Return on Investment
Side Story - The Headhunter
"Good soldiers follow orders."
— Traditional Belkan soldier's chant
The Sky Kid Bar
San Salvacion, Western Usea
15 May 2020
The air was festive and full of life. The bar was crowded and busy with noise, filled with delighted cries and the clinking of glass bottles. Occasionally, a roar of laughter would ripple across the room. Incandescent lights hung from the ceiling, bathing the wide, smoky cellar in a warm, orange glow. From somewhere up the stairs, where the bar's current owners lived and slept, a soothingly-nostalgic tune was playing from an old, worn-sounding harmonica...
The Sky Kid was one of the oldest bars in San Salvacion. Many things had come and gone in its lifetime; countless wars and revolutions, periods of great conflict and great strife, and the occasional lapse of peace and prosperity. There had even been an asteroid planetfall - the Ulysses disaster - and the Continental War that followed, during which the bar had served as a vital resistance base. Today, the bar was now bearing witness to the still-bleeding wounds left by the Lighthouse War.
And yet, throughout them all, it remained a gathering place for people to forget the burdens of life, to kick back and have a good time.
But Clown - formerly known as Mage One - was feeling none of this. His miserable, unshaven figure was draped in a ragged, torn flight jacket, reeking of unwashed sweat and rancid puke. Only the Osean Air Defense Force patch on his upper arm, faded and hanging with loose threads, gave any indication of his former dignity as a flying officer. But even that was only an indication - even as he emptied the last drops of his tenth bottle of black, sweet-smelling beer, his mood did not lift. No matter how much he drank, the gaping void in his heart would not fill. Far from drowning his sorrows, it only seemed to plunge him further into his pit of frustrated, self-hating despair. And he couldn't stop.
He was sitting alone at the bar, on a creaky wooden stool. He spared a bleary, bloodshot glance at the other patrons. They were all very cheerful, smiling and laughing. They probably all knew each other.
Probably all related, too. Clown thought bitterly.
They were still laughing, and it pissed him off. They might not have been laughing at him, but it sure felt like it. How dare those other people enjoy themselves, while he sat there feeling like shit! He envied their happy, normal lives. If he wasn't so busy drinking, he'd have surely got and up and smashed his bottle in all of their smiling faces.
Even his callsign seemed to be mocking him; clowns were supposed to inspire joy and happiness in other people. Yet, the former pilot felt anything but. Because who, after all, would inspire joy and happiness in the clowns themselves?
He signalled for another drink. The bar owner - an attractive young woman in a red sweater with blonde, pixie-cut hair - looked at him dubiously for a moment. Then Clown thumped down another fistful of crumpled, shit-stained bills on the bench. Grimacing, the lady slid another bottle across the bar before gingerly sweeping up the filthy money, and Clown continued his miserable saga.
He had been coming here for almost nine months. The whole world had fallen apart in that time, but not for Clown. No, his world had crumbled long before then.
Clown had once been a fighter pilot in the Osean Air Defense Force. His career had been one of steady, if unremarkable advancement, enough to start the Lighthouse War with a respectable posting; commander of the Mage Squadron, assigned to the Fort Grays Aerial Reconnaissance Group. And it was on that first day of the war that he met his wingman and partner-to-be; a young rookie callsigned 'Trigger'.
Trigger had been barely a week out from flying T-7s at Heierlark before being thrust into his first mission; a bomber intercept, with real missiles and real enemies. He'd been tossed straight into the deep end, but he quickly showed himself to have all the right instincts - the kid was fast and quick-thinking, and most important of all, aggressive and unafraid to dive into the fireworks.
To the dismay of Knocker, leader of the rival Golem Squadron, Trigger continued to show great promise in the following missions. And Clown was proud of that. Together, he felt they made a great team. And with time, teaching, and good guidance, Clown was sure that Trigger would have eventually surpassed him and become a great pilot in his own right.
But everything changed on June 6th, the day of the ill-fated mission to rescue former President Vincent Harling from the Space Elevator; a swarm of Eruseans drones had surrounded Harling's escape craft, and in the chaos, the former president was shot down and killed - ending the mission right then and there. In the post mortem, it should have been easy enough to pin the blame on the Eruseans...
... But by virtue of a single verbal accusation, Trigger was saddled with the blame.
And that's when things really went to hell.
