Raven was on the bridge of the Lekk when the ship's navigation officer brought up critical information.

'Sir, the GPS system went offline.' The nav officer reported. Raven put down his cup of coffee and walked over to the GPS dashboard. Indeed, the information wasn't updating. The map was stuck on their last known position.

'When's the last time you used a map?' Raven asked, looking at a drawer underneath the console that contained a bunch of nautical charts for all of the world's oceans.

'I'm current, sir. Manual navigation?' The nav officer replied, reaching down to grab a chart for the Cascade Ocean. Raven nodded to the officer and returned to the front of the bridge.

'Helmsman, maintain current course. TAO, light up radar.' Raven gave directions to the other two officers on the bridge, taking a seat at the front and picking up his cup of coffee. To him, it felt like it was going to be a long day.

The coordinates that Raven had been given by his handler pointed to a random area of water in the middle of the Cascade Ocean, about a third of the way from the Usean continent to the Anean continent. Raven pondered a guess as to if that had any leads to his handler's nationality. Three choices. Emmerian, Estovakian or a Norden. Most likely Estovakian, Raven decided after a few seconds of thought. The Lekk pressed forward to the coordinates. When they were ten minutes away from where they needed to be, the ship's radar detected signatures surrounding it.

'Numerous radar contacts, range thirty kilometres.' The TAO reported this to Raven.

'How many?' Raven asked. He didn't want to walk right into an Erusean Navy fleet.

'Seven. Central ship is a Hubert-class aircraft carrier.' The TAO read off the screen, including extra information as the radar itself read from a database of known vessels. 'Additional ships include a Kirov-class battlecruiser and five Daring-class destroyers.'

Emmerians. Raven thought. To his knowledge the Republic of Emmeria Navy was the only navy in the world to operate that class of air defence destroyers. Raven pulled down a microphone handpiece that was meant for communication with other ships.

'Carrier in the vicinity of RT-40138, this is the merchant ship Lekk. State your purpose and intent.' Raven hailed the carrier, presumably the flagship of the carrier strike group. He waited for a reply.

'Lekk, this is Emmerian Navy warship CVN-0403, waiting for cargo confirmation.' A woman on the other side of the radio answered. These were the people he was looking for.

'0-4-0-3, coming in along your starboard side. We'll be waiting for transfer.' Raven said before putting the handpiece and directing the helmsman to come alongside the 300-metre long aircraft carrier.

The Lekk approached from the front of the carrier strike group. To get in position, the 140-metre long converted cargo ship had to pass through the formation and circle behind the carrier so that the ship was on her right-hand side. The carrier slowed down so that the Lekk could catch up. There was little aircraft activity on the carrier's flight deck. The only aircraft that launched were a pair of F/A-18E Super Hornets. Once the Lekk was lined up with the carrier, a boat was launched from the rear of the carrier. That small boat peeled off and came over with a party to board the Lekk. Raven watched this happen from the catwalk surrounding the superstructure while drinking from that same cup of coffee. The boarding party entered the ship via a lift that was provided to the port side of the Lekk. Once Raven had finished his coffee and the lift had brought the boarding party up to the main deck, Raven dropped his coffee cup on his chair in the bridge and walked down to the deck. The cargo was on the deck where the boarding party was waiting.


September 20th, 2019

Cape Rainy Air Force Base, Northern Erusea, Usea

Alex, Jaeger and Long Caster, the three most senior officers of the LRSSG, were discussing things in an isolated room somewhere at the ocean side of the base. It was early in the morning.

'Techs confirmed it for us. The satellite network was completely destroyed. The Eruseans had the same idea.' Long Caster was the first to speak at the meeting. Alex rubbed his face with both hands.

'What about sats used for civilians?' Alex asked. Surely those weren't targeted.

'They weren't explicitly targeted, but debris from others brought them out of commission. Right now, there are no satellites over the Usean continent period.' Long Caster explained. Jaeger sighed in disappointment. Their deployment was about to get a lot harder.

'Comes with a lot of problems. Namely, we don't have comms with anyone outside of line of sight or landlines. And because we're in the middle of nowhere, we don't have either of those.' Alex pointed out their most immediate problem.

'In other words, we're blind, without any standing orders and without any support.' Jaeger summarised, mostly correctly.

'And that's not mentioning the fact that our CO is dead.' Long Caster sadly mentioned. Both Alex and Jaeger nodded in acknowledgement of that fact. 'Jaeger, you're the executive officer.'

'Blaze outranks me both in paygrade and in experience. I think you should take the lead.' Jaeger, an OADF O-4 Major, turned to Alex, an OMDF O-5 Commander.

