As Usea fell onto the dark side of the world, Kei slowly saw an entire continent drift into darkness. There were smoke stacks everywhere, but when night fell there wasn't any light to shine through the smoke. From that observation, Kei guessed that in addition to the satellite network being gone, civilians were adhering to light standards or most of the electrical grids had been knocked offline. Or both. She watched the planet from the messy observation deck of the Pilgrim I while gently rubbing the thin scar she had on her arm from when they had been hit. For what it was, the wound had healed quickly.
The door to the observation deck behind Kei opened. She whipped around to identify the intruder. It was Hubert. He froze in his tracks. Hubert was dressed in his usual attire; Erusean Army combat pants, black t-shirt and a white labcoat. He glanced at Kei.
'I don't recall you being one to easily startle.' Hubert joked. Kei grinned and loosened up. Hubert walked forward onto the deck. The floor of the observation deck was made of sheets of hardened acrylic glass, resistant to impacts from micro-asteroids. Hubert whistled at the destruction down below.
'That makes six.' Hubert muttered, looking down at the Usean continent. His home.
'Six of what?' Kei asked. She didn't know what the warrant officer was on about.
'Six wars that the Usean continent has summoned.' Hubert answered more clearly. Kei pondered. She counted on her fingers. She came up to four.
'The two rebellions, the Continental War and now. What were the other ones?' She asked, clearly confused. Hubert seemed amused at Kei's lack of knowledge on the two wars she had forgotten.
'The Free Erusean uprisings.' Hubert answered her question.
'Ahhh.' Kei now remembered. She should have. Alex had mentioned the 2006 one to her last time the couple had spoken. She didn't know much about them, except for that the Free Eruseans were radicals and very, very dangerous. 'You were in the army during the Continental War. Were you involved in the uprisings?'
'I, uh…' Hubert hesitated for a moment. 'I was a doctor for a forward trauma ward near White Valley. Handled most of the civilian casualties of the uprising. The Free Eruseans were brutal.' Hubert placed extra emphasis on the word brutal. 'People would come in missing the entire upper half of their craniums. Brain matter scrambled. A lot of civilians died because of the Free Eruseans.' Hubert ranted. He cut himself off. The thought pissed him off.
'Jesus…' Kei empathised. While not a ground soldier herself, she had an imaginative mind. The two stood there in silence for a few seconds staring downwards at the Earth. Hubert sighed to break the silence, but he didn't speak. Another minute of silence passed before Kei said something.
'When was the last time you spoke with your family?' Kei asked.
'Start of the year. Had a brief call with my sister, told her I was coming back.' Hubert replied. Kei nodded in acknowledgement. 'What about you, captain?'
'Um.' Kei had to think for a second to remember. 'A little while before we were hit. Boyfriend.' Kei replied meekly. Hubert chuckled warmly.
'You never mentioned you were in a relationship.' Hubert poked some fun at her. Kei scoffed.
'Wasn't worth mentioning. Besides, what would I say? We haven't seen each other in eight years.' Kei tried to explain. Hubert seemed to find interest in the topic.
'Sounds like a swell guy. What does he do?' He asked, obviously interested in a man that had managed to woo the infamously inwooable Kei Nagase.
'Very. He was a fighter pilot, we were in the same squad during training and the war.' Kei briefly explained. 'He was headstrong, but he cared for his pilots. When we lost a member during a parade flight over November City-' Kei had to pause for a second to keep her emotions under control. '-he was the first to leap into the thick of it. I'd never seen someone so angry and so coherent at the same time. He took out damn near all of the Yukes that were around the city.'
'Hmm. Good pilot.' Hubert commented, seemingly impressed. 'Do you know where he is?'
Kei frowned to herself. 'Well…'
Alex was unleashing his strength against a punching bag hanging off a spike at the very forward end of the hangar. The bag shook with every punch that he threw at the thing. His punches were progressively getting faster and hitting with more force. As Alex got near the end of his endurance, he unleashed a final, hard kick at the bag. He roared. The bag swung, almost coming off the hook, but it reached the end of the momentum provided by Alex before it did. Alex breathed heavily as the bag swung around. He heard footsteps on the rough floor of the hangar's surface. He turned around. Before him was an orange-haired Air Force major.
'What did that bag ever do to you?' Grimm joked to Alex. Alex rolled his eyes in amusement.
'Getting practise in.' Alex replied, unwrapping the bandage-like material on his hands. His knuckles were slightly bruised, as to be expected for a man who had just spent twenty minutes punching a leather bag filled with sand. Grimm was dressed in his two-piece uniform, while Alex was wearing BDU bottoms with a black tank top. Grimm leaned up against a nearby Humvee. The hangar was packed almost to the brim with vehicles and disassembled aircraft. A theoretical logistics nightmare, but with the lack of flight operations it wasn't that much of a problem.