Of all the members in the supposedly close-knit Fort Grays Aerial Recon Group, Clown had been the one person to speak out on Trigger's behalf. Golem Two 'Brownie' might have joined him, but she was too busy being dead. In any case, everything had been drowned out by a cacophony of blood howls spearheaded by AWACS Sky Keeper, a Harling fanboy who commemorated the former president's memory every night with his right hand and a box of Kleenex.
Trigger never stood a chance. A show trial, chaired by some of the biggest Harling-humpers in the Osean military, had eaten the poor kid alive. The evidence itself was laughable; a few choice radio snippets, some shaky gun-cam footage, and a 193-minute euology in the late Harling's memory. Right from the beginning, it was eye-burstingly clear that the proceedings had no reality.
But none of that mattered: Harling had been killed. All of Osea was crying out for blood, and someone had to take the fall. It was that simple.
Even now, long after the truth had been revealed and Trigger's name cleared, Clown found it very hard to forgive his country. Trigger had been his wingman, almost a brother. He was also superbly talented, even if a bit rough around the edges. Hell, he had scored more kills in four sorties than both Clown and Knocker had in their entire careers.
And how had he been rewarded? The kid had been stripped of his honor... his pride... his life! He had been banished to the 444th Squadron - a penal unit, where he would pay for his imaginary crime with real blood. Clown never found out what became of Trigger after that. Not before his later exoneration, or before news of another hotshot pilot - the one everyone called Three Strikes - stole the spotlight.
Maybe it was an incident like this that inspired the mutiny of the Wardog Squadron during the heady days of the Circum-Pacific War; you serve your country honorably and risk your neck, only to get kicked out like a dog by some pencil-pushing weasel clinging to his place at the officer's feeding trough. And then everything gets covered up, just in case the truth should ever come to light.
Clown hated that. He hated his country, his compatriots, and the whole unfairness of this cold, uncaring world. But most of all, he hated himself - he hated his own weakness, his failure to be a responsible flight lead, and his inability to save Trigger from the baying mob. The combined guilt and anger at himself very quickly plunged him into the depths of despair, taking a grievous toll not only on his performance, but also on his working relationships with his colleagues - eroding the very foundations of what separated a good officer from a bad one.
So he left. He threw his career away and became a loathsome deserter, wandering the land without a purpose. And now here he was; drowning his sorrows in a little San Salvacion bar, living as just another faceless vagrant in a world just as miserable and broken as he was.
'Trigger...' he mumbled incoherently. His body felt as if it was swaying. 'I'm so sorry...'
'You seem troubled, friend.' said a voice beside him.
Groggily, Clown turned.
A stranger dressed in an olive combat jacket and heavy boots had taken the stool beside him. He was young and tall, with a squared jawline and a strong, muscular build. He had spiky hair dyed blond, and smelled faintly of quality cologne. Whoever he was, he was not a local.
'I couldn't help but notice your patch.' the stranger said. His voice was deep, smooth, and delivered with confidence. 'You a pilot?'
'I was.' Clown replied, slurring slightly. 'But not anymore. Who wants to know?'
The stranger smiled. 'Someone who knows talent when he sees it.'
Clown snorted loudly. 'Then you need to get your eyes checked, pal. My talent left me, a long time ago.'
The smile vanished. 'Oh... I'm so sorry to hear that.' the stranger said, slowly shaking his head. 'What happened? Tell me.'
Like a drunk invited to tell his story, Clown told him. Everything. From his first meeting with Trigger, their early exploits in the Mage Squadron, and then the post-Harling debacle. How Trigger supposedly betrayed Osea-... no, how Osea had betrayed Trigger. How his so-called friends and comrades never came to help him, but instead surrounded him; accused him; kicked him while he was down. And how they were all too happy to sentence him to certain death. In doing so, Clown opened the floodgates to his deepest shames and grievances, even - especially - those directed at himself.
And it made him angry. By the time he finished, Clown's mood was in a fever pitch. He felt ready to lash out at anyone at any moment. And yet, the stranger - this strange, incomprehensible man - had listened to every word of his drunken ramble without interrupting, only nodding along with what appeared to be genuine understanding.
'Your country has betrayed you.' he said, neatly capturing Clown's feelings in a single sentence.
The former Osean pilot slammed his fist on the bar. 'Yes, dammit!' he snarled, spraying spit and beer. 'They betrayed us - me, and my boy, Trigger! I had known those people for years, and they turned on my boy in a second! They hung him out to dry to save their own asses. They are the real cowards and traitors! They should have been the ones sent to the penal unit. And I owe them no loyalty!'
