Present Day

Margaret shook her head in an attempt to make sense of the situation. No modern, civilized army, with a reasonable amount of common sense, would willingly do such things.

"Let me get this straight. They were fighting amongst themselves over who got to kill this guy? Why? It's nonsense!"

"Of course it doesn't. After that point, nothing made sense anymore. Nothing no one did was rational. The Obersalzburg burning, the Hoffnung burning, the nuclear bombs...but I'm getting ahead of myself."

"So what happened?"

"I was on the tail of Solo Wing Pixy. I was ready. I'd gotten in behind him just as he took out another plane. My plane was a bit damaged, but I took my chance and I had him. I had him in the damn crosshairs..." Jan trailed off.

The Fall of Redtail

May 28, 1995

1218 hrs

Jan's fighter was wobbling a little bit, but he could still fly it well. The battle was heating up as the situation became more desperate for the Belkans. Jan had every right to be worried and he wasn't the only one. For the first time in his career, Zubov was beginning to worry. He'd lost five of his wingman in a mere few minutes. His mind was filled with confusion.

"What the hell happened?" he said simply.

Both Rosencrantz and Zubov had similar thoughts. How could this be happening? Why were they so good? Years of training meant nothing now. There were superior numbers of allied aircraft. The vice was slowly closing. Both men had to make a move...and quickly.

Jan turned his plane to avoid a possible lock on from a pursuing allied airplane. He looked all over this misterious "Demon Lord". The loss of family weighed heavily on him. It was obvious this man cared nothing for those he eliminated...even after the fighting was done. It was men like this that did not belong in the world. Perhaps this Ustio mercenary was born in the wrong century. Perhaps he should have been a pit fighter in the old ages. It would certainly suit him. Suddenly, a single fighter pulled up right in front of him and quickly turned left. Jan saw the enemy plane; it was Solo Wing Pixy. Jan quickly pulled up and quickly got a lock on. He figured if he couldn't find the leader, he'd probably get metal just for taking down his wingman. But this could be his last chance. Fuel was running low and the damage would not be forgotten.

As soon as he'd managed his lock, Jan's fighter suddenly began to drop like a rock. He was losing oil pressure. He couldn't believe it. He'd kept his fighter in tip top shape, now it had failed him when he needed it most. Not to mention the possibly of being at the mercy of the Demon Lord. There was no question on what to do now. He was facing northeast, away from the center of the Round Table. If he could bug out as fast as possible, he could get away and fight another day. He struggled to his plane level, but finally managed it...by flying upside down. It drifted to its side. Jan looked back and saw there was some smoke; however, he was maintaining good speed so far. He dropped the rest of his ordinance and began the delicate process of nursing his wounded fighter home. As far as Jan was concerned, Schwarze was their own.

Cipher was still laughing and having a good time. He taken out the sixth plane in the enemy formation. This "Vulture" was not living up his expectation. There were two enemies left and Cipher had three missiles to play with. He decided to end the battle as quickly as possible; he'd had enough of the charade. Pixy shared the sentiment, but he was bogged down by other enemy fighters. Cipher decided that Pixy could handle himself and went after the two remaining enemy planes. However, Cipher could make out what appeared to be a smoking fighter heading north. Now the question was, should he go after it?

"Ah, what the hell?" Cipher said.

Jan's gauges were going crazy. The radar was out and he decided he would be lucky if the ejection seat worked. Suddenly, the fighter had lost just about all of its hydraulic pressure. He jerked the control stick and ended up flipping the fighter around. All this time he was smoldering with anger. All of this damage was due to friendly fire.

"Ah, dammit! Damn those greedy bastards!" he said.

But just as he said that, he managed to right the airplane somehow. The Flanker was known for its ability to take punishment. However, just as he was about to turn the airplane around, he saw that image of death in his field of view. It was the Demon Lord and he staring him down. For Jan, it was the apocalypse. His blood turned cold as ice. For Jan, there was no escape now; it was over. Jan was finished.

