Until you embrace your full potential, you'll only be a pawn of fate, never its master.
Valais air base, Ustio, 07/04/1995, 10:00
The base was silent since the message arrived. Well, the messages would be more correct, as six messages were received since the successful interception. But for a good amount of time no analyst managed to find the key. The computers were running nonstop, at the cost of some power shortages, but they did not help either. Valentin seemed to lose his nerves about it, he had never seen such illogical and nonlinear code.
Then, as he was wandering in the room where they gathered all the analysts, the solution appears. A solution that few grown-ups could have thought about. But the news of the deciphering after such delays were enough to ring the alarm, attracting all pilots and officers to the briefing room. The messages had finally given up their secrets, at last.
All pilots seats down, waiting for Herr Thesermeister to begin, but as he struggle a bit to explain this so unorthodox method, Viviane pointed out one thing: a young adolescent girl with blond curls on her head , who seems to be playing with some colored cube that could be rearranged to make the face only in one color instead of a mixt of little colored squares. What was this young one doing in the middle of a military briefing?
" Val, I know some scientist were precocious, but isn't this young one a bit too young to be your assistant?''
" Well, Rachel, explain the key you found to miss Ingertrude, I am sure she will like it." Kovsky said, without respecting Halo 10's wish not to be called by her first name.
The young girl stopped turning the faces of her cube and showed it to Ingertrude.
" See? The six messages had all a code for color if you arrange the words contained carefully and print them small enough that they can fit on my Rubik's cube. And if we begin with a cross create on hit, the most common figures, we obtain an order that means something when I resolve this game." She showed that on the little squares of color there were now little characters, which created a comprehensive message when resolved. The amount of movement based on instinct rather than mathematics had made the numeric deciphering almost impossible until now.
" How can you even solve a five by five cube? I never finish even a three by three cube." Fred asked, mesmerized by the speed at which the little girl solved this twisted game.
" You just need a method. And this cube is the only thing I had the time to get when I had to flee with Opa Kerzen." She humbly responded, handing the cube to Koenig so he could read the message. She seemed to be a bit sad due to the exile in which she was forced this young, but a bit happy to show her little skills at twisted games.
" I don't think I would have figured this method by myself and it was hard enough putting the parts of the message on the cube and figuring out of which initial configuration we had to begin with." Thesermeister explained how random this method was, yet millions of times more complicated than Plutarch's staff or other Enigma machines.
" Thanks, little one." Koenig patted the shoulder of the young girl, after noting some of the lines that now were making sense : a date, few coordinates delimiting an area, frequency, phase and amplitude for a signal to send or to receive some, and a few lines of description made by resistance members of their plan.
" You're welcome. If I can get my cube back, I will let you to your grown-ups meeting." The little girl took back her toy with which she managed to decipher a message that computers could not.
" Innocence of Youth is always a marvel to see." Iskanda described, as the little girl left the room quietly and closed the steel-made door politely. But for once her voice was not neutral, it was filled with sorrow. Sorrow that she was contemplating an age she had never lived and could not anymore.
" Yes, that's beautiful to see that hope can prevail in the heart of this new generation." Pixy added.
" Now, that this message had been deciphered through his infinitesimally unorthodox manner, we can concentrate on its meaning." Johnson cut, going back to the initial aim of this meeting.
" Of course. The date is next week, the fifteenth of April 1995, at 10:30. The covered Area is the national route 171 that goes through Aarlon. And the final words are some kind of enigma: The king of the jungle will soon get his kingdom back." Koenig said, reading a piece of paper where the data deciphered from the message was written.
" Isn't there an Axe and Hammer factory in this city?" Francis asked, trying to find some sense in the enigma that had surely been sent by the Ustian resistance. The only thing he was wondering was how they sent the signal without being detected by the Belkan AWACSs.
" Indeed, there's one, built in joint cooperation as an export and maintenance facility for the Sapin Air Forces. My sister used to work there before leaving for the main research and development center in Directus." Johnson said, still without any news from the said sister. He knew she was a tough girl; she was the first of the two to leave Belka, leaving her husband with her two teenage daughters who choose freedom over loyalty.
" That did not explain the enigma. But taking back this factory and keeping it could still allow us to sustain ourselves until Osean forces regroup and send us some supplies." Koenig said, with the next operation already planned.
" So, we will liberate this route and city housing a factory on the fifteenth of April. Is there any chance this factory contains the necessary composites for my plane?" Iskanda guessed, not wanting to fly the Nord 1500 Griffon for the entire war. It was good for hit-and-run tactics, but she preferred highly mobile fighters like her now unusable X-29A.
" It's possible, not a very high probability but not an impossible event I would say." Herr Steller replied, not wanting either to let the Griffon in the hands of this crazy pilot. He judged her good, but she would end in a death spin sooner or later due to the flawed jet engine of the Griffon.
" Super, it's not that I don't like your little flying antiquity, but I was a bit too close to death last mission, even for my standards." Iskanda cleared her mind about the old fighter.
" Whatever, you will have to fly it to help get the aerial superiority over Aarlon, if you wanna help." Pixy said, his now established confidence in her allowing him to believe she was going to survive.
" Well, this briefing is finished. Spend your time like you want, but please avoid an all-out Schneeballschlacht, we have some officials that are spending some time outside, including minister Kerzen." Koenig warned the pilots, hoping they would keep up to card games or other non-hazardous games.
" Roger." the eight pilots answered, even if they wanted to reset the score of the previous snowball battle, especially Pixy.
But it was from a proud Belkan we are talking, and pride still motivate him, even if he had no longer Belkan nationality
" Gott Verdammt! Go to your rooms, Galm team. And you will shovel the snow off the runway for your next take-off!" A very angry Adrian Kerzen, Ustian minister of defense and relation with the allied forces ordered.
They went to their common room, with Iskanda a bit afraid of their ongoing task: the runway was maybe very short from the sky, but it would take hours to push the twenty-centimeter-thick layer of snow. And what does they have to undergo such punishment? Because a snowball avoided by Fred hit the granddaughter of Kerzen. She took it well, joining the friendly battle. But when Kerzen was hit by a stray ball, he did not like it at all, and punished the two who began the fight: Iskanda and Pixy, the second trying to restore his pride and the first not wanting to lose her rank in a snowball battle.