Clown stopped to catch his ragged, angry breaths, while the stranger kept on nodding.
'Yes... Use your aggressive feelings. Let the hate flow through you.' he said smoothly, in a manner that could just have easily also come from a hooded, scrotum-faced space wizard shooting lightning from his fingertips. 'I can feel your anger. It gives you focus. Makes you stronger.'
The stranger ordered a drink, and then paid for it with a glossy, pitch black credit card. Yep, most definitely not a local...
Then, he proffered it to Clown, who by now was tense and wound-up like a spring, primed to explode at the slightest provocation.
'What the hell is this for?' Clown gurgled.
'My thanks, for sharing your troubles with me.' the stranger replied, unintimidated. In fact, he was smiling again, as though he had found something that he'd been looking for. 'And take this, too.'
He held out a business card, with the name 'Abyssal Dision' printed alongside the stylized "G" logo of General Resource Limited.
'You've had a rough time, but I'd love to have you on my team.' Dision said, in response to Clown's unspoken question. 'You want a chance to start over? Maybe get justice for your boy Trigger? You'll find all of that with us. The General Group takes good care of its employees - we'll take care of everything; food, housing, equipment, even help you find a girlfriend, if that's what you want. All we ask in return is your complete and unwavering loyalty to the company. What do you say?'
Mildly tipsy, but still in control of his thoughts, Clown looked at the fresh bottle in one hand, then at the business card in the other. It didn't take long for him to make his decision.
'Alright, I'll join you.' he said, taking the opportunity afforded to him without a second thought. 'But on one condition.'
Dision raised an eyebrow, intrigued. 'Oh? And what might that be?'
With a low, determined voice, dripping with hatred, Clown stated his terms...
Ryugu Reef
Off the coast of Heiwa, Far Eastern Usea
1 June 2020
Golem One 'Knocker' tilted the flight stick, taking his aircraft into a gentle turn. His wingmen followed suit a second later.
The four F/A-18F Super Hornets of the Golem Squadron swept around in a wide arc over the vast, sparkling blue sea that lay below them, and began to pick up speed. Their low-gray air superiority frames roared through the open sky at fifteen thousand feet, wings proudly displaying the pointed-star roundel of the Osean Air Defense Force. It was midday; the sun was at its peak, and soft streams of little white clouds hung out in the warm, tropical air.
Each Superbug carried a four-by-two loadout - two AIM-9s and four AMRAAMs - plus a tubular drop tank slung under the belly for extra range.
«Golem Squadron, this is the AWACS Sky Keeper,» the radio crackled. «Be advised, you are entering Heiwanese airspace. An allied squadron, callsign Clover, is en route and will rendezvous with you soon. Stay sharp, remember the mission, and you'll all come home safe.»
'Copy that, Sky Keeper.' Knocker replied crisply. 'Golem Squadron, let's maintain element.'
His deep baritone conveyed his orders, sharp and to-the-point. A chorus of acknowledgements followed, and Knocker throttled up.
The Fort Grays Aerial Recon Group was an ad hoc formation tasked with enforcing the IUN-PKF's mandate over the sealanes of southeastern Usea, with their area of responsibility forming a rough arc that covered the many island archipelagoes dotting the region. They had seen considerable action during the Lighthouse War, and were well on the way to real glory until the disastrous events of Operation Lighthouse Keeper - the failed mission to rescue former President Vincent Harling, praise be his name.
On that fateful day, Harling - praise be his name - was murdered by one of their own, a young pilot from the Mage Squadron called Trigger. Trigger had gone rogue, and the initial investigation determined that he had been the one responsible for Harling's - praise be his name - murder. Subsequently, Trigger was transferred to a penal unit, never to be seen again.
That was all good and well, until it became clear that Trigger's conviction also had left an adverse impact his squadron's flight lead; Clown. The man seemed to have some kind of attachment to Trigger, perhaps as a mother eagle might have for its hatchling.
It was an understandable sentiment; Knocker had lost his own number two - Brownie - to the Eruseans through a tactical misstep of his own. He regretted that. But unlike Clown, he didn't let it get to him. This was war: people died. And mistakes would always be made. That was simply the nature of their trade.
Clown should have sucked it up and moved on like a good officer... but he didn't. After that day, things were never the same with him. Once a prolific wisecracker and jokester, as befitting his callsign, the man gradually became more morose and detached as time went on.
