While Blaze and his crew were busy dealing with a potential nuclear strike, on the other side of the continent a lone wolf was occupied with his assigned mission.


'Target zone is on the beach. There's a small police presence around.' AWACS High Watcher reported to Raven. The latter was flying his signature Su-57 over the ocean nearby the capital city of Saint Ark. His target, a foreign and black-painted aircraft according to the image being projected by his AWACS, was parked in the sand of a beach outside of the city. Raven had a simple plan. He would land on the beach, use a system of ropes he had attached to one of his weapon bays to nab the target and bring it back to the Lekk.

'Inform me if there are any additional dispatches.' Raven requested from his AWACS. The beach became visible in the distance as he drew closer to the target zone. Raven reached to a lever at the side of the cockpit and pulled on it. The Su-57 started to slow, as the dual engines turned towards the ground and the vents on the wings opened. Raven's Su-57 was an Su-57C variant; the only one of its type. Aside from having a different set of avionics, the 57C was also VTOL-capable. Raven pulled up slightly to slow down until he was at a hover over the beachhead. He inched forward a little bit to get closer to the target drone. There were police officers on the beach, all spreading out, confused as to why an Su-57 was giving them a visit. Once close enough, Raven opened the weapons bay that had the cargo rope in it. The ropes spooled out onto the ground as Raven lowered his landing gear and landed on the soft sand.

'Sorry about this.' Raven muttered to himself as he grabbed his weapon from the bottom of the cockpit - an MP5K submachine gun - and exited the cockpit. Two of the four policia approached the pilot warily. Raven jumped down to the sand, raised his MP5K and fired two suppressed shots. Both bullets hit and killed their respective targets. One of the other officers saw his men drop dead. He reached hastily for his sidearm, a second too slow. Raven nailed him square in the chest with a two-tap, dropping the third officer. He scanned around for the fourth.

'Hey-' The fourth man called from over a sand dune, revealing his position. Raven whipped around and fired four bullets. The first missed, the second and third hit the last police officer in the centre of the chest and the fourth entered through his nose and out the back of his head, dropping the fourth and last officer. All targets down, Raven slung the MP5 around his back and started the process of hooking up his target to the rope system he had brought with him. Raven walked over to the Su-57 and grabbed the bundle of ropes. They were heavy and thick, a necessary side effect of having to carry a large load, but Raven managed to get them over to whatever the hell the target was. Raven analyzed the aircraft as he got to work. Black body. It was a small aircraft, and it looked like it had been involved in a serious dogfight. Paint had been scratched off in many areas, and there were shrapnel and cannon holes over the entire thing. One resemblance that Raven noticed was that the aircraft's frontal cockpit area resembled a particular advanced fighter that he had heard about from the coup-d'etat in 1998.

'As an officer of the Saint Ark Police Department, I place you under arrest!' A man from behind Raven half-shouted and half-gargled. Raven turned around. It was the third officer that he had shot. He wasn't dead but he was bleeding heavily from the chest cavity. He had his badge in hand. Sighing in disappointment, Raven quickly attached one of the rope bundles he had in his hand to the aircraft, unslung his MP5K and mercilessly ended the officer's life with a single bullet to the head. The latter dropped like a stone. Just to make sure, Raven put an extra three bullets into the man's dead body. Now that he was alone, Raven went around to the other side of the target aircraft, attached the remaining two ropes and then went back over to his idling Su-57. Raven strapped in, shut the canopy and lifted off from the beach with the target aircraft in tow. Raven steadily hovered away and towards the Lekk.

'Ingress alert. Four aircraft of various types approaching the area from the west at high speed.' High Watcher reported as Raven went feet wet. He checked his radar and his tactical display. Indeed, four aircraft were approaching the zone where he had just extracted the target aircraft. A Typhoon, an F-16C, an F-14D, and an aircraft reading as unknown. Raven steadily hovered towards the Lekk. He couldn't fight them effectively while carrying a heavy load.

'High Watcher, why am I seeing an unknown contact?' Raven questioned his AWACS. An aircraft with no known radar signature was never a good sign.

'That is…' High Watcher explained but paused for a moment. '...a very good question. Unknown contact has no matching radar signature in the database.'

Raven checked the distance between him and the ingressing group. Sixty kilometres and closing fast. Raven estimated he only had a couple of minutes before they would be right on top of him. Enough time to get the load onto the Lekk and to set up for a fight.

'Tap their communications. If they know something, I want to hear about it.' Raven ordered High Watcher. There were a few moments of silence before foreign voices came up on Raven's radio. The enemy radio channel had been successfully tapped.

'Airspace around the area is empty.' One of the enemy pilots had been saying. Belkan accent. Raven was intrigued. His handler was right about Belkans being involved.

'Good. The less casualties, the better.' Another of the pilots spoke. Raven recognised the voice of the pilot. An ace pilot from the Belkan War. Harald Brehme, a former pilot of the BAF's Schwarze Team. Raven's handler was also right about Belkan aces being involved.

'The plot thickens.' Raven mused openly.

'You know one of them?' High Watcher asked quizzically.

'Pilot of the unknown aircraft is Harald Brehme, or Schwarze Three. MiG-31 ace from Operation Battle-Axe.' Raven explained.

'Ah. A Knight of the Round Table.' High Watcher seemed to understand. 'Aircraft are slowing down. Wait. The unknown aircraft just fired a projectile in your direction.'