And after two minutes of awful silence, the two pilots sitting in front of each other, Pixy broke the silence, trying to reassure his flight leader worried about the crazy task they will have to do.
" Do not worry, pilots never shovel snow. That's nothing but idle threats."
" Jeez, I was truly worried when Kerzen gave us this foolish order." Iskanda replied.
" Do you really think the snow is clean by hand?" Pixy ironically asked, laughing a bit at the idea of every pilot and soldier shoveling the snow with simple tools.
" Well I did point out a strange smell of burned napalm just before we took off last time. I thought the base took some napalm bombs, but I saw nothing burned." She said, wondering what could justify that smell.
" The reason is obvious: they use flamethrowers to quickly melt the snow. It's because of this that we have no more napalm bombs for our planes, as all the napalm available is strictly reserved for this use." Pixy explained. The first time he saw it, he was as astonished as Iskanda was now. Her usual neutral stance was replaced by an astonished one, her eyes wide open. But as she backed down her head in astonishment, Pixy noticed a thin leather lace on the neck of his wingmate. He never figured her out as the jewelry-loving type, so to see this caught him a bit off guard. But he could not see what kind of jewelry she was wearing, despite her wearing only a thin pullover.
" Eh, why are you looking at me, Pixy? Trying to figure out what usage I would make of napalm instead of using it to melt some snow?" She said, a bit embarrassed by the strong gaze of the Belkan merc. She knew he was not some seductive nor perv kind of guy, and still needed to mourn his fallen one, but she was always very cautious to the people that analyzed her a bit too much, as she had to hide her identity for more than five years.
" No, even if I am sure you would find some way to use it as an anti-fighter weapon. You're the only one who would use such unconventional armaments here." Larry replied, causing her to smirk a bit at the idea of using thermobaric ordnance against planes, an idea that only Kupchenko was crazy enough to try.
" Well, I may have one or two ideas, but I don't think it was what you were trying to deduce from me."
" You're right.' He shrugged, moving back to his first question: " I never expected you to wear some jewelry."
" That's right, it's not jewelry but souvenirs. The cleaning staff gave it back to me just a few days ago, when my stuff was cleaned of all the blood I came with." She said while pulling out her strange souvenir from under her pullover.
Holding it by the leather lace, she showed it to Pixy. It was a curious ornament, more of a stylized weapon than a true jewelry. It was a twenty-centimeter harpoon with two rows of barbs. What was more unusual was the rock it had been carved in: jade. Still, it was not what made Pixy's eyes frown. For an unknown reason, the small lines carved on the surface of the blade were not white but filled with crimson red. "What did she do with this?" Pixy thought. "Nothing good" would surely be the answer.
" If you want, I could tell the story of this souvenir of my youth, without any innocence, sorry for your cold-sensitive nature."
" Why not?" He took the blade, which was truly cold, making it turn a bit, revealing signs of abrasion on the barbs, but due to what usage, he did not know. He then gave it back to Iskanda, still wondering why all mercs had to have dark origins.
" So, let's go back to my birth, when all began."
San Salvation, Usean continent, 13/07/1970, 15:00.
"It's the day I came to this world. It was a nice and sunny day, but my arrival was a pretty unwelcome one."
In a simple house in the street of San Salvation, a woman with medium tanned-skin and dark hair was waking up from a light faintness. She did not remember why she had passed out. She had been a bit weak for the last few weeks, but her doctor told her it was only a temporary illness, nothing to worry about. If only she had known what the doctor meant when he said "temporary", maybe her reaction would have been different.
The first person she saw was her older sister, to whom she had always shown a bit of disrespect for never succeeding to have a family on its own, even if it was due to a tragic event of her sister's past. But yet, she was glad to see someone caring for her. She was alone those two weeks: her twin sons were on a scholar trip in the vicinity of Salatepuga, and her husband on a business trip in North Point.
" I hope you are better now, Seymia. You really freaked me when you passed out two hours ago." Her sister welcomed her to the conscious world with a nice voice, but she knew that even with all the kindness she was able to make feel it wouldn't be enough for her to make Seymia accept the truth.
" Hello, Zharina, thanks for taking care of me." Seymia replied with a weak voice, not having fully recovered her physical strength.
" I was fearing you would never wake up; I was getting the phone to call the emergency." Zharina responded honestly. She had been worried for her sister, but yet there was now one person more to worry about.
" I do not understand why I even fainted. Until yesterday my health was perfect. I mean, I was a bit tired after my morning running, but I am usually tired after it." Her sister tried to find the reason for this sudden loss of consciousness.
" I will show you the reason." Zharina said, while leaving the bedroom.
" How can she show me the reason?" Seymia tried to assess the word of her sister.
And fifteen second later her elder sister came back, holding something wrapped in white fabric. That kind of fabric was commonly used to wrap newborn children. She did not understand anything, she had not been pregnant for twelve years with her twins, and now this one was coming out of nowhere?
" Say hello to your daughter, Seymia." Zharina handed her child, but she refused to hold that child; she did not understand her origin.
" What the fuck is happening? How could I give birth and without noticing it?" She asked violently, her eyes wide open of astonishment.
" Don't be so rude with this young one, these are words that shouldn't be said in her presence." The elderly responded with a calm voice, while her sister was now sitting on the bed, holding her forehead in her right hand, trying to figure out this crazy situation.
" I do not care for this child which I do not even feel growing. How did she anyway?" Seymia was now going mad, not understanding a single bit of the origin of this daughter. She never wanted a third child, and her husband neither.
" It's called a denial of pregnancy. The child grows up vertically instead of in a more usual and curvilinear way, the belly does not get bigger, so you can carry it without noticing it." She calmly explained, trying not to wake up the young newborn.
" I do not want it. I never planned to have a third child. It would change anything in the familial balance I manage to create." Her sister went from an uncomprehending person to a denying one.
" It's your child, you have to accept her." Zharina handed her the newborn one time again, but Seymia pushed her back with an unexpected violence, nearly making the sleeping child fall to the ground.
