Some how I said I would post a story for today. It's kind of rough and straight off the keyboard but it should be readable.

Test Flight

Jasper six rotated off the runway and headed for the test area. A few final words with the control tower and Jake flipped the master stealth switch. From now on he would be as invisible to radar, infrared, and visible sensors as could be. The ground radars and a flight of f35’s would start a search in half an hour. He had that much time to loose himself in the foot hills that rose above the salt flats of the secret base known as Area 51.

Jake looked up to the display that replaced the usual plexiglass dome. That was too had to stealth and until he opened the cockpit he could only see what was shown on the screens. He scanned his systems and verified that LEDs were projecting the proper views. From the bottom he would look like sky and from the top like the salt flats. As he entered the valleys that changed to a mottled brown and dull green of the scrub bushes he few over.

The forward IR sensor showed a large heat source directly ahead. Probably a flock of birds he thought but turned on the video camera to verify. A large green object appeared as the proximity alarms went off. A large flame bathe his plane as he pulled the stick hard to the left. The engine alarms went off as they flamed out. He had about ten minutes of battery before the electronics stopped and he would have to bailout.

He turned toward the salt flats and started the emergency landing checklist. The computer was shutting down the less essential systems to conserve power as he lowered the landing gear and rolled to a stop.

He released the canopy locks and pushed it up. A large green head looked at him from a few feet away.

"Are you OK?" he heard in his head. The head scanned the plane and nodded. "This is new. I couldn’t sense any of your electronics or feel your heat. This is going to cause some problems."

"What are you? How did you bring down this ship?"

"I’m a dragon of course. Sorry about that. You came up on me so fast and I couldn’t sense you. I gave a reflex blast of fire and I think it knocked out your engine."

‘Dragons don’t exist," was all Jake could say.

"But we do. Usually we hide. It’s quite easy. The telepathic was I’m talking to you can be done on a visual level too." The dragon faded and all Jake could see was a shimmer similar to all the other heat waves rising from the desert floor. "The question now is what to do with you. I’d rather not eat you. That would be rude. But we can’t really let you go with any evidence that we exist."

"Eat me. What evidence?"

"I’m sure your plane has a recording what its sensors saw."

"It didn’t see anything. I thought you were a flock of birds and when I turned on the video I saw a green blob and the flash of the fire ball. Do you think I’ll tell anyone I saw a dragon. I’ll be in psych evaluation for the rest of my life. Here I’ll show you what the sensors have recorded." Jake reset the display and ran the sensor data from when he detected the heat source. The brief view of the dragon was too blurred to make out any details.

"Looks OK. Guess I don’t have to eat you. Be on your way and we’ll call it on harm on foul."

"I can’t start the plane here. It needs some ground equipment to get going. And there a some F35s looking for me."

"Those guys. They’re about twenty miles north west. Don’t worry to them we look like the desert." The dragon looked into the engine. "Simple enough. Turn the fuel feed on."

Jake did as requested. The dragon puffed up and blew a fire ball into the engine intake. The turbines spun and a flame came from the rear. "There you go. I’ll be following you to learn more about you new tech. We can’t have a repeat of today. And those F35s, two are up high as bait and the third is loitering in a valley. Have a nice day."

The dragon shimmered and was gone. Jake lowered the canopy and began a takeoff roll. Pilots felt most at ease when in the air. He headed north and would come up on the F35s from the east. Every now and then his sensors would show a heat object behind or off to one side. Each detection was weaker than the last.

The F35s were going to be easy. The hard part would be explaining to the crew chief why he had salt chunks in the tires.

The End