Cora let out a content sigh as she absentmindedly flipped through the pages of a book. It had been so long since she had been able to sit down and read- before she joined the air force, even. Although, that may have helped her in a way because now she was reading some of her favorite books in entirely different ways. All the talk of freedom cast a whole new light on everything now that she knew the freedom she was really fighting for.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death," Cora murmured the passage to herself, smirking before saying, "Damn, that line's got some power to it."
It felt so strange to have this new sense of understanding with whatever she read. It was the same feeling she got when watching a movie from her childhood as an adult and understanding everything; only it felt more personal. Over the past few weeks, Cora had grown more dedicated to Free Erusea's cause than she ever thought she would have initially, and now that she had this newfound dedication, the word 'freedom' itself felt as if it had taken on a whole new meaning. Being behind bars for so long made her realize how much she missed it, and at the moment she and the others finally broke free from Osea's grasp, she felt like a new person. Cora wanted others to feel that same feeling, and that, more than anything, is why she related so much to Free Erusea and their goals.
Suddenly, Axe stepped in after briefly tapping on the door. "Yo, Magnum, we've got a mission. The Commander wants everyone for a briefing," he explained.
"Everyone?" Cora echoed. "What could be so important that we need everyone?" She folded a tiny corner of the page she was on and shut her book.
Axe shrugged. "I dunno. I suspect we'll find out once we get there, though." A wry smile found its way onto his face. "I mean, typically, that's the point of briefings," he added sarcastically.
Cora rolled her eyes and stood up to give him a light punch on the shoulder. "All right, smartass. Let's go, then," she said before the two of them started down the halls of the base toward the briefing room.
"So, um… what do you think we'll see an end to all of this soon?" Axe suddenly asked as they continued walking. "Like- I don't know. I just wanna be done with the fight already."
"To tell you the truth, I feel like I've given up on returning to any sense of normalcy," Cora admitted after a long pause. "All I care about now is making Diamond and the others pay for Slipstream's death and booting Osea the hell off this continent."
"But what then? Are we just gonna keep doing this forever?" Axe asked. He punctuated his sentence with a distressed sigh. "I've just been thinking about this for a while, and I don't really know…" He looked over at Cora as they walked. "What kind of future do we have once this is all said and done?"
Cora would be lying if she said she hadn't thought about the same thing from time to time, but it didn't take her long to come up with an answer. "Well, we've still got a future here. I doubt the other countries on Usea will just sit back and watch us do all this." Cora had a slight optimistic smirk, a rarity coming from her, but it quickly vanished as she turned to face forward. "Besides… that's implying we live long enough to make it through all this."
"Heh. You've got a point there," Axe admitted as he reached up and scratched the back of his head. "I suppose you're right. I just wish you weren't so we could return to some sense of normalcy."
Cora sighed. "Yeah, me too," she agreed, nodding her head slightly. "Me too."
The two of them pushed open the door to the briefing room and found their seats next to Dodger. "He say anything yet?" Axe whispered with a slight nod to the Commander standing at the front of the room.
Dodger shook his head. "Nope. Still waiting for everyone to show up," he explained, occasionally glancing back at the door to watch people filter in. "Which looks like it shouldn't be too much longer.
As if on cue, the Commander cleared his throat, cutting any side conversations dead in their tracks. "Right, then, everyone quiet down. This is important." He paused as his eyes drifted across the briefing room, zig-zagging back and forth until he had met the gaze of everyone in front of him. "Our scouts have finally returned. They ran into quite a bit of trouble, and of the twelve we sent out, only four came back. However, the intel they retrieved could change everything."
A wave of anxious murmurs swept through the crowd, including from Rogue Squadron. "The hell do you think he's talking about?" Dodger asked.
"If you shut up, I'm sure he'd explain," Cora hissed as she gave him an aggressive nudge with her elbow.