'So, stuck on a carrier with limited support. Sound familar?' Grimm asked. Alex shrugged, shoved his hand bandages in a pocket and crossed his arms.
'Grimm, if I had to point out every familiarity from 2010 to now, I'd be swimming in coins.' Alex countered, chuckling sadly to himself. Grimm scoffed.
'Do you think-' Grimm began to speak. Alex took a calculated guess at what he was going to say.
'Don't jinx it.' Alex cut Grimm off. He certainly didn't want to have to attempt to launch an Su-33 from the deck of a sinking Invincible-class carrier. Grimm grinned. Alex slapped him over the side of the head as he made a move to leave a hangar for the crew room.
'Leaving already?' Grimm asked. The major had only been around for a minute and Alex was already walking off.
'Caught me at the wrong time.' Alex replied like a smart-ass. Grimm rolled his eyes and also moved to leave the deck. Unlike Alex, Grimm went up to the flight deck. The aircraft elevators were inactive, but there was a staircase that led from the hangar, to the superstructure, to the flight deck. Grimm walked up it, and in thirty seconds found himself staring down the rear end of an F-35B. He looked at the tail end for a symbol. A Strider aircraft, with a nine-tailed fox surrounded by mist. Huxian's aircraft.
'Morning, Archer.' A voice called out from somewhere ahead of him. Grimm knew the voice, but his eyes had to adjust to the darkness before he could see. It was Trigger. With a few other people. Grimm's eyes fully adjusted. Trigger, Count, Avril and Huxian were standing in a circle talking. Grimm approached.
'Morning. What's going on here?' Grimm asked, curious as to the situation.
'Early morning talks, as you do.' Avril answered the question. Grimm joined the circle. Trigger made a gap for him to squeeze into. 'So major-'
'Please, call me Grimm.' Grimm corrected Avril. He preferred to be called by his name instead of his rank.
'So Grimm, I hear that you were a mechanic before pilot.' Avril shifted the conversation to the newly-arrived Razgriz member, and suddenly everyone was looking at him. Grimm nodded.
'Structural engineer. I worked for a year as an apprentice before transferring through the Replacement Pilot program.' Grimm explained. Not many knew that being a pilot pilot wasn't his first occupation.
'Replacement Pilot program? Jeez, didn't that get canned a little while ago?' Count asked, clearly having heard of it.
'OADF canned it. I'm pretty sure the Navy still has their version running.' Grimm guessed. He didn't know for sure, and none among the group were OMDF.
'You people think that Labarthe's gonna have any effect on the war?' Trigger asked the next question. No-one else answered, so Grimm took the lead.
'With a virtually nuked communications system and both our militaries in disorganisation? I don't think so, at least not for the short term. Military bureaucracy is slow, at best.' Grimm threw out there. Count agreed with him, especially on the last part of that statement. Grimm took the brief interlude of silence to ask a question of his own.
'I don't suppose any of you have seen Mythic?' Grimm asked. Huxian pointed towards the bow of the ship, on the deck segment abreast of the carrier's ski jump.
'Saw her idling somewhere on the catwalk.' Huxian answered. Grimm thanked her and departed from the group looking for his former trainee. He found the 1st Lieutenant hanging around the handrail at the front of the flight deck, as to be expected. Mythic was anything but a social person. She heard the footsteps of Grimm approaching and turned around to check.
'Sir.' She greeted her former commanding officer before turning back to observe the ocean parting to either side of the bow of the carrier. Orca was making a toasty twenty knots, as were her two escorts. Arrival at Tyler Island was expected at some time within the next day or two.
'Sightseeing?' Grimm asked, checking on the general wellbeing of his old trainee.
'It's a nice ocean.' Mythic admitted, not breaking her gaze on said ocean.
'If you like the ocean so much, why didn't you join the Navy?' Grimm joked with her. Mythic chuckled softly and quietly.
'If I wanted to be stuck on a ship for six months at a time with access to Hornets and Lightnings, I would have opted in.' Mythic justified her choice. Grimm agreed with that. He had spent some time on empty carriers, but he imagined that a full shift on a fully loaded carrier would have been jarring.
'Fair enough. How's the lip?' Grimm asked, referring to when Mythic had been shot down and punched in the face during the assault on Cape Rainy nearly a month ago. Mythic looked at Grimm and smiled. There was a faint scar on her lower lip.
'I don't notice it anymore.' She answered, turning her head this time to observe the horizon. 'You ever been placed into a life-or-death situation on the ground, sir?'
'I got shot at Fort Greys Island, remember?' Grimm answered. A very long while ago an assassin had tried to kill him, and had failed.
