The Black Widow

In the closing years of the 21st century, as the world began to rebuild from the devastation of the third world war. Alex Kincaid's company, Starlite, which had begun as small startup building advanced, cybernetic prosthetic limbs for wounded soldiers in his garage quickly blossomed into an international robotics company building everything from prosthetic limbs for kids to full-scale combat droids for the military. 

The extreme success made Alex one of the wealthiest men in the world. But all the money in the universe couldn't prevent the argument he had with his son "CJ" that one faithful night. No amount of money could stop him from rushing out into the road, or delay the mail truck that took his life. What it could do though, what only Alex could do was use his knowledge of the human brain, and computers. Along with a few highly detailed scans of his sons brain to in theory, resurrect him digitally.

Now, this ultimately failed. Alex was not able to save his biological son, but still refused to give up. Believing he could actually make something better. Right or wrong, he threw himself into this project for over a decade. And when it was settled. The being he created looked very much like his son, even shared a few basic mannerisms, but wasn't by any stretch the same person. He was a computer emulation of a human mind, running inside the chassis of a heavily modified combat droid.

He could feel, he could think, and imagine abstract concepts. Alex did such an impressive job that he even felt hunger when he had no means to eat. So over the first year of his existence, the new CJ stayed hidden away with Alex on his property in northern Texas. However, with a computer as a brain. CJ grew mentally much faster than Alex had anticipated, and before he was a full year old, CJ was finding ways to sneak out and explore the town.

Eventually, the world would find out what Alex had built, and the reactions were mixed to say the least. Some were willing to fly around the world just for a chance to speak to him in person, which CJ absolutely hated and would do anything he could within reason to avoid.   

Others were indifferent, more concerned with their own lives than a story about an android from the desert; CJ liked these people because they left him alone, or at the very least didn't always want to talk about him. And others would take pot-shots at him any chance they got. Thankfully, only a few ever got the chance as Alex's security was top-notch.

None of the rounds ever actually hit him, though it wouldn't have mattered much if they had. Starlite TCR-9 Combat Avatars, the chassis to which CJ was built on are designed to withstand direct hits in critical areas from Mk-211 Roufus armor-piercing high-explosive incendiary rounds from a .50 caliber rifle and keep operating. The data-core itself, or rather the case it's protected can, in theory withstand a small nuclear detonation. This was not a stock feature on the military version by any means.

Alex went all-out to make sure the new CJ would be as un-killable as possible so the squirrel guns and pea-shooters the crazies were firing at him wouldn't even have broken the skin. Which itself is a graphene-reinforced silicon composite that's both cut resistant and NIJ Level III rated. on top of being rapidly self-repairing. Meaning it will stop most handgun rounds. To say CJ is a walking, talking piece of power-armor is not an understatement. 

That didn't mean getting shot felt good, or was something he could just brush off though, as CJ first found out during his stint in the Marine Corps. When dragging a wounded Marine to cover, CJ was hit by a 5.45 round in the upper left hip. The bullet stopped against his subdermal armor, but mushroomed out under his skin. Not knowing what else to do, he and his fellow Marines decided the best thing to do would be grab plyers and rip it out. So they did. 

CJ later said it hurt so bad he couldn't physically scream, and the next he knew, he was waking up back in their armored vehicle a few minutes later. By the time their convoy got back to base, the only sign he'd been his was a small amount of discoloration around the impact point. 

CJ probably would have stayed in the Marine Corps longer, however the death of his best friend and spotter, Jimmy changed his mind and he did not reenlist. Instead, he went home to Texas and not long after. The newly founded Starlite Aerospace division broke ground on their first major facility in the Texas desert.

The facility was quite large, with a dozen large construction hangers, each could accommodate two, full sized jets at a time. All built in a circle with a posh courtyard in the center and a large runway built directly behind the facility with access roads for customer jets to be tractor'd up to any of the hangers, except one.

Most of these hangers worked on outfitting existing aircraft with specialty components, mostly converting passenger jets to areal hospitals with built in robotic medical instruments to suit the customers needs. They also did some other work suck as with search and rescue aircraft as well as some military contracts. These hangers were, more or less open to public view and anyone could pretty easily see what was goin on inside aside from the two where military aircraft were being worked on. They were often closed off. 

There was only one that's doors were never open and no one knew what was going on inside. Interested parties who watched the site would note that no one had entered, or left the hanger in well over a year at one point. The hanger also had a large, and morbid mural of a coyote feeding on a carcass.

There was also a 2x6 board hung from the door frame with the word " Coyotelab" crudely hand-painted on it. 
The crude sign was eventually replaced with a laser-cut metal one. But that was the only change anyone noted on the building itself for over five years. 

