"Control Tower, this is Castor 6. We need to come in for a landing ASAP," Eva insisted as she finally laid eyes on the base. "How are you holding up, Slipstream?" She looked to her right to see him flying at a reasonably low altitude.
"Not great, honestly," Slipstream grunted before coughing again. "My vision's starting to get a little blurry."
Eva felt herself getting tenser with each report he made. "Alright, just hang in there. Control Tower, do you read me? This is Castor 6."
"Castor 6?" The tower operator finally responded. "We thought you guys didn't make it. Where's the rest of the squadron?"
"They didn't make it," she reported. "It's just Slipstream and me, but he's wounded and bleeding out. He needs to land and get medical attention." The fact that the tower operator thought they were already dead only made Eva more concerned. She couldn't help but think about if things went just as poorly for them as they did for the others. More importantly, though, she started to get worried that some of the others might not have made it back.
"Come on, Slipstream. You go ahead and land first," Eva told him. "Just hang in there."
Slipstream coughed some more. "Right. Coming in… for a landing." His breathing continued to get worse.
Eva circled the base and watched as Slipstream made an extremely rough landing and started taxying to the hangars. Once he was off the runway, she lined herself up and came in to land. It was only then that she realized how exhausted she felt. Up until that point, she had mostly been tuning it out, but now that it was all over, for the most part, it was starting to creep in finally. Eva's landing, admittedly, wasn't much better than Slipstream's, but it was enough to get her on the ground at the very least.
Once Eva was off the runway, she saw figures running out of the hangar to meet her and Slipstream. As they got closer, Eva let out a sigh of relief as she made out all ten pilots still in Rogue Squadron. Neither of them bothered to park their planes in the hangar and just parked them on the tarmac instead. Tearing off her oxygen mask, Eva heaved the canopy open and climbed down onto the ground. Vortex, Charger, Poet, Magic, and Lucky ran over to her as soon as she came down.
"Are you alright, Diamond?" Vortex was the first one to ask the question. His eyes showed the same caring look as they had when they landed after the Kestrel II sank.
Eva nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine," she answered. "But, Slipstream…" She pointed to his plane as the canopy opened.
As Slipstream meagerly crawled out of his cockpit, Eva finally saw what a sorry state he was in. The first thing she noticed was all the blood that stained the legs of his flight suit. Then, she saw several scarlet circles around the right side of his waist. He tried to climb down the ladder, but by that point, he was too dizzy to hold on and fell from the third rung off the ground. Magnum ran over to him, with the other convicts not far behind, and held him in her arms.
"Slip!" Dodger called out as he and Axe sat down next to Magnum. "Come on. Talk to us, buddy!"
Slipstream responded with another coughing fit, but he smiled as he looked up at the other three convicts. "Hey, guys," he said wearily. "You worry too much. Y'know that?"
"Come on, Slipstream. Don't do this to us," Axe pleaded. "We all agreed that we were gonna make it through this together."
"Well… I guess you guys are gonna have to earn your freedom for me." He grunted as he tried to adjust his position slightly. "Just do me… one favor. Will ya?"
Magnum nodded. "Name it. We'll get it done, no problem," she assured him.
Slipstream coughed some more before looking back up at Magnum. "Don't- don't blame yourselves. It wasn't your fault." He managed to let out a weak laugh. "I mean, hell, you weren't even in the area, so just… don't think it's your fault." He let out another coughing fit. "And don't stop… fighting for… your freedom." With those final words, Slipstream fell limp in Magnum's arms.
For a moment, everyone stood around in silence, but Magnum was the one to break it. "You," she snarled, looking up at Eva. "This is your fault."
"Magnum," Vortex tied to step in calmly.
"Shut your damn mouth!" Magnum snapped at him, getting to her feet. "Slipstream is dead because of you," she bellowed as she stormed over to Eva. "I'll kill you!"