Zharina managed to avoid losing her balance by catching the handle of an open drawer. She had expected her sister to be cold or rude like usual, but not this violent.
" It's a denial of pregnancy? Then I deny her as my child. The abortion services should accept her." She stated the future of this child she was refusing to raise.
" You cannot do that to your own offspring. You deny her the right to have a normal life, if you do that, this child will look forever for acceptance and never find it as her own mother did not accept her for the first time!" Zharina shouted, feeling in this very moment only anger toward her sister.
And this argument lasted for a good chunk of the hour, before a decision was made. It was not the best, but it could have been far worse for the still unnamed daughter.
" So, what's happened then?" Pixy asked, bringing her back to reality.
" My aunt didn't accept the will of her sister and adopted me. She gave me a name, Iskanda. For twelve years, she was a caring mother, giving me the acceptance and chance to be happy my own breeder denied me. I saw my brothers as cousins and my father as my uncle" She told, with her usual neutral voice and face on the verge of collapsing from all the feeling that reminding this story caused to grow within her mind: anger, sorrow, grief, hatred.
" Well, you seemed to be happy at that moment. Your true mother never said anything to you about it?" Pixy asked, a bit puzzled by how messed up her familial backstory was.
" Never said a thing about it. But in a strange fashion she decided to adopt a young girl with the same age as me. I thought of her as a nice cousine, but this time of happiness did not have an eternal duration." She responded, doing a negative sign with her head.
" You used the preterit to speak of your "Mutti". It is usually used often past actions which are now ended. I will guess she died at some point?" Pixy tried to see how this period could end, but no good conclusion came to his mind.
" Died in a stupid car crash, told me the truth as she was dying, holding me in her arms, trying to explain the situation in a way I would not hate my biologic breeder." Iskanda described the end of her childhood, lowering her eyes, speeding her words as it was always difficult to remember all the good times that she spent with the person she believed for a time to be her mother. In her heart, Zharina would always be her mother, even if she was her aunt. This is why she was always referring to Seymia as "her biologic breeder" and never as "her mother".
" I'll take a straight shot and guess it did not work?" Pixy said, knowing through the disappearance of Iskanda's neutral tone for an almost mad one.
" I tried to accept what happened, to reintegrate my former family, but they rejected me in every way possible: my adoptive sister was always saying that she was more a daughter to Seymia than me, my father who did not give a freaking sh* about me, and my mother who made me become the maid of all work at the house." She described how the situation changed from messed up to unbearable.
" And what about your older twin brothers?"
" Them?" She repeated, before resuming on her description. " They were the worst ones. When I hit sixteen, they tried to make sexual advances to me."
" What? Does they know it's basically incest?" Pixy gasped, really astonished how low she has been.
" But they were just cowardly bullies who never act hopefully."
" So, this horribly messed up situation lasted four years. How does it end?" He was curious to know if she had to kill someone to leave this familial coercion, which could explain the bloodstains on the harpoon.
" Very bad for some and very well for me." She said while leveling her eyes at Pixy's level. But now he did not see any more an angry or regretful woman at this moment, she was smiling in a twisted manner of the sick joy she felt that day of August 1986.
" At a bit more than the age of sixteen, the testament of my aunt was revealed, and its aftermath was quite violent to say the least." Iskanda began to recall this crazy day, during which she experienced the same sick joy the souvenirs of that day were filling her mind now.
San Salvation, 19/06/1986, 16:15, Weather: Risks of Thunder.
Iskanda had waited for a long time to know the last wills of her almost mother. But yet her biological breeder did not authorize to follow her to the notary. She had once denied her the right to be accepted, and now she was denying one more right: to receive her true mother's inheritance.
When her breeder came back, she rashly went to the chimney of the house, and before Iskanda could do anything, all the papers that could have legalized her were now gone in cinder.
" I admit it's hard to bear the heat of burning papers in August, but the sight is warm enough for me, low-born daughter!" Seymia mocked her. Now Iskanda no longer has an identity, but she knew what she was, and she was not an obedient person.
" Good, now I can leave this crazy house if nothing tides me here legally speaking." Iskanda retorted, hoping to get her freedom from any way she could use it.
" Oh yes, you will quit this house today even. But without your freedom, insolent mistakes." Her breeder went angry again, and five seconds later…
Iskanda lost her balance after her mother slapped her a bit too hard. She stumbled on a little piece of furniture and fell just in front of the chimney were her official identity was laying amongst the cinders.
" What will you do to me that could be worse than staying here?" She tried to recover, pushing on her forearm but a foot-kick in her shoulder sent her back to the ground.
" I was not alone on the way back. Your future employers are here too."
" What? I don't get it?" She said with a puzzled voice, not understanding what her breeder was up to.
" You can come in, misters. She will be a bit rough to educate but she's worth her price." Her mother welcomed two white guys in their thirties with a typical bad guy look: one was blond with a scar on the left eye and in military-like clothes, and the other was bald in a leather jacket.
" The world's oldest job always needs its new workers from times to times." The bald man said, while marching toward Iskanda. He put a rope out of one of his pockets, in order to restrain the young lady currently laying on the ground.
" Was your mother truly crazy or what?" Pixy interrupted her, shocked by this cruel behavior. He knew what the world's oldest job means. Who could sell his own child and condemn him to a life of spiritual and corporal slavery?
" Nope, she just wanted to get rid of me. The others were not that cruel, they were just rude and loyal to her." She described her messed up family in a nutshell.
" Whatever, I sense you gave her something back, and more than one bad bruise." Pixy guessed, knowing from just the first mission he saw her fight in that she was not someone who would back down easily.
" Let's go back to this story, it's now my favorite part. It's gonna get bloody." She said, sick joy filling her mind. She was smiling, not from happiness, but through the pain and suffering she had instigated in her breeder's mind and body.
Warning, Readers, this area is rated M for violence. Go to the next ''Valais Air Base'' mark if you want to jump it. If not, brace yourselves…
San Salvation, 19/08/1986, 16:20, Weather: Risks of Thunder.