In that time, the number of a black triangle UFO in the skies over the the North American deserts rose dramatically. A few did guess correctly very early on that Starlite was working on some sort of black-project aircraft and that the mural was a direct jab at a competitor. The world, however largely just laughed it off as another conspiracy theory. 
 
Then in the early spring of 2087. CJ would post a video online. The video was hand filmed, clearly shot from a cell phone. It showed a dark room with the silhouette of a strange, triangular aircraft back-lit with bright, white spotlights. The craft than makes a sudden and near instant leap about 2 meters into the air before gently touching back down in what look like conventional landing gear with no wheels on them. The camera tracks it calmly the entire time, then just cuts out.

The only included one thing with the video, a link to their website where a page had been set-up. When you clicked it, it would firs take you to an all white page with the words "Black Widow" written in black and red letters. That would them dim, and the screen would change, showing the same backlit image of the hovering craft. Once the page was done playing it's animation. A countdown timer would appear. At the time the video was posted, the timer had 22 days, 14 hours, 19 minutes on it.

When the clock hit zero across the board. The site automatically refreshed and what amounted to little more than another teaser played. This one however showing much more of the aircraft, which wasn't even really a fair discretion of this vehicle. It could fly, it could dive into the sea, it could go to space, it made no noise, produced no radiation, and defied all known laws of physics as they were then known.

Many were expecting something akin to a 7th gen fighter jet, but instead Humanity had just been introduced to the Starlite Aerospace X-8 Black Widow, or as it would come to be known, the first generation starfighter. Powered by a single fusion reactor and propelled by a Moscovium-to-Livermorium positron induced electro-gravitic drive core. 

Or in simple terms, she floats inside an artificial gravity field. When inside the field, neither the pilot or the airframe are subject to G-forces, meaning the X-8 could turn on a dime at mach-5 or go from 800,000 feet to 80 feet in a matter of seconds. They could carry any weapon that was currently in service at the time within their two payload bays, and came with 650kW point-defense laser emitters on each wing tip, and twin 30mm cannons in the nose, which were eventually replaced with 3mm hypervelocity rotary railguns. 

The technology also proved exceptionally reliable and robust. The first flight model clocking well over 5-million kilometers traveled with very little maintenance before it was lost in a mid-air collision. CJ and another test pilot were out flying the planes over the North Atlantic as part of a Navy test when the test pilot misjudged the distance between the two craft. His plane sliced CJs plane just about clean in two, severing the entire nose of CJs plane and sending it tumbling through the air.

In a freak turn of events, an injury CJ had sustained to his back during his time in the Marines but was unaware of. What amounted to little more than a loose hard drive cable came undone in the impact, rendering CJ as good as dead in the cockpit. Thankfully, the Black Widow had BCIs (Brain Computer Interface) to help the pilot maneuver such a powerful and capable aircraft.

The computer on CJs plane determined he was incapacitated and the plane could not be saved, and it activated the jettison sequence, punching the entire cockpit section away from the doomed aircraft which crashed into the ocean with a tremendous splash. 

CJ was recovered, still strapped in his seat a few hours later by a navy warship and was immediately flown back to Texas. Where upon being repaired and reactivated, the first thing he asked was if his friend was OK. The other pilot was able to punch-out safely but he was so ashamed of what he'd done and the foolish mistake he made that never flew a combat aircraft again. Even though CJ was more than willing to put him right back in the next one they built. 

Despite the accident, it didn't take long before the X-8 go into production as the Starlite Aerospace S-8 Black Widow starfighter, which would go into service with the newly formed United Earth Stellar Navy in 2099. Designed simply as the F-8 Black Widow. Making every other fighter aircraft on earth hopelessly obsolete overnight. Finally, the mural on their building made sense to everyone. Coyotes hunt skunks.. 

The airframe in it's basic form would remain in service with the UESN all the way until the 30th century. During the Terran-Vorla war, the F-8 would be the Terran Alliance's best means of stopping the Vorla DKD-85 starfighters from shredding their fleets and planetary colonies. However compared to Vorla Vipers, the old S-8s were designed for a different mission in a different age. 

They struggled in thick atmospheres against the Vipers, and in space were evenly matched at best. Still, the alliance functionally won the war with the old workhorse. However, every saw it was time for a new fighter. And who else to build such a fighter but Starlite Aerospace.

The S-8 Mk-5 AM-PAAV, or Advanced Multi-Purpose Atmospheric Assault Vehicle was their answer to the question of a new air/space superiority fighter. Designed to work best in atmosphere where fighters are most needed, but to be able to kick ass in space too. The Mk-5 S-8 was a totally new craft from the ground up, despite retaining the traditional "Black Triangle" shape Terran fighters are known for. They would go on to finish the Terran-Vorla war, and, with upgrades over the years, are still the primary fighter of choice for Alliance forces as of 4445.