The Belkan war: alternative story

by Vergeltern

It did not take great mans to begin wars nor to end then. But to turn the tide of one they are required. This is an alternate history for the Belkan war. Follow an other sixth Unit of Ustio, a different Galm team, as their actions will turn the tide in a twisted, but maybe better way. This story is rated T, but can content some M rated chapter with some depicted violent scenes.

24. Chapter 122: Operation Cannibal 1 part2

South of Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:10, Weather: overcast, medium cloud coverage.

After their quick refueling, they had streaked right toward the south of Hoffnung, flying above the rows of fuel tanks that flanked the river. At this point of Hoffnung, the Löre was well bent, and it seemed more like a canal than a river, what he was a bit more after and before the most industrialized city of Belka.

When they left the Bienenstock base, they saw that there were still a few transports waiting to leave the city. On their way, they had a look at the civilian airport of Hoffnung, who was flanking the limits of the mountain at the West of Hoffnung. These mountains had often protected Hoffnung from tempest, or invaders on the ground. Now, they couldn't stop the tempest that was slowly settling here, but the SAMs they set on the peaks could surely delay the invaders trying to flank the city, forcing the allied forces to come from its South or its North.

Donner four to seven hadn't had an easy morning, and maybe a harder one that our three musketeers at the North had. First, they were assaulted by a swarm of MQ-9 predators armed with either SAAMs or QAAMs, with the one bearing the first staying behind while the other carrying the latter would try to saturate the four Belkan F-35Xs. But they managed to shrug them off in the end, slowing them down enough to make them become target for the BAWS.

Their second waves were of A-12s. Sixteen of them. They could recognize they had a hard time defeating them, without the support of a Merlin satellite. Thus, half of the BAWS and the three SAMs at the limit of their position were destroyed. Same for the few AA guns south of the first small industrial center, that some foreigners called the "rugby field", as the terrain was dominated by a big flat factory with four chimney protruding of its metallic roof.

And right now, they had trouble with some Osean units which weren't sparing them at all. Because of course, it was the infamous Spare squad of Osea.

"It's harder to fight without the support of the technological achievement of Pendragon. You got the RTLS and one Merlin." Donner 4 had envied the support his brother-in-arm fighting at the North had received. Even if there the fight was also an almost lost one if it wasn't for the stunt that this next pilot had performed. Right now, he was fighting a F-16C while having to dodge the fire of two F-14Ds. At least his vector thrust equipped aircraft could keep up with their swing-wings ones. And they only possessed their XLAAs, who had poor matchup against agile targets.

"We are coming." Donner eight announced, as he was almost getting in range to fire his XMAAs on the fighter of Spare. Unlike the kulaks which hadn't any camo, they would keep their former camo, and as such what they could see in the sky was a patchwork of multi-tone camos and even some with digital camos. But like the Kulaks, they had their emblems shaded, by white lines, one, two or three. According to their intel, it was expressing the gravity of their crimes. Even if the said crime was just to have expressed some pro-peace sentiment after witnessing their comrades getting mercilessly vaporized by Excalibur or to raise their voice against their foolish commander that sacrificed their squadrons for nothing. Few had really committed war crimes. But all of them they were going to.

"They are called the Spare squad? Then I won't spare any of them !"Iskanda cheerfully exclaimed, as she locked onto three F-15Es that had ganged up again a sole F-35X, which was losing speed from having to evade all of their SAAMs he had to evade.

"Dankeschön. Jetzt ist Zeit der Vergeltung. (thanks. Now is time to retaliate)" The targeted F-35X managed to sleep through their locks, pulled a quick Herbert Manöver, and fired a QAAM and a pair of missiles on the two that had evaded the XMAAs of Schwarze Luchs.

"They had received reinforcement." An Osean noticed, but a bit late. The next second, his F/A-18C Hornet was stuck by a QAAM that tore off his tail. He didn't have the time to eject that another missile reduced his craft and himself to a pile of dust spread around by the eddies.

Now, the forces were of seven F-35X against four F-14Ds, five F-15Cs, three F-15Es, a few Fighting Falcons and six F/A-18Cs. No super Hornets nor high-tier airplanes were amongst those condemned. Their commanders wouldn't waste resources on what they considered to be human waste. Still, the Belkan were outnumbered three to one in the current situation. But putting into consideration all they had survived until them, they knew they had the chances to pull that victory off. Even if it would only be a temporary setback for the allied forces, who were supposed to attack en masse this evening according to report from the ears and eyes of the CSB that had infiltrated the allied ranks.

Iskanda went for the F-15Es, knowing that their SFFS would be the most destructive weapon these Spare pilots had in their arsenal. She went low, as they were going for a bomb run on the "rugby field" area. Still, they might have seen her in such close range, as they fired a few SAAMs. Nothing dangerous enough to harm her, but she was a bit disturbed in her approach to say the least. Curving a bit her path, she evaded their gunfire, and fired one QAAM on the one situated at the sides of the three-plane formation, and a gun burst on the one at the center. However, they showed some improvisation for Oseans, which was unexpected.

The one at the center couldn't improvise that much against the gunfire, but the two other fire a pair of SAAMs, which their onboard WSO managed to steer right on the path of the QAAMs.

"Quatsch (sh*)." Iskanda swore, a bit annoyed that some Oseans could display a bit of cunningness for once.

"Keine Sorgen (No worries). We have just to hold a bit more. The last jumbos are leaving the airport right now." Donner 6 indicated, thinking it was a good idea to share the only good news of this fight.

"Eigentlich habe ich keine (indeed I have no worries." Iskanda replied, as she flew below the two F-15Es that had survived her wrath for only a few seconds. Then she performed a half vertical loop, which made her arrive right above the two Strike Eagles. She had gotten fund of the Belkan Schräge Musik, but the Guillotine from that F-15S/MTD Belkan pilot was fun too. And it was what these criminals deserved, after all. She was only quickening the execution. Which wasn't by a very sharp blade, but by two missiles on their respective canopy.

"Wachte mal (Wait a second) … the F-14Ds are skimming above the Löre to the North." She noticed as she leveled, about to engage a pair of F-16Cs that had stayed true to the results of some Osean exercise and were outmaneuvering a F-35. There was only the transport craft they could attack there. She knew these Belkans were ready to fight to the last. While she couldn't let defenseless transport, or worst, civilian craft used to evacuate the citizen of Hoffnung get blown up by these convicts. They were already criminals, but she wouldn't let them add civilian mass slaughter to their list of evil deeds.

"Go, catch them or the five last jumbos will be lost." The pursued F-35X saw her abandoning her intended rescue to go on the hunt, skimming above the Löre. She was so low that she was leaving a trail of fog behind her, with her afterburners at full power.

"These military supplies cannot leave Hoffnung, Spare squadron." The Osean commander enforced his will on his leashed criminals.

"These aren't military craft. But civilian, look at your IFF, dummkopf!" Iskanda was trying for the first time in her life to dissuade someone not to fight.

"Don't listen to Belkan lies." Their commander ordered, but it was not enough to dissuade a hesitant Tomcat pilot. Who begin to do some kind of U-turn, but to be honest she had never the time to observe the change of mind of the pilot or his WSOs.

Because the pilots didn't exist a few seconds later. He had lost a pretty great amount of speed pulling that U-turn, and as such, he wasn't able to evade a pair of XMAAs coming from the F-35X trailing them. Which she had fired while inverting her aircraft, to get sure she had a window of fire from her external bays.

"Spare 12, cover us while we attack these Belkan suppliers." One of the other F-14D pilot ordered with a determined voice. He had ceased to care about what was wrong or right in that war since they throw him into a cell, after he bombed a medical tent in the retaking of Wesson. What would Osea bother with taking Belkan prisoners when this war was aiming to annihilate all of their forces, he thought back then. And it was with the same set of minds that he was climbing to engage them. His WSOs hadn't say nothing back then and stay silent now. After all, he lost half of his family when the fluvial cruise ship they served onboard was destroyed by a bad-aimed anti-ship missile during the first battle of Wesson.

"Roger." The pilot followed the order. At least he wouldn't have any more civilian blood on his hands. He had acted in the destruction of these tents there too, as well as the third still flying F-14D. All of them had good reason to be willing to kill Belkans, but were they really motivated to kill so many civilians without letting them a chance to survive? He wasn't that sure. He tried to motivate himself, as he went head-on against this modified lighting, firing some XLAAs that ended up for trash in the Löre.

"Move or Die. Or just Die, Osean!" She shouted infuriated at the Osean, while evading his missiles with amazing ease. Then she made a hairpin bend to the left, before performing her head-to-tail maneuver. Which took the Osean by surprise.

Still, surprise didn't take his life. A gun burst on his right flank did, and at the very last second, he bailed out, as well as his WSO, the two men were vaporized by the close explosion of a pair of missiles.