"For the past few weeks, all of our air operations have come under attack by long-range strikes. This has seriously hindered our ability to do pretty much anything. Thanks to our scouts, though, we've learned where this thing is and, more importantly, how to capture it." He opened up the briefing software on the screen and displayed the map of Usea. "Our target is Galar Fortress, located in the Altoora Desert," the Commander explained. "When the Independent State Allied Forces began their invasion during the Continental War, they feared a counterattack from Erusea, so they constructed Galar Fortress to help against the potential attack. It wasn't actually finished by the end of the war, though. Instead, it was completed during the 2005 Free Erusea uprising." He zoomed in on the region in question and marked it as hostile.
"So, do we know what this thing is?" Someone that Cora couldn't see asked.
The Commander shook his head. "Not entirely, but we do know two things: It has some sort of railgun, and it has to be launched by a mass driver. We suspect that the fortress was used in secret by Erusea to develop this weapon once they took control of the area. Quite frankly, it's a miracle we haven't noticed it until now." He shifted his gaze from the screen in front of him to the dozens of men and women sitting and looking up at him. "Regardless of what it actually is, we know that the garrison there isn't very large. That means if we strike fast enough, we could easily overpower them and take control of whatever this weapon is."
"What's the plan, then?" Cora asked. "Just rush in guns blazing?"
"Our ground forces will separate into three groups, Alpha through Gamma. Alpha will approach head-on, while Beta and Gamma approach from the east and west respectively," the Commander explained. "Meanwhile, our air support, spearheaded by Rogue Squadron, will provide cover for all three teams as needed. Finally, Alpha will secure the weapon while Beta and Gamma breach the fortress itself and secure it. Any questions?" Once again, his eyes drifted across the room, looking for even the slightest hint of doubt or confusion. When his search yielded no results, he said, "No? Good. Then prepare to roll out."
"Galar Fortress at vector 010, on the nose," AWACS announced. "All aircraft, weapons free."
"Copy that, Rogue Squadron, engaging," Cora replied.
Cora pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go and dove straight toward the enemy with everyone else right behind her. As she glanced over her shoulder at the several squadrons of aircraft following her in, she let a slight smirk creep onto her face as she realized the irony of the situation. Crosswind insisted on half of their aircraft being painted orange as a way of degrading the former convicts, making them feel like lesser people. Now, though, that same orange on draping half of the three lead planes was showing the way for dozens of people seeking the same freedom as them. It felt nice to get one last win over her old AWACS operator, even after his death.
"This is Alpha Actual. We're getting pounded by artillery from further back in their lines," a new voice chimed in. "We can't advance until it's dealt with."
Cora made a mental note of the enemy positions on her radar and scanned the rest of the map. "Right. We'll take care of that. Beta? Gamma? What's your status?"
"We've got enemy tanks advancing on our positions!" Beta Actual yelled. "They'll flatten us if we don't get some help ASAP!"
"Enemy strike fighters keep strafing us, and we can't do anything about it," Gamma Actual reported. "The bastards are too quick for us to hit from down here."
"Don't worry. Help is on the way," Cora assured both of the men. "Scarlet Squadron, provide air support for Beta."
"Affirmative, we're oscar mike," Scarlet 1 replied as the four A-10s peeled away from the formation and turned toward the cluster of radar contacts in the east.
"Orange Team, take care of the flies buzzing around Gamma's heads and do your best to establish air superiority. I've seen you two in action, so I know you can do it," Cora said, turning to look over her other shoulder at the two Su-57s.
The only response they gave was a brief, "Wilco," before they started flying off at full speed, leaving everyone else on their heading for Alpha. It was a surprisingly large and diverse group of aircraft. Rogue Squadron's F-15, F-16, and Su-33 led the charge while squadrons of F-14s, MiG-29s, and even a few Su-47s followed them in.
"Right, the rest of us are going to give Alpha all the cover they need," Cora announced, raising her voice in the hopes of exciting the others. "Remember, once they're in and secure whatever this superweapon is, we win. Now, let's move!"
Cora hit the afterburners and gradually descended until she was a kilometer off the ground. Before long, ground units from Alpha started showing up on her HUD, and the enemies they were fighting appeared a second later. A slow and consistent beep began to sound off in Cora's cockpit until her standard missiles locked onto the closest tank it could find. Rather than pull the trigger, she opted to angle her plane even further down until her crosshairs were centered right on the tank. Then, the powerful hum of her machine guns rang out as tracers spewed forward until the tank went up in flames, and she pulled up only a hundred meters away from the sand dunes below.
