The cockpit of the Ghost Bat was a bubble of silence, thick black glass offering a panoramic view of the world below. Angus Hamilton watched the Somme unroll beneath him, a scarred canvas of mud and shell-holes, pockmarked with the geometry of trenches. It stretched, desolate and unforgiving, towards the distant, hazy line of the Western Front. Three specks of crimson and black, like angry wasps, rose lazily from a makeshift aerodrome nestled behind the German lines. Fokker Dr.Is. Beautiful, deadly, and hopelessly outmatched. His gloved hand tightened fractionally on the flight stick, the smooth, cool polymer a stark contrast to the riveted metal and varnished wood of the enemy machines. No vibration hummed through the frame; the Ghost Bat moved through the air with an almost unnatural stillness, its twin pulsejets a whisper compared to the roar of a rotary engine. He was a ghost in the sky, a phantom of a war yet to come, and the solitude pressed in on him, a familiar weight. Angus leaned forward, the heads-up display shimmering to life on his visor. A grid superimposed itself over the Fokkers, tiny target reticles snapping into place. The lead Dr.I, its pilot undoubtedly oblivious, pulled a gentle climbing turn, the sun glinting off its propeller. Angus knew the man in that cockpit thought himself a hunter, stalking the skies in the most advanced fighter of his age. The irony was a bitter taste in Angus’s mouth. He watched the Fokker climb, calculating its vector, its airspeed, its probable intentions. The Ghost Bat’s systems did the heavy lifting, of course, processing data at light speed, but Angus still felt the old hunter’s instinct stir. It was a cold, clinical thrill, divorced from the raw adrenaline that must have pumped through the veins of every other pilot in this miserable conflict. His heart rate remained steady, a practiced calm that had become his default. His finger hovered over the firing stud. One quick burst, and the canvas wings would shred. The pilot would never know what hit him. He preferred it that way. No prolonged suffering, no desperate struggle. Just a sudden, violent end, swallowed by the vast, indifferent sky. He had seen too much struggle already. Too much hope extinguished in a final, agonizing gasp. This was the only way he knew how to fight it now: with overwhelming, unanswerable force. The targets glowed green. A soft chime echoed in his helmet. Acquisition complete. He was ready. --- Angus squeezed the trigger. The Ghost Bat shuddered, a barely perceptible tremor, as its wing-mounted particle cannons spat their devastating volley. Not the stuttering cough of machine guns, but twin streams of incandescent energy, silent and terrifyingly precise. They tore through the sky, faster than any bullet, converging on the formation of crimson biplanes with surgical intent. The lead Fokker exploded. Not a gradual tearing, but a sudden, violent blossoming of fire and shrapnel, a bright, brief star against the pale blue. Its pilot had been mid-turn, the sunlight still dancing on his wings, when the world simply ceased to be. The other two Fokkers, caught completely unawares, jerked erratically, their pilots reacting to the impossible, instantaneous destruction of their comrade. One of the remaining Dr.Is, piloted by instinct more than reason, plunged into a steep, uncontrolled dive. The other tried a desperate banking turn, its rotary engine sputtering as the pilot wrestled with the stick. His advanced targeting system re-calibrated instantly, painting the diving Fokker with a fresh reticle. Another, shorter burst of energy lanced out. It struck the biplane’s upper wing, ripping through the fabric and wooden spars as if they were made of tissue paper. A large section tore away, flapping uselessly, and the Fokker began to spin, an uncontrolled spiral towards the churned earth. Angus watched it go, a plummeting toy, already moving on to the final enemy. The last Dr.I was a blur of crimson, its pilot fighting valiantly, trying to bring his guns to bear. He was too slow, too predictable. Angus banked the Ghost Bat with a casual flick of his wrist, the jet’s superior aerodynamics making the Fokker seem like a stone tethered to a string. The heads-up display highlighted the enemy, a perfect, glowing crosshair on the cockpit. Another squeeze. The particle stream punched clean through the engine cowling, erupting from the rear of the plane in a shower of sparks. The Fokker’s propeller instantly seized, then snapped off entirely, spinning away into the distance. Black smoke billowed from the engine compartment, followed quickly by orange flames. The biplane, now a burning hulk, began its final, majestic descent. Three enemy fighters, gone in less than a minute. Angus pulled the Ghost Bat into a high, graceful climb, leaving the scattered debris and burning wrecks behind him. The sky was clear