For Cipher, the action was also on the verge of the end. He was tired of this awful resistance the Belkans were putting up. They were professionals alright, but they were just mere ants to be stepped on. He was only looking forward to his immense paycheck. What was in front of him was merely an easy target. He had no idea, or cared, this was an academy trained ace with a opulent family with a strong military tradition, that he could play the piano that he could speak eight languages, or that he read Aristotle on a regular basis. There was only the target; in Cipher's world there was no room for hesitation or compassion. He brushed it off with a simple 'oh well' and blasted his target out of the sky. As he turned, he was disappointed to see a parachute.

"Dammit! Am I have to shoot this prick down again? Next time, I'll strafe the burning wreck." Cipher thought.

Unbeknownst to Cipher, Wizard One was watching all of this unfold. By now, the fighting had completely changed and the Belkans were now on the run.

"Looks like we've given the Galm Team an opportunity to make more money." one of his wingman said.

"Interesting. He fights for all this money as if he's going to have it all when someone finally sends him to Hell. A fitting place for this...Demon Lord." Bristow said. He then lead the flight out of the Round Table, glad the battle had finally been one. The Belkans were falling back and the Round Table was secure. Over a year of fighting for a mere patch of desert came to a final, chaotic climax. The allies had gone in with 125 planes. They came out with about 60.

Present Day

"The instant that missile hit me, I punched out. I was only five seconds from burning to death in that plane. I was actually almost completely upside down, but I managed to come down alive somehow. I hit the ground hard and I was very bruised and scraped. It was then I realized that the war was over for me. I had no idea where I was. All I knew was that I was in the Round Table and I'd come down some a dozen miles from the center. The north was Belkan territory; the south was Ustio. But there..." Jan said pausing.

"What is it?"

"There's no sense of direction there. Communications were almost impossible. There were so many twisted metal pieces and shards there that magnetic interference was the norm."

"So it's a desert right? How'd you survive?" Margaret asked, concerned.

"I didn't."

"What? Wha...that makes no sense! Wait...you're speaking metaphorically, aren't you?" Margaret said, concerned and dumbfounded.

"In a sense. It's hard to describe to you what I saw there in terms you could appreciate. But I remember what I felt. I was angry. It was then I began to hate that man. I saw him above and I looked at him with the eyes of a desperate, angry man. There was no way to comprehend the amount of damage he'd done. And to think all of it was for money. There was no reason for someone like him to be there. Sure he helped the allied forces, but his interests were purely self serving. I wondered how our forces could lose to someone like that. He had not even the smallest sense of pride, no honor, no conscience, no concept of loyalty. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be."

Margaret could not hope to understand everything about what had happened to Jan, but it was obvious that this day had affected him deeply. And to think that if this didn't happen they never would have met at all. She cringed in horror and confusion as Jan told her all he'd saw there.

May 15, 1995

1235 hrs

Jan had spent under half an hour under the silk as he floated to the earth. He had to be careful where he landed; there were jagged pieces of metal everywhere. He came down nice and soft along a narrow dusty trail. The roar of the fighter jets slowly ceased and silence once again filled the Round Table.

Jan took one good look around. Some of his survival equipment had been destroyed in the ejection. The only things he had was a day's worth of emergency rations and a small supply of drinking water. But that wouldn't be enough. There was nothing but the sense of isolation and fear that gripped Jan. In combat, he'd never allow fear to overtake him. Now, he was all alone in a place he'd never seen in person but had seen a million times from the air. In reality, there was nothing glamorous about B7R.

His compass destroyed, and the sun almost directly overhead, it was impossible to tell exactly where he was. His only chance was to simply pick a direction and start walking. All around were pieces of metal. Metal here, shrapnel here, burned grass there, shattered, burned out cockpits and planes were everywhere. Inside the wreckage were burned corpses laying in twisted positions, frozen in eternity in their horrid state. There were none that stood out as unique though. One wrecked plane was not unlike another. Then there were the fires that already raged. In the distance, there were nothing but plumes of smoke. Some areas had large stacks of smoke and fire reaching into the sky. The atmosphere was dark and it was often difficult to breathe. And yet, this wasn't Jan's biggest concern.

It was the unexploded munitions that were everywhere. Heat seeking missiles and radar missiles of all types were all around. The Round Table was a death trap within a death trap. If the heat didn't kill you, the unexploded munitions would. Or the snakes. Or the falling airplanes. And all Jan could do was walk. As he kept walking, there was more than a sadness; it was depression. Jan felt as if he himself was walking toward death itself.