She had already figured out what her breeder had planned for her. Slavery and the destruction of her privacy, intimacy, and own true identity. But as she was allowed for one second to recover, she saw something among the cinders. Something she had already seen in the house of her aunt, a strange sculpture of jade, a stylized version of a harpoon with two rows of barbs. Even if the stone was still warm and for this reason painful to carry in her naked hands, she caught it before recovering quickly. This stylized weapon had sent her a message: you will survive this day, as the jade had survived the flames. In a phoenix-like manner, she needed to rise from the ashes.
" Drop that thing, Iskanda!" Her mother ordered, as the bald man stepped back, not expecting her to recover in such a short time.
" You forget why jade is a symbol of immortality. It has great fire resilience. And the flame of my will not be silenced. " Iskanda kept her hold on the blade, even if she winced as the heat was painfully dissipated through her skin.
" Stay still, girl!" Her breeder retorted, marching toward her.
But Seymia never expected her daughter that was just a bit headstrong and insolent to act that violently in the following seconds. As her breeder tried to take the harpoon away from her, stretching her left arm to grab it, Iskanda stroke before she could even touch the jade-made blade. The heated weapon embedded itself into her raised forearm, going through the flesh. Screaming from the sudden pain, Seymia tried to kick her with her right hand, but the sufferance deprived her of the necessary strength. Iskanda blocked the weak strike, before head kicking her executioner and breeder. This made her breeder lose her balance, and the momentum created was enough to separate the flesh of the arm of the barbs of the harpoon. Seymia Raiyen was now laying on the ground, screaming due to the pain, trying to stop the blood loss on her arm.
" Stay down, girl, we do not want to harm you." The bald man said while dropping his rope to catch from behind him a water bucket he intended to throw at this girl, hoping it would knock her down.
" And what if I want to harm you?" She asked in an unnatural neutral voice, yet with an expression of sick joy on her face. The pain she was going to cause seemed to make her happy in a perverted way.
" Take that." He threw the glass bucket as she was marching toward her. She struck at the upcoming object which shattered on impact, but then slid on the spread water and fell right before him, with little cut on her arm due to the fragments of glass.
He was about to kick her with his feet, but then he felt an unbearable pain to his right knee. She had dived just next to him and struck right at the middle of his limb. But this time the barbs were not embedded in the flesh, so it was easier to pull the blade out of his body. As she stood up with the blade, he fell to his knees, and she struck him with the hold of the blade square at his temple, knocking him for good.
Then the blond man pulled out a knife from a pocket in his leather jacket. Both strike at each other at the same time while blocking each other's strike with their free arm. If he had the advantage of strength and experience, she had the advantage of having a longer blade. So, she could by rotating her wrist plunge two centimeters of the harpoon in his flesh when he could only make a superficial wound. She kept moving the harpoon into the wound before he let her right arm go free. But he managed to strike at her upper torso, cutting a bit through her tee-shirt and wounding her breast a bit. The wound seemed more of a burn to her chest than anything. He expected her to step back to recover from this very painful scar in an area sensitive for women, but she went only more aggressive. He tried to strike at her neck, but she bent down just on time, and he struck nothing but air.
On the other hand, Iskanda kicked him in the chin after his failed tentative, and as he was recovering from this violent blow she struck in the gap between the shoulder and the neck.
A scream of pain shattered the room as the blade went into his flesh, at the same time the thunders began to shatter the sky. He wanted to act, but the overflow of adrenaline that provided first the strength to act was now paralyzing him. Iskanda got behind the stammering blond man and pulled out the now bloodstained harpoon of his body, before kicking him in his back with her right foot. The wounded man fell to the ground as the lightning struck for the third time.
Iskanda looked at her breeder, reluctant to finish this defeated foe who was struggling to stop the blood loss. She was ready to wound someone in the middle of action, but cold blood killing was another thing. At a point, she felt the envy of slicing her breeder's lying mouth, but she restrained herself from doing so. She had maybe lost her innocence today but tried not to insult the memory of her aunt. She taught Iskanda to try to accept the others, but to fight if needed too.
Letting her defeated foes lay on the ground, she ran to what she could call her room. Quickly gathering the few stuff her breeder allowed her to keep here, she then came back to the room they were still laying across. Her breeder had managed to make a compression point with a scarf and try to block her way.
" Do not try anything foolish, or I will not be aiming for the arm this time." She pointed to her mother's neck with the harpoon still stained by blood and flesh.
Her mother did not do anything. Like the blond man, fear was now paralyzing her. The fear Seymia tried to instigate had been turned against her at this moment. And she was now paying the price in blood. She could do nothing but watch as her low-born daughter ran out of the house without caring for the thunder outside. As Iskanda ran, she was laughing. A maniacally mad laugh that was partially covered by the cracks of thunder.
Indeed, she did not care at all. She was free now. Free from the inhibition she had to endure, and with the freedom to follow her passions. A bit of rain was not enough to cool her passion now. She kept running until outside of the town, not caring as the other persons in the streets who were a bit curious why a young girl was running away out there with this weather.
End of M rated section.
Ustio, Valais Air Base, 7/04/1995, 13:00.
" So, you did not kill her at this moment." Pixy assessed, knowing people with enough determination could recover from very bad injuries, both psychologically and physically speaking.
But for the first few seconds, Iskanda did not hear him. She was laughing maniacally from the same joy she felt that day. She could even sense tears of joy running down her cheeks, she was almost in overjoy just from the remembrance of the scream of terror, fear, suffering she heard that day, and was filling her with a sense of power.
" Yeah, I should have silenced her lying mouth." She responded quickly, before adding the gesture, moving the harpoon close to her own neck.
" You're all right, now?" Pixy asked after she burst out laughing again for a good five minutes, he was now a bit worried of his squad leader as she was struggling a bit to catch her breath, laughing a bit too hard.
" Why shouldn't I be all right? I am just a sick mad monstrous person who's excited about near-death experiences, hearing people suffer and the idea of killing her own mother in various painful ways." She assumed her madness. If there was a therapist at the base, he would find her to be an interesting case of study for years at least.
