---
-II-
---
High up in the sky, two Green Earth bombers flew along over Blue Moon territory, accompanied by four Green Earth fighters. Roger Winters was flying ahead of the squad as everyone in the Fighter cockpits scouted around, making sure no enemy aircraft was in sight. If there were, they would immediately have to deal with Green Earth.
"Ten minutes to target, skies are clear."
They had easily crossed the border without resistance from Blue Moon. So far, it was shaping up to actually be a pretty simple escort mission, but something was bound to go wrong. Glenn just had that bad feeling he always had during escort missions. Something was bloody bound to bloody go wrong, and if it didn't bloody happen before he bloody cracked, then he would bloody die in the bloody cockpit of this bloody plane!
Nothing occured. He was growing anxious for something, anything. "Five minutes to target, skies are clear."
"Gordon, come up on my seven." Winters' voice from the radio was muffled thanks to his helmet and the painfully excessive noise from the engine of the aircraft, but he could hear it, nonetheless.
"Copy." Glenn carefully piloted his plane past the two bombers and up behind Roger Winters' plane. At least something of signifigance had happened.
"Target is in view." The bombardier's voice kept coming every once in a while in the squad's ears. Everybody was getting itchy. Would they run into trouble? Not if Roger Winters and his proud crew had anything to do with it.
Winters had encountered a whole deal of trouble on escort missions before. He was actually getting a little used to them, and even when the odds were against them, he had come through leading his squadron to victory against numerous air forces. He had even more successful missions to his name than his own father, the General had in his day, and he had recieved the most experience from anyone who was now in the entire 56th squadron from the flight simulators during training, but nothing would prepare him for what was about to happen.
When the squad of Green Earth planes were about three minutes from arriving at the area in the air where the bombers would complete their objective, something loud and something heartstopping got all the pilots' attention like nothing else.
Behind Glenn, something was wrong. A horrific boom had gone through his ears. It had been enough to make glass shatter, or so he felt. He was now struggling to turn around in the cockpit seat to see what was happening, but he had a darned good idea as to what was going on now. He probably wouldn't even have to look behind him to know what had happened.
It had only been a matter of seconds when another massive boom ripped through everyone's hearing. Behind Glenn and Roger, the two bombers that had been flying along the fighter planes were now dropping to the ground in messy balls of smoking and charred scrap. Immediately, the two Green Earth fighter pilots behind Glenn and Roger spread from each other hysterically, each one trying to figure out just what in heck was going on.
"Damn it, Grit must be leading those guys!" Winters' voice sounded quite angry and frustrated.
Down on the ground at the Blue Moon base, a whole company of anti-air was still firing up at the sky, namely towards the Green Earth fighters who were now scrambling around in the air like bees who had no idea what they were doing. A fisherman-like man was safely behind the anti-air machines, holding his ears as he stood next to a group of infantrymen.
"That oughta teach them Green Earth buzzards a lesson they won't soon forget!" Grit had to speak quite loudly in order to talk over the still- blasting anti-air. "Maybe now they'll forget about this fightin' and go home or somethin'!"
At least I hope so, he then thought. He didn't like having to fight against people he didn't even know, but that was war, and those hawks up in the sky were going to be war tragedies if he could help it.
"Where are the bombers!?" Back in the air, one of the pilots' voices was quite hysterical as the anti-air rounds flew up towards the sun all around his plane. "Oh my God!"
"Settle down, boy, being crazy is gonna get you killed!" Winters was too late. The anti-air rounds had already torn through the Green Earth jet he was calling out to, and the plane was now beginning to head towards the ground, black smoke billowing from its remains. "The mission has been called off, get back to base everyone!" Immediately after sending his order to the remaining two pilots that were with him, Winters put his fighter into a wide left turn and kicked in the afterburner.
Glenn Gordon was busy trying to keep calm. He had been in this situation before, but not with this many anti-air dogs shooting up at him like there were today. Before he could tell Winters he had recieved the order and acknowledged it, something in the distance caught his eye. In fact, five things in the distance all got his attention quite nicely.
"Winters, there are enemy fighters coming in!"
Oh great, Roger Winters thought to himself. We've already failed the mission, and now we have to deal with these guys.
"Awaiting orders!" The anti-air was still firing at them from down below.