once more. The efficiency of it was brutal, beautiful even, in its own way. He was a predator in a realm where no other creature possessed teeth or claws remotely like his own. The silence in his cockpit was absolute, broken only by the steady rhythm of his own breathing. --- The third Fokker plunged, a screaming torch, into the muddy fields below. A brief, muffled thud reached Angus even at this altitude, swallowed quickly by the vastness. It was a sound he knew too well, a punctuation mark at the end of every engagement. He watched the black smoke plume rise, a grim flag hoisted over the battle-scarred earth. Another three lives extinguished, another three families who would never again see their sons or brothers. He was too fast for them. His Ghost Bat was too agile, its weapons too potent. They fought with canvas and wire, with courage and antiquated machine guns, while he wielded the future. It was not a fair fight. It never was. That was the point. That was the only way he knew how to shorten the endless lines of graves that stretched from the Channel to the Alps. One of the downed Fokkers had attempted a desperate Immelmann turn, a maneuver of pure skill and daring. The pilot had fought, truly fought, trying to get on Angus’s tail, to bring his twin Spandau machine guns to bear. It had been a fleeting moment, a ghost of a challenge, quickly snuffed out by a burst from the particle cannons that vaporized the rudder. Angus felt nothing but a cold acknowledgment of the man’s bravery, a detached respect for a worthy, if doomed, opponent. The aerial ballet, if it could even be called that, was always the same. He arrived, a shadow. He struck, a lightning bolt. They fell, like leaves in an autumn gale. There was no real dogfight, no prolonged dance of skill and nerve. Just brutal, immediate obliteration. He was not a pilot in this war; he was an executioner. His gaze swept the empty sky, searching for any other sign of life, of resistance. Nothing. Just the vast, empty blue and the churned earth below. He always checked, always made sure. No stragglers. No witnesses to the impossible machine that carved through the clouds with such devastating ease. He was a secret, a weapon wielded in the dark, and he had to remain so. The silence of the cockpit settled around him, a heavy shroud. He began a wide, slow circle over the area, his eyes scanning the ground for any movement, any flicker of activity. The smell of distant cordite and burning wood lingered faintly, a ghost of the carnage he had wrought. It would dissipate soon, leaving only the memory, etched into the broken landscape and into his own unquiet mind. --- Angus eased back on the stick, pulling the Ghost Bat into a gentle, cruising altitude, its pulsejets barely audible. The silence in the cockpit was absolute, broken only by the faint hiss of the oxygen circulating through his helmet. He detached his left hand from the controls, his fingers finding the cool, tarnished brass of the locket hanging from a chain around his neck. It was warm from his skin. His thumb traced the worn engraving: a faint, almost illegible 'T.H.' The metal felt heavy, a tangible anchor to a memory he tried, and failed, to outrun. He stared out at the indifferent sky, but his vision was inward, replaying the scene that haunted his waking hours and his nightmares. Tommy’s face, pale and streaked with mud, his breath rattling in his chest. The smell of antiseptic, blood, and fear in the aid station dugout. The distant boom of artillery. Angus had held his younger brother’s hand, the familiar warmth already fading, his skin chilling even as Angus clutched him tighter. Tommy’s eyes, wide and terrified, had sought his. “Angus…” The whisper had been thin, reedy, barely audible above the distant rumble. “You’ll… you’ll make it stop, won’t you? You always make it better.” He hadn’t. He couldn’t. Tommy had died in his arms, the last flicker of life leaving his eyes as Angus murmured meaningless reassurances. He remembered the feeling of his brother’s hand going limp, the shocking finality of it. The guilt, sharp and raw, had been a physical blow. He’d promised Tommy the world, promised him safety, promised him a future free of this hell. And he’d failed. The locket was cold now, even through his glove. Every sortie, every kill, every single time he brought the Ghost Bat’s impossible power to bear, it was for Tommy. To make it stop. To end this godforsaken war, even if it meant becoming a monster, a ghost in the machine. He was already isolated, a pariah among his own, the secret of his craft a wall between him and every other living soul. He had to be cold. He had to be efficient. There was no room for hesitation, no space for the warm, human emotions that had died with Tommy in that muddy dugout. The crushing weight of that promise, unfulfilled, drove him. It was a silent scream, echoing