary.
He eased throttle, dropped 1,000 meters, and drifted off his original route by 15 degrees.
The contact mirrored him.
He toggled his radar to passive pulse.
Three pings.
A match returned.
Fighter class.
Size: similar to Su-27 frame.
No lock.
He keyed a silent countermeasure scan and dove hard beneath the cloud layer.
---
0417 Hours – Sector Golf-8
At treetop level now, his Su-35 streaked through the hills at 800 km/h. He cut a wide arc across a valley, kept throttle modulated just below maximum, and set ECM on standby.
Still no formal engagement.
But the trailing contact had multiplied.
Now there were two.
One at 40 km. One at 55.
Leonid's IRST caught thermal bloom from both.
Engines hot. Banking. Closing.
Simulated ambush.
He smiled tightly.
They'd laid the trap. Now it was his turn.
---
He didn't climb.
He dove even lower, past the tree line, letting the terrain block radar reflection. He toggled his radar warning receiver — nothing yet. The enemy wasn't actively painting him.
He armed his R-77s. Set seeker mode to semi-active.
Waited.
Thirty seconds.
Still nothing.
Then — both enemy radars lit up.
Lock-on beams painted his rear and right flank.
Simultaneous engagement.
---
Leonid pulled up at 40°, broke hard left, throttled to 90%, and pitched into a climbing spiral. The G-force pushed into his chest like a fist, but he didn't flinch. The Su-35 moved with him — not like a machine, but like a partner. A beast that knew what he needed before he said it.
He released one R-77.
No response from enemy.
Then released a second — a decoy shot.
As expected, both contacts banked outward to avoid the threat.
Now split.
Now vulnerable.
Leonid pushed straight up to 11,000 meters, rolled inverted, and dove hard on the closer of the two.
40 km.
30 km.
Lock-on tone screamed.
Fire.
Hit confirmed.
Simulated kill: RAVEN TWO – DOWNED.
Leonid flipped into a barrel roll and turned hard east.
The second contact had regained tracking.
But he was ahead now.
And he knew the valley.
---
He led the second contact on a chase across three ridgelines, staying just outside full lock-on range. He dropped simulated flares. Triggered radar jamming for thirty seconds.
Then went silent.
Pitch-black flying.
No radar.
No HUD.
Just terrain. Wind. Stars.
He bled altitude fast.
Skimmed a riverbend.
Broke through fog.
And popped out directly behind the second contact.
5 km separation.
No maneuver from the enemy.
Leonid flipped radar on.
Immediate lock.
Fire.
Kill confirmed.
---
He returned to base 19 minutes early.
Fuel reserve: 24%.
Ammo: 1 cannon burst remaining.
When he landed, the runway was still empty. No one met him. No instructor. No mechanic. No debrief.
Only silence.
As if it hadn't happened at all.
---
At 0630, a single envelope arrived at his locker.
Inside: a black card with silver lettering.
"Evaluation Passed. Designation Confirmed."
And in bold at the bottom:
CALLSIGN: RAVEN
---
Yuri found him in the mess hall that evening, tray in hand, expression unreadable.
"So, Ghost gets a name."
Leonid raised an eyebrow. "You heard?"
Yuri tapped the collar of his own jumpsuit.
"There's a rumor going around. Something about a solo pilot ghosting two interceptors in the dark."
Leonid sipped his water. "Just training."
Yuri laughed. "Sure. Just training."
He leaned in.
"You know what that name means, right?"
Leonid nodded.
"Ravens don't fly in flocks. They fly alone."
Yuri clapped him on the back.
"Then I guess you're finally yourself."
---
That night, in the quiet of the flight dorm, Leonid opened his notebook one last time for the semester.
He wrote:
"Today, I was alone."
"No comms. No guidance. Only my hands, my thoughts, and the machine."
"I found silence in the chaos."
"And I made it sing."
Then he paused.
And for the first time, beneath his entry, he didn't sign his name.
He signed:
RAVEN.
---