Oh, fucking brilliant. Raven thought to himself as he inched closer and closer to the Lekk. Raven saw the aforementioned projectile approach him at an alarming pace. Raven tilted his engines to get more forward momentum. The receiving pad of the Lekk was a bare couple of kilometres away. There was no radar warning from the projectile, and it didn't appear to be moving to intercept a target. The projectile reached the point where the target had been, and exploded. Spectacularly. There was a giant flash that engulfed the entire beach and shook the ocean away from that area for a brief moment. A white fireball was preceded by a shockwave that reached out the few kilometres to Raven's aircraft. The Su-57 was moved violently along with the shockwave, the added weight of his catch also throwing him off course, but Raven managed to correct the error induced by the shockwave before he and his cargo went into the drink. Raven looked back towards the beach. There was a large crater where the weapon had exploded. Right over where he had been a minute or two ago. Ignoring for a moment that he had been fairly close to being wiped off the face of the Earth, Raven closed the final kilometre to the Lekk.

'Dropping.' Raven declared as he passed over the frontal deck of his ship, touched down the target and then released the ropes from his internal weapons bay. Deckhands onboard the ship ran out to tie down the drone. Raven pulled away from the Lekk, went into normal flight mode and turned in the direction of the pilots who had fired that projectile at him, ready to intercept.

'Are you sure that's a good idea?' High Watcher asked after witnessing a missile damn near eradicate a wide area.

'Surely he's only got one of those projectiles.' Raven reassured both himself and High Watcher while kicking his aircraft into afterburner mode to catch up with the people with the missiles. After closing the distance from sixty kilometres to twenty, Raven fired a missile at the rear bird in the line, the F-16C.

'Shit! Missile lock!' The F-16 pilot pointed out while going into a sweeping turn to evade. The entire formation split apart as each pilot went their separate way to not form one gigantic radar return signature.

'Where the hell?' The F-14 pilot asked, looking for the offending aircraft who had fired at them. Raven's missile missed. He waited until he could see the Belkan aircraft before firing another missile, again at the F-16C. His second missile didn't miss. The Fighting Falcon was split in two by his missile and disintegrated in mid-air, killing the pilot.

'Sven is down. No parachute.' The Typhoon pilot saw the F-16 explode. 'Attacker is in sight. Su-57 with a custom paintjob, no apparent unit markings.'

'Helmut, Roald, take him on. I'm of little help here.' The pilot in the unknown aircraft, Harald, ordered. The Typhoon and the F-14D turned to attack Raven. They couldn't gain a radar lock on him, courtesy of some custom modifications, so instead they used IR-guided missiles to attack with. Raven turned out of the way of two missiles coming his way, firing one of his own IR-guided ASRAAMs as he did so. The two Belkan AA-11 Archer missiles missed their target, but Raven's ASRAAM didn't. The missile shot through the air intakes underneath the cockpit and exploded somewhere inside the engine bay of the aircraft, destroying it. The pilot managed to eject before the entire aircraft was destroyed. As he shot by the F-14, Raven noticed that the unknown aircraft was running away from combat.

'Analyse that aircraft.' Raven said to High Watcher. 'I need to know what I'm dealing with.'

While High Watcher began an analysis of the aircraft to determine its capabilities, Raven turned around to take care of the remaining fighter aircraft. He pulled a tight turn to get on the back of the less maneuverable Tomcat. He then closed the distance, looking to get a kill with his aircraft's cannon. Raven chased down the Tomcat, following all of the fancy turns it did trying to get out of the gunsight of the attacking Su-57. None worked as Raven forced the Tomcat into a climb straight up where he first fired up his tailpipe and knocked out an engine before ripping a wing off. The F-14 fell to its side and toward the floor, out of control. The pilot ejected, unable to regain control of his aircraft before it hit the grassland below. The three fighters all down, Raven turned for the unknown aircraft and went to chase it.

'Where's that analysis at?' Raven asked. He needed it now more than ever.

'Getting there, nothing like it's ever been seen. It's some kind of large advanced ground attack aircraft. Capabilities unknown.' High Watcher reported what he had gathered to the Su-57 veteran. Raven had the speed advantage and closed on the attacker aircraft. High Watcher was right. Compared to his aircraft, the unknown was much larger, especially in terms of wingspan. The unknown saw that it was being tailed and started moving around to throw away any kind of lock. It had decent maneuverability for an aircraft its size, but nowhere near enough to get an Su-57 off its tail. Raven fired a pair of ASRAAMs at it. One hit, damaging the aircraft. He started pumping cannon rounds into the body of the aircraft. They tore away plating from the black body of the craft, ripping into the internal compartments and damaging or outright destroying vital systems. The aircraft started to slow down as one engine shut off.

'Alright, alright!' The pilot of the attack aircraft relented, leveling out and intending to surrender. Raven formed up directly behind and above the attacker. He wasn't going to let the man leave alive, Raven was well aware of Schwarze Squadron's reputation. But he wanted to confirm some things before he did kill him.

'Is your crew formed of Belkan War veterans?' Raven asked the first of three questions.

'Yes, all of us.' Harald answered quickly.

'Are you involved in this war?' Raven asked his second.

'Partially.' Harald answered as quickly as he did the first time. Raven was satisfied with the answer.

'Last question. Do you happen to know where a pilot called Phoenix is?' Raven asked his last question.

'No. I've never heard of a pilot going by that name.' Harald answered. He was starting to calm down.

'Thought not. Alright, you can go.' Raven said, but indicated otherwise with his actions by firing a cannon burst into the cockpit of the unknown and quite large futuristic attack aircraft. The shells went through whatever sort of cover was over the canopy and tore the pilot to shreds. Now unmanned, the aircraft fell to the ground where it would crash and burn. Raven turned back towards the Lekk, his mission complete and a side objective finished. Now all that he had to do was bring his ship and his catch out to the point designated by his handler.

As Raven came for a landing approach on the Lekk's forward deck, he wondered if he would have any additional tasking following this.