To Eva's surprise, she actually managed to get a good amount of sleep, or at least, more than she expected to get. Her eyelids fluttered open, and the pinkish-orange light from the sunrise poured in through the window, gleaming in her dark green eyes. She sat up and looked around; everything was peaceful. A cool, refreshing breeze came in through the window, which was cracked ever so slightly open, and the birds were singing their songs. For a brief moment, Eva naively thought that the war and everything that happened the previous day had all been a bad dream, but then she saw her flight crumpled up haphazardly on the floor and she came back to her senses. She let out a heavy sigh that was filled with many emotions; sadness, anger, regret, and most of all, guilt. After finally spotting her tank top, dangling from the back of the chair pushed into the desk, she threw the sheets off of herself and stood up. The tiles on the floor felt ice-cold against her bare feet; it definitely helped to wake her up. Although, just as she got up, Lucky appeared in the door, but he quickly turned away upon seeing Eva not fully dressed.
"Oh- uh… sorry," he stammered and fumbled over himself.
Eva shrugged as she slid her tank top on. "Don't worry about," she said dismissively. "What'd you need?"
Lucky finally turned around, his face showing a very subtle shade of red. "We're all meeting in the mess to come up with a plan," he informed her.
Eva nodded. "Alright, I'll be there in a second. I just need to get ready."
"Sounds good, I'll let them know," Lucky said with a shrug as he continued walking down the hallway.
With the room to herself once more, Eva threw on her flight suit and then started gathering all of her hair into a ponytail. She stretched out the hair tie wrapped around her wrist and slid it past her hand and pulled it closer to the back of her head. Just as she was putting it around her hair, though, it suddenly snapped in two. One end of the elastic band whipped around and nipped at her skin, causing her to curse under her breath. She looked down at the now broken hair tie for a moment before casting it aside, and walking out of the room toward the mess hall, running her fingers through her hair along the way to make it at least look semi-decent.
By the time Eva arrived, everyone else was already gathered at one table eating pieces of toast. She found herself slightly amused by the fact that despite everything they had gone through, it still almost seemed like nothing had changed. Magic held out a piece of toast in her hand as Eva approached, which she took as she sat down.
"Is this our breakfast?" Eva asked with a small smirk.
"I was up the earliest, and this was the easiest thing to make that I could find. Truth be told, there wasn't much else," Poet explained.
"I want you all to eat as much as possible. We don't know when the next time we're going to eat is," he told them before hesitantly adding "If there's a next time at all." He rolled out the map from the previous night in the middle of the table. "But now that we're all here, let's come up with a course of action."
"Well, there's not really much we can do, to be honest. Fort Grays Island is the only allied base we know of, and we wouldn't have enough fuel to make it there," Charger observed.
"What if we raid an airbase on the way and use its fuel to help us get there," Magic suggested.
Eva shook her head. "No dice, the planes we saw weren't loaded with missiles, and I don't know about you guys, but I don't think we'd be able to take an entire airbase with just machine guns."
Vortex nodded. "She's right. Not to mention, we can't forget about the Arsenal Birds," he reminded everyone. "We don't know where they are."
"Or that other pilot that showed up," Lucky added.
Vortex let out a heavy sigh and rested his head against his hand. It was clear that the whole situation was stressful for him, and Eva didn't blame him for it. She couldn't imagine having to lead five pilots into the unknown with no intel and no plan.
"I don't know," he finally said. "I think our best bet is to head east along Northern Usea. After that, we have three possibilities: either we'll get shot down, run into allied forces, or run out of fuel and land in the desert."
"Well, realistically, that's probably what'll happen regardless of which direction we choose to go," Charger said.
"At least this way if we run out of fuel, we'll have something soft beneath us to try and land on," Lucky added optimistically.
Vortex's eyes shifted around the table at each pilot who nodded. "We're all in agreement, then?" he asked.
"We're behind you, Vortex," Poet said with a smile.
"All the way," Eva added.
Vortex smiled and nodded. "Good, let's go to the hangars, then. We'll make whatever adjustments to our planes that we need and get going. We should be leaving in no later than two hours."
Once everyone got to the hangar, they were all hesitant to be the first one to pick a plane, but Eva's eyes gravitated toward the Su-35, which had a camo pattern of various shades of dark gray.