"Can we get away?" Winters looked through his plane's canopy around the air, trying to determine whether or not they even had a slim chance of escape. It wasn't looking good so far. Even if they somehow got away from the base and enemy fighters, anti-air would probably be waiting for them before they got to the border now that their presence was known. Winters sighed, realizing he should have made out his will when they had encouraged it. "Oh, this is..."
"The enemy fighters are engaging!"
There was no way around it. It was either do or die. "Let's send some Blue Mooners to where they belong."
Immediately, the three Green Earth fighters shifted their courses and began heading towards the five Blue Moon fighters. It must have been quite surprising to the opposing pilots who had fully been expecting a turn and run, but instead, they were going to have to fight. These three Green Earth pilots were certainly some brave people, or maybe they were just crazy and wanted to go down in a blaze of glory.
Winters knew anti-air would have a tough time trying to shoot them down now that they were dogfighting against Blue Moon. If someone down there accidently shot down one of their own fighters when only attempting to help the Blue Moon cause, they would have to face Grit, who would probably be mighty displeased with the action.
Each of the Green Earth fighters, now in a poor excuse for an echelon formation, flew by the Blue Moon fighters at an extremely high rate of speed, and then made steep left turns, the three pilots each hoping they could circle widely enough to get a good shot at one of the enemy fighters.
Instead, the Blue Moon aircrafts were now spread out among the air. It looked like things would get rather messy, but Roger Winters almost thought he saw a holy light when one of the enemy planes found its unfortunate self in the direct line of sight for a handy missile. Seconds later, the plane was headed towards the ground in flames, much to the dismay of the remaining Blue Moon pilots. They're probably going to get more aggresive now, Winters thought.
Glenn Gordon was busy dogfighting against two of the Blue Moon aircraft himself. He had his hands full as the planes swooped and screamed around in the air, each of them trying to find an open shot for their respective sides. Unfortunately for one of the Blue Moon pilots, Glenn found his shot before the two he was fighting with found theirs, and he released a streaming missile towards one of the blue planes. The same fate that had fallen upon Roger Winters' victim encountered this one, too.
As he continued blazing around the sky, now with one more enemy plane to personally deal with, he looked out of the corner of his eye towards the other two pilots in the Green Earth squadron to make sure they were doing alright. It seemed they were faring well and could take care of themselves, at least he knew Roger Winters could, but then, he heard noises that made him re-evaluate the situation he was in.
"PINGPINGPING, PING PING!"
Something that sounded like that was definately not a good sign. Had anti- air gotten him? He looked around, trying to figure out what the noises were, but then he noticed something on the control panel that gave him quite a scare.
His fuel amount was dropping at a dramatic rate. A dramatic rate. As far as he knew, planes weren't supposed to go through fuel that fast.
Glenn struggled to turn himself around a little bit and look behind him again to make sure he wasn't losing fuel, but he wondered to himself why he bothered. Whether his fuel line had been hit by anti-air or not, he was doomed now that he was losing precious food for his aircraft, and even if didn't matter now, when he looked behind him towards the back of his plane through the canopy, he sorrowfully saw a liquidy spray coming out of his fighter and off into the blue sky.
"I'm losing fuel here, Winters!"
"Hang in there!"
Hang in there!? He was losing fuel in a fighter jet over what must have been fifty anti-air machines shooting up at him and a fully defensive Blue Moon base while dogfighting Blue Moon aircraft and all Roger Winters had told him was "hang in there"?!
His fighter was beginning to lose altitude already. Seeing this, the enemy pilot who he had been fighting broke off his quest to take out his enemy and sped off to duel with the remaining two Green Earth pilots.
Glenn was facing a hard dilemma. He could not bail out without risking getting hit by anti-air rounds, and even if he did make it to the ground safely somehow, he'd probably be killed by Blue Moon infantry or taken hostage. He'd never known the Blue Moon army to take a prisoner, though, so he decided bailing out was out of the question.
Instead, he could make a crash landing, but it wasn't like that was a very good choice either. "Arrgh, I don't believe this!"
By now, he was flying away from the Blue Moon base, but not in the direction he had hoped he was going. The other planes were almost out of sight, they were so far away, and here he was with a damaged plane leaking fuel, about to die, unable to bail out successfully.
His fighter was headed directly for a forest. He could bail out now, but his parachute would never open in time for him to safely land. He'd probably get stuck in a tree anyway even if he did. Glenn gritted his teeth as he tried his hardest to keep the doomed aircraft at what wasn't even a balanced level. Before he could hardly brace for impact, the plane tore through the trees of the forest and crashed to the ground, sliding along on the ground at a hundred-fifty miles an hour. It was a rather bumpy ride, in all fairness.