" You're not a monster to me. Just a lost person like I see many among mercenaries. Aleksei seems tough but he's suffered PTSD after this mission in Romney he never talks about for obvious reasons. Almost everyone has suffered loss from close ones other Directus. In the end, Thesermeister is the only normal person around here. I bet it comes from his analytic mind." Pixy replied, knowing he had a bit of PTSD too since the loss of his loved one.
" That's a first, someone who sees me as a human." She accepted Pixy's answer. She was even a bit calmed in her sick laugh, thanks to Pixy's acceptance. For once she had some. Last time it was three years ago, but in better circumstances.
" So, anything to say about your past to compensate for my confession?" She inquired, willing to know a bit of Pixy's memory if she wanted to understand his mind in battle. She knew past experiences, even culture could be key factors in this case.
" Well, nothing as bloody as yours." He scratched the back of his head, trying to focus on the determining event of his past. He did not need to tell her everything, just the basics.
" I was born 1960 in the outskirt of Dinsmark, Stray A-B student from a proud humble middle-class Belkan family, get his Abitur with a good mention, enlist in the Air forces, had a six months period in the Kellerman Grupp." He began to sum up his youth.
" Kellerman Grupp? You mean, Silber Squadron?" She was a bit caught unprepared. Kellerman, even if he was a bit old now, was still a well-known pilot not only for his own career but for the careers of pilots he taught how to fly who would often quote Kellerman in speeches after airshows.
" Yep. The best way to be trained, we even were dispatched in Wieldvakia when some officers tried to go rogue after a failed coup d'état, but we won the day and gained access to Wieldvakia's oil for Belka afterwards. And Osea had still not figured out how Belka did not run out of fuel."
" Even so we cannot attack a neutral land for that, I guess?"
" Right. Osea tried actually to attack Fato to make them change their alliance, but I think they were met by the BAWS we destroyed at Bayes Fortress." He tried to remember the report Koenig gave them that day. The Osean forces lost twenty B-52s, ten B-2As, and their escort of forty F/A-18Cs Hornets over there, while the Fatoan loss were almost insignificant.
" That did not surprise me, I knew Osean prefer quantity over quality. But still, how a good-and-proud Belkan student and fighter pilot ends up mercenary? You mess up and had to run like me or something else?" She asked him, ready to accept any truth he would say. If he had accepted her bloodstained past, she could accept a rather normal one easily.
" Let's say someone else. I was about to retire from the army to become a test pilot for Sud Belka munitions factories, but she happened." He said while picking a little notebook, which revealed itself to be a makeshift photo album.
On its front page there were Pixy and a pale blond-haired girl with some green and turquoise locks of hair among her head. As background there was the door of a hangar with a massive Galm squadron insignia. But it lacks the Ustian designation -666 Unit -. So, this notebook was a bit older than this war.
On the first page we could see the same girl climbing down a modified MiG 31 with some strange forward-swept canards. Typical customization of a merc who usually preferred mobility over the other characteristics of the airplane.
" She was Laura Zielter, my flight lead and more than a friend to me. Even if our first encounter was not friendly."
" Well, some romance, always nice when it's linked to passion."
" It all began during my last flight, on the seventh of August 1986."
Outskirt of Dinsmark, Falkennest Base, 07/08/1986, 15:00.
Larry Foulke had just landed from what should be his last flight here. Next week, he was going to Sudentor to have a meeting with his new bosses: Sud Belka Ausrüstung Werke (south Belka munition factory). He even obtained from his new bosses that he would be test pilot for the new generation of F-15 who were under development right now. But for an unknown reason the speakers of the base decided to call him to a meeting with the base commander for an unknown reason.
It did not take him long to go to the base commander office, Oberleutnant Oswin Neugel. The Belkan pilot saluted him, before waiting for the authorization to sit down. But in the gap between those two moments, he could notice an unknown pale-blond haired girl with turquoise locks wearing a leather jacket with a pale green camo and markings of hard rock bands. This person was definitely a merc, there's no way official soldiers could have worn such kinds of jacket and hair color without being reported by their superiors. The glance of his brown eyes met for one second the one of her grey ones, and then his commander told him to sit down.
" Laura Zielter, I present to you Larry Foulke, one of our best pilots of this base." The commander introduced him to this new person.
" I do not think I am the best, but I know how to survive in live battle." Larry humbly replied. He had only very little true battle knowledge, and not against truly worthy opponents.
" Well, you are the only one left from your batch, the others from this Kellerman class have already been dispatched to active squadrons, but you're still available due to your specific choice." Oswin resumed the situation.
" And also, what's the meaning of this reunion?" Larry asked, wondering why he was meeting this particular merc.
" B7R is quite empty since there was a need of mercenaries due to the Aurelian civil war: some were shot down, some decided to settle after the battle in Aurelia or Leasath after meeting someone or for some contracts." She explained her quite boring situation. She had not dogfight for two months, and the last was against six J35 Draken, not a big deal for her.
" Und?"
" Foulke, you know today is the day of visit from half of Dinsmark's and Hoffnung's Gymnasium. So, a little Belkan DACT with Fraulein Zielter would be a nice advert for our Kampfflugzeugschule here." Oswin almost gave him the order to go back in his F-15C and dogfight this merc he did not even know what she was flying into.
" When will this take place?" She asked, eager to show to this man what she was made of for two reasons: one, he seemed to despise mercs, and two, she did not like the look he gave her first.
" At 16:00, this leaves the time for both your aircraft to be fitted with the necessary armament. Dismissed, Zielter und Foulke." Oswin ended this small unofficial briefing.
Valais Air Base, Ustio, 07/04/1995, 15:00
"What's the difference between Erusean and Belkan DACT? Do you have a pride gauge or something like that, since Belkans are as proud as Oseans are money-hungry?" Iskanda asked, curious of the secret of the legendary Belkan Air Force.
" Well first you should remove Dissimilar and Training from the acronym, as it's not a dissimilar training for one good reason: it's a life fire exercise with weakened tracers bullets and specific missiles with shockwave warheads designed to catch you in their blast without shooting you down, but the loss of control can be deadly if you are too low, as it often end in a spin." He quickly explained how terrific the training was for the new pilots. But in the end, very few resigned, even if they suffered light injuries.