in the quiet of his cockpit, pushing him further into the impossible, the unforgivable. He would end this war, no matter the cost to his soul. He would not fail Tommy again. --- Angus took a slow, deliberate breath, the memory of Tommy still sharp, a fresh cut. He released the locket, letting it fall back beneath his flight suit. His gaze swept over the Ghost Bat’s instrument panel, a constellation of glowing dials and digital readouts that would have been alien to any man living in 1917. Everything was nominal. Fuel, oxygen, weapons systems – all in the green. He was alone in the vast blue expanse, a silent sentinel of the sky. Then, a flicker. A faint, almost imperceptible blip on the edge of his advanced radar display, tucked into the lower right corner of his visor. It was small, indistinct, but definitely there. His eyebrows furrowed. German reconnaissance flights sometimes strayed far, but they were lumbering Albatros or Rumpler biplanes. Their signatures were unmistakable, slow-moving, heavy. This was different. The blip solidified, growing slightly larger, and its trajectory became clear. It was moving, fast. Faster than anything he should encounter. Angus zoomed the radar display, isolating the contact. The Ghost Bat’s systems, designed to identify and categorize every known aircraft signature from the early 20th century, churned, trying to make sense of the anomaly. No match found. The words flashed, small and stark, in the corner of his eye. His grip tightened on the stick once more. This wasn't right. It wasn't just fast; the signature itself was… clean. Too clean. It lacked the erratic noise of a piston engine, the distinct profile of propellers or fabric wings. It was a pure, tight point of light, indicating a sleek, unburdened craft, cutting through the air with minimal drag. A chill snaked down his spine. He initiated a passive scan, pushing the Ghost Bat’s advanced sensors to their limit. The blip grew brighter, its speed accelerating at an impossible rate. The distance readout began to drop rapidly. This wasn't just another biplane. It was something else entirely. Something he had never seen, never anticipated, not even in the future he had left behind. The blip was no longer on the edge of his display. It was centered, filling the screen, its rapid approach alarming. Angus instinctively pushed the throttle forward, the Ghost Bat responding with a surge of power. He banked hard, trying to gain altitude, to get a visual. His radar flickered again, a momentary distortion, then the blip intensified, a new, stronger signal emerging from the swirling clouds, moving with impossible speed directly towards him. f it could even be called that, was always the same. He arrived, a shadow. He struck, a lightning bolt. They fell, like leaves in an autumn gale. There was no real dogfight, no prolonged dance of skill and nerve. Just brutal, immediate obliteration. He was not a pilot in this war; he was an executioner.His gaze swept the empty sky, searching for any other sign of life, of resistance. Nothing. Just the vast, empty blue and the churned earth below. He always checked, always made sure. No stragglers. No witnesses to the impossible machine that carved through the clouds with such devastating ease. He was a secret, a weapon wielded in the dark, and he had to remain so.The silence of the cockpit settled around him, a heavy shroud. He began a wide, slow circle over the area, his eyes scanning the ground for any movement, any flicker of activity. The smell of distant cordite and burning wood lingered faintly, a ghost of the carnage he had wrought. It would dissipate soon, leaving only the memory, etched into the broken landscape and into his own unquiet mind.---Angus eased back on the stick, pulling the Ghost Bat into a gentle, cruising altitude, its pulsejets barely audible. The silence in the cockpit was absolute, broken only by the faint hiss of the oxygen circulating through his helmet. He detached his left hand from the controls, his fingers finding the cool, tarnished brass of the locket hanging from a chain around his neck. It was warm from his skin.His thumb traced the worn engraving: a faint, almost illegible 'T.H.' The metal felt heavy, a tangible anchor to a memory he tried, and failed, to outrun. He stared out at the indifferent sky, but his vision was inward, replaying the scene that haunted his waking hours and his nightmares.Tommy’s face, pale and streaked with mud, his breath rattling in his chest. The smell of antiseptic, blood, and fear in the aid station dugout. The distant boom of artillery. Angus had held his younger brother’s hand, the familiar warmth already fading, his skin chilling even as Angus clutched him tighter. Tommy’s eyes, wide and terrified, had sought his.