"The pursuer is gaining ground." The other Tomcat pilot reported to his leader, who had now arrived in range to use his XLAAs.

Which he lost now time firing on three jumbos, firing two on one and one on the two others. In a few seconds, he thought, all these Belkans would die. They would burn, and then their Hope would. It needed to burn for the allied to achieve victory, he knew it. And he would not be afraid to kill non-combatants here. Yet, he was beginning to be afraid of an earthlier threat than ethical issues.

Thus, the first death that occurred was his wingman's. Iskanda had climbed below him and fired one QAAM and two missiles at its fighter's underside, to make sure he would die. The Tomcat was obliterated in an instant.

Yet, so was the fate of the engines of the two last jumbos he fired upon, while the first as his wings clipped off by the explosive strength that were enough to ruin the hardened structure of a B-52s. These two were falling. They might hope for a crash-land and not kill all of their passengers. But the first that lose his wings was shattered into the shockwave, and the wing-root fillet was torn off as the still functional engines damaged the plane even further.

Then, she saw one of the most horrible way to die, as bodies were sucked into the air. Some were still alive and would be still alive when they would kill themselves from falling from such heights. She had heard of that Yukte nurse that survived a near ten kilometers fall, but she wasn't in perfect health after that, and she fell on snow and not semi-mountainous terrain. What would be left would be only dislocated bodies, with the few still alive screaming in agony for horrible injuries, such as impalement on tree parts.

However, she would made sure that this Osean would not live much longer than his victims and would suffer as much in his death. He tried to engage her head-on, that fool, swearing some insults at her that she dismissed. He could say F-words all he wanted, he was the one that would get screwed here. XLAAs did nothing to her. He did evade her QAAMs, but she was the first to get behind him, as he had closed his wing to outrun her as he went for these transport, and thus hampered his mobility.

A well-aimed gun burst sealed his fate, as the QAAMs had re-acquired their target, and with his engines reduce to burning pieces of metal, he couldn't outrun them. He expected her to fire at their chutes when they bailed out, but her gruesome tactics would differ this time. She had burned these witches tonight, and now he would burn too. Sure, she had no static FAEBs today, but she was good at improvising. She followed their chute, and as she flew nearby, went full afterburner while grazing the pilot's chutes.

The burned fuel set the silk ablaze in a splint second. They tried to separate from their chute and use their secondary ones, but then they discovered that their gear didn't contain secondary chutes. Another thing their commander had not bothered to get, even if it was common practice since the 1960's but that man would try to gain whatever money he could on the safety of his men. Legality wouldn't bother him since their rights had come to an end in that penal unit. Stuck in their harness, the two human torches burned very well.

Maybe some penal units pilots had either seen their becoming, or the tragic fate of what their commander would surely consider to be a misplacing of some zeroes, this error in target designation. Because all of the F-16C decided to fly away. Speaking of mistake of target finder, it was a complete one for the Osean, since at this very moment, the last Belkan military transport was leaving the area. If they hadn't tried so hard on those civilian crafts, they might have succeeded.

The only good news was that the two jumbos with damaged engine managed to crash land, but outside of her field of view, on the other side of the mountains, maybe not that far from Verzweiflungsberg. She wasn't seeing big clouds of smoke, so she could assert they weren't burning. The losses may be minimal today, compared to their predictions without her as a factor.

And it was the only good news, as two Belkan craft had been shot down while she was chasing these Tomcats. The first was Donner 6.

He had fell to three F-16Cs which attacked him head-on, that Schwarze Luchs intended to attack but had to let go as she went on the hunt for these convicted. He thought he would get the upper hand as he managed to kill one with a pair of QAAMs during the first fire exchange, but somehow parts of the burning craft got sucked into his engine. That caused the "engine overload" alarm to blare, telling him that his stand over Hoffnung had come to an end.

"Reaktor überdruck. I have to go." He reported and try to use the last bit of this thrust to get out of the combat area.

But the two F-16Cs weren't going to let him run like that, and also were quick to get in his sixes. He was doomed. But if the sacrifice of his craft would mean survival for the Hoffnungern, he was ready to give in his own.

"Spare 8, Fox 2!" One of the convicted happily announced. But he lost his happiness when the F-35X he was following with Spare 7 went vertical, but didn't climb, thus stopping its motion in mid-air, or almost. And of course, the F-16Cs followed the laws of dynamics and impacted the fighter. Since they were flying very close to one another, both went down.

The Belkan pilot managed to bail out, but none of the Oseans did. Maybe they were too astonished to try anything when they rammed him.

Still, there was another bad news: the loss of the Donner 4. He had successfully downed two F/A-18Cs by firing at them on their side, as they were attacking another F-35X head-on over the "rugby field" area. What he didn't expect was an Osean in F-15C to climb behind one the chimney of the factory and use that as cover to perform a surprise attack. The Belkan pilot then tried to lose the Osean by hitting the deck and going below the structure that was linking the two chimneys, where an aircraft could barely fly, and which foster the "rugby field" feeling of this place. But there, this very aggressive Osean followed him ruthlessly. He was forced to bail out after the F-15C hit him square at his single engine.

"Spare 15, one kill" The Osean said, but without sharing any joy from his actions. Unlike some of the more war-hungry members of this penal units, he didn't feel any accomplishment by doing the dirty tasks for the GHQ.

"That one is very aggressive, for an Osean." Iskanda analyzed, as she was getting back from her somewhat successful pursuit. Sure, she prevented the total destruction of all jumbos, but the death toll would still be over the hundreds.

So, she chose to go to battle with this one. But she would merely toy with him first. And she made be sure to have his attention by shooting down his wingmen with two XMAAs instead of one for each, as they were about to get a lock on Donner 5.

"Spare 15, attacking Schwarze Luchs." He made his will clear, as the Eagle of his squadmates had been obliterated without any chance of survival.

The next move of the Osean was to perform a sharp horizontal loop toward her craft, which she allowed him to do. But she would never allow him to land a single hit on her craft, swinging from side to side whenever he tried to get a lock on her, while laughing on the waves at his foolish attempt to hunt her. And with each tries, she was only infuriating the Osean more as her mad laugh grew louder.

She then saw Donner 5 hunted again, and despite her pursuer firing two QAAMs that she made impact an abandoned warehouse, flying very close to its roof made of glass and metal panels ordered in some curious fashion : they seemed like a wave, but of triangular shape. Still, the time was not to that kind of comparison. She thought she would gain a bit of time by flying close to the ground and between some facilities, but she had to admit that this Osean was persistent. He had learned a bit how to navigate in terrain with heavy encroachment on his path, or maybe he learned from someone, she guessed.

But even with all of his will, he couldn't keep his craft close to her to hinder her counterattack. She was able to catch up with the two other Oseans, that as much trouble as her pursuer to keep up with Donner 5. Definitively, this one was persistent too. And as the Belkan pilot continue her sharp turns and other evasive maneuvers, Iskanda saw an opportunity to strike at the two Osean F/A-18Cs.

Putting the pedal to the medal as they flew straight for once, with the Osean firing their SAAMs on the Belkan F-35X, she burst through their two plane formation, with her sudden presence interfering greatly with those two Oseans. At full speed, she pulled out a quick Himmelman, which maybe gave her a few seconds of redsight, but why would she complain to see her targets in crimson when she was planning to paint the earth with their crimson fluid. They had only the time to pitch up a little to aim their SAAM at her, that she evaded by curving her path, before zooming in quickly, hitting again the high-Gs just after that Himmelman. Donner 5, by now, was long gone, and had shot down a lone Osean F-15E.

But Iskanda hadn't finished with these Hornets : she performed a nearly vertical Herbert Manöver, which made her arrive at full speed at the Oseans, and at the same time the F-15C of that Spare 15 arrived at QAAM range. He tried to fire some, but she was falling so fast that he overshot her. While she didn't miss any of her targets, obliterating them with a volley of XMAAs on their top. Her four missiles didn't let a single chance to these Hornets, and they were worth one life each, since these Hornets had WSO too. Ending as WSO for a penal unit was without any doubt the worst becoming ever.

Furthermore, even when the QAAMs re-acquired her, she fooled them by firing at a fuel tank, and that was enough to trample with their IR sensors. Sure, she caused a bit of damage, but since she couldn't see any smoke pouring out of the building, maybe these factories had already been evacuated, and thus it was less of an issue for her.

Right now, the issue was the last allied message:

"Spare 15, Spare 18 and 2-1 are coming to help you get this one out of the party." Their commander announced this order, and the very soon death for these F-15E pilots. They would surely try to use their SAAMs while the F-15C would hunt her down and make her lose her speed with his QAAMs.