"Belkans are not only proud as fudge, but they are also crazy too." Iskanda cursed, finding this training method not only foolish but cruel.
" You are not a good person to talk about craziness, miss "I wanna kill all my relatives and I'm happy to think that way." Pixy snapped back at her, sarcasm filling his voice.
" That would be a bit too long for a nickname, my dear." She smirked at his remark before dodging to another subject. "And this Kellerman Class, how was it?"
" Pretty good, only the one who lost only five AC could go in. Didn't matter how much you have won before though."
" Seems fair. Anything interesting you made with Kellerman?"
" As I have said before, we were sent to help fight some rogue officials of Wieldvakia's navy which rebel due to internal affairs, but this threatened our commercial alliances back then."
" Seems weird to me that neither Osea nor Yuktobania tried to intervene back then, just to gain some influence at least." She pointed out, not fully aware of the very cold war those two countries had fought for a good forty years.
" They were still bickering in their little competition of who will have the bigger missiles, and who will have the better protection." Pixy mocked those two countries who consider themselves as superpowers but do not possess power at all sometimes.
" Sound like a typical male kind of argument. Let's go back to this DACT, I bet it's funnier." She concluded this little interlude.
Over the Falkennest Base, Dinsmark, Belka, 07/08/1986, 16:30, Weather: clear, high stratus.
Pixy took off just after the MiG 31 of Laura Zielter. But while she passed right next to him on the runway, he had some time to figure out the features she put on her aircraft. First, the canards were not standard, but some kind of forward-swept wings. And her engine output had not a circular shape, but an octagonal kind of. Maybe they were 3D vectored nozzles?
" Laura, you are not identified as Scharlach 1. Larry, as Blau 1" The surveillance tower said, as the two aircraft separated before the engagement, Larry going South and Laura North West.
" Why does she have a cooler nickname than me, flight control?" Pixy asked. He did not understand, usually his TAC name was Falke 1.
" Lady first. And it's just my official callsign."
" Can I ask why?" Foulke let his curiosity speak out. The better you knew your foe, the better you understand it, he thought, as she responded with a small laugh.
"It's due to the fact I usually leave cockpits stained with the blood of the pilots when I gun them. Nothing more beautiful than seeing a dead aircraft fly for some time before you decide to blow it up."
It was a truly crazy merc, without a bit of care for her foes. But who was he to judge? Himself did not care that much when he was sent outside and shot down Wieldvakians.
" Gut. Now that you know each other, these are the rules: do not break the 1000 meters or the training SAMs will fire at you. A loss of control by the opponent due to a hit will mean a point. The first who reach 5 with a difference of three wins." The commander described the oncoming fight.
Both could see the rows of seats where dozens of students or any people were attracted by those kinds of AC. But for the pilots it was strictly forbidden to approach them: in order to avoid crashes, the stands were protected by a dome of glass and surrounded by heavy SPKs, able to intercept lost ordnance or even fighter indiscriminately.
" These are good rules." Scharlach 1 agreed.
" Blau 1, ready to engage."
" Were Belkans really that crazy? I mean, fighting each other in DACT is a good exercise, but fighting with those kinds of condition is borderline suicidal at this point!" Iskanda cut the story of Pixy.
" You're not the best person to say who is crazy and who's not." The Belkan pointed out for the second time of the day, before resuming his fight.
" Blau ein, Scharlach ein, Kampf fängt jetzt an! (blue one, crimson one, the fight begins)" The commander said cheerfully, as messages of good luck were heard for both pilots in the background.
The MiG-31 and the F-15C went straight for each other. One downside of those little shockwave missiles was that they require a five second lock-on. Pixy would never have the time to lock her, but she wouldn't either. He tried to fire a gun burst a few dozen meters before her gun range, but she moved faster than the bullets, doing two sharp turns at a very fast pace. But it was no big surprise, this MiG was known for its maneuverability at Mach 2.5. Yet his inertia was the greater one, giving it a longer turn rate.
" Nice try, Frischling (rookie)." she mocked as they crossed.
" I wasn't trying."
Then he extended the airbrake at its peak, before beginning a hairpin turn. He felt the intense negative G-forces as his aircraft decelerated. She turned hard in the opposite direction, but not fast enough. After this exhausting turn, he was finally in her six. She set her afterburners at mid-course, still enough to outrun the slowed Eagle, but providing an obvious target for Pixy's IR sensors. She did not try to shake him off at first until he fired a pair of missiles at her.
" Fox 2." Pixy already claimed his future point. The missiles quickly closed the gap between his and her aircraft, but as they were only four hundred meters from the Migalev, the unthinkable happened : the Migalev extended air brakes composed of four layers of steel, two below and two above the plane, just after the cockpit. And what he thought were 3D vectored nozzles revealed to be true ones, as she did a Kulbit maneuver - a figure theoretically impossible for a Foxhound - and fired a gun burst in the direction of the IR guided missiles he just sent. Yet if these missiles had a bigger warhead, they were also more vulnerable to defensive gunfire.
" Gun gun gun." She said as she pulled the trigger, and ten seconds later, as the missiles were only one hundred and fifty meters from her, they detonated in mid-air.
" This is what I call true active defense, Anfanger!" she shot verbally and physically, with a four-missile volley. She had asked the maintenance crews to keep the XLAA capacities with the training missiles, while she made sure her opponent had only conventional ones.
" What? Fox 3s?" Larry said as he dived to lose the missiles, gliding toward the altitude limit. But he did not break through it, while the radar guided missiles did, only to be shattered by the automatic SPKs.
" Nice trick to lose my missiles, I give you that. But you thought I could not dogfight with my MiG-31. But it's an Advanced Vectorial one. Du irrst, Dummkopf!" (You made a mistake, stupid). She followed him, diving on him from one thousand meter as he was slowly climbing.
She said the truth: he never expected her to refit her Foxhound to give her an insane maneuverability. As he climbed, he could see her foes craft quickly shortening the distance. Then the "missile locked" alarm blared in his cockpit. Why did she have those XLAAs kind of training missiles and not him? He realized quickly that running was nutzlos. So, he turned back to face the two missiles she had just sent at him. If she were foolish then he would be too. The XLAA were too fast, and he knew he would feel the shockwave pretty badly. But it could give him a small window of fire.