Eva got caught entirely off-guard as Magnum ran up and tackled her, pinning her to the ground. Eva's shock quickly turned to panic and fear as Magnum pulled a shiv from her flight suit's sleeve and pressed it to Eva's neck. She desperately tried to wriggle free, but it was no use. Eva saw her life flashing in front of her eyes as she realized there was nothing she could do when a loud voice cut through the panicked shouts of her squadron.
"Stop right there, Magnum!" The voice belonged to Crosswind, and he had a pistol trained right on Magnum. "Drop it, now!" he commanded.
"Why should I? Slipstream died because of her," she said as she looked back down at Eva. "She can die too for all I care."
"You're dreaming if you think I'll let you get away with this again," Crosswind said, keeping his pistol on Magnum.
"Oh? You mean you're actually gonna do something about it this time?" Magnum asked. She seemed to be taunting him about something, but Eva didn't know what they were talking about.
"I could always just shoot you now if you'd prefer," he snapped.
Eva's eyes darted between Magnum and Crosswind worriedly. She didn't even dare to swallow in case it set Magnum off. All that stood between Eva and death was a flick of Magnum's wrist, and that terrified her. Luckily, Magnum dropped the small piece of metal and stood up.
"If you think that this is over, think again," she warned. "It might not be today or tomorrow, but soon enough, I will kill you," she promised as she stormed off, shoving Crosswind out of the way as she headed off into the cell block.
As soon as Axe and Dodger left to follow Magnum, Lucky ran over and wrapped his arms around Eva. Despite everything that had happened in such a short amount of time, Eva felt all of her worries fade away. All that existed at that moment was her and Lucky. She didn't have to worry about a war, or losing anyone else, or even Magnum's promise to kill her. Eva didn't even realize that the others had joined in at some point. She just took the time to breathe in and out and collect herself.
"Are you sure you're alright, Diamond?" Magic finally asked, breaking the silence.
Eva nodded. "Yeah, yeah. I'm just a little shaken up, is all." In truth, she was more than a little shaken up, but she didn't see any reason to worry them.
"What exactly happened out there, kid?" Charger asked. "How did all of Castor Squadron go down?"
Eva sighed. "Things were going fine at first. We took out the enemies at the base without any issues, but then the reinforcements came," she explained. "Threes took a hit, and Bouncer went down taking another one that would've finished him off. Then we got swarmed by drones. Nobody died, but it was exhausting." She paused, taking another deep breath to try and steady her nerves. "After that, we saw friendlies coming toward us. We thought it was Major Wiseman and the others, so we went to investigate. Turns out they were just spoofing our IFF. Slipstream and I were the only ones to make it out, and even then, it was only barely."
"Ignore them. It's not your fault," Vortex assured her. "You did all you could, and that's what's important."
"What happened to you guys?" Eva finally asked after staying silent for a moment. "How did things go for you?"
Vortex's expression darkened. "Shitty," he answered bluntly. "It started fine, but it went downhill really quickly. The Arsenal Bird showed up much faster than we expected it to, and we got swarmed. To make it worse, Deviant Squadron got decimated. The survivors only barely made it out with the data." He sighed. "But we can talk about all that during the debriefing. Come on, let's go."
As soon as everyone stepped into the briefing room, the first thing that Eva noticed was that the convicts were all missing. Although, after the incident on the tarmac, she couldn't exactly be anything but glad that they weren't there. As Eva and the others sat down, she noticed how defeated Gates and Tillmin looked. Compared to how excited and enthused the two of them looked during the briefing, it hurt to see them look so hurt.
"Well, you all know what happened, so I suppose there's no real reason to keep this longer than it needs to be," Gates said. "In total, we lost about 75% of our forces today, so even though we got the data we were looking for, there's no way we can possibly call this a victory."
"And that's not even taking into account the bad news," Tillmin cut in. "The data is encrypted, and without the proper tools and software, it could take me a while to get it decrypted. If I had to guess, I'd say it'll take a week at least. Most likely more."
