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"There they are," called out the lookout. "Two Dagger 1-C., incoming."


The pilots requested clearance for landing. They had both gone on a relatively long patrol flight, flying a radius of 300 kilometers from the carrier to search for possible contacts – ships, sub periscopes, and other airplanes. The landing signal officer, a naval aviator himself and who would much rather be flying, stood at port aft with his wavers in hand and began to signal to the pilots, giving the signals to inform him whether or not he was doing the approach properly. The pilot had lowered his landing gear and arrestor cable to make the final approach, his flaps in landing position as he glided the plane down smoothly and gracefully. The LSO waving to tell him to continue on his current course, in a matter of moments the plane had touched down, bouncing slightly as the arrestor caught the wires and forced the plane the stop. The engine ran on low power as some deck hands came to help the plane taxi out of the way for the next landing.


By the time it was out of the way, the other plane was already coming around to land, having been radioed and the LSO once again ready to assist in the landing. After a few minutes, the plane had come down towards the deck, with the arrestor catching the third cable on deck and soon came to halt as the deck hands moved to move the planes towards the elevators and bring them down to the hangar bays.

The elevators were very large, comparable to the size of a tennis court – and at one particularly quiet time, where actually used as such – and the planes were brought down. Afterwards, the flight leader, Junior Lieutenant Jalkon, climbed out of his fighter and walked over to his wingman's plane. "Hey Ekove," he called out as he lifted his goggles and began to untie his flight helm. "How's it going with you, got sick of carrier landings yet?" He smiled a bit as he asked, ignoring whatever response he might have gotten as he made his way to Ekove's plane.


The young Kahrie pilot, fresh from training. He completed the whole thing in record time due to his shortened flight training, indoctrination and commission time—the Ledornese Navy already knew of his skills and took advantage of it. Ekove was now just over 17 years of age, already the youngest champion civilian pilot, and now the youngest military aviator in service. As per the law, his age was the bare minimum to be sent into combat. "Nah, you should trying walking on your wing during a rough ground landing," said Ekove as he got down from the cockpit, leaping on the wing with all his natural feline agility and finishing it off with a hop to the ground,

"You wish," responded his wingman with a slight hint of sarcasm in his voice. "Remember that second time you tried landing, you bounced three times before coming to a stop. The Captain expected the plane to break to pieces..." He paused for a moment as Ekove rolled his eyes and smiled with interest. "You even had the LSO running for his life."

Shrugging innocently, Ekove simply said.