The launch had been a bit bumpy but what would you expect. The space shuttle program had been mothballed for a reason. They were old tech, leaked like a wiki-report and handled like a pig in jello. Still the crew had got the job done. The important thing was that the X-49 was in the air. Out of the air actually. Captain Rollins had taken her  trans-atmospheric almost as soon as Night Raven had cleared the docking clamps. Decades of research and obfuscation had finally culminated in a working prototype of a fighter designed to protect Earth from xeno-incursion.

Jason never understood why they bothered to call them "black boxes" ... the damn things were always orange. Shaking his head he focused once again on the flight data. Fifteen minutes into the pattern and everything held steady as they circumlocated the globe. "Christ this thing is fast. I couldn't travel this fast this close to the planet when I was Rampart." The stealth systems seemed to be online but they were interfering with comms again. "If you boys back in '51' can hear me your oh so pretty hi-tech invisible plane isn't going to make much of a fighter if it can't communicate ... with anybody."

Col. Stephens was momentarily confused by the statement he'd just heard.

"Radiation spike?"

"Yes sir", replied the the young sergeant monitoring a series of screens. "We're picking up a spike in the background radiation along the X-49's designated flight path. The readings are already high, and it looks like they're rising."

While the Col. wasn't one to panic, he was growing concerned. While the ship was designed to take a good dose of radiation, and bring it's pilot safely home, no one was quite sure exactly what the peak levels were.

"Capt., do whatever you need to do to get me some comms with that pilot...now, and get on the horn with NASA and find out what's going on. Ask them why the hell the we're getting readings like this."

With that, there was a curry of activity as lower ranking military personnel hurried to various terminals to try an raise the X-49. Unfortunately the vary radiation they so desperately wanted to warn the young pilot about, was now playing havoc with the craft's communications systems.

As the scene below unfolded, the X-49 continued to accelerate high into the night sky, until it reached its final cruising altitude. But, within seconds of doing so, multiple warning lights began flashing in the pilot's Heads-up Display. A mechanical female voice began to repeat the same message in his helmet's headphones. "Radiation Waring, Radiation Warning". One-by-one, the craft's systems began to shutdown, and the craft began to loose altitude, hurtling back toward the atmosphere at just over 6 times the speed of sound.

TO BE CONTINUED

"Shut ... Up!" Captain Rollins fist slammed down on the digital control console, shattering its glass and plastic pieces. There had been no warning from the 'squints' of the solar flares the had sent out spikes of radiation eight minutes ago. The electromagnetic pulses had played havoc with the craft's modern electronic and computerized controls.  It had just been more than they had been designed to handle.

Dipping back down into the atmosphere, Jason used the last of the X-49's maneuverability to point the nose earthward. The quad-core sensor links still blinked red beneath the shattered touchscreen panel and flames were starting to lick about the craft as Jason fought with the dead stick, struggling to keep it going into a spin. Not since Operation Tartarus had he handled a bird in such bad shape.

Confident his comms were as fried as the rest of the high tech bird's electronics, Jason keyed his mic. "This is Night Raven. Base tell Quantam Tech the radiation shielding needs an upgrade ... yesterday. Better yet I'll meet them in the parking lot, I'll tell them myself." The heat starts to build as he burns deeper into the atmosphere. Sweat beading down his brow as he attempted to re-engage the maneuvering systems, Jason didn't even notice when his pupils started to flow a fiery orange.

The good news ... the nose was still pointed down.

The bad news ... it sounded like the starboard wing was starting to sheer apart from the Raven's fuselage.