'If you need me in that role, I'll take it.' Alex said. 'We need to inform the guys of the situation.'

'Want to go wake them?' Jaeger asked.

'Nah. Let them catch up on some sleep.' Alex decreed, standing up to signal the end of the meeting. The other two stood.

'Until we can determine where our allies and enemies stand, we're gonna double our combat air patrol sorties. I don't want to be caught unaware.' Alex told the other two what his final order was before leaving the room and heading back to the main base. Farbanti was meant to be their final operation to end the war. All it had done was made their job a hell of a lot harder. Worse, there were some questions that Alex wanted answered.


Lekk

Talisman and Raven stared each other down. Two ace fighter pilots, imposing their presence on each other.

'So you're the Black Raven. I was expecting someone of your reputation to be younger.' Lucy Hunter started the conversation. She had heard of the Black Raven, a mysterious but formidable mercenary. Now she got to meet him in person. Black and greying hair, cold blue eyes and an imposing posture.

'I wasn't expecting my handler to be an Emmerian.' Raven replied. It was exceedingly rare for the Emmerian armed forces to hire a third party, even in times of crisis.

'If it weren't for the circumstances, I was hoping you'd never find out.' Lucy said, scanning Raven up and down. His accent and appearance…

'We're of the same nationality.' Lucy confronted him on this. 'Fighter pilot, operating off a ship. RENF?'

'RELF.' Raven corrected her. The RENF was the Republic of Emmeria Naval Forces. RELF stood for Republic of Emmeria Land Forces, respectively.

'An army man as a pilot. Who would have thought.' Lucy said sarcastically.

'First time you've seen a retired soldier?' Raven asked almost sarcastically. Lucy scoffed in amusement. Raven had his wits about him. She looked behind the merc and saw the thing that her intelligence service had been looking for the good part of a month.

'I see you found it.' Lucy changed the subject towards Raven's mission. Raven turned around and glanced at the target. The Emmerian military personnel that had boarded his ship were preparing the drone for transfer to the carrier.

'And a group of Belkan War veterans. They had fancy tech up their sleeves.' Raven mentioned the attack aircraft that he had found when he recovered the drone.

'They always do.' Lucy had figured they brought some kind of advanced weapon with them to the Usean continent.

'But that's besides the point. What is this thing that I've captured for you?' Raven asked, referring to the drone. Lucy stared him in the eye.

'It's an experimental 7th-generation aircraft.' Lucy gave a vague answer.

'I'm sorry. Seventh-gen?' Raven asked, confused.

'You heard me.' Lucy retorted. Raven turned to look at the drone, and then he looked at his own Su-57, a 5th-generation aircraft. This drone was a prototype of an aircraft two generations ahead of his own. Raven whistled. He wondered how well they could perform in combat. A helicopter came into hover above the Lekk, drowning out any further conversation. Raven and Talisman waited for a couple of minutes for the helicopter to lift the drone off the deck before either of them said anything.

'My intelligence suggests this drone has something special. If that's true, I'd like to invite you to see.' Lucy invited Raven to follow the drone over to the Emmerian carrier. Raven shrugged and followed Lucy and her boarding party. Raven was intrigued.


Cape Rainy AFB

A couple of hours later, Alex had the now awake LRSSG pilots assembled in one of the hangars. Many looked sad without Wiseman around.

'As you're all aware, Wiseman's KIA. As senior officer, I'm taking command of the LRSSG. But that's the least of our problems.' Alex was briefing them. At the end of the sentence, he stood up and clicked a button on the remote he was holding to show an image on a projector screen. It showed the perspective of someone in an aircraft looking at flaming trails shooting into the atmosphere.

'These are our satellites. GPS, communications, early warning, all gone. The Eruseans had the same idea as us.' Alex said outright what those flames were. There were a few quiet mutters around the room.

'Wait, so how do we communicate with other allied forces?' Count asked. Without satellites-

'Without a landline, we don't. As it stands, we have no communications with anyone outside of Cape Rainy.' Alex answered the question.

'What about Fencer?' Huxian asked. 'He ejected over Farbanti.'

'I was about to get to that. Trigger, you'll be taking Strider back to Farbanti to see if you can recover our missing pilot. Cyclops, you'll be running combat air patrol around the area.' Alex gave out mission orders to the two squads.

'And of Razgriz?' Tailor asked what the veteran squadron would be doing.

'We'll be splitting up to see if we can get into contact with any major Osean garrisons.' Alex replied. He waited a moment for any other questions. 'If that's all, go and kit up. Squad leaders, wait with me for extra details.'


Emmerian Navy aircraft carrier Silverhunter

'It's an intriguing design. I wonder what damaged it.' Raven spoke his mind as he and Talisman watched an engineering team disassemble the engine of the drone so it didn't go anywhere.

