EPISODE TWO: THE JEWEL OF SUMATRA

[max_vale]

Mid afternoon, September 30th, Skies over the southern Phillipine Islands and the South China Sea



Nikolai opens up with his 20mm cannons at the last pirate I-16 and grins as he sees his shells tear into the stubby little fighter's fuselage, causing it to lurch about and begin to smoke heavily. The pirate plane makes a wobbling, tight roll and dodges the rest of Klokov's fire, but inadvertenly ends up in Jean-Claude's sights….

Murdoch manages to slowly coax his crippled Fury back towards the Stormcloud; calling over the radio as he does so; just to ensure any gunners with itchy trigger fingers don't finish the job the pirates started. He can see that one of the Engine nacelles and attached guns is smoking heavily and seems pretty badly wrecked, but no other damage is visible to him. He sees the landing by doors open up and the gantry crane is lowered. He manually cranks up the folding landing hook attached to his plane's fuselage until it rises up straight at 90 degrees, right above his canopy. He then carefully maneuvers his shot-up plane until he catches the gantry crane with his hook and the Zep's crew take over from there. His plane is quickly lifted up and into the cavernous hanagar bay of the air-ship; and several mechanics are already waiting to get to work on his plane…

Jean-Claude sees the smoking I-16 turn out of Klokov's line of fire and move right towards him. He shifts his Devastator around a bit and opens up with his quad .50 calibers; quickly finishing the job his wingmate had started. Scanning the skies, he sees no signs of any more pirate aircraft, so he radios Nikolai and the Zeppelin that they are returning to base. Soon, both planes were at rest in the hangar bay and they could see Murdoch and Che's planes being worked over by mechanics.

They went to see Squadron Leader Chalifoux and Captain Fritz Wolff to give them thier report about the pirate dogfights. Despite staying on constant vigil over the next two days; no more encounters with pirates or ANY other aircraft occurred. In the late afternoon of October 2nd, they sailed into Sumatran skies and after mooring at an airfield near the city of Padang, Chalifoux soon summoned Oulette, Klokov and Murdoch to his cabin.

"Gentlemen, as you know, Gunner Hendricks is still in bad shape after that rocket hit, so I'm going to need Curador to stay on board with Docs Lewis and Carrol to do thier best to keep him alive. That means you 3 are going to be down a member in your flight for now, nothing I can do about that. Also, I'm going to send you 3 to this 'Tiger Bar' to find this 'Rick' and see what he knows about this 'Jewel of Sumatra' buisness. I've never been here, but I've heard this city can be a rough place. Lots of pirates, mercenaries, smugglers and the like are here, so be on your guard. Meet back here either late tonight or early tomorrow, depending on how things go. Do NOT think of this as a great opportunity to just get drunk and into trouble! Be careful out there, and good luck boys."

[kipper]

"Do NOT think of this as a great opportunity to just get drunk and into trouble! Be careful out there, and good luck boys."

"Qui, moi?" Murdoch replies with a grin.