Typically, Cora would circle back around and help engage the enemies on the frontlines. However, that wasn't her plan this time. That job would go to the squadrons following her, Axe, and Dodger. Instead, the three former convicts continued flying straight ahead toward the line of howitzers further back- the thing stopping their advance.
As Cora climbed to a higher altitude and continued to get close and closer to the fortress itself, she began to realize just how big it was. Even from a distance, the facility looked massive, but up close, it seemed as if they were ants approaching a house. The way the old and weathered stone jutted out from the sand almost looked unnatural in a way. Various towers stood tall and proud on the corners of the perimeter wall, ready to open fire on the first thing to come within their range as they sought to protect the absolutely massive compound behind them. Luckily, Rogue Squadron didn't have to get within the range of the defenses lining the fortress itself, just the forces outside its walls. Unfortunately for them, however, dealing with them was still easier said than done.
"Good lord, I thought the Commander said the garrison here wasn't that big," Dodger exclaimed as he turned and weaved through the hail of anti-air gunfire being hurled up at them.
"Considering whatever this thing they have is, it must be smaller than it should be," Axe rationalized as he dropped a pair of GPBs on a group of SAM launchers.
"Whatever the case may be, he thinks that we'll be able to capture this thing, so that's precisely what we're gonna do," Cora added as she finally closed in the howitzers pounding Alpha.
A few AA guns surrounded the howitzers, but all it took was a pair of standard missiles and a gun-run to take them all out before they even had a chance to react to her. Axe and Dodger followed her in moments later, and now that their target was left unguarded, they chipped away at the line of artillery before passing over them. By that point, Cora had fully turned around and was now preparing for a second pass. She lined herself up to be nearly parallel to the howitzers and came in low for guns. One by one, Cora destroyed the enemy ground vehicles. Finally, she pulled back up, speeding higher and higher into the sky after firing a final two missiles and leaving the rest to her wingmen.
"Alright, we're closing in on the fortress now," Gamma Actual reported. "But these towers on the wall are proving to be a real pain in the ass," he added with an annoyed grunt.
"Diddo," Beta Actual chimed in. "Once they're out of the way, though, we should be able to force our way into the fortress." He spoke with a surprising amount of optimism in his voice.
"Alright then, Scarlet, you take care of those towers," Cora ordered. "And if you can, try to blast a few holes in the wall to make it that much easier for them. Orange, keep up the good work. This operation'll be a breeze with you two running interference on their fighters. The rest of us just need to thin down the front lines so Alpha can get in."
Cora, Axe, and Dodger turned around to see that the others had done an admirable job keeping the enemy ground forces at bay for Alpha. By the time the three of them regrouped with the main group, only a few handfuls of tanks and APCs remained with no anti-air guns in view. The Free Erusean fighters dove in and out of the enemies' sight, and with the combined forces of several air squadrons and all of Alpha, the last of the hostiles outside the fortress fell in no time at all.
Next, they turned their attention to the fortress itself. Scarlet Squadron had already taken out the towers around the wall, and they began to destroy the defenses within the fortress while Gamma and Beta stormed it from the inside. They were also accompanied by Orange Team, who had already taken out all of the enemy aircraft.
"Hah! We've got this in the bag," Alpha Actual scoffed. "Guess we caught the bastards with their pants down."
"No kidding," Cora agreed. "I mean, I expected them to at least be able to put up a bit of a fight, but we just demolished 'em."
"Y'know what, I say we finally get a good look at what this superweapon really is," Dodger decided, already flying toward the large hangar near the rear of the fortress.
Corra and Axe followed him, but it was Axe who managed to speak first. "Is that what I think it is?"
A long, white shape reflected itself in the visor of Cora's helmet, and she smirked. She knew exactly what it was, but more importantly, she knew what it was capable of. "It's the key to victory."