Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
Betrayal
Blaze and Nagase marched hurriedly down the hallway towards Captain Hamilton's office; they needed to tell him what had happened out there on their way back from the mission. Blaze still couldn't believe that the 8492nd had been able to jump them so easily and without anyone apparently noticing. What was worse was the fact that they'd been flying a craft type he'd never seen before; he was actually surprised that he Nagase and Grimm had made it back in one piece considering they'd been flying Flankers and their enemies had easily out maneuvered them. It had been mostly luck and the terrain that had saved them. They'd headed for the deck and followed the terrain to make missile lock and tracking all but impossible; Grimm was going to find Genette and Pops to tell them what had happened while he and Nagase took care of things with Hamilton.
Nagase pushed open the door and stepped inside. "Captain we—"
Blaze stepped in besides her, unsure why she'd stopped talking so suddenly. Then he saw Hamilton, standing in front of them at his desk with a Colonel's uniform on, smiling at them.
"You've been causing a great deal of trouble for me Wardog; I'm glad you decided to turn yourselves in. Who would've thought that Captain Bartlett and his Nuggets would turn out to be Yuktobanian spies?"
"What?!" Nagase and Blaze said in unison.
Hamilton leaned back on the desk. "How else could they continually penetrate our airspace so easily? Especially whenever your squadron was in the area, naturally it aroused suspicion but we never expected to discover that our top aces were actually spies."
His smile broadened. "At least you're here now and we can put an end to this char—"
He never finished as Nagase's fist connected with his face and he went down hard, hitting his head against the desk on his way down.
As Nagase stood over Hamilton's unconscious form Blaze grabbed her arm.
"Come on, we've got to get the others before they get grabbed."
She looked at him as they started running. "You don't think they—"
"I don't know! But we're cutting the power and getting the hell out of here before someone finds that bastard."
Nagase sounded furious as she spoke. "Did you hear what he said? About us, about Captain Bartlett?"
"Of course I heard I was standing next to you! We've been set up."
Nagase nodded, she seemed to regain her composure as Blaze said the obvious and reassured her of her own innocence. They ducked through a door marked 'Maintenance' and began searching for the power.
"Found it."
As Blaze began to sabotage the power station, Nagase heard someone come up from behind.
"Freeze! What do you think you're doing in here?"
She spun, kicking the tech in question into the equipment inside the cramped space, he tried to keep his balance and bring his sidearm up again but she was on top of him a moment later, landing a punch to his stomach and another to his face, he didn't move after that.
Blaze looked over his shoulder as she retrieved the fallen man's pistol. "Remind me never to get you mad. You didn't kill him did you?"
She shook her head, then the lights went out and they heard gunshots off in the distance. Groping in the dark, they made their way out of the maintenance room and were fortunate enough to be trampled by Genette, Pops, Grimm, and Kirk.
There was a brief moment of collective swearing and in one case barking as Kirk loped up the hall to join in the furball. After a moment they managed to quite the Labrador and get themselves calmed down.
Pops took command almost immediately as if he'd been doing it for years. "Come on, we've gotta hide. The base commander thinks we're all spies."
Nagase and Blaze both looked at each other in the dim light as the group followed Pops' lead.
"Wait until you hear what we just had to do."