But then, he couldn't see anything.
---
Roger Winters and the only other Green Earth pilot who had made it back safely from the mission stood rather sadly before General John Winters and Captain Clay Shamrock in the office of the General. All of them were now in their casual uniforms, with Roger and the pilot's caps at their sides in their hands.
General Winters spoke now of the situation, but he knew exactly what had happened. He just wanted to hear his son admit what had happened. It made a pilot a better one.
"Major Winters, debrief me on the raid."
It took a moment for Roger to find his voice box.
"Objective one was a failure, objective two was a partial failure. The bombers were taken out before we arrived at the drop point by anti-air from the base, possibly led by commanding officer Grit. We succeeded in destroying two enemy aircraft before we found our escape maneuver. Pilot Marc Vincent, Lieutenant Tyrone Bennetton, Pilot Nick Sunder, and Lieutenant Glenn Gordon all failed to return."
Clay Shamrock had a look in his eye that easily expressed how he felt. Why had he told Gordon to go on that mission? He was the next one to speak. "So far, we've found Vincent, Bennetton, and Sunder's remains, but there's no sign of Gordon. We believe he's crash-landed in Blue Moon territory and that he's probably not alive."
The two active pilots looked pained by this information. It was the unfortunate truth, as Shamrock often liked, or maybe didn't like to put it, but this sort of thing had been going on for the entire war. Every single squadron in Green Earth territory had sadly lost at least one pilot in the military campaign, but it hadn't stopped there thanks to the length of the war so far.
"Major Winters, Pilot Reeves, I want you two to take a while off from flying." The General was addressing both pilots now himself. "What you two just went through is something that no human being should have to go through."
"We're alright, sir. We can keep flying."
"Roger." The General's voice was a little more harsh than it had previously been. "You're taking a week's leave whether you want to or not. I can't have a pilot up there in the skies who's not fully thinking about his objectives."
"But--"
"Maybe you'd like to call my boss and talk to him about it yourself?"
Roger Winters wisely closed his mouth. Although commanding officer Eagle had respect for pilots who wanted to keep flying even after a tragedy such as this one, the man would have the same opinion as Roger's father, and he didn't want to waste the commander's time like that. "No, sir."
"Good. Go into town or something, at least try to have some fun."
The two pilots solemnly stepped out of the General's office. Winters nodded to the other pilot and wished him farewell for the time being, and began walking down the hallway, his mind still not even halfway cleared of the events of earlier. He wasn't going to readily admit he was thinking about it to anyone, though. He felt he would look weak if he did so.
He continued to walk down the halls, towards nowhere in particular. Maybe he'd just go for a good, long stroll. He needed one.
Winters found himself in the barracks at night now, lying on his bunk quietly, staring up at the ceiling. He still couldn't get over the botched mission, and it wouldn't be leaving his head for a good long while, but it seemed he wasn't the only one who was shocked and saddened over the loss of so many good pilots, no, good friends in one day.
Dario Yossarian was sitting on his bunk, his eyes shifting around like he was looking at things other people weren't. Fencer Reeves was now in the middle of a quiet, somber card game with some of the other 56th fliers. "Krazy Kel" Logan had both his wide, bloodshot eyes centered directly on Babar the Elephant and his friends, who were on Kel's small radio-style television. He probably wasn't even listening to the TV though.
"Logan."
Kel Logan unconciously turned his head slightly over in the direction of Winters. The Major repeated himself, this time with a louder tone, and Kel's head broke away from the inane adventures of the pachyderm on the little screen. "Sir?"
Winters found he didn't even know what he wanted to say. He wanted to give Kel some comfort in the fact that the pilots had all died for Green Earth in glory, but that was pretty much a fib. Besides, he was having a hard time dealing with it himself anyway. Once he could deal with it, all would be better. The 56th would not be grounded for long.
"Forget it." Kel didn't even hear Winters this time, his attention was already back towards the screen.
"Captain Shamrock has ordered lights out now, pilots, all lights out, pronto." Someone had stepped by the barracks entrance & exit to give the call for sleep, and Winters welcomed the order. He was tired of today and its reverberating events, but he seriously hoped he wouldn't end up dreaming of them now.
But he couldn't seem to fall asleep when the room got dark.