"These are not threatening odds. Only target-rich environment." She retorted, heading straight for the F-15C. He fired a pair of missiles, that she evaded by flying inverted, and pitching up while inverted -so pitching down if she had been in the good way-. His fire pass right above her, and in this position, they were too quick for the missiles to compensate for her change of trajectory. He tried to follow up with his guns, but then she decided to kick the afterburners, and fly straight on him.

He was reluctant to move for a few seconds, and this was a glaring mistake. Not to him, but for the two F-15Es. After all, they couldn't fire with him and that Belkan pilot on the same axis without risking hitting him. And as their joust was not going as fast as they anticipated, they had come closer than the SAAM required. What she did by taking advantage of his current idle position was to fly inverted over him, at very close distance, with her X-shaped empennage almost grazing his rudders. Something that she had already done while fighting for the allied forces, and not yet on this side.

Which side was she even, she asked herself? Her own was the blunt answer, but this operator of Tauberg had allowed her to transmit some orders to the thing she once swore to destroy. Who was she fighting for, she could say for the fleeing habitant of Hoffnung. In that regards, her fight was almost chivalrous. But her way to get her victory was all but chivalrous of course. Using their wingman to prevent them from firing was unorthodox to say the least. Of course, if these F-15Es pilots had the same mindset than the one of the F-14Ds that opened fire on some jumbos, they would have sacrificed their squadmates to get to her. But they didn't, and thus they fell to her last volley of XMAAs.

During this whole chase, and the downing of these Hornets and Strike Eagles, Donner 3, 5, 7 and eight chased most of the other members. There were only a few retreating aircraft by now, and even fewer that tried to stand and fight. You couldn't expect bravery from criminals.

And her, still pursued by this F-15C that she had got a good read on while crossing his path from close, was arriving on this battlefield. She distinguished between his two white lines the almost erased symbol of mage squadron. She knew only one mage squadron, and this squadron had only one member still alive after the battle over Mt Ivrea, where she showed him a bit of her aggressivity. He had learned but would never master it. It took more than to look for an idea to understand it. It required to make it your own, not simply copy it.

But she didn't want to shoot him down, now that she had understood who he was. Now, she wanted to show him pain. She guessed that shooting down his comrades with him unable to retaliate and watching that with utter powerlessness as he was barely keeping up in his sight was already a good step. She was only repeating what Kupchenko taught her during operation Dynamo and the subsequent attack on the Wunderwaffe, when he reduced her brother-in-arms in cinder, without harming her that much. Bearing your own pain was doable. Yet seeing the other dying all around you and bearing the weight of survivor was much harder. She was a living proof of that.

She said that these convicts had no bravery, and that was certainly true. However, some might have mistaken dauntlessness and lack of fear for bravery. In some case, these qualities could lead to man outperforming above their standards, but here it would only lead to their death.

"Spare 3 and 4, engaging the Schwarze Luchs." A F-16C pilot tried to threaten her as he engaged her head-on. His poorly aimed machine guns grazed her, while two of her missiles that she fired at the limit of her firing arcs destroyed his wingman. Again, she was taken by euphory as she watched them die without any fighting will. And the F-16Cs wasn't untouched, with her gun opening fire after she pitched up a bit to fire with a bit of high ground.

"Damn, I lost my front radar." The Osean complained, as bullets from the F-35X pierced his frontal fuselage.

"Then move away, you cannot help anymore." Spare 15 -or to use his real name that Iskanda had by now figured and remembered, the Second Lieutenant Kizuko Takako aka Mage 2-.

But despite the help Spare 15 tried to give him by firing a pair of XMAAs, he died. To be honest, it was the help he gave him that killed her, as Iskanda put the pedal to the medal as she saw the two XMAAs incoming. Even if she had made a gun score, they hadn't crossed yet. And when she crossed his path lightning-fast and inverted, she had two XMAAs trailing her very close. As she flew extremely close to the damaged F-16C, and as the missile were dumb "fire-and-forget" munition, they kept their forward motion, lined up on her craft. But their proximity sensors make them blow up as they follow her right below the F-16C. Which could be considered to fall victim of a blue-on-blue. And the irony of the situation only caused a bit more laugh from this Schwarze Luchs. By now, he had gotten a read on her. He would have recognized that mad laugh anywhere.

"I'll kill you, Schwarze Luchs!" The angered Osean pilot shouted at her, while growling from both frustration and desperation. But anger got over his concentration, and he wasn't as good, and couldn't keep up after this horrible mistake.

Thus, she managed to outmaneuver him after a streak of sharp turns. He was activating his afterburners to compensate for the loss of speed. She knew that in a straight line, the acceleration of the F-15 was unmatched by most fighters that she could get her hands on, with the exception of the Nord 1500 Griffon. But that aircraft was not available right now, of course. She preferred cunningness over brute force, and her enacted plan was relying on him overrunning her with a close timing.

She flew a bit lower than him, as he was catching up and was in gun range, as a way to begin her last stunt, and primarily to evade his gunfire. She had no doubt that his gun would wreck her single engine. She had seen Pixy down enough single-engine fighter to have a good mind on the subject. Then, she pitched high, but without keeping her thrust high. She wasn't trying to pull a Cobra, that wouldn't help, just getting below him at a precise angle.

Two gun burst stroke the Osean that just overrun her as she pitched her fighter. The first stroke the nose, knocking down his radar. The second went through the center of the fighter and damaged the right engine critically. The Osean had to shut it down, and loss in roll stability due to this. He would have a hard time landing. She would let him go. There was no glory in killing him, like Kupchenko had surely seen no glory in killing her after the first slaughter of the Wunderwaffe -even if to be honest, its very first was when their space drones were suddenly destroyed during Operation Hell Bound-.

"Bienenstock to Donner, the last penal units members are running away. There's no point in pursuing them too far, it would only deplete our forces." The Airbase was calling them back. Even if Iskanda wasn't already bingo fuel, she knew that there was a pretty high likelihood that the Southern defenders of Hoffnung were.

"Ver. RZB" Iskanda replied, letting Mage 2 live with the weight of the survivor, and worse, the weight of guilt that would chew away at his heart for all of his life. It was almost what she felt after her defeats at the hand of Kupchenko, but these new victories had swept away those dark feelings.

As Donner 3 and 8 joined up with her, they were a bit startled that she had let that Osean run away. They saw her causing the death of a neutralized fighter, and before, having no trouble in burning the chutes of these killers flying F-14Ds. Which caused Donner 8 to ask, when he was almost getting to understand her, and was resetting pretty much his understanding :

"Why did you let him run away?"

"Nur eine Zeuge, um die Geschichte zu erzählen. Es gibt keine Herrlichkeit ohne Zeugnisse (just a witness to tell the tale. There's no glory without any witness)" She defended her almost selfless act. Sure, there was enough Belkan to tell the tale, but she wanted the Oseans to not only know her, but to fear her. After all, it was out of fear that they respected her when she was their allies, and she wasn't going to change that right now, when she was at the exact opposite of an allied to Osea.

They would be afraid of her, she swore. Until her enemy would crawl away in fear and acknowledged her superiority, she would made them fear her. She might not need to perform the same kind of horror she had to perpetrate against the Hexens, but she would always be ready to.

"Es stimmt." Donner 3 seemed to agree. It was a bit surprising to her that now and with her having proven her loyalty by her acts in the air, Donner 3 was almost trusting her more than Donner eight, when they were at the inverted situation on the ground an hour prior to this moment.

The five F-35X flew toward the airport. On their way, they announced her that some ground troops had located the two other Donner team that survived getting shot down. For this day the pilot had no casualties. And the civilian casualties were pretty low, in comparison of the entire population of Hoffnung, several hundred thousand.

They had made half the way to the airbase, when something happened, that was going to raise the number of casualties. Suddenly, a few MQ-9 Predators flew above the hills of the eastern side of the valley. At first, the defenders of Hoffnung didn't take this threat seriously, since most of the drones were shot down by a single BAWS launch, and the few that survived it were decimated by the flak cannons positioned on the flank of the Hill.

"Strange, these drones shouldn't have come from here. There's only the railroad toward Fato there." Donner 5 pointed out, a bit worried that something might have shifted in the alliances of power that once were well set.

"This is the 32nd air defense battalion, we have intercepted some data these drones emitted. Transmitting the encrypted data zu Tauberg." A Belkan lieutenant leading the flak site that had successfully decimated the Osean UAVs sent. It was better to send those data to Tauberg, there they had the computing power to crack them, while here their IT technicians were a bit busy with finishing the overall data transfer to Blumenberg.

"Data received." One analyst at Tauberg reported twenty-five seconds later, due to their own encryption they used to protect this intel, and the communication having to go through space and the Merlin satellites to avoid the mountains between the CSB and the South-East of Nord Belka where Hoffnung was located, The Waldreich mountains.

Still, the deciphering revealed to be useless after five minutes of waiting, with the fighters having moved closer to the area instead of going for the airport. They could always eject if they hit bingo fuel, and there was plenty of spare planes to man, with many North Belkan pilots having followed the order to let Hoffnung burn, since the city was openly supporting the CSB.

