Chapter by Dax
The United States of America were at the top of their game now. Ever since the battle of Guadalcanal, the Sleeping Giant had been crushing the Japanese at every encounter.
Not only that, but after getting their hands on his travel itinerary, the allies struck a blow to Japanese morale...
By taking out their beloved Admiral Yamamoto.
Without one of their key strategists, Japan was in trouble.
Still, the American forces were taking pretty big losses in the war. Taking a Japanese controlled island was no easy task. But in order to keep up the fight, the US Navy, Air Force, Army and Marines had to work together.
And boy were they really working together. With four very powerful groups working as one, their victories were only increasing. Japan was now running on fumes, but that didn't mean they were done. Soon a new battle would happen, and the Enterprise would have to use every trump card just to stay in the game.
June 13, 1944.
The Enterprise was sailing straight toward the next target, Saipan. But before the battle ready pilots of Angel, Rouge and Devil Squadron would take to the sky, a massive Battleship group, lead by the New Jersey would first soften up the Japanese defenders of the island.
However their was one flaw. The Battleship gunners were all new to this, so their round either coming up short or a complete miss of their designated targets.
On the flight deck of the Enterprise, Sweets and her boyfriend Dax watched the beach get blasted. Seeing this brought back memories of Guadalcanal that the fiery-furred sergeant's handsome Lieutenant wished to never see. The voices of dying Marines and Japanese soldiers echoed in his ears,. Trying hard to forget what he saw, Dax closed his eyes tightly, but that only made the voices louder.
"Stop it!" Dax screamed falling to his knees. "I can't save all of you!"
Sweets stepped back from him in shock. It was clear to her that he was suffering from what could only be shell shock, but what could she do to help him? A fight deck crew member walked up and made the mistake of touching Dax.
"You ain't going to kill me, Jap!" he shouted punched the deck crew member in his gut very hard.
Without missing a beat, Sweets reached out and grabbed his boyfriend's arm before he could throw another punch. Dax, then spun around and grabbed Sweets by the waist and threw her face first to the flight deck. When the Lieutenant suddenly realized what he had done, he broke down.
Not only had he assaulted a fellow serviceman in the Navy, he had just done the same to Sweets.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered sadly as a crowd gathered around to watch the scene unfold. "I can't do it. I can't fly anymore. I'm done. I just want to go home!" his voice now being drowned out by his sobbing.
Lt. Col Humphrey "Rex" Chambers Sr, walked up to the distressed pilot. As two members of the flight deck helped of Sweets, Rex looked down at Dax and frowned. "We all want to go home," he growled, "but we won't have a home to go to if we lose this war."
Dax seemed to have calmed down a bit now. "But I so much blood on my hands. I got nothing left in me. My spirit is broken."
First Lt. Cody "Pretty Boy" O'Connor walked up to Dax. "Dax," he said. He had something he wanted to say for a long time, something that needed to come out. "I know some things can never be taken back, because those things can scar you and it they will never fade. I offer no excuse, my friend. It is nobody's fault that you got hurt. For all of it. You mean everything to us."
Eve looked down at Dax. "I have lost more then you did on that damn island," she said pointing to her husband's wedding right that now hung around her neck. "And we will have scars that never fade."
"Scars never fade," Dax repeated.
"Yes, they never fade, but they can be covered, hidden from sight. You helped save many Marines and survived Guadalcanal. Your spirit remained strong then, it still can remain strong now when we need you the most." Eve replied firmly.
Sweets put her hand on Dax's shoulder. The silver wolf looked into the eyes of his beloved. She smiled at him. "Dax, there are things we never will know about you, but what I know is that the greatness in you is a greatness of spirit. Courage and generosity, compassion and commitment. These are your virtues," Sweets said gently. "You have done great things, and I love you."
Dax found he had nothing to say. Getting to his feet, he looked around at his fellow pilots and the Enterprise's deck crew. With a new found respect and strength, Dax straightened himself up.
"First Lieutenant Dax "Big Daddy" Stirling, reporting for duty!" he shouted with a salute. "Just give me a plane and let's do this!"
The whole flight deck erupted with cheering as the pilots ran for their planes.
June 15, 1944.
Angel and Devil Squadron were dropping their payloads on the Japanese bunkers and pillboxes, while Rouge Squadron flew escort.
As Colonel Jaime "King" Ramirez watched the two bomber squadrons bomb the anti-air guns, he kept looking up at Eve, who was now strafing the ground with her machine guns. In the handsome colonel's eyes, she was a real angel. Smart, beautiful and above all, very loving and protective of her daughters. King was going to tell her how he felt as soon as they landed at the back on the Enterprise.
Suddenly! King's plane was hit bad by some of still active Anti-air guns. The colonel was in trouble, so he needed to bug out or risk getting shot down. As he turned toward the safety of the Allied fleet, another Anti-air round scored a direct hit on the under belly of his fighter. In the blink of an eye, King's cockpit burst into flames!
His screams were heard as smoke escape through the holes in his plane. However, he refused to let himself die by the flames. Reaching under his seat, King pulled out his fire extinguisher. Even though his arms and hands were burning and the pain consumed him, the colonel fought through it and put out the fire.
"DAD! Are you alright?!" Terra cried out. There was no answer. "Dad, please answer me!" she begged.
"I'm fine," came King's reply, but from what everyone could hear, he was not in good shape. "I'm going to return to the Enterprise, just stay the course and finish your bombing runs."
