-1Ace Combat: Restitution
An Ace Combat (fanfic/short story) brought on by
playing Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat Zero until
six o' clock in the morning for three days in a row
(Written by The Great and Powerful Keski)
- - -
Part One
- - -
For after all what is man in nature?
A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing,
a central point between nothing and all and
infinitely far from understanding either.
- - -
Who am I?
I don't know how to answer that question anymore. I don't really think I have a name, at least not in the way I think you mean. In fact, for years now I've wondered if I am even a veritable human being.
Whatever else I may be, I am a fighter pilot. I've always been a pilot, probably always will be. An amazing pilot at that—you don't understand, though, you can't, what I really mean by 'amazing'.
I've flown under many different monikers—I've been Cipher, Galm One and the Demon Lord of the Round Table; I've been Mobius One, known only by my ruthlessness and my plane's ribbon insignia; I've been a Wardog, and then one of the Demons of Razgriz. Blaze, they called me then.
I've fought Belka, then a World With No Boundaries. I've fought Erusea, then Yuktobania, then Belka again.
I've killed men who didn't know what they were fighting for, and I've killed men who fought for the most respectable causes of all.
I've shot down some of the most expensive planes ever built, and I've destroyed weapons the mind can barely comprehend. I've tasted death in the air, and I have cheated it more times than I can count.
I don't let myself get too attached. To anyone. I've lost too many close friends, partners, comrades. First there was Larry Foulke. "Solo Wing," they called him—He was a good friend. I flew with him on twelve missions, and at the end of the twelfth, he turned on me. I shot him down on New Year's Eve, 1995—just minutes after he killed Patrick—PJ—another friend, another wingman. Years later, in another war, I lost another friend. Alvin… Chopper. He went down with honour, but… I can't help feeling responsible. I was his flight lead.
I have always been the flight lead, and always they die under my wing. I am a bringer of indiscriminate death, to those who fight both with and against me.
And yet, even that is not entirely true. I have brought life to some. There are those who would have died were it not for my aid. Kei Nagase flew with me at the same time as Alvin. She was shot down on November seventeenth, in the last war, and if I had not been there to spearhead the rescue effort, she would not be alive today. And the young one, Grimm—He might have been shot down the moment he got into the air for the first time if I hadn't been fighting for air superiority above him.
But then, none of this is what you wanted to hear, now, is it?
- - -
"Yo, buddy. Still alive?"
These words echoed through my consciousness, even though it had been years since I'd last heard them. It was January 3, 2011, just days after the end of the Circum-Pacific War, and I had, for a second time, grown weary of the organized military. I was once again a mercenary, as I'd been in the Belkan War. Perhaps that was why Larry's words came back to me now, after all these years. No longer was I a Wardog, nor a Demon of Razgriz.
Edge—Kei Nagase—had become a mercenary like me in the few days following the destruction of the SOLG, while my other wingmen, Archer and Swordsman had stayed in the Air Force. I hadn't heard from any of them since the mission on New Year's Eve.
That particular day, I was flying over the mountain range that had once been known as B7R. I had no mission, no objective—the plane I flew was my own, an old MiG-29A. I carried no weapons, and I carried no obligations. Wartime was over, after all. Nobody needed my service, and I was reluctant to offer it up after the occurrences of the recent war.
"Blaze." Kei Nagase's voice, over the radio.
"Don't call me Blaze," I said sharply.
"Fine, Razgriz One."
I stiffened and drew my upper lip back in an expression of distaste. "Kei…"
"Well, you never told me your real name."
I sighed and leant my head back. Briefly I checked the radar, but nothing was displayed. "Call me… Cipher."
"Cipher?"
"It's a long story. Maybe someday I'll tell it to you."
"Maybe. Okay, Cipher. Where are you headed?"
"Oblivion," I said, then sighed again. "I don't know. Just waiting for the world to go crazy again, I guess."
"What do you mean?" A quick blip in the lower-right hand corner of the radar caught my attention—It was her. I pulled my plane around to head for it.
"Another war. There's always a war going on. Always. People can't exist without conflict. Something I've learned over the years. Someone is mad at someone else, or someone needs resources, or someone is plotting—There's always something. And I'm always the one to save the world, and I'm just… I'm just so very tired of it all."
I could see her in the distance. I couldn't make out what she was flying, but it wasn't very large. "Getting a bit full of yourself, aren't you?" she said.
"So says you. You don't know what I've done. Where I've been. What I've seen. This last war was only the last of many. And there will be more."
"Blaze—Cipher," she corrected herself, "who are you, really?"
I didn't reply for a few seconds, then I sighed. "You remember that reporter who published a series of interviews about five years ago, about a mercenary pilot who flew in the Belkan War? The Demon Lord of the very same Round Table we are flying above right now…?"
"Yes," she said, "it was interesting to read. Along with the rest of the records of the Belkan War. But what—"
I threw caution to the wind. "I'm the Demon Lord, Kei. I am Galm One. I'm Cipher."
Silence. Her plane came closer, closer, and then flashed by above me. She wheeled around and pulled up to fly alongside me. She was flying an F-16C. For an instant, I remembered PJ—he always flew an F-16C—but I suppressed the memories of that long ago war.