Why did it reveal to be useless? Not because they weren't able to decipher it. That took them three more minutes. But after what happened, this data had become meaningless. What happened was a sudden rocket launch coming from the other side of the valley, followed by light campaign artillery. Like if someone had set a battalion of Kaliuchka on the other side of the hill.

"RTLS, opening fire on the rockets." The lead operator inside the armored railcar announced.

But by then they had understood what the shells were heading to: the RTLS itself, while the rockets were crossing the valley. And it was a bit harder to intercept shells than rockets, due to shell having greater speed and less explosive power. Even if they blew up, the shrapnels would still fall on the train. Besides, they focused their fire on the rockets, and were helped by the fighters who fire all of their last XMAAs.

The railcar suffered heavy damage from the artillery shell barrage, but the two third of the rockets were destroyed. By then, the path of the rockets had been figured out by the Merlin satellites precise sensors, but which couldn't help since North Belka was still firing ASAT on them, and Excalibur was used to strike at some Belkans squadron trying to engage the transport craft on their way to Blumenberg. Their origin too had been seen.

"Gottverdammt, Sie feuern an der Autobahn." The Tauberg operator announced, furious as he knew what was on the highway right now: hundreds of civilians, that were still being evacuated. They couldn't evacuate all by the air, and the railroad had been destroyed by a North Belkan pilot who chose to crash on the runway.

"Woher?" Donner 3 asked, startled to see that Osea and their allies were not even trying to cause strategic damage, but pure and useless bloodshed. Their so-called "land of freedom" had fallen quite low to go to such extent.

"Aus… die Eisenbahn im Osten." He was again, shocked to see that their former Fatoan allies were siding against Hoffnung. Thus, they had sided with the allies, since Hoffnung was a target for both North Belka and the allies. North Belka hadn't attack directly, but chose to focus on the transport, hampering the transfer of Hardware to Tauberg and Blumenberg.

"Verdammt Fatoan." Iskanda swore. They were just a bunch of turncoats that were trying to stay at what they would consider to be the winning side. Even if that side suffered massive hardware losses, both for Osea with the EMP disaster, and North Belka since Hoffnung would not supply them anymore, and apparently Sudentor had chosen to enact some "aggressive neutrality" and had ceased to supply North Belka in hardware too. But not in basic needs or energy.

"Ziel in Sicht!" Donner 7 added, after having fly over the hills for sometimes, followed by four other Hoffnung defenders no thirsty for Osean blood.

There, in some plains, two trains filled to the brim with howitzer were idle, having stopped their motion to fire, as well as too deploy the small artillery pieces they used to destroy the RTLS. They had deploy some self-propelled CWIS, but now some of the artillery servants were doubting of their air defenses, as the five F-35X fired their missiles and their guns, taking some Osean bullets in the process, but killing and injuring a good number of artillery servants. And the top armor of the self-propelled CWIS was not that thick, at least not thick enough to counter such punishment.

"Noch einmal." Donner 3 ordered, and the five aircraft flew away from the target for some seconds, before rushing on their last defenses, gun blazing.

"CWIS down, they are now dead." Iskanda cheered, trying not to think to all of those civilians that had been crushed by the volley of rockets. She then proceeded to attack the right train in a joint attack with Donner 7 and 8, while 3 and five kept killing the servants of the artillery pieces, not leaving them one single chance to reach the relative cover of the train. Each of them was firing gun bursts and one missile on each howitzer, which were set ablaze quickly.

Of course, this destruction wasn't missed by the Osean commander, who as he witnessed the death and mayhem in that plain toned to the train driver:

"Full speed back. Enter the tunnel."

"But sir, there is still some of our men trying to get on the train." The driver noted, not wanting to let all of the servants die, as the Belkans were mercilessly gunning them down.

"It's hopeless. These Belkans are as dangerous as that Ustian journalist." The officer, which had some metallic mask covering the lower half of his face, stigmata of a very painful chemical burn a few weeks ago, from which only his charred lips were protruding.

"Now, Full speed back or I do that myself After getting your lifeless body out of my way!" Ransack threatened his driver, drawing his pistol to add the gesture to the speech.

" Okay, calm down sir. Full back it is." The train driver gave up his hope of saving his comrade, disengaging the brakes and putting the diesel turbine to full power.

And it was the good time to go, because in the next minutes, the burst rockets that must have caused so much death on the Belkan highway burst inside their magazine, on the other train. The explosion tore the train in pieces, while propelling burning metallic parts in all directions. No Belkan took any damage from that, but the few Oseans that had gotten out of the train were pierced by the fast-moving objects like if they were shot at dawn.

However, the fate of the first train was not a certainty yet. Iskanda was determined to make it a certain death, following the train into the small tunnel. Which was wide enough to fly through it, since it was made to let pass two trains at the same time.

"Does she have some tunnel fetishism or what?" Donner 8 sighted, as he saw her do her second inside flight of the day. Herself didn't know how many she had done by now. Maybe a dozen, more or less. Sure, it was extraordinary risky, but there was no glory without danger.

And, feeling the adrenaline running through her was reminding her of the fantastic night she spent yesterday. She did go very close to the death once more, but it had been worth it. Like engaging those ADFX-01 had been to.

The tunnel was light up with some small reddish lines, so this time she didn't need to fire any missile to light her path. Besides, she saw the back red lights of the train only a half-minute after getting into the tunnel, flying at eight hundred kilometers when train like that would go four times slower.

Yet, this time her approach wasn't unnoticed by the soldier onboard the train, with the tunnel reverberating the sound of her engine. Soon, they activated a few lights on the train, and some tried to shoot her down using submachine guns. Tracers grazed her, illuminating the dark place, while she fired back two missiles on the back of the train, vaporizing some of the soldiers that had climbed on its roof. She then gunned the driver post, shattering the wing shield in a thousand pieces with a great crystalline sound. Two more missiles followed the gun burst, exploding inside the train, injuring many of Ransack's men and killing more than a dozen.

The man himself fell to the ground, as he was looking at a map of their surroundings. The next Fatoan base where they could join the allied or even asked for reinforcements was too far away to try to contact them. They would all die to this fighter if they didn't do anything soon, he admitted as he was standing up again.

"Fire at the tunnel with the burst rockets." He shouted dryly to his servants that were a bit startled by the nonsensical order. If they attempt that, it might crumble on them. But it would crumble on their pursuer as well.

"But sir, we might get trapped!" A fire control officer intervened, knowing that even steel-reinforced concrete would not fare well against these burst rockets made to destroy bunkers or to saturate aegis ship in naval warfare.

"Fire, I said. Execute that order. Now!" Je shouted once more, as the fighter was now flying alongside the train.

Right now, Iskanda was flying in a very dangerous way, having done a quarter of barrel-roll to the left, with her bays now facing the train. She fired two missiles at the train side, which dented its side like if a giant punch had hit it. The hull hadn't been utterly breached, like her LAGM once did to the RTLSs at Directus, but the blast had projected a great quantity of metallic fragment inside the train, reaping Ransack's men once more.

Which caused him to shout in desperation, as the fighter was slowly overrunning them:

"Fire. Now or It's your head that's gonna take fire!" He threatened the FCO once more, and he finally agreed to act below the threat.

"Firing howitzer one and two." He sent the firing sequence to the howitzer in front of the craft.

Iskanda was first shaken with horror when she saw the blast of the explosion. She had already had a hard time leveling after she fired at the train while flying tilted, but here it was ten time more. Her fighter's right wing hit the wall hard, and through the shockwave the wing was shattered and vanished into the air. In an attempt to avoid another of these situations, she kicked the afterburners to their peak, overrunning the train.

"She's leaving a trail of flame behind her. We hit her in the tank, and she used her burners. Now she's just flying with a wick on her back." One of the operators observed through one of the windows, as the tunnel was illuminated by the bright flames.

"Increase speed, I want to see that Belkan bastard blowing up sky-high." Ransack wanted to see this Belkan's demise dearly. Nothing would be better than to see their F-35X exploding like a stick of dynamite.

"We can't, sir. The turbine number 2 and 3 have suffered damage from the shockwave. We're trying to reboot them, but it will take some time. Furthermore, the steering mechanism has been compromised." One of the drivers on the other driving post transmitted, as the train was slowing due to these damages.

*Fine. But make sure we go fast enough, so I'll at least see her burning remains falling." He ranted, as some failing machines were depriving him of this simple pleasure.

Iskanda, wasn't happy about her situation. Luckily for her, the tunnel had no great curves, so she could see the light at its end quite quickly, having gone above Mach by now. Going above Mach had finished to rip off the last standing pieces of her right wing.