"Is this what Hell on Earth really is supposed to be?" he thought.

Of course, he wasn't the only pilot there. Dominic Zubov was also here, but some seventy miles away on the other side. His only thought was, "I've got to get the hell out of here!" He took of in another direction, irrelevant of the harsh, rugged conditions. For Zubov, survival was everything. If he could simply get to the next day, he'd have a chance. Then he'd disappear...but what then? Perhaps he could continue his work in secret, but where? Perhaps he could move close to the danger zones...like Oured. No one would ever think to look for him there; he'd disappear into the big shadow created by his enemies.

For Cipher and the rest of the allies, it was nothing but complete, unequaled victory. Yet, Cipher felt empty. His challengers were skilled but nowhere as skilled as he was. He still relished the experience and wished for more. For the allies, it meant that the war would soon be over. They'd broken the back of the Belkan Air Force; most of their experienced pilots were either dead or in POW camps. This was bad news for Cipher. He faced the horrible probability of actually running out of battles to fight. Battle was everything to him and to lose it, even a possibility of such, was not a very good thing to imagine.

"Yo buddy, you still alive?" Pixy asked.

"Of course. I feel more alive now." Cipher replied.

"We did it. We drove them off and now we can take the fight to the enemy's homeland."

"Yeah. Oh, that seems like an awesome venture." Cipher said while laughing.

Cipher was suddenly full of life again. The prospect of fighting the elite pilots was out, but the prospect of going into the Belkan homeland and causing as much destruction as possible seemed extremely enticing. Cipher decided to help bomb Belka back to the Stone Age. He was sure that many of the allied forces thought this too, even though they did not admit it. Going into Belka would probably make him like a kid in a candy store. But instead of wondering what candy he wanted, he wondered what he could destroy next. He'd get all he'd want soon enough.

Present Day

"It took me about two days to get to the border. But it was there that I realized I'd gotten turned around and ended up in Ustio territory. It only took them a few hours to find me. A well decorated ace like me was a prime target for intelligence...and prestige. I was taken to a makeshift Osean air base just south of Directus. At this point, there was no point in trying to bluff my way out of it. I was a POW after all and we were losing the war. What was the point in misleading them? So I told the interrogator this exact story and he believed most of it to my surprise. He didn't buy the intentional friendly fire incident though."

"So they let you go?"

"Not exactly. All I could think about while I was there was I saw there at B7R. There was nothing but death there. Destroyed planes here, there, and everywhere. It was quite...disturbing to say the least. The sad thing was that no one would ever be able to recover their remains. Only a select few were ever found. The rest were simply ghosts. They'd never find any rest. I imagine they're still there. Still wandering around that dead place. No one's even bothered to build anything there; not even a museum. For five weeks, I sat in a prison cell with some dozen other higher officers. They, for the most part, were quite defiant. They knew I'd talked. I guess they figured that because the guards never bothered me. They were quite bitter. They acted if they had a reason to fight on, even from behind the cell walls. For me, the war was over. It was a punishment of sorts for the way I lived. It was there that I realized that in combat I was no better than the Demon Lord, but even then the man had no pride nor nationality. Those things we were taught from birth."

Margaret then finally realized why he said nothing about what had happened. The typical delight of the soldier to see destruction is muted upon viewing of the results of that destruction. The glory and romanticism of air to air combat was quickly taken away. She walked over to the small chest Jan was sitting on and sat down right next to him.

"Then why did you leave if you loved the country so much?" she asked him.

"After we were released, I was essentially a wanted man. Some guy had blabbed to the Wing command, that somehow survived the war, that I'd cooperated with the enemy and I was pretty much a traitor. I wasn't the only one. So I fled. At the time, I was living up in Aachen with some relatives. My uncle was a ultra-nationalist and when he heard about it, he, like the people I helped fight to protect, wasted no time in throwing me under the bus. So I got the hell out of there and fled to Sudentor. I wasn't a big fan of Osea at the time, but it was better than being hunted down as a so-called war criminal. I'm probably still a traitor to them and they're probably still looking for me...but what the hell can they do to me now? It's been fifteen years. Some people will never let go. That's the real tragedy of it. We never knew when to quit. We lost the war at the Round Table. It was obvious."