"Cipher," she said quietly over the radio, and I knew she wasn't addressing me.
"And I've been around for a lot longer than that," I said.
There was silence again. I don't know what I would have said, if anything, but the instant I opened my mouth, a multitude of new blips appeared as if from nowhere in the northwest corner of my radar. They didn't register on the search screen as enemies, but they were headed fast for us, and they didn't say anything over the radio.
"Damn it," I said viciously. "I told you. Something's happening again. I don't have any weapons, Kei."
"Neither do I. We should head back. Valais?"
"It's closest," I agreed. "That's where I'm staying for now, too."
We both wheeled around to the southeast and pushed the throttle to the maximum. Whatever planes the others were flying, they weren't fast enough to catch us; we never even saw them.
- - -
Valais Air Base was dormant, and it took only a few moments of communication before they authorized the both of us to land. It wasn't long before I found myself climbing down from my plane and handing it off to a nameless mechanic with orders to outfit it with air-to-air weapons. If, as I suspected, those planes were up to something crooked, I intended to hunt them down and shoot them down, one by one. First, though, I had to get in touch with someone who could identify them.
As Colonel Philip Teron, currently at the head of Valais Air Base, told me, the planes were of Belkan origin, objective unknown, but it couldn't be anything good, since they hadn't contacted anyone. I was back in the air within a half an hour of landing.
- - -
"Time to dive into the fireworks," I muttered as the radar blips appeared once again, this time fully registering as enemy planes. The afterburners were on, the SAAMs attached.
It struck me as odd, though, that they hadn't made much progress at all in the time I'd been gone. When we'd spotted them, they'd been at the northern fringe of the Round Table, and by now they'd made it to the centre.
"Yes," was all Kei said.
"Belkan aircraft," I said clearly, "I'm not a military fighter, and I've been given no orders from the military not to shoot you down. If you have a good reason for me not to kill you, you've got about three minutes to verbalize them."
As I'd expected, there was no response.
The planes appeared in the distance. It all happened as if in a dream. I saw everything as if I was not in my own body: There were four planes, and I recognized them all instantly as F-35Cs. The battle was quick and efficient, and we never once heard an enemy's voice over the radio. Kei shot down one of them, I shot down two, and I didn't waste more than three missiles overall. I told Kei to leave the last one to me, and she fell to observing from the middle distance. I was just managing to pull into position behind the fourth plane when the radio buzzed, and I heard:
"Yo, buddy. Still alive, I see."
I froze for but an instant, and he was gone—he pulled up sharply and wheeled around until our positions were reversed, and then he released a single missile. I just barely managed to wrench my plane out of its way.
"Larry!" I said. "What are you doing?"
"Collecting on a debt you've owed for a long time." He sniggered.
"Debt…? Larry, stop this!"
We were flying in circles around each other, neither of us willing to let the other one get a shot lined up. Finally, I angled my nose toward the ground, raced straight toward it, and pulled my plane up into a horizontal path along the mountains just as a missile alert began to blare. I pushed the throttle up to the maximum and raced, dangerously low to the mountains, until the missile alert silenced. I checked my radar—plenty of distance. I pulled up again and headed straight back at him, releasing two missiles as I went. He dodged them easily by pulling up, but as he did that, I got behind him and just concentrated on staying there when he began to execute all manner of evasive manoeuvres.
"We're both aces, with no reason to oppose each other," I said angrily, "and yet you want to fight." Two more missiles, to no avail. I kept trying to line him up better, so that I might try the SAAMs.
"No reason to oppose each other? Mobius One, Cipher, Blaze, whatever you call yourself now—We have every reason to oppose each other. And besides, I'm no ace. You, though…" His plane was jerking up, down, and to each side unpredictably, trying to shake me, but I wouldn't be eluded.
"What are you talking about! You are just the same as every other idiot, convincing yourself that you've found a worthy cause, when really it's pointless, and always has been!"
"Do I hear bitterness?" he said slyly, laughing. I cursed.
"I liked you," I said, "I really did. I flew alongside you and saw your skill. And I flew against you, and saw the same skill. But, Larry, I always liked you. I thought you'd died, and I hated myself for it. But now, after everything that's happened, after everything you must have been through, to think that you still want to fight me!"
"You don't have any idea what is going on, Cipher."
There it was, the perfect shot. I released two SAAMs and struggled to keep him in front of my nose.
A flash, an explosion—
—and his plane was gone.
"Hopefully I'll never need to," I said bitterly. "Kei, let's—"
"Did you think that was me?" My stomach knotted. It was him. "Cipher, you know I wouldn't risk it all this early in the game!"
"Larry," I said.
"You don't even know who you are," he said in a low voice. "You don't know who or what you are. You just keep on flying through these skies, watching everything, raining death on everyone that gets in your way."
"I know exactly what I am," I snapped. "I'm a fighter pilot."
"Well, obviously, but that is not what I am talking about."
I'd turned my plane around and was heading back toward Valais. Kei was on my right wing.
"I don't know or care what you're talking about, but if you aren't careful," I said, "if you get in my way, if you attack me… I will kill you."
"Oh, I know you will. Now, run along home, 'Ace'."
And I did.