She should have asked to Pixy a bit more how to fly with only one wing. And he made it with a F-15C, a worldly known fighter for its durability, which was not hampering its mobility too much. Still, her fighter was a pain in the * to maintain stable on the roll axis, while her alarm was assaulting her with high pitch tones. Of course, she could understand why the structural integrity was red, since her fighter had lost quite a bit of integrity. Made it was as decent as its pilot, by now.

Somehow, she was outpacing the trail of flames that had come from her right fuel tank, punctured when her wing had been ripped off. It wasn't a big leak, and as such she would keep that trail of flames for quite a while if she didn't manage to extinguish it. It was only if the flames didn't catch up with her first.

Near the Belkan-Fato Border, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:30, Weather: high stratus

Iskanda was now leaving the tunnel, and climb right after leaving hit, hoping to cut the trail of flames still hanging at her craft. She still had a third of her right fuel tank, and she feared that the flames might catch with her if she didn't find some way to extinguish them. But as she climbed, a bit of fuel was thrown aside by some wind and ended up spread over on her XMAA pod. Which was more than useless against the train she would soon face, if they had kept their pace. Still, she wasn't sure if it was empty or not, and the sensor for that were a bit jammed due to the other weapon pod missing, since she lost it while losing her entire right wing.

Maybe she could detach it, and look for what outcome it would cause. It was always better to lose a bit of weight in this course against time and death. And it was removing her of the risk of having it be set ablaze when she would go down, in case the fuel spread over would take fire. Because she knew her craft would support the explosive mass of one XMAA at such proximity, especially after having taken so much punishment.

After a few seconds of reading her switches, she found it, and turn off the switch indicating "Abtrennung". It was the same word those Belkan would say when they drop these dagger-shaped drones. Thus, the magnetic lock linking the XMAA pod to her fighter's left wing was deactivated, and the small metallic part fell behind her, in the column of flame she had created in her climb.

What she feared would happen to her a few seconds ago. The pod blew up in mid-air, meaning that it was still housing a few XMAAs inside. However, the shockwave had some benefic effect, as it extinguished the flame in the blast of wind. She cut her engine and hit the deck toward some valley she saw while she was climbing. Compared to Hoffnung gigantic valley, wide of several kilometers, this one was much slimmer, maybe less than half a kilometer.

She decided not to use her afterburners again, flying solely in supercruise, and trying to conserve her momentum of her fall after her survival against this threat she didn't want to face any time soon. She would fight an ADFX-01 any day, but not escape some trail of death that almost seemed like fate was abandoning her for an instant. Even if these words didn't mean much for her. She didn't believe in fate or determinism. Right now, she had only one belief: she would obtain victory today. And she was determined to.

So, she began pouring fire onto the bridge that had been set to cross the valley, a nice metallic arc bridge. She had already see similar bridge in Erusea, made by a now old architect of the last century, with the same big metallic arc sustaining the bridge deck, and with the weight distribution rendered a bit more equal on the different parts of the metallic bridge through some other smaller metallic pyramidal constructions. Of course, if the model was good, they were nothing that could prevent Belka from reusing it a few decades later. After all they had reused 75 millimeters cannons from a war almost eighty years ago, and they worked pretty well until she trashed their operator. That bridge too, was holding pretty well its structure, until she began firing at it.

She began firing at the two main base, which housed the foundation for the main arcs and one pyramidal support. She didn't fire at the metallic itself, but at the concrete block from which the arc was protruding from. And after a few missiles, she saw concrete being slowly shattered and filled with cracks. She did the same on the two sides, and after a few minutes in which she spare half of her remaining missiles, the two main bases had suffered unfixable damage, with some of the metallic pieces now hanging over the void when they were heavily attached by concrete to the slope of the valley a bit sooner.

Her other missiles, she used them to weaken the metallic pyramids used for weight redistribution. Pieces of metal were flying with each explosion, and she could see after a few minutes that now even the small winds coming from the valley were enough to twist the bridge, like a line of boys that a wave would impact, and that would move in disharmony.

She had just finished firing her last two missiles on the metallic pyramids protruding from the main arc, near the center of the bridge, when she heard the sound of the train, that was getting out of the tunnel, eight hundred meters before the bridge. She quickly hit the deck to hide in the valley, and above all to enjoy the sealed fate of the train, the horrific trap she had just set.

On board, the atmosphere was a bit lukewarm. But it got warmer, and almost joyful when someone spotted the remains of an explosion still lingering at high altitude. It was a small one, they conceded, but maybe it was because she blew up without many ammos left.

"Now that Belkan scum is dead. Let's cross the bridge and go back to the Osean base Fato had let us create." Ransack announced. He wouldn't have been happier than if his trooper had captured that damned Ustian journalist that had now scarred him for life.

"Still, how can they be so naive… We won't let them have a piece of Belkan territory. However, we won't support Gebet and Recta if Fato try to take land from them, since they refused to join the allied forces." One of his closest lieutenants, that shared deeply his hate of the Belkans -and now of the Ustians as well-, almost disclosed how Osea was disposing of their supposedly allies. They were nothing but tools that would eventually become obsolete, like almost anything Osea was creating after all.

The train was already engaged on the bridge, when they heard a sudden explosion : Iskanda, having no more weaponry, gave it all out, and flew below the first weight distributor she had critically damaged, timing her speed so she would hit the Mach while crossing the bridge. The shockwave would have usually done nothing to such structure that was made to support heavy wind. But for the weakened and crippled metallic structure, the shockwave that went through all the metallic components of the bridge was the last straw. The deck of the bridge twisted terrifically, almost making the train derail, while metallic parts were set loose, with stud being projected in all directions, as their mechanic resistance was overload.

"Stop that train!" Ransack bellowed, as the bridge was already beginning to collapse, no deeply worried, and understanding how easy it was to believe in a good victory he thought he own when you would only get what you deserve, which would be a utter defeat soon.

"We can't. Mechanism were damaged when you ordered to fire at the tunnel wall." A horrified driver answered, stuttering due to the terror that his imminent death was making him feel. He had activated the emergency brake, but they wouldn't hold. They would only slow down the train, and even if they were fully functioning, the train wouldn't have stopped before the middle of the bridge, at least.

"Then jump! Try to, before it's too late." Ransack left his post with haste, knocking over some terrified mens that the overrush of adrenaline caused by such danger was creating for some, and was causing them to stay idle in front of death.

"Now, fall to hell, Oseans. You wanted to make it rain on these people, but it's opening right for you." Iskanda taunted, them, as the train was slowly gliding on the collapsing bridge. She went for a final gun run, as people were trying to jump from it, acting in desperation in front of a certain death. She surely reaped multiple Osean by doing so, but didn't know where the leader jumped from, so she wasn't sure about his fate.

A few seconds later, as she was gunning from above one of its rocket launcher that took fire, the fall finally happened. The weight, and the force that the motion of the train had transmitted through the deck of the bridge were too much for its weaken structure, and this time, the whole metallic arc went loose, with metallic part moving fast with strange metallic noise, like an extremely low guitar, or maybe a contrabass. But outside of this sonic performance, the more beautiful thing to her was to see the train capsizing and falling in flame to the ground. Apparently, her last bit of gun fire had caused a fire to grow within the train. Ablaze parts fell to the bottom of the valley, accompanied by screams of terror from the still onboard crew on the waves, before the deafening sound of a big explosion filled the valley, suppressing any noise.

What was left were burning parts, were ammo kept exploding in chains, propelling burning metallic parts and burning human remains high in the valley, while the bridge had lost its entire deck. What was left of him were the base of the pyramidal weight distributor, facing the sky like a row of red teeth. There was quite a high likelihood that there were a few survivors that managed to jump in time and maybe even escaped her bullets. But she was trusting her wolf friends to make their life hard until they get to the allied frontline. Which closest point might be Glatisant, with the few strangled Osean troops there having established some base into the ruins of the fortress, having great troubles at getting supplies and having to fend off attacks of Belkan survivors that had the knowledge of terrain with them.

Their fate would be theirs to decide, even if it had been sealed for most of them, and even for the few that believed being in charge, their fate wasn't theirs anymore. Osea had decided for them, and it would be death, sooner or later. They chose to pick up the wrong fight when entering her battlespace were she was expecting only one thing : victory.

And it's with thoughts of this well-deserved victory that she contacted her new Belkan friends at Hoffnung, while she was pulling a slow U-turn, wanting not to lose control of her solo-winged F-35X. She could bet Pixy would feel some sort of pride, if he knew that she managed to fly such a fighter for so long with only one wing. Maybe she even beat him at his own game, because so far, he hadn't bragged about doing inside flight while in "Solo Wing".

"Schwarze Luchs zu Hoffnung, Bahn Zerstören. RZB (Train Destroyed Rück Zu Base, RTB)." She happily announced infirming the few that though she died and asserting the majority that had rooted for her survival.