Not far off was Private Daniel "Pipsqueak" O'Connor, who had spotted two Japanese trucks heading for the jungle. Without notifying any members of his squadron, the glory seeking rookie broke off from the group and went after the trucks. As his Hellcat closed in on the fleeing trucks, the jungle floor erupted with Anti-air machine-gun fire. Daniel had flown right into a trap!
In a panic, Daniel banked to the left, giving the Japanese gunners a clear shot at his Hellcat's underbelly. Bullets riddled his plane and he lost all power. There was only one thing to do, bail out. So, he did. Sadly, the Japanese were waiting for him on the ground.
From the air, the O'Connor daughter and father saw Daniel get taken. There was nothing they could do, but hope and pray that he would survive. After all, the Japanese were known to be very rough with prisoners of war. To them, surrender was sign of weakness and was against the code of Bushido.
But there was another problem.
Coming toward the island of Saipan was the newly built Japanese Imperial fleet! And among the new fleet were sister ships, Shokaku and Zuikaku. These two ships had squared off with the Enterprise before, but now they were coming back to finish what they had began at the battle of Guadalcanal and Santa Cruz. But those two Japanese carriers were not alone, sailing close by was the new super carrier, Taiho.
The Taiho was so big that she weighed 30,000 tons, had two hanger decks, and had an armored plated deck. She was built to last, but that was nothing to her weapons. Protecting this ship was twelve 99MM flak guns and fifty 25MM Machine-guns. It was a floating fortress.
June 19, 1944.
However, the floating fortress had an unseen enemy lurking in the water nearby. An American submarine had spotted the massive Japanese carrier and moved in for the kill. The submarine slowly approached the Taiho, just like a lion would as it hunted its prey. Still, the Taiho had already lunched it attack planes to destroy the Enterprise.
But, the attacking Japanese bombers were just no match for the veteran pilots of Enterprise and the other American carriers. Wave after wave, the Japanese were taken down with ease, however they scored a single hit on the Battleship South Dakota, claiming only seven lives. It looked as if the Japanese were done for this battle. Nearly four hundred Japanese planes were shot down and it was one of the greatest victories for the American Navy.
Then just before 12:00 AM, another American submarine that had been stalking the Shokaku finally attacked. The Shokaku was then sunk, taking many of her crew with her to the bottom of the sea, but it wasn't the only Japanese carrier to be sunk. The Taiho had been hit earlier that day by a single Torpedo, and unknown to the crew, the whole ship was filling with flammable gases. It only took a single spark to turn the super carrier into a burning wreck.
After the Americans lunched another attack on the Japanese fleet, they sank one more carrier. But there was still the Zuikaku and the two super Battleships to deal with. But right now, the battle for Saipan was far from over. After three weeks of fighting, the Japanese defenders were defeated. But taking the island had cost the US. More then 16,000 Marines and soldiers had lost their lives, and the Japanese lost 24,000, but there was still one pilot from the Enterprise that was still missing...
Danial O'Connor.
It took some time but Rex was able to get permission to go ashore with the rest of Rouge Squadron and Cody to find Danial. As the pilots searched the last known location of their missing pilot, a group of Marines were escorting a group of captured Japanese prisoners back to the beach. As Cody passed one of the Japanese prisoners, he saw that the soldier was wearing his son's dog tags.
Worried that his son was still being held somewhere on the island, the distressed lieutenant reached out and snatched the tags away from the Japanese soldier.
"Where is the pilot who wore these tags?" he asked.
The Japanese soldier only smiled and pointed to the nearby hill. The pilots of Rouge squadron followed Cody up the hill where they found Daniel…
Well, what remained of him that was.
Daniel was trussed to a dead tree. His arms were bound behind him with rope. But no one noticed that detail. They were all staring at Daniel's face. It appeared to have two mouths. One hung slack to reveal his blood stained teeth. The other gaped under his chin and drooled blood over his dirty uniform.
Daniel's throat—that instrument that had entertained his buddies at the academy—had been slashed from ear to ear.
Cody was in shock and speechless. The Japanese had murdered his only son!
"NO! Those fucking animals! Look what they did to my boy!" he shouted.
Rushing over to the body, young Elise cut her brother free from the tree.
As the two last members of the O'Connor's wept over their loss, the newly promoted Colonel Cain "Devil Anse" Adams lead the rest of the group back down to the beach.
They had a new mission: To find the ones who killed Daniel and make them pay.
When they got to the beach, they were greeted by one of the captured Japanese soldiers. He figured that once they had found the body, they would be coming back to punish the one responsible. The angry colonel didn't need to be told where the killer was because the prisoners quickly moved away from the guilty one.
There, standing with as much pride he could muster was a Japanese major, wounded arm in a makeshift sling. One might say, he wasn't even trying to hide the fact that he had tortured and killed Daniel. Well, that was all Rex needed to know.
"You," he barked to a nearby Marine.
"Shoot that guy!"
The Marine looked confused at first and point to the Japanese major. "This guy?" he asked.
"Yeah, that Jap cock-sucker with a busted wing. He butchered a member of my squadron," Rex replied.
The Marine smiled and pointed his BAR at the Japanese major, who only smiled back at him.
"See you in hell, Jap!" the Marine said and pulled the trigger.
"Fuck you!" the Japanese major said before the sound of the BAR being fired was heard.
The pilots and Marines watched the Japanese major fall dead with a certain satiation. After that Rouge Squadron returned to the Enterprise, where they gave Daniel a funeral, before letting him rest at the bottom of the sea.
Another pilot had been lost and was now an angel flying above them.