" You are going right into my missiles, Blau ein. Lust von Niederlage (envy of defeat), maybe?"
" Niemals! (never)." He retorted, managing to have the two missiles on his left side. This should decrease the loss of control.
And five second later, the shockwave of those XLAA hit him hard. His plane went into a stall as he tried to tilt it to absorb the wave, and then into a dangerous spin. He felt his eyes become very painful as he slowly countered the spin. The G-forces were so intense that he even got some seconds of redsight.
She had seen him fall for good. Her first point. She was planning to wait for him to recover, then strike at him from above another time. But Larry had managed to bypass this spin, and put the throttle stick on PC max. She did not expect to recover this quickly, and her missiles had a seven second time of lock on. So, she decided to hit the afterburners too, hoping to shake him off through sheer speed.
" Not this time again, Fraulein." He warned her, as he climbed vertically to meet her trajectory. He could feel his whole plane vibrate in such a climb, and even had to turn while climbing vertically to adjust his bearing, but his aircraft did not stall. And finally, he had a very little window of fire.
His plane was almost tilted with his head toward the ground, but he was on a perfect course to have a gun kill from below. Forgetting the suffering of flying inverted, he kept his path, and after five seconds which seemed to be an eternity fired his gun at the Foxhound. If it were a true fight her fighter would have been sent ablaze, as he hit her in the front air intake. But even those training bullets could temporarily disable this critical system.
" Gunkill!" He screamed as she dived due to her current loss of thrust. Tilting his plane back in horizontal, he then did a horizontal loop toward the falling Migalev, firing two missiles while she was recovering. Not a nice move, but she had weapon choice and advantage.
And they did hit. That makes him three points while she had only two. But he still needed two more points. He thought it would be easy to chase her after these hits. But she had fully recovered her maneuverability now, and kept swinging from side to side, using her 3D vectored nozzles at low speed, compensating for the usual flaw of the MiG at this speed domain. Larry managed to keep up for some time, yet his speed was bleeding quickly. He leveled for just three second to build some speed back, but as he did this she was already far away, thanks to the Foxhound's insane acceleration.
" Not as insane as the Nord-1500 Griffon I would say."
" Iskanda, can I end this fight?" He rhetorically asked, a bit unnerved by her third cut in his story.
And she even had the time to pull out an Himmelman before he was at locking range. Yet way before he could fire, she sent a volley of her XLAAs as rockets. Going into the fireball against all odds, Larry thought they would not detonate as they were not armed. He realized his mistakes too late when the shockwaves shook his plane like a leaf in the winter wind, but still managed to level up and fire a pair of missiles at her, even if his plane suddenly lost a great part of stability, something he did not understand why. One other thing he did not understand either was why she turned too late, and was a bit caught in the waves, but not as hard as he did.
" 4 for both." The control tower announced, followed by a chorus of worried voices Larry did not understand.
Strangely, as he turned behind her after they crossed, it seemed to him that his turn rate had been shortened a bit. He was able to have a second gun kill, and even a third. But when he began chasing her for the second time, he felt his plane becoming more and more unstable, as his speed increased. However, even if this instability allowed him to do sharper turns than before, he could not get a single git on her, again. "Verdammt 3D vectored nozzles" he cursed internally.
And she did exactly the same: slowing with her unconventional air brakes, and then getting in his six through a Kulbit maneuver. Yet this time he anticipated her maneuver, and instead of trying to shoot her while she was on the move, he hit the burners, outrunning her for some time before pulling an Himmelman. He was not even inverted that he was already at gun range and fired. But when he tried to level up to stop the half loop, his aircraft decided to lose the final bit of stability it still possessed until now. And entered in a terrible spin. However, here, the spin was not around the roll axis, but the pitch one. His aircraft was now rolling around this axis, while falling toward the ground.
" I don't understand, what is wrong with my plane?" Pixy furiously asked, under severe pain in his eyes.
" What is wrong is that you have just one wing." Scharlach 1 said. She had seen that when she got behind him and was astonished that he did not land immediately after that kind of damage.
" And you're falling. Eject while you still can!" His commander ordered, not willing to spare life for one fighter.
" I won't. I survive and land together with my pal, or we both die together!" He angrily retorted, not willing to abandon this fighter in which he achieved so much: his first acrobatics, and his first kill against a Su-27 during his external deployment.
" This is mad…" Then Larry cut the speakers, not willing anyone to disturb him while he was slowly getting out of this spin. When he extended his airbrakes, it showed on his HUD in red " Risk of structural failures". Risks? He had already lost half of the structure.
Eventually, Foulke managed to land, very painfully, as the spin caused him ten seconds of redsight, and he was still recovering from it when he landed. Quickly following him was a worried Laura. Usually she never cared for anyone in B7R. But it was against other mercs, never officials who just came out of their first real missions. So as soon as she had landed, she ran toward the half-torn Eagle.
Larry had even a bad time just getting out of his fighter. The mechanics put a ladder to help him climb out of the fighter, but he was a bit unbalanced due to the amount of negative G-forces he had to endure. One of them even had to catch him in mid-air as he missed a step, but now he was fine and on the ground. Leaning against a wall of his hangar, he was still holding his head in his hands due to his headache when the merc arrived and crouched down to be at eye level with him. He looked at her, but not with an angry gaze. Just with one of sadness.
" Look, I'm sorry for what has happened up there."
" Yeah, nice lie for a merc. Like you would care. Your kind cares only about benefits." Larry said with disdain.
" I don't, you close-minded official!" She snapped at him. If he wanted to play the disdainful guy card, she was going to snap back some sense out of him. " Even mercs have a moral compass, du Dummkopf! If it's about your plane I can pay the repair bill, I'm not a poor merc." She proposed to him, hoping it will put him in a better mood.
" I'm sorry for the way I behave, the only time I saw a merc in action, it was above Wieldvakia and he killed two of my closest friends without batting an eye. Kellerman shot this guy five seconds too late." He explained the prejudice he felt toward her kind, finally standing up, as the last spark of redsight in his field of view finally dissipated.