'True.' Mythic seemed to remember that occasion, when the 242nd Wing was still a fighting formation. Now it was only her, Grimm, Huntsman and Taipan. Hell, she didn't even know if Huntsman or Taipan were even alive. Time would tell come the hour they made landfall at Tyler Island. Both were part of the 444th Squadron, which had been deployed to that very island.
Below the deck, Alex was getting changed into his full uniform when he came across a recently woken and seemingly recently disturbed Marcus Snow. The man was sweating despite the air condition below deck and he was pale, or at least what Alex assumed was pale for a man with black skin.
'You look like you've seen a ghost.' Alex commented, mildly concerned. 'Bad dream?' Snow didn't answer audibly at first. He shakedly put on the upper half of his uniform before replying.
'Yeah, bad dream.' Snow admitted. Once he was fully dressed, he calmed down a little bit.
'Do tell.' Alex took a seat at one of the wooden benches in the crew room and invited Snow to take a seat across from him. 'Share stories. I've been plagued by them as of late.'
Snow slowly took a seat and rubbed his hands while looking at Alex.
'I saw my death. At the Space Elevator. Surrounded by pilots of varying legend and nationality while going after a couple of hyper-advanced aircraft.' Snow explained the content of his nightmares. Alex nodded in understanding.
'Precognition, you reckon?' Alex joked. Snow groaned.
'I don't believe in that shit.' He complained.
'Neither do I, but in all seriousness, watch your back out there.' Alex told Snow to be careful out on the field.
'Aw, you actually care?' Snow played around with Alex jokingly. He already knew that Alex always kept a watchful eye on his teammates.
'I blame myself ten years later for Chopper's death. I don't want the pressure of two dead friends.' Alex quietly admitted. Chopper's death over November City did and still weighed heavily on him to this day.
'Is that what your nightmares are about?' Snow asked about Alex's recent series of nightmares.
'Yeah. I can remember every detail. Missile hit from an Su-27. His aircraft burned. Crashed right into the middle of the city's stadium.' Alex recalled the event in painful detail. It hurt him to recall it.
'Any reason why it keeps popping up?' Snow asked.
'I fucking saw him.' Alex swallowed. 'Bulgurdarest. Some sort of drone, I don't know what it was, but it had his voice. I'd know it anywhere.'
Snow winced. 'That's oddly specific to see on this continent, so long after the fact.'
'That's why I'm confused. I saw Chopper die over November City. So where the fuck did this imitation come from?' This fact made Alex upset and angry. Two very volatile emotions, especially when combined with each other.
'I wish I had an answer for you.' Snow empathised with his squad leader.
'Yeah.' Alex grunted. He ran his fingers through his hair. Longer than he would have liked, but not too far out of control. 'I want an answer before this war ends. And I'd also like to keep you alive.'
Snow laughed. 'I think I'll be fine.'
Alex laughed with him. 'For both our sakes, I sincerely hope so.'
While the Osean carrier made steam towards Tyler Island, the people on it were in the middle of hell.
'Contact, twelve'o'clock!' Standing behind the ruins of a prefabricated office building, Captain Michael Huntsman Webber called out to his squad while raising his M4A1 carbine to fire at the approaching hostiles. Erusean Army soldiers. He fired four shots. Two missed, the other two nailed one soldier in the chest. Beside him, Keystone fired a suppressing burst with a captured Minimi light machine gun. The Erusean Army fireteam that had unwittingly approached the Osean position wisely retreated. Huntsman managed to tag one of them before they left his line of sight. Once he was certain they weren't going to pop out of cover, Huntsman ducked behind cover and swapped for a fresh magazine. On their local radio network, there were comms.
'Hostiles are on the run.'' Tabloid reported.
'Probably to go tell their howitzers. We can't stay here. Squad, assemble on me.' Bandog ordered. Huntsman indicated to Keystone to move towards the squad leader while he covered. Keystone ran, and then indicated to Huntsman. The latter ran while Keystone covered. This sort of movement went throughout the squad until everyone still alive was assembled behind a warehouse. Bandog, Champ, Tabloid, Full Band and Taipan were there, as well as a few regular Air Force pilots and a six-man team of mechanical specialists from the 444th Squadron. Bandog had a map and a redlight torch out.
'This place is busted. Next best place would be the barracks south of the mass driver base.' Bandog suggested they go and raid an Erusean barracks complex.
'No, too heavily defended. We should move to the shuttle scrapyard to our west and hide there for now.' Full Band disagreed and suggested another plan of action. This was the more popular option among the squad.
'Alright, scrapyard it is.' Bandog confirmed that order. He packed his map and slid it into one of his pockets. The 444th Squadron started moving west.