'An ace of significant skill.' Talisman theorised. From the reports she had seen, the drone was highly capable. Raven grunted in agreement. One of the lead engineers in the hangar bay they had set aside as containment looked towards the enclosed tower that Talisman and Raven were standing in.

'Ma'am, the UCAV's engine has been disconnected.' He said, waiting for orders. Talisman picked up a radio handpiece.

'Hook it up to a power source.' Talisman ordered. The engineers brought in some cabling and a portable generator. They hooked up the drone to that generator and flipped an activation switch. The drone suddenly shuddered. There were some electrical startup noises that emanated from it. A dim red light flashed at the front for a few seconds before turning to green and then fading. The drone was powered and active.

Captain Alvin H. Chopper Davenport groaned as the life support system around him woke up the broken example of a human. A dull headache quickly developed, which was counteracted by synthetic painkillers. On digital cameras linked to his cerebral cortex, Chopper's surroundings became visible. His view was blurred at first but the image focused in his head and Chopper quickly realised where he was. He was in the hangar bay of an aircraft carrier. There were people, engineers and techs, surrounding his chassis.

'Where am I…?' Chopper asked groggily. Last time he had been awake, he had encountered his squad leader over a city somewhere over the Usean continent.

'You're on an aircraft carrier, the Silverhunter.' A female voice answered his question. Chopper didn't recognise the voice, but he recognised the accent as that of an Emmerian.

'Hang on, when did I get from Erusea to Anea?' Chopper asked, confused. Chopper's recollections of the events in the past few months were hazy at best.

'You're still in Usean waters. We're approaching the country of North Point.' The female explained.

'And who are you?' Chopper asked. There were many questions he needed answered.

'I'm Lieutenant-Colonel Lucy Hunter. I'm a pilot and analyst for the Emmerian intelligence services.' Lucy explained to him. 'I'm part of a task force that's looking to assist you.'

'How are you meant to assist me? I'm a dead man inside this coffin of a plane.' Chopper asked a sarcastic question. There was no amount of assistance that could save him from being the undead pilot of an experimental plane.

'As I understand it, you have friends in Osea yes? The pilots of Razgriz Squadron?' Lucy rebuffed him with a couple of facts.

'Razgriz? So they did end up getting that callsign. How are they?' Chopper mused on the one joke he had made nine years prior over the Jilachi Desert.

'I'm not certain of your squad leader or your wingman, but your second in command is fairing well in low earth orbit.' Lucy said. Chopper went to exhale, remembered that he didn't have functioning lungs and chuckled instead.

'Back to the point: how can you assist me?' Chopper still didn't have a clear meaning of how he could do anything.

'You're part of a Belkan construct. Is there any information you can give me from that?' Lucy pressed for valuable information. Chopper struggled to recollect his memories. He remembered an aircraft name from before his inhibition modem had broken.

'I'm inside an ADFX-10, a Prototype Raven.' Chopper mentioned this. He tried to recall other snips of information that he had heard. 'Part of something called the REDEEMER project, headed by Doctor Schroeder.'

Up in the observation tower, Raven shot a side glance to Lucy.

'If I had known there was a human pilot in there…' He said quietly.

'Had to capture it to know for sure.' Lucy explained. Raven crossed his arms and watched as the pilot of the drone kept talking.

'Are there more of you?' Lucy asked if there were more 'piloted' drones.

'I don't think so. But, I saw a bunch of airframes similar to this thing.' Chopper said. When he had come off the production lines and activated, there had been two other bodies of aircraft, both painted a shade of grey.

'Do you know where your body was made?' Lucy almost asked that as if Chopper was a robot, which wasn't entirely incorrect.

'I don't know exactly where.' Chopper really had to think to answer that question. 'It was somewhere in Belka. Near a body of water.'

Up in the tower, Lucy wrote this down. Information useful to her and her organisation. Raven noted what Chopper had said.

'Belkans.' He said coldly. Lucy looked at him. There more he wanted to say, she could tell, but he wasn't letting any of it slide. Lucy was about to ask Chopper another question when a pair of sailors entered the room, out of breath.

'Ma'am,' One of them said between breaths. 'Second ship contact spotted to the south-east.'

Lucy looked to Raven, who looked back.

'I work alone.' He said, shooting down any chance of the second ship approaching the task force being one of his. Lucy looked at Chopper's UCAV body in the hangar. She sighed.

'If you could, get my aircraft ready.' Lucy declared, moving to exit the observation tower for what Raven guessed was a crew ready room. Once she left, Raven looked to the seaman who had given them the information.

'I need a way back to my ship.'