"Ver. We will wait for you to do the debriefing. Don't take too much time." The voice of the man in charge of Hoffnung's defense, Oswin Neugel, respond, relieved to heard of her success.

Her back travel would be a calm one, other the mountains that housed that tunnel. Nothing crazy on this way. She had her fair share of craziness for the day, and even for the month, she thought after all the events that had happened today, since midnight, from the Hexenjagd to this final act. But was it truly the final act of the day? After all, it was only midday. Maybe this spectacle would be a four-act one. There was enough theatrics in it, definitively…

Bienenstock Airbase, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:45, Weather: medium cloud coverage

To say that Iskanda's landing was arduous was an understatement. It was harder than arduous, with his aircraft having lost its right wing. Still, the sharklets on the almost pristine left wing -it wasn't pristine by any means, but it could be considered as such in comparison with the right wing- were helping a bit in enabling her a bit of stability as she landed. Now she was almost regretting her landing with her ULM this morning, in which she was shaken away like a leaf in the tempest, but she had still some bits of control over her craft. There she had none.

"Will she make it?" One of the operators in the control tower shared his worries, as the flying wreckage was lowering its gear. Luckily for Iskanda, she hadn't lost her right rear gear when her right wings were ripped off.

"She managed to fly all the way back here from the bridge, and before in a tunnel. So, she had good chances, I would say." Their commander Oswin Neugel deduced, after having watched this new pilot's every move since her take off. She was quite a tough girl to be sure.

And in the end, they were both relieved to see the F-35X being stopped by the emergency landing system, that used some network of cable to do so. Iskanda was a bit shaken by the sudden stop, but this little deceleration was almost irrelevant compared to all the Gs she had had to bear today. Still, it was a pretty tired that some rescue crew helped out of her fighter, since she had a bit of trouble stepping down from it, due to the damage it had taken on every corners.

A few minutes later, she was back in the briefing room, seeing the ZHW software loading screen. Last time she hadn't the opportunity to see it. It was quite a simplistic one, even if it was a bit more elaborated that the twin mountains of Axe and Hammer : the three letters were written in italic letters, stuck between two trails made by what was supposed to represent the exhaust of a stylized fighter jet, that was almost looking like some arrowhead, and the second trail was made of a propeller fighter, maybe a BF-109 or a FW-190, she couldn't say.

Maybe she could try flying one of these relics of another one for fun, she thought as she saw the logo disappear, to see another infamous logo appear, even if she had never seen it by herself, the logo of the Pendragon Projekt, with Excalibur inside a circle, a Su-47 and a ADFX-01 nearby, and the name of the Projekt wrote in medieval letters around the circle. After all, most of the Pendragon Projekt seemed to have come from here. Last proof up to date: the presence of a RTLS here.

"The results of this morning's operation are… mitigated to say the least." Oswin Neugel began the debriefing, as the screen displayed the city of Hoffnung in her croissant-shaped valley, with the two small fighting forces leaving it at the South and the North. There, the numbers of the Osean and Yukte fighters they had downed was huge to Iskanda, but not that much to the other pilots.

"The number of losses they suffered might be above the hundreds, drone and QF-fighters taken into consideration. However, we loss a few planes, and the RTLS is beyond repair due to this last rocket and artillery attack. Civilian losses in the lost transport and on the bombed highway have not been counted yet, but we might hope to have a number between one and two thousand."

"But the last attack revealed one thing that threaten our current situation even more : The Rald-led North Belka, and their Fatoan allies, are ready to let Osea cross their airspace to annihilate us. We might have to expect more forces coming from the East. That can also explain how these Yukte managed to come from the North." He continued the briefing, with the software zooming out, to display some base of Fato and North Belka, including Anfang, Dinsmark and Dinsmarkhaven, and in Fato, the Bayes Fortress, that had been repaired since Iskanda's arrival in Ustio, months ago.

"Furthermore, some of the ears and eyes of the Pendragon Projekt have reported that Osea and Yuktobania are mobilizing old high-altitude spy-planes prototypes to turn them into supersonic high-altitude mediumweight bomber." A final arrow was drawn, coming from Osea, with unknown forces this time.

"That's understandable, since Excalibur had lost in power with the generator being relocated right now, and also with the destructive power of the Merlin satellites decreasing with altitude." Neugel finished the briefing, with some proposition for these unknowns being listed near the bottom of the arrow that was situated in the middle of Osea. Among the suggested names were the YF-12 Oxcart Interceptor, which had given the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-104 starfighter and the X-15 prototype, used more to train astronauts than fighter pilots, and from Yuktobania, only the letter R-020 were written. Which was of course some references to a fighter, but Iskanda had no idea of what it could be. She didn't know that the Yukte had high-altitude supersonic jets. Or they would be like these A-12 Avengers the Osean were pushing into service, cancelled planes that were used because it was less costly to make them fly again than scrap them and use the new resources, and maybe less time-consuming too.

"I doubt of the high-altitude capacities of the F-35X. In low altitudes, that's a good craft." Iskanda intervened, with at this moment no idea on to how to stop these high-altitude infiltrators.

"Ich anerkenne, Frau Schwarze Luchs. Aber vielleicht werden wir eine Lösung dieses Problems finden. (I recognize, Miss Dark Bobcat. but maybe we'll find a solution to this issue)." Oswin shared the mind of this unknown pilot about this multirole which effectiveness had been greatly increased by their new variant, but not to such an extent.

"Ich hoffe wir werden einigen finden, und schnell (I hope we'll find one, and fast)." Donner 3 had not much optimism about their survival. Especially with the Wunderwaffe doing less Wunder.

"Wir haben ein bisschen Zeit. Unseres Spiones haben gelernt, dass die Osean Angreife am Nacht stattfinden wird. (we have a bit of time. Our spies have learnt, that the Osean attack will take place at night). Jetzt ruhen Sie sich aus (now go get some rest). " Oswin tried to boost a bit the diminishing morale of his pilot. He knew they would fight to the Death to defend their city, but he didn't want any useless death either and wasn't a franc supporter of any kind of martyrdom. War were won by the survivors, not the sacrifices. And his last sentence was because he had seen half of his pilots yawing at least twice since the beginning of this briefing.

"Ich denke wir werden.(I think we will)" Iskanda asserted, trying to figure a way to reach these infiltrators with their available hardware.

"Untergrund Flug wird nicht funktionieren gegen solches Jagdflugzeug. (Underground flight won't work against such fighters" Donner 8 retorted her, as they were on their way to the Belkan mess hall, were some high nutritive food was waiting for them, among them some Rösti, these roasted hash brown.

And as they eat some's, feeling exhausted from this long flight. The Belkan had even more reason to feel exhausted, as this kind of morning was their daily routine since a few days and the beginning of the evacuation of Hoffnung. They had already seen some other Kulaks, QF-4 and QF-16s and some A-12, when these two units had been utter surprises for Iskanda. Yet, their use in such high numbers meant that Osea had lost their cool, and was throwing everything they could at the city, which had now only four planes ready to defend, and only one third of its initial defenses still in good state.

She had one person she wanted to talk right now, after their lunch. She wanted to know about Vasquez, at least to know her state, after all she had went through those last few days.

Sand Island, West Osea, 11/06/1995, 14:00, light marine wind

The weather was light, his fighter was light after having dropped all of his weapons after leaving Hoffnung to fly faster. But his mind, and his heart were not light at all, as he, the former second in command of Mage squadron and its unique survivor of Operation Hell Bound, was on his approach to the cemented sandbar that Sand Island was. The name of the place was fitting at least. Even if to be honest, name such as "purgatory island" or "trash archipelago" could have also fit very well.

"The last convict is arriving." The control tower operator announced with a feelingless and disdainful voice.

"Your bit of freedom in the air is over. Drag your delayed ass in there." Was what the welcoming committee told him, as soon as he landed. Welcoming committee made of MPs used as watchdogs on this island. Both pilots and their guardians were forbidden to display any emotions between one another, and any display of anything was severely reprimanded. In comparison of this almost warm Island with ice-cold welcome, his little time at Valais had been the complete opposite: ice-cold mountains, but much warmer welcome.

The briefing was same as usual, with their commander, a man named Quantrill, ranting about their failures at destroying anything of major importance at Hoffnung. He didn't rant about their losses. That, he would never do. They were just good to be use as cannon fodders or as operatives to do Osea's dirty works. First, Osea had tried to rely on mercenaries to do such kind of dirty works, but even the most heartless, brutal and greedy mercenaries were showing reluctance to fly under the threat of being vaporized by what seem to most to be overworldly weaponry.

"You are just a big bundles of weak, pathetic deserters. For once I wish we would have a deserter hunting squadron like the Vulture so I wouldn't have to see your face of losers here."

"Yeah, and that Kupchenko guy would surely turn them against you too?" One of the pilots, that had fled onboard his F-16C when he had realized what they were asking them to do, dare to speak.