"Well, we're not getting any younger here," she said, walking over to the plane and giving it further inspection. "Although, it feels like it's missing something." She looked around the hangar and spotted various paints out of the corner of her eye. "Aha, perfect!" A little personal touch felt like just the thing. She looked grabbed a blue paint, as well as white, and went back to her plane, circling around it as she thought of a design.
Meanwhile, Vortex decided to opt for the Su-37, while Charger went with one of the Gripens. Magic and Poet chose the F-2 and Mig-29 respectively, and Lucky chose a Rafale. By the time they had finished choosing, Eva had already covered the Erusean emblem and replaced it with her own on both vertical stabilizers. She took a step back to admire her handiwork, proud of the fact she managed to seamlessly cover up the Erusean emblems with the camo pattern, but suddenly, more inspiration struck. She grabbed the blue paint and climbed up to the tails again.
Lucky looked up from his plane at Eva. "How are you so good at that?" he asked.
"My mom was a mechanic in the OADF. She used to put liveries on planes all the time; this one is pretty basic," she explained, not looking up from her work. "That's where she met my dad," she added. For a moment, she felt a deep sadness as she brought up her father, but quickly shrugged it off when she realized that if he saw her now, he'd be proud of her; Eva was sure of that.
Finally, she jumped down and circled around her plane again. She had painted the tips of both the vertical and horizontal stabilizers blue, as well as around a third of both wings starting from the tips. Eva definitely felt proud of her work, but it still felt incomplete. She looked over to the others and their planes, hoping to get some inspiration, and she saw Vortex, she thought about what he had told her the previous night.
"It's up to us to keep their memories alive." The words echoed clearly in her mind as if he had just said them, and it was then that she got her idea.
She went back to the vertical stabilizers and started painting a kestrel in white. Its wings were outstretched and it looked right at her. It was quite difficult to get such fine lines with the paintbrushes at her disposal, but she was rather pleased with the result, and even more pleased with the fact that she was able to create an almost identical copy to the first one on the other stabilizer.
An hour passed before anyone even realized it, and Vortex jumped down onto the hangar floor after finishing his work.
"Is everyone ready?" he asked. The squadron replied with various responses of approval and he nodded. "Alright, good. Let's suit up and hit the road, then."
Everyone grabbed their helmets and flight gear and climbed into their planes. For a moment, Eva was caught off guard by how different the cockpit of the Su-35 looked from her F/A-18, but she had the basic principles down. She slid her helmet on, albeit with some difficulty due to her hair being down, and switched on the engines. One by one, they all taxied out of the hangar but stopped.
"Oh, right. We forgot about the wreck blocking the runway," Charger said.
Magic let out an exasperated sigh. "Alright, let's go move it."
With all six pilots pushing, it was a lot easier than Eva thought it would be to get the Su-37 wreck off the runway, although it did still take a great deal of effort, but with all of the obstacles out of the way, Nexus Squadron was ready to take off once again. They went up one at a time, and as usual, Eva was last. She could feel her heart pounding as she sat at the end of the runway. After what happened during Operation Dual Wielder, she still wasn't entirely sure if she believed in herself enough, but she believed in Vortex, and that's all she needed. She gently accelerated and gradually picked up speed, and finally, she lifted herself into the air. After retracting her landing gear, Eva opened her afterburners and formed up with the others as they turned northeast and flew off into the distance. She looked behind herself one more time as they all flew away. She may have only stayed at Gardos Air Base for one day, but she still felt like she was going to miss it in a strange way, but not the memories it brought back for her.
"How's everyone doing on fuel?" Vortex's question made Eva jolt as she admittedly had zoned out a bit after flying in a straight line for so long.
She glanced down at her instruments, looking for her fuel. "I've got about a quarter of my tank left," she reported.
Everyone else seemed to be in a similar situation. Eva looked down at her radar, and just like the last few dozen times she checked it, there was nothing. She rolled her eyes. She hadn't been keeping track, but Eva was sure that by now they had been flying for several hours. She turned her attention from the instruments in her cockpit to the ground below her. She couldn't make out many details, but then again, there weren't many details to make out; it was nothing but sand and rock.
"This is Nexus Squadron of the IUPF radioing any Osean forces. Does anyone copy?" Vortex asked in a monotone voice, tired of repeating the same question over and over again. He waited for a moment, and just like every other time, nobody responded. "Great, still nothing," he mumbled.
Once again, Eva absently scanned through all the instruments in her cockpit. At first, she saw nothing out of the ordinary, but she quickly did a double-take at her radar. She looked closer and saw a group of contacts headed straight for them.