-II-
---
High up in the sky, two Green Earth bombers flew along over Blue Moon territory, accompanied by four Green Earth fighters. Roger Winters was flying ahead of the squad as everyone in the Fighter cockpits scouted around, making sure no enemy aircraft was in sight. If there were, they would immediately have to deal with Green Earth.
"Ten minutes to target, skies are clear."
They had easily crossed the border without resistance from Blue Moon. So far, it was shaping up to actually be a pretty simple escort mission, but something was bound to go wrong. Glenn just had that bad feeling he always had during escort missions. Something was bloody bound to bloody go wrong, and if it didn't bloody happen before he bloody cracked, then he would bloody die in the bloody cockpit of this bloody plane!
Nothing occured. He was growing anxious for something, anything. "Five minutes to target, skies are clear."
"Gordon, come up on my seven." Winters' voice from the radio was muffled thanks to his helmet and the painfully excessive noise from the engine of the aircraft, but he could hear it, nonetheless.
"Copy." Glenn carefully piloted his plane past the two bombers and up behind Roger Winters' plane. At least something of signifigance had happened.
"Target is in view." The bombardier's voice kept coming every once in a while in the squad's ears. Everybody was getting itchy. Would they run into trouble? Not if Roger Winters and his proud crew had anything to do with it.
Winters had encountered a whole deal of trouble on escort missions before. He was actually getting a little used to them, and even when the odds were against them, he had come through leading his squadron to victory against numerous air forces. He had even more successful missions to his name than his own father, the General had in his day, and he had recieved the most experience from anyone who was now in the entire 56th squadron from the flight simulators during training, but nothing would prepare him for what was about to happen.
When the squad of Green Earth planes were about three minutes from arriving at the area in the air where the bombers would complete their objective, something loud and something heartstopping got all the pilots' attention like nothing else.
Behind Glenn, something was wrong. A horrific boom had gone through his ears. It had been enough to make glass shatter, or so he felt. He was now struggling to turn around in the cockpit seat to see what was happening, but he had a darned good idea as to what was going on now. He probably wouldn't even have to look behind him to know what had happened.
It had only been a matter of seconds when another massive boom ripped through everyone's hearing. Behind Glenn and Roger, the two bombers that had been flying along the fighter planes were now dropping to the ground in messy balls of smoking and charred scrap. Immediately, the two Green Earth fighter pilots behind Glenn and Roger spread from each other hysterically, each one trying to figure out just what in heck was going on.
"Damn it, Grit must be leading those guys!" Winters' voice sounded quite angry and frustrated.
Down on the ground at the Blue Moon base, a whole company of anti-air was still firing up at the sky, namely towards the Green Earth fighters who were now scrambling around in the air like bees who had no idea what they were doing. A fisherman-like man was safely behind the anti-air machines, holding his ears as he stood next to a group of infantrymen.
"That oughta teach them Green Earth buzzards a lesson they won't soon forget!" Grit had to speak quite loudly in order to talk over the still- blasting anti-air. "Maybe now they'll forget about this fightin' and go home or somethin'!"
At least I hope so, he then thought. He didn't like having to fight against people he didn't even know, but that was war, and those hawks up in the sky were going to be war tragedies if he could help it.
"Where are the bombers!?" Back in the air, one of the pilots' voices was quite hysterical as the anti-air rounds flew up towards the sun all around his plane. "Oh my God!"
"Settle down, boy, being crazy is gonna get you killed!" Winters was too late. The anti-air rounds had already torn through the Green Earth jet he was calling out to, and the plane was now beginning to head towards the ground, black smoke billowing from its remains. "The mission has been called off, get back to base everyone!" Immediately after sending his order to the remaining two pilots that were with him, Winters put his fighter into a wide left turn and kicked in the afterburner.
Glenn Gordon was busy trying to keep calm. He had been in this situation before, but not with this many anti-air dogs shooting up at him like there were today. Before he could tell Winters he had recieved the order and acknowledged it, something in the distance caught his eye. In fact, five things in the distance all got his attention quite nicely.
"Winters, there are enemy fighters coming in!"
Oh great, Roger Winters thought to himself. We've already failed the mission, and now we have to deal with these guys.
"Awaiting orders!" The anti-air was still firing at them from down below.