"You. Solitary without water." The emotionless voice of their commander was suddenly filled with anger as he ordered the MPs of the room to escort that man to a short sojourn in hell: metallic cell in plain sun, without water. Nobody would comply for a week when they put out of those cells after one day, at the limit of exhaustion or dehydration. Their health wasn't a meaningful factor here either, Spare 15 had learned too. The day of his arrival, he was greeted with a half day of Solitary, since the commander learned why he had been sent there: refusing to listen to orders and following the orders of Ustians instead of his leader's.

"You only destroyed one plane entirely, and it wasn't even a military supply. Even if I won't cry about some Belkan death. The only good Belkan is a dead one." He continued to throw his tantrum at his unfortunate pilots, who for the few that survived, had not such hatred toward the Belkans. They were taught to hate them, but they weren't willing to kill all of them, like the F-14D pilot attempted, and paid with their life above the city of Hope. Then, a small map of Hoffnung was displayed, with showed the action of some unit they hadn't seen, since all of them had already fled by that time.

"Luckily for us, major Ransack killed quite a good number of those hopeless people, and actually manage to do your job!" The software displayed the destruction of the RTLs, obviously not through sat cams since there was no satellites still active above Belka, but through some 3D animation that could surely been updated, which showed only structure made of blue lines instead of more realistic ones.

"I bet he's dead now." Another pilot interrupted the briefing, knowing that there was a good likelihood that the same pilot that killed their F-14D pilots he didn't even remember would have not let such killer escape alive.

"I hope you'll be to next mission. Solitary without water!" Quantrill showed only utter disdain at this pilot that somehow had deduced the truth about the becoming's of Ransack. His armored train had been annihilated by the Hoffnung defenders, and there was no news of survivors.

"But that won't matter to you. You didn't do crap there, only downed two fighters for a laughable kill ratio, and less defense systems than Ransack's men. All of you, Solitary without water." He continued his ranting about his useless pilots, that wouldn't achieve anything, and hadn't achieved anything meaningful today. After all, there were just convicts, and using them as such was only shortening the time before the death penalty was effective, and making room in Osean penitentiary, which had been filled by looters and other human waste since the EMP disaster.

"Sir, I'm…" Spare 15 dare to speak, but was rudely interrupted by a MP that almost pistol-whipped him with his submachine gun, not wanting any talk before solitary. Besides, these convicts had already been foolish enough to interrupt their commander two times, and he wouldn't allow a third. The pilot stumbled on one chair as he ducked was lunging forward to evade the strike, and thus fell hard on another row of chair, with his forehead hitting one metallic chair leg hard.

"Do you want to be in Solitary for two days without water this badly, Spare 15?" The commander asked him, as he watched the almost knocked out pilot being supported by two MPs that didn't look at him a single bit. He wasn't worth their attention, and his wound at his forehead would cause them to care for him a single bit.

"No, sir. but I have…" he tried to speak, but another MP silenced him by thrusting the hilt of his gun into his gut, cutting his breath and causing him to stumble to the ground, breathless.

"You wanted to say something, perhaps?" Quantrill faint to show false sympathy for the now injured pilots that hadn't fled first. But he still fled, and that wouldn't earn him any true sympathy.

The injured pilot pushed a bit on his forearm so he could at least stare at the commander. If he could, he would have thrown him a death glare, but he hadn't such possibility, and he didn't want to have that two-day penalty. Still, he dared to speak to his commander, that made a small gesture to prevent one MPs to strike at the weakened pilot once more. He would have possessed a bit more of fighting spirit a bit more this morning, but having to fight that Schwarze Luchs pilot that he couldn't even graze with his weaponry while seeing her killing relentlessly his squadmates while laughing at him like a mad woman had taken a toll on him.

"I… may have recognized the new Belkan pilot. It's… Galm 1." He was disgusted by his own action, now. Why did he needed to say that, again? He was only betraying the only person in the entire military that showed him a bit of support and allow him to live once. But such allowance didn't seem to be free. And it had costed the life of so many Oseans.

"I hate liars. Spitting on the name of a MIA, that's not good at all." Quantrill harshly replied, not believing that mercs were turncoats. He knew Belkans were, but that one wasn't Belkan, as far as he knew.

"I swear… That aggressivity… It was her…" Spare 15 tried to argue but was knocked out by a MP. They had heard enough excuses from that pilot that had obtained only a single kill, and it wasn't a full kill, since the Belkan pilot had survived the engagement, from what they could see on the gun cams.

"I might transmit that, still. Wait for the OIA response before putting him into his cell." Quantrill specified, as he went for his office and let the now unconscious pilot to the not good care of the MPs.

Thus, after what seemed to be a few hours later, but only had been twenty minutes for the restrained Spare 15 that had been put into an cell inside of the building, and had lost a bit the notion of time -watches were not allowed here, and all personal belongings were confiscated the seconds you landed here-, the commander showed right in front of the bars of his cell.

"Their analysts have some reliable intel that might confirm your foolish excuses. Now bring him to Solitary." The commander was not that happy to hear that even money couldn't buy the loyalty of mercs nowadays. Such unorthodox mercs were only as good as dead Belkans, and deserve similar fate.

The MPs dragged him out of his cell, and kept dragging him to the confinement area, were the solitary cells were situated, crossing the runway that was as long as the island and made any take-off and landing quite dangerous. By now, Spare 15 hoped that his penalty had been decreased to only one day, as he crashed into the metallic walls of his cell that had already been heated by the nice sun of June.

"That's for you, snitcher." he tossed him a bottle of water without any marks on it. Just plain plastic. After all, if he owed that merc his life, that man was definitively worthless to give her identity like that.

Spare 15 tried to drink a bit of water, all exhausted that he was from his long flight between Hoffnung and here. They had only authorized them to do one stop to refuel on their way in and out. No mid-air refueling or external tanks, they were worried that if they gave them to much fuel they would try to flee to neutral countries such as Wellow or Wieldvakia.

But then he was caught by the carelessness of his heartless and rude commander, that had filled the said bottle with seawater. It would only increase his dehydration if he drank that bottle. There was no worse punishment to give that to a thirsty man. As he threw the bottle away, he saw MPs passing buy laughing, laughing harsh and loud, in pure mockery. And with his mind getting foggy with the dehydration slowly beginning, that almost acted if he was drunk, since drinking dehydrated too, he was seeing himself back in Valais once more, drinking Glühwein and feeling relieved to have survived. Now he was just feeling guilty to have survived, and actually envied Mage 4, the one that survived the first onslaught, only to be killed by the Barbicans over Glatisant. He had died as a free man, at least. While he would be forever in those chains, and without any chances to see his daughter and wife he left at Oured, that would never have any widow's pension, since the army would not pay any pension for the families of betrayers, thieves, criminals and deserters..

Valais Air Base, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 15:00, high stratus

Perrault had asked him to come to the briefing room. He knew that the battle would be this evening, but he didn't expect him to have a briefing so soon. Besides, it couldn't be a briefing, because he asked for only him, Larry Foulke, to be here and not the Oseans that had come here to be part of the bombing, the ones with fighters carrying phosphorous ordnance.

There was something wrong here, Pixy saw it the moment he entered the room. No one except Perrault and two Osean soldiers were here, and for an unknown reason, they were carrying weapons outside their sidearms. Even if there were no risks for anyone here. Even without the snow, these mountains were dangerous enough to make the travel not worth the price, even for trained Belkan Kommandos.

The second thing that he found weird was that the software he saw on the display screen was not the usual Axe and Hammer one, bearing the twin mountains logo, but a rather different one. One he never liked to see, because when he had to do jobs as a mercs for them, it often involved very "dirty" tasks, that were more than often not worth their time, nor the money they offered for. And there was even sometimes where he ended up fighting operatives of this organization, if he had been recruited as a merc to watch over some sensitive factory that this very organization wanted to take pictures of. This is why Pixy had three U-2 kills under his belt. Even if he had not taken any glory from taking down those glorified gliders.

The symbol was a big blue circle, with the words "OSEAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY" in white and set alongside the upper limit of the circle. Below it where an eagle partially covered by a medieval-like shield ornamented with the white and blue six-star flag of Osea. Behind the bird was some dodecagonal white star. He had heard once that the number twelve was to make some religious reference. After all, Osea loved to do such, since they were often considering themselves to be some god special envoys tasked to spread truth and democracy on the world, even if their truth was biased and their so-righteous democracy crippled by corruptions of their industrial oligarchs. The lower part contained some goldish medieval-like banner with the words "Osean federation" in it.

"What does the OIA want to me? Last time it was not to speak about the weather." Pixy asked, the last time being when he shot down two of his three U-2s. Of course, how could have he and his former leader known that these U-2s had an explosive charge, that a simple gun burst that was only meant to incapacitate the spy-plane triggered.