"Why?"

Jan had forgotten that Margaret, smart as she was, was not expected to know the schemas of modern military doctrine. She probably wouldn't have known that control of the air was the first step in a successful war unless some one told her...and what regular person would bring that up in conversation?

"If one controls the air, one will control the war. That's the way its always been and always will be. But we kept on, even though there was no chance of success. I thought about what Osea eventually did, just annex this part of the land and suck it dry of its resources, but to prevent that...was it worth seven nuclear bombs? Was it worth all that? No...it never was. And no one's going to learn from the past. War is going to get bigger and stronger as technology increases with it. That's the real reason why no one wants a war anymore."

"I know...but we shouldn't worry about that. Our lives aren't about war anymore. There's so much we'd like to do but we can't because we're helpless. Just as you were helpless against him, as you said..." Margaret said wisely.

"I guess you're right. I guess there's still a part of me that's stuck in past; but no matter how hard I try to forget, I can't. I had leave everything behind, family, friends, a career just to survive. That's probably why I enjoy being around you and kids. I gained a deep appreciation for life...and for you guys. Anyone would, after living through that mess."

"You're so sweet. Hmm...what ever happened to him? You know...that Demon Lord guy or whatever." Margaret asked.

"Who cares? The man's probably dead by now. The way he lived...I'm sure Hell has a special place for him. All that money he earned was probably never going to a good cause. He only spent it on himself." Jan said in derision.

"Did anyone else talk about him?"

"I've heard many things. Almost all agreed with the theory that he was still alive and fighting in some war somewhere. Irrelevant of whatever actually happened, he'll always have a home on the battlefield."

"I kinda feel sorry for him. That's not a good life to lead. That's...that's kinda awful. Such a life is so lonely. The only thing he has time for his himself and that's it. He'd probably die alone somewhere and only the few would ever remember him. History won't remember someone like that. Now you...that's a different story."

There was a long pause from Jan.

"No. I never want to be in history. I don't want to be remembered for any of that. I've left my legacy...the kids. That's my history. And him...who knows...and who cares? He's just a black spot in our memories and he'll die with us. The kids will never learn about him...I hope. The Demon Lord was the perfect example of how not to live."

"So you still hate him?" asked Margaret.

"Well, yes and no. It's not going to bring my brothers back...but...what else can I feel? You have the ability to have pathos for him, but such a man is unrepentant. He wasn't the only mercenary I ran into. How do you have sympathy for those who incapable of basic empathy or at least some rules, even in war time? It was as if he wasn't even human and sure didn't care about his comrades from what I've heard. Like he'd ever learn from his mistakes. If he's alive, he's either fighting or tearing up a bar somewhere. If he's dead, I'd guess he'd having it coming. I guess we all get the lives we deserve..."

"That's kind of cold, but I see where your coming from. Did...you ever have any of that...post-traumatic stuff? I mean, you never said anything before now..."

"Sometime after there was some nightmares. But you either learn to cope with it, or it just eats at you. I guess I'm a success story."

There was no way for Margaret to be able to fully understand the experiences of her husband during the war. These things were so alien to her: aces, the Round Table, pride, honor...she could not come to grips with these things so soon. There was no reason she could believe that such men like this "Demon Lord" could exist. Such a thing was the measure of a myth, and yet there was the facts. She could read the reports, look at the pictures and see that Jan spoke the truth. However, there was the growing acceptance that perhaps it wasn't meant to be understood completely after all. All she could was lend her emotional support to what was, even though he cleverly hid it, a painful secret. So this was she came to comprehend the situation as he she placed her head on Jan's shoulder. All that was needed was her willingness to be there. Perhaps this the feeling that soldiers got when they were together. It was all she could do.

There was no way for Jan to know if the Demon Lord was still alive. But it didn't matter. The fear that had gripped him so long ago had faded away. In some twisted fashion, he had to thank that Ustio mercenary for helping him have such a good, peaceful life. Jan was one of the few lucky ones. There were those out there that still cringed in fear at the mention of that dark nickname.