"Um, guys. We've got hostiles, bearing 210, coming right at us," Eva reported.
"Shit!" Vortex growled. "We're gonna have to engage them. Everyone, stay on your toes."
Charger was the first one to break right to engage the enemy, but Vortex sped forward and took point. The rest of the squadron followed, but Eva's heart sank as soon as they all realized what was headed for them: MQ-99s. At that moment, she thought that it was all over; they were going to die, but suddenly, static cut into Eva's radio. It was indiscernible at first, but slowly, it got clearer, and the voice of a young man, probably no older than thirty, was audible.
"Allied fighters, this is the AWACS Crosswind for the Air Force Base 262 Squadron. What is your affiliation?" they asked.
At that moment, everyone felt a mixture of relief, now that they had found allies, and fear, because of the drones speeding toward them. Eva set her sights on one of the drones and adjusted her course to go straight at it. Now that they had found allies, they had a fighting chance. As soon as the drone was in range, she fired a burst of machine-gun fire, which destroyed the drone as she broke off at the last second.
"This is Nexus Squadron of the International Union Peacekeeping Force. We're being engaged by enemy drones, and we're not equipped for air-to-air. We need support," Vortex answered urgently.
After a brief pause, Crosswind finally responded. "Understood. Allied fighters are in the AO and are on their way to assist," he told them. "Just hang in there."
As if on cue, five allied contacts appeared on Eva's radar, moving in their direction. Although, she didn't have long to think about it, as her thoughts were cut off by a missile alert. She quickly deployed flares and banked left, looking over her shoulder as she did to get a look at her pursuer. She went from a left turn to a high-G loop upward and then back down. After that, she went right into another high-G turn upward, where she had a perfect shot on the drone that was chasing her. One quick burst from her machine-guns was all it took to finish it off.
Suddenly, a volley of several missiles came shrieking overhead and took out all of the remaining drones at once. Eva craned her neck toward the source of the missiles and saw the allied fighters fly overhead. The formation consisted of five aircraft; an F-15C at the lead, an F-16C and an Su-33 on either side of it, and a Typhoon and a MiG-29 bringing up the rear. What interested Eva the most, though, was the fact that the entire left side of all five planes was painted orange, and their tails all had either one or two white lines on them.
"There, problem solved. You're welcome," a new woman said.
"You did what was expected of you Rogue 1, nothing more," Crosswind snapped. "Quite frankly, I'm surprised Rogue 3 didn't run off with his tail between his legs like he always does."
"Save the lecture for back at base Crosswind. For now, let's just send these incompetent idiots back where they came from and go home," another man said.
"Err I hate to interrupt," Vortex cut in awkwardly. "But we don't have a base. It's a long story. I hope there's room at your base for six more."
"Yes, of course, there is," Crosswind answered. "Ignore Rogue Squadron here. We'll guide you back to base."
"You better not slow us down now," a new male voice chimed in with a lighthearted tone. "We'd just hate for you to get lost along the way."
Eva rolled her eyes as she formed up behind the allied Fighters with the rest of Nexus Squadron. So far, she didn't seem to be getting the best impression from them, but by that point, she didn't really care. They had regrouped with Osea, and that was the important thing. While she had her doubts about this squadron, she put herself at east with the thought that they likely wouldn't be staying with them, and would get transferred right away anyways. Besides, nobody else in Nexus Squadron seemed to be voicing any concerns either, and that was enough to calm her nerves as they all followed Rogue Squadron back to their base.
Author's Note: Well, here we go, the beginning of Act 2. We've got new characters, a new location, and later on, some new developments in the plot. I'm gonna be honest, though, I've got mixed feelings on how the beginning of the chapter turned out. Like, all the stuff that happened was basically essential for the story, but something about it just feels kind of... off to me. I'm not sure what, though. Anyways, yes the Air Force Base 262 is a penal unit, but as its name suggests, it is not the 444th. The inclusion of a penal unity was my main concern when I mentioned being too similar to the main story in my Chapter 13 Author's Note, so I'm curious as to what everyone's thoughts on this development are. Anyways, while I'm here I want to acknowledge the fact that we passed 1k total views the other day, so thank you everyone for that. I'll keep writing this for as long as you guys keep reading it, so expect more soon.
Edit: I updated the chapter because I just realized I made a pretty crucial typo since I apparently don't know my directions.