Gates sighed. "And on top of everything else, it seems the convicts are right back to square one."
"I told you this would happen, sir," Crosswind said, not in a condescending way but more insistent.
"I know you did, and, quite frankly, I feel stupid for not listening to you." Gates set his head down on his arms, which were folded onto the desk. "You're all dismissed. I need some time to myself."
As everyone started to stand up and make their way out of the briefing room, Eva stayed seated and watched everyone leave. Specifically, she watched as Crosswind walked over to his office next door and shut the door. Eva took a deep breath and stood up, walking up the door and gently tapping her knuckles against it.
"It's me," Eva announced gently. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"
Crosswind opened the door a few seconds later. "What is it?" His voice sounded tired- not annoyed, just tired.
"I uh… wanted to thank you for earlier. I'd be dead if not for you, so thanks for that," she said.
Crosswind looked away. "Yeah, well, I wasn't gonna let that happen again," he muttered.
Eva arched an eyebrow curiously. "What do you mean? Has that happened before?"
Crosswind sighed, gesturing for Eva to come inside, and he shut the door behind her. "I don't like talking about it much, but yeah. Before the war started, this base's air squadron wasn't entirely made of convicts. It had some regular pilots mixed in with it, like Deviant Squadron," he explained. "When I got transferred here, I didn't exactly come alone. I came here with another pilot, and he and I were uh…" He sighed, and Eva got the gist of what he was trying to say. "We were close." He stopped pacing and sat down at his desk. "When Erusea started bombing us at the start of the war, we would keep sending up fighters to intercept them, but we'd keep losing pilots with each sortie." His expression darkened as he told more of the story. "Eventually, command of Rogue Squadron fell into his hands, but during one sortie, they lost several convicts. Magnum was beyond furious, so she… she killed him."
Eva wasn't sure what to say at first. "I- I'm sorry, Crosswind," she finally said.
"It's not your fault," Crosswind reassured her. "I'm just glad that I was able to keep the same thing from happening twice."
"So am I," Eva said, smiling a bit. "But today's been such a long day. I think I'm gonna go and lie down. I just wanted to thank you for saving my ass." Without another word, she left his office and headed for her room.
"I can't believe this," Cora huffed as she angrily paced around in her cell. "Why won't they see this is all her fault?"
"Who cares?" Dodger, who was sitting next to Axe on Cora's bed, said with a shrug. "I do know one thing, though."
"And what's that?" Axe asked, looking over at Dodger.
"Slipstream said he wanted us to get our freedom, and after today, I doubt they're gonna give it to us, so I say we take it by force," Dodger spoke with an amount of conviction that Cora had never heard from him before.
"Hmph, strong words coming from you," she accused. "How do I know you won't just run away again and let us do all the hard work?"
Dodger shook his head. "Nope, I'm done running away. They got Slipstream killed, and I'm gonna make damn sure they get what's coming to them."
Axe smiled and nodded. "Damn straight," he agreed. "They're gonna regret getting him killed. The only question is how are we gonna do it."
Cora slowed down, pacing at a much slower speed as she mused over her thoughts. "We've gotta wait for our perfect time to strike," she finally said. "Until then, we'll play nice and stay out of trouble, but when the time comes, we'll kill them all: Gates, Crosswind, Diamond, Vortex, and all the others."
"What about Trench?" Axe asked. "He may be siding with them these days, but in the end, he's still one of us."
"We'll give him a chance when the time comes, but if he chooses wrong, then he dies," Cora answered.
Axe and Dodger nodded and left Cora's cell, leaving her alone. As she thought more and more about the plan in her mind, she felt the excitement building up inside her. After spending months in prison, she was finally about to have a chance at freedom. Not only that, but she'd be able to get back at the others while she did it. Cora nodded to herself, feeling satisfied with the basics of the plan.
'Yes,' she thought to herself. 'When the time comes, they'll all die, and we'll get our freedom.'