"Can we get away?" Winters looked through his plane's canopy around the air, trying to determine whether or not they even had a slim chance of escape. It wasn't looking good so far. Even if they somehow got away from the base and enemy fighters, anti-air would probably be waiting for them before they got to the border now that their presence was known. Winters sighed, realizing he should have made out his will when they had encouraged it. "Oh, this is..."
"The enemy fighters are engaging!"
There was no way around it. It was either do or die. "Let's send some Blue Mooners to where they belong."
Immediately, the three Green Earth fighters shifted their courses and began heading towards the five Blue Moon fighters. It must have been quite surprising to the opposing pilots who had fully been expecting a turn and run, but instead, they were going to have to fight. These three Green Earth pilots were certainly some brave people, or maybe they were just crazy and wanted to go down in a blaze of glory.
Winters knew anti-air would have a tough time trying to shoot them down now that they were dogfighting against Blue Moon. If someone down there accidently shot down one of their own fighters when only attempting to help the Blue Moon cause, they would have to face Grit, who would probably be mighty displeased with the action.
Each of the Green Earth fighters, now in a poor excuse for an echelon formation, flew by the Blue Moon fighters at an extremely high rate of speed, and then made steep left turns, the three pilots each hoping they could circle widely enough to get a good shot at one of the enemy fighters.
Instead, the Blue Moon aircrafts were now spread out among the air. It looked like things would get rather messy, but Roger Winters almost thought he saw a holy light when one of the enemy planes found its unfortunate self in the direct line of sight for a handy missile. Seconds later, the plane was headed towards the ground in flames, much to the dismay of the remaining Blue Moon pilots. They're probably going to get more aggresive now, Winters thought.
Glenn Gordon was busy dogfighting against two of the Blue Moon aircraft himself. He had his hands full as the planes swooped and screamed around in the air, each of them trying to find an open shot for their respective sides. Unfortunately for one of the Blue Moon pilots, Glenn found his shot before the two he was fighting with found theirs, and he released a streaming missile towards one of the blue planes. The same fate that had fallen upon Roger Winters' victim encountered this one, too.
As he continued blazing around the sky, now with one more enemy plane to personally deal with, he looked out of the corner of his eye towards the other two pilots in the Green Earth squadron to make sure they were doing alright. It seemed they were faring well and could take care of themselves, at least he knew Roger Winters could, but then, he heard noises that made him re-evaluate the situation he was in.
"PINGPINGPING, PING PING!"
Something that sounded like that was definately not a good sign. Had anti- air gotten him? He looked around, trying to figure out what the noises were, but then he noticed something on the control panel that gave him quite a scare.
His fuel amount was dropping at a dramatic rate. A dramatic rate. As far as he knew, planes weren't supposed to go through fuel that fast.
Glenn struggled to turn himself around a little bit and look behind him again to make sure he wasn't losing fuel, but he wondered to himself why he bothered. Whether his fuel line had been hit by anti-air or not, he was doomed now that he was losing precious food for his aircraft, and even if didn't matter now, when he looked behind him towards the back of his plane through the canopy, he sorrowfully saw a liquidy spray coming out of his fighter and off into the blue sky.
"I'm losing fuel here, Winters!"
"Hang in there!"
Hang in there!? He was losing fuel in a fighter jet over what must have been fifty anti-air machines shooting up at him and a fully defensive Blue Moon base while dogfighting Blue Moon aircraft and all Roger Winters had told him was "hang in there"?!
His fighter was beginning to lose altitude already. Seeing this, the enemy pilot who he had been fighting broke off his quest to take out his enemy and sped off to duel with the remaining two Green Earth pilots.
Glenn was facing a hard dilemma. He could not bail out without risking getting hit by anti-air rounds, and even if he did make it to the ground safely somehow, he'd probably be killed by Blue Moon infantry or taken hostage. He'd never known the Blue Moon army to take a prisoner, though, so he decided bailing out was out of the question.
Instead, he could make a crash landing, but it wasn't like that was a very good choice either. "Arrgh, I don't believe this!"
By now, he was flying away from the Blue Moon base, but not in the direction he had hoped he was going. The other planes were almost out of sight, they were so far away, and here he was with a damaged plane leaking fuel, about to die, unable to bail out successfully.
His fighter was headed directly for a forest. He could bail out now, but his parachute would never open in time for him to safely land. He'd probably get stuck in a tree anyway even if he did. Glenn gritted his teeth as he tried his hardest to keep the doomed aircraft at what wasn't even a balanced level. Before he could hardly brace for impact, the plane tore through the trees of the forest and crashed to the ground, sliding along on the ground at a hundred-fifty miles an hour. It was a rather bumpy ride, in all fairness.