“Angus…” The whisper had been thin, reedy, barely audible above the distant rumble. “You’ll… you’ll make it stop, won’t you? You always make it better.”He hadn’t. He couldn’t. Tommy had died in his arms, the last flicker of life leaving his eyes as Angus murmured meaningless reassurances. He remembered the feeling of his brother’s hand going limp, the shocking finality of it. The guilt, sharp and raw, had been a physical blow. He’d promised Tommy the world, promised him safety, promised him a future free of this hell. And he’d failed.The locket was cold now, even through his glove. Every sortie, every kill, every single time he brought the Ghost Bat’s impossible power to bear, it was for Tommy. To make it stop. To end this godforsaken war, even if it meant becoming a monster, a ghost in the machine. He was already isolated, a pariah among his own, the secret of his craft a wall between him and every other living soul.He had to be cold. He had to be efficient. There was no room for hesitation, no space for the warm, human emotions that had died with Tommy in that muddy dugout. The crushing weight of that promise, unfulfilled, drove him. It was a silent scream, echoing in the quiet of his cockpit, pushing him further into the impossible, the unforgivable. He would end this war, no matter the cost to his soul. He would not fail Tommy again.---Angus took a slow, deliberate breath, the memory of Tommy still sharp, a fresh cut. He released the locket, letting it fall back beneath his flight suit. His gaze swept over the Ghost Bat’s instrument panel, a constellation of glowing dials and digital readouts that would have been alien to any man living in 1917. Everything was nominal. Fuel, oxygen, weapons systems – all in the green. He was alone in the vast blue expanse, a silent sentinel of the sky.Then, a flicker. A faint, almost imperceptible blip on the edge of his advanced radar display, tucked into the lower right corner of his visor. It was small, indistinct, but definitely there. His eyebrows furrowed. German reconnaissance flights sometimes strayed far, but they were lumbering Albatros or Rumpler biplanes. Their signatures were unmistakable, slow-moving, heavy. This was different.The blip solidified, growing slightly larger, and its trajectory became clear. It was moving, fast. Faster than anything he should encounter. Angus zoomed the radar display, isolating the contact. The Ghost Bat’s systems, designed to identify and categorize every known aircraft signature from the early 20th century, churned, trying to make sense of the anomaly. No match found. The words flashed, small and stark, in the corner of his eye.His grip tightened on the stick once more. This wasn't right. It wasn't just fast; the signature itself was… clean. Too clean. It lacked the erratic noise of a piston engine, the distinct profile of propellers or fabric wings. It was a pure, tight point of light, indicating a sleek, unburdened craft, cutting through the air with minimal drag. A chill snaked down his spine.He initiated a passive scan, pushing the Ghost Bat’s advanced sensors to their limit. The blip grew brighter, its speed accelerating at an impossible rate. The distance readout began to drop rapidly. This wasn't just another biplane. It was something else entirely. Something he had never seen, never anticipated, not even in the future he had left behind.The blip was no longer on the edge of his display. It was centered, filling the screen, its rapid approach alarming. Angus instinctively pushed the throttle forward, the Ghost Bat responding with a surge of power. He banked hard, trying to gain altitude, to get a visual. His radar flickered again, a momentary distortion, then the blip intensified, a new, stronger signal emerging from the swirling clouds, moving with impossible speed directly towards him.The unknown signal rapidly materialised out of the grey haze of a distant cloud bank. It wasn’t one aircraft, but a tight formation of them, perhaps seven or eight, their dark shapes emerging from the gloom like predatory insects. Not the lumbering reconnaissance craft he had been expecting. These were fighters. Albatros D.Vs, by the looks of their wing shape, but they were flying with an unnerving precision, a coordinated aggression that felt new. And fast. Much faster than any standard Albatros.Angus’s training kicked in, a cold clarity overriding the flicker of surprise. This was an ambush. The single blip had been a lure, drawing him in. He didn't hesitate. The Ghost Bat’s advanced targeting systems locked onto the lead plane even as it began to break formation, peeling away for an attack run. A warning flashed in his visor: "Incoming. Lead hostile acquiring lock."He didn't wait. His right thumb slammed down on the weapon activation button. Twin beams of emerald energy lanced out from beneath the Ghost Bat's wings, cutting through the thin air. They moved with impossible speed, a silent, deadly precision that defied the laws of