But that was too bad. The mighty hammer of Osean justice always accounted in all balance, and it had swung against the young Trigger with all of its inexorable might. All anyone could do was get in line, or get out. Knocker and the rest of the Fort Grays Recon Group chose the former. Clown, increasingly gripped by feelings of grief and powerlessness, ultimately chose the latter - he had simply deserted his post and disappeared. The satellites came down not long after that, and in the resulting chaos, no one had any mind to go looking for him.
It's too bad about Clown and Trigger. Knocker reflected. But, no point arguing. That's how war is these days.
«Boss,» radioed Golem Two 'Faun', Knocker's wingman - and Brownie's replacement. «Visual ID on friendly fighters, nine o'clock high.»
Almost on cue, a quartet of F-15Js came circling down from above, showing up as friendly cursors on Knocker's radar screen. Their fortress gray bodies bore circular red roundels, marking them as aircraft of the Republic of Heiwa. Decelerating to a cruising speed, they joined the formation just off Golem Four's left wing.
«This is Clover One, Major Tsuzuki of the Heiwa Air Self Defense Force. We've been expecting you, Oseans.»
'Roger, Clover.' Knocker said curtly. 'This is Golem One of the Fort Grays Aerial Recon Group. We appreciate the help.'
His appreciation was genuine. As a small island nation in the Usean Far East, the Republic of Heiwa occupied a strategic nexus along Usea's eastern sealanes. Without their support in providing intelligence and assets - as today - the Fort Grays Recon Group's air patrol operations would have been a much greater headache than they already were.
And that was exactly why today's mission - despite ostensibly being billed as a simple recon sweep - had a far graver subtext than first appeared.
Three days ago, a group of Heiwanese F-2A Viper Zeroes had disappeared in the area while on a live-fire training exercise. One of their number had made a distress call that described an ambush by a lone enemy fighter, before all contact was lost. Subsequent investigation only turned up wreckages floating in the waves, in a pattern that suggested they had been ambushed and shot down in very quick succession.
The Fort Grays Aerial Recon Group, still carrying out its IUN-mandated air patrol mission, was obliged to respond. And so it did...
... Just enough to lure us in. Knocker thought. I got a bad feeling about this.
His suspicion was not unfounded. A sudden attack on a national air force was no small matter, and the evidence turned up so far ruled out a random attack by pirates and marauders. The perpetrator - whoever he was - had planned his attack well, and executed with ruthless efficiency.
Just like the one that got Brownie. Knocker reflected again, more darkly this time.
But then, if that were the case, they must also have been smart enough to know that their trespass was going to invite a deadly retaliation from the IUN-PKF. So, knowing that... why had they still gone and done it?
Knocker wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
Then the radio buzzed again. «This is AWACS Sky Keeper, be advised: I've got a lone bogey entering the airspace at high speed. Bearing two-two-zero, distance four-zero miles and closing, angels three-zero.»
'Thirty thousand feet? That's twice our altitude.' Knocker said, trying to ignore a sudden sinking feeling in his chest, like a bad omen. 'Are you sure?'
«Positive.» Sky Keeper's response was instant. «Wait...»
'What do you mean, "wait"? Just talk to us!' Knocker demanded. 'Sky Keeper! What's wrong?'
«The bogey is headed straight for... me.»
'... What?' Knocker didn't understand at first.
Then the coin dropped.
'Sky Keeper? Sky Keeper!' he suddenly exclaimed, horror rising in his voice. 'You're in danger! Leave the airspace immediately and return to base! Now!'
«Holy Harling - praise be his name - we've been spiked!» Sky Keeper yelled. Muffled shouts from the rest of the AWACS crew were audible in the background, and Knocker felt his heart skip a beat as his worst fears were realized. «Countermeasures! Deploy counterme-...!»
The mission controller's voice cut out in a blurt of static.
'Sky Keeper! Sky Keeper!' Knocker shouted, feeling cold goosebumps crawl across his body. 'This is Golem One, come in Sky Keeper! Do you read me?'
Still no response. He tried again, and still nothing.
Knocker swallowed. Gradually, the grim reality established itself in his mind; AWACS Sky Keeper had been killed, snuffed out like a light in a storm. They were all flying blind now.
«That... doesn't sound good.» remarked Golem Three 'Boggard'.
«Golem, what's going on?» radioed Clover One