But then, he couldn't see anything.
---
Roger Winters and the only other Green Earth pilot who had made it back safely from the mission stood rather sadly before General John Winters and Captain Clay Shamrock in the office of the General. All of them were now in their casual uniforms, with Roger and the pilot's caps at their sides in their hands.
General Winters spoke now of the situation, but he knew exactly what had happened. He just wanted to hear his son admit what had happened. It made a pilot a better one.
"Major Winters, debrief me on the raid."
It took a moment for Roger to find his voice box.
"Objective one was a failure, objective two was a partial failure. The bombers were taken out before we arrived at the drop point by anti-air from the base, possibly led by commanding officer Grit. We succeeded in destroying two enemy aircraft before we found our escape maneuver. Pilot Marc Vincent, Lieutenant Tyrone Bennetton, Pilot Nick Sunder, and Lieutenant Glenn Gordon all failed to return."
Clay Shamrock had a look in his eye that easily expressed how he felt. Why had he told Gordon to go on that mission? He was the next one to speak. "So far, we've found Vincent, Bennetton, and Sunder's remains, but there's no sign of Gordon. We believe he's crash-landed in Blue Moon territory and that he's probably not alive."
The two active pilots looked pained by this information. It was the unfortunate truth, as Shamrock often liked, or maybe didn't like to put it, but this sort of thing had been going on for the entire war. Every single squadron in Green Earth territory had sadly lost at least one pilot in the military campaign, but it hadn't stopped there thanks to the length of the war so far.
"Major Winters, Pilot Reeves, I want you two to take a while off from flying." The General was addressing both pilots now himself. "What you two just went through is something that no human being should have to go through."
"We're alright, sir. We can keep flying."
"Roger." The General's voice was a little more harsh than it had previously been. "You're taking a week's leave whether you want to or not. I can't have a pilot up there in the skies who's not fully thinking about his objectives."
"But--"
"Maybe you'd like to call my boss and talk to him about it yourself?"
Roger Winters wisely closed his mouth. Although commanding officer Eagle had respect for pilots who wanted to keep flying even after a tragedy such as this one, the man would have the same opinion as Roger's father, and he didn't want to waste the commander's time like that. "No, sir."
"Good. Go into town or something, at least try to have some fun."
The two pilots solemnly stepped out of the General's office. Winters nodded to the other pilot and wished him farewell for the time being, and began walking down the hallway, his mind still not even halfway cleared of the events of earlier. He wasn't going to readily admit he was thinking about it to anyone, though. He felt he would look weak if he did so.
He continued to walk down the halls, towards nowhere in particular. Maybe he'd just go for a good, long stroll. He needed one.
Winters found himself in the barracks at night now, lying on his bunk quietly, staring up at the ceiling. He still couldn't get over the botched mission, and it wouldn't be leaving his head for a good long while, but it seemed he wasn't the only one who was shocked and saddened over the loss of so many good pilots, no, good friends in one day.
Dario Yossarian was sitting on his bunk, his eyes shifting around like he was looking at things other people weren't. Fencer Reeves was now in the middle of a quiet, somber card game with some of the other 56th fliers. "Krazy Kel" Logan had both his wide, bloodshot eyes centered directly on Babar the Elephant and his friends, who were on Kel's small radio-style television. He probably wasn't even listening to the TV though.
"Logan."
Kel Logan unconciously turned his head slightly over in the direction of Winters. The Major repeated himself, this time with a louder tone, and Kel's head broke away from the inane adventures of the pachyderm on the little screen. "Sir?"
Winters found he didn't even know what he wanted to say. He wanted to give Kel some comfort in the fact that the pilots had all died for Green Earth in glory, but that was pretty much a fib. Besides, he was having a hard time dealing with it himself anyway. Once he could deal with it, all would be better. The 56th would not be grounded for long.
"Forget it." Kel didn't even hear Winters this time, his attention was already back towards the screen.
"Captain Shamrock has ordered lights out now, pilots, all lights out, pronto." Someone had stepped by the barracks entrance & exit to give the call for sleep, and Winters welcomed the order. He was tired of today and its reverberating events, but he seriously hoped he wouldn't end up dreaming of them now.
But he couldn't seem to fall asleep when the room got dark.