" I know, not all mercs are as honorable as me. I was a bit angry due to the disdainful glance you give me in Oswin's office if you want to know the truth."
" If you wanted to teach me a lesson, it was not the better way, but a good one anyway." He acknowledged her will, which was quite a rational one: mercs like officials are flawed, and no kind is better than the other.
" Well, maybe ripping your wing off was a bit too much. Still, I do not want to leave you with just a disdainful point of view of us mercs. I know a good Belkan traditional restaurant, better to make peace than the officer's mess." She offered him what a romantic person would call a date, and a realistic one a rendezvous.
" Aww, your end of this story is so cute." Iskanda compared his life to hers.
" Cute? I lost a wing and almost my life, miss Deadpool!" Pixy replicate with a semi angry voice. However, he knew she was right: his story was a very sweet bed of roses compared to her dark past.
" So, what happened then? Are we gonna add some lemon to this romantic story?" She asked with a malicious smile.
" No. I will not add some. Not yet." He replied, before beginning to describe the restaurant scene.
Historical center of Dinsmark, Belka, 07/08/1986, 20:00.
When she talked about a restaurant, he had thought it would be some kind of traditional dinner in the outskirts of Dinsmark near the base, not a fancy one. And it ended being one of the fanciest in the historical center of the capital of Belka. Foulke had already seen this restaurant before when visiting the street, but he never thought he would enter in it: even the cheapest menu was considered very expensive, and the cheapest wine was about the equivalent of a two-month pilot wage. Definitely, this she-merc was quite a stylized and wealthy one.
The furniture was nice, using wood types such as oak and balsam, but not overwhelming either. Even if from the outside it seemed to be a very fancy and private place, from the inside it seems warm and peaceful. The perfect place he needed to be right now to cool his jets.
" So, Herr Oswin pointed out that you were going to work for SBMF?" She asked, curious to know if the oncoming of their previous fight had changed his mind.
" For the South Belkan Munition Factory? Yeah, that's what I intended before our ...somewhat adventurous meeting I would say" He began his response. Yet, he did not know which path to choose. He could choose safety, a well and regularly paid job with few risks, or what she was the result: a risky and well-paid life full of action, battle. Not a better life though, but a livelier one.
" Did our DACT change your mind, maybe? Or just me, Frischling?" She wanted to know if she would leave Falkennest Base alone or not.
" Both of them did. I had my fair number of engagements, but nether true battles. Never moment of true passion with twelve seconds of red sight." He explained how he felt about this fight and its aftermath.
" Nice metaphor, to duel above B7R is the best, you can believe me. Besides, from my point of view, you won."
" I was no more fight worthy." He countered, as she was taking a sip of the fine red wine of South Oriental Belka (this part will become Ustio) she had ordered with the meal, which consisted of chicken breast with exotic fruits , and him some duck breast with cherry. The waiters had told them they were trying sugar-salted mixture this week, and they were not deceived.
" That did not matter actually from my point of view. I do not think I could land my MiG-31X/V without my left wing. You would accomplish that in the round table, you would now be considered as one of its honorable knights." She retorted, admirative of his flying capacity that he would only restrain by flying for a company.
" Titles don't interest me. My survival did." He replied, not that proud of his action. A pilot that cannot preserve his plane was not a good one from his point of view this very morning. But since his DACT some tides of his mind were changing.
" So, how did this very interesting situation have ended?" Iskanda interrupted him, not wanting to know every line from his past. She did not make her story last, on the other hand, but it was intentional. Who wanted to hear suffering for whole chapters?
" Way better than I thought. And NO, we did not do anything " Special" that day. I just resigned from the Belkan air force and joined her at first as her wingmen and friend, but I can agree we were way more than friends with benefits in the end." He described the evolution of his almost nine-years-relationship with Laura.
" And where did you fight, I mean, before this war?" Now she asked, a bit more chilled, her lust of hearing "funny" anecdotes suppressed.
" Well, we did a good world travel: in 1988 to silently took down some smuggler operating old salvaged Yukte bombers for their trades, in 1991 against Erusea to stop their expansion, in 1992 in Romney on the rebel side where I unwillingly cross the path of the future Komyeta 2 and the future Schwarze 1, the well-known Vulture, a pilot named Zubov, and now fighting for Belka and in 1993 against mercenaries that tried to overwhelm a government in Sotoa."
" So, you have seen some countries. Outside of Erusea, Shilage, Voslage and San Salvation, I do not know that many countries." She said with a bit of boredom. Those four countries looked all the same to her.
" The best thing she always said to cheer me up was that everyone deserves to find happiness at some point." He wanted to conclude on a brighter note.
" You did for a little less than ten years, and I'm sure you can find it again. I, on the other hand, will live like all demons that haunt this world: in hell." She shrugged while saying that: happiness was a feeling she did not feel truly since the death of her true mother. She could only feel the sick joy of cold passions that overwhelmed her while fighting or killing.
" As I said, you are not a monster, Iskanda. Every demon is a fallen angel, and if you have the will, maybe you will earn your wings back one day." Pixy countered her biased argumentation.
" Whatever, it's time to eat, let's join the others." She concluded the talk. If she talked again of her past, she would end up again in this sick overjoy state, and she did not want to. It was a part of her she hated to show to others.
" Better not starting a Schneeballschlacht again." He said as they were walking through the snowed runway. This earned him a small laugh from Iskanda, but this time it was a normal one, not one born out of sick cold passions.
She had shared her story with him, but would the other show the same acceptance? She was not very sure, but she felt confident as she walked through the restroom.
End of chapter.
Well, I will surely put some markers if you want to jump over the bloodiest part of Iskanda's story. If this story were a crossover, I'm sure she would end up in the assassin Creed universe at some point. But whatever, she would learn that there's always light, even in the darkest nights. It's my first flashback, say me if you like this type of writing for those, with these little analyses of their own story by themselves mixed in their story.
I know that MiG 31 cannot do post stall maneuver, but who cares, Laura flew a tuned one, so she can do anything with it.
And bis nächst mal, reader
Small corrections and a time set on the 05/06/19 and the 29/07, as well as the 29/12/2020.