"Mercenary Larry Foulke. Before this war and Excalibur killing our spy planes in droves, you're the one that caused our highest casualties." The anonymized voice of an operative of the OIA spoke with disdain, like he was speaking to some underlings. But that was common with the OIA : throw a spanner into the works, and they will hate you, and support once a spy plane, and they'll praise you like if you saved their president for death or something like that.

"Yeah, and if you want that to increase, I'm sure I can always try to buy some Belkan ERAAMs and try them on your SR-71s. Cut the smart talk, Chris Pitt." Pixy retorted harshly. Even if his fighter was not made to carry those, he was sure there was some way to put then on an F-15C. They had managed to put them on those modified single-seater F-14s and F-4s, after all.

"Foulke, this is not the common talk in peace time. But the extraordinary one of wartime." Pitt replied, surprised to know that his name was known. Maybe Pixy had contacts he didn't know off. That might have links to what he was about to announce, perhaps.

"Spit it out, Pitt. I'm not in the mood for quizzes." Pixy expressed his utter will to finish ASAP his talk with any member of the OIA.

"Fine. You have heard of the new Belkan ace, an unknown woman with the callsign "Schwarze Luchs"?" He inquired to verify his sources, while the logo vanished to display the two fighter she had flown this far, a black Su-47 with modified weaponry and increased mobility, and lately, this morning to be precise, a F-35X, unknown model for Pixy.

"Yeah, cross her path a bit above B7R." Pixy admitted that he had met this one. They stole each other's kills that day, at some point, if he recalled correctly.

"You'll be surprised by what I'm about to disclose. This woman would be your former MIA leader, Iskanda Rayien." Pitt began to explain the discovery of their unofficial scouts.

"Was ist diese schlechte Witze? (what's that bad joke)" He shouted as he interlocutor, not willing to hear about the fate of his leader they sacrificed to try to kill Kupchenko on the ground. Which was a failure, since the men had showed himself to be well alive and had even sent some medical data to journalist to assert that Osea had failed their attempt.

"It is not a "Witze". But a certainty. From that day she's now considered as a traitor to the allied forces, and a prime target to be shot down without warning." The OIA analyst was dead serious, and almost showing some pleasure to announce that this person that had already kill quite a lot of sailors at Futuro was truly a traitor. The picture of the two planes were replaced by a picture of his leader, apparently taken without her consent nor her knowing it, since her eyes were not staring to the cam on the picture. Picture that was complemented by a red banner "WANTED", with the list of her crimes : espionage, first and second degree murder, desertion, mass murder, illegal possession of allied hardware, and terrorism -since Osea was considering any secessionist that were linked to Kupchenko to be terrorist and not soldiers-.

"I don't believe you. What's your source? A U-2 that Excalibur splashed I guess?" Pixy spat venom at the analyst. He was not seeing Iskanda siding with the person that had caused the death of almost all her wingmen and the disappearance of their superior any day.

"A reliable one. An Osean pilot doing aggressive reconnaissance." Pitt gave a false response, since there was no certainty with the origin of the intel, their penal units. However, Osea was not supposed to have penal units in the first place, so he would not brag about it.

"If that's reliable, then the aggressive neutrality of Fato is pacifism." Pixy cut the explanation of the OIA analyst, that was almost relieved to be cut so he wouldn't have to expand on his explanation.

"Like it or not, that's the truth." Perrault intervened, quite annoyed to see this merc speaking without any respect to the OIA.

"That's your truth. Not mine. Call me when they'll be a real briefing." Pixy snapped back, before barging out of the room, not wanting to hear any defenses from the Oseans about their inabilities. Of course, the armored doors didn't slam as much as he wanted to explain his resentment toward the OIA. They were just not good at their jobs, not gaining any grounds, failing at gaining intel since their satellite network had become a game of space invader on low difficulty for the Excalibur operators and now, they were using MIAs as scapegoats.

Pixy spent quite a lot of the day trying to ease out his anger about these nonsensical assertions. There was no way he was seeing Iskanda betray Ustio. She had fight so hard for the liberation of this country, that having her turn her coat in such an expected manner was something that wasn't understandable to him.

Surprisingly, the one that managed to calm the mercenary was the only turncoat of the base, Friedrich von Hervin, that had refused to leave his city. And refused to let any Belkan fire at it in their attempt to enact any scorched land policies. He gave Pixy his own mind about what he considered to have done. He had gone rogue, that was certain, but did he become a traitor? He said it depended on the point of view.

"I won't say I didn't betray the chain of command or the Belkan occupation forces. They have good reason to see me as a traitor."

"Well, you opened fire on their Major, I guess that won't play in your favor." Pixy recalled how the CH-17 of the fleeing Sturmbannführer went down, blown sky-high by a SAM volley. Quite a sinister fate.

"I fired on someone who was refusing to admit the defeat and stand." He defended his action that day. He had the blood of his countrymen on his hands, he knew it. Even if his current interlocutor, on the other side of the table, had without any doubt a hundred times more blood on his hand than he had.

"That's almost the point of view of the Vulture: Flucht ist Tod." Pixy quoted this man he was settled on not to fight since he saw him in action above B7R. Even if he had not shown much mercy than Zubov against the Grabacr, and even more aggressivity against this specific squad than Zubov against the deserters. Or at least as much.

"But that's their point of view. Not mine." Hervin added, not wanting to be seen as a Belkan but as a single individual with his own chain of thoughts.

"And what's yours, then?" Pixy wanted to know what he was thinking of his own betrayal.

"In my heart, I don't think of myself as a traitor. My actions have always been aligned with my motives and my convictions: to fight for the peace and safety of my people. Not to conquer others and enforce false notion of peace and security." Hervin explained what he consider what all people fighting should strive to, even if most of them had become warmongers fed with false pride and false glory.

"The last reason, it's your critics of the Oseans, isn't it ?" Pixy was just verifying that he had the same mind that Koenig about the motives of Osea.

"Affirmation: it is. And the other one is the critics of the Rald-led Belka. Both are not more righteous. Humanity won't gain anything from wars of annihilation." Hervin went a bit philosophic with his last sentence. He knew Pixy was a good man, and a soldier able to think, rarity on the battlefield.

"But what as all of this to do with their supposed betrayal of my MIA leader?" Pixy hadn't forgotten the almost proofless accusation of the Oseans. What did they know of her? Next to nothing. But what did he know of her? Only two chapter of her life, one a bit bloodier, and that was it.

"I meant, that she has maybe committed what the Osean and their cheeriest OIA consider to be betrayal. But she might be considering this otherwise, and to be something that need to be done, for what she believes is right." Hervin applied to Iskanda his chain of thoughts, that was not branding her as a traitor, but as someone who was chosen to fight, and would keep fighting.

"That's…. an interesting point of view." Pixy nodded, somewhat satisfied with the argument of Hervin. It wasn't a perfect point of view either.

That, at least gave Pixy a bit of a middle-ground between an Osean misthinking and his leader being a full-blow traitor. But right now, he would have wanted to scream, to reach out to her, in the hope of at least hearing her mad laugh on the radio. He didn't have many questions that required answers, only a few. Where was she? In the sky, without any doubt. Whether she was dead or alive, she would be in the sky. What was she doing? She was fighting. She was a resilient and persistent warrior. He knew she could survive the impossible to keep fighting.

Still, and with this new situation, Pixy had only one feeling about the war. Gone were the bright day of the heroic reconquest of Ustio, with the greatest victory being the liberation of Directus. The victory stopped after that day, and the war had descended into an abyss of darkness. Darkness grows, and light to meet it, he knew that proverb very well. But he knew that wars were not just fought by fighter, soldier, sailors or marines on the battlefield, but in the heart of all human being. Yet, in all his year of war, he had seen human nature at its core. And there was no light there. But maybe he was mistaken. And maybe there was still Hope, even the eponymous city was burning.

End of the chapter.
(Damn, that's a long one, the longest so far, 34000words, hence the division by two)
I have chosen to introduce a few things here: some penal units, after all Osea and Yuktobania had become quite desperate. The flying wing A-12 Avenger II, who was supposed to be a stealth plane for carriers, and the "Belkan" F-35. I have brought back a few characters I have introduce a few chapters prior to this one, and it's not their end.
About Hoffnung (hope), I do think the mayor's speech is a bit influenced by the blue lantern oath "In fearful day, in raging night, with strong hearts full, our souls ignite. when all seems lost in the War of Light, look to the stars, for hope burns bright!"
All might seem lost, indeed. The canon is lost. Only for a new story to strive, with new hopes. Will it be a better one? That, to the future to decide.
Well, I won't go too philosophic, since there's still two chapter to this arc of Hoffnung, and I have not finished the changes soon.
Feel free to comment, review, like and favor… Und bis nächst mal, Lesern und Leserinnen