aerodynamics. The lead Albatros, a split second into its dive, didn't stand a chance. The beams tore through its upper wing, then its fuselage, igniting the fuel tank in a spectacular blossom of orange flame and black smoke. Shrapnel spun outwards, glinting in the pale sunlight, before being swallowed by the wind.The other German pilots, momentarily stunned by the instantaneous destruction of their leader, faltered. This was not the dogfight they had been trained for, the intricate dance of turns and dives. This was an execution. Angus rolled the Ghost Bat hard to the left, pulling into a tight, almost impossible loop that put him directly behind a second Albatros. Its pilot, still reeling from the shock, tried a desperate corkscrew manoeuvre.It was useless. The Ghost Bat’s pulsejets screamed, pushing the craft to speeds that blurred the world outside the cockpit. Angus’s targeting computer predicted the Albatros’s every move before it even happened. A quick burst of autocannon fire, not the energy beams, ripped through the German plane's tail assembly. The fabric tore, wood splintered, and the Albatros spun out of control, a broken toy tumbling earthward, its pilot’s screams unheard above the rush of air.He was a blur in the sky, a phantom of destruction. The German formation, once so disciplined, was now in utter disarray. Two more Albatros fighters tried to converge on him, their twin Spandau machine guns spitting streams of tracer fire. The rounds zipped past, harmlessly deflected by the Ghost Bat’s shimmering energy shield, a silent, invisible barrier that absorbed the puny attacks. Angus simply laughed, a short, sharp bark of exhilaration and grim satisfaction. They couldn’t touch him.He was already past them, twisting, turning, anticipating. His eyes, amplified by his visor, saw every detail: the grimaces on the pilots' faces, the frantic movements in their cockpits. He saw the fear. That was the point. Not just to kill, but to terrify. To break their will.A third Albatros, painted with a distinctive black cross on its fuselage, attempted a desperate climb, hoping to gain an advantage from the sun. Angus was already there. Two short-range air-to-air missiles, sleek and silent, detached from the Ghost Bat’s underbelly. Their small rocket motors ignited with a puff of white smoke, propelling them towards their target with unerring accuracy. They struck the Albatros simultaneously, one in each wing root, tearing the wings clean off. The fuselage, a headless, wingless cylinder, plunged towards the ground, leaving a trail of dark oil and mangled metal.The remaining four German planes scattered, breaking formation completely. Their coordinated attack had evaporated into a desperate flight for survival. Angus chased, relentless. He locked onto another, unleashing a concentrated beam of energy that vaporized the cockpit in a flash of blinding light. The plane continued its trajectory for a moment, an empty shell, before gravity asserted itself and it plummeted.One pilot, a young man by the look of him, his face pale and contorted in horror, tried to bail out. Angus watched him scramble onto the wing, fumbling with his parachute harness. For a fraction of a second, a flicker of something human, something like pity, tried to surface. He suppressed it. Tommy. The promise.He let the man go. Not out of mercy, but out of a calculated cruelty. Let him tell his superiors. Let him spread the terror. He wouldn't risk letting the others escape, though. He pursued the last two, his systems humming with deadly efficiency. A quick pass, another energy burst, and one Albatros spiralled, trailing smoke, before exploding in a spectacular fireball against the backdrop of the clouds.The final plane, its pilot clearly broken, simply pulled up into a steep, desperate climb, a futile gesture of defiance or despair. Angus didn't even need to engage fully. A single, perfectly aimed pulse from his primary weapon, a focused concussive blast, struck the Albatros’s engine. The propeller froze mid-spin, then snapped clean off. The plane shuddered, stalled, and began to fall, an uncontrolled descent into the churning landscape below.Angus pulled back on the stick, the Ghost Bat soaring upward, away from the wreckage and the burning plumes. Below, the scattered debris and spreading fires were the only markers of the brief, brutal encounter. Seven German planes. All gone. In less than three minutes. The air still carried the faint, metallic tang of ozone from his weapons, mixed with the acrid scent of aviation fuel and burning wood. He surveyed the empty sky once more, a silent, deadly predator that had cleansed its territory. The cold, efficient satisfaction settled over him. It was done. But the initial surprise of that 'new signal,' that strangely coordinated attack, lingered. It felt different. It felt… personal.

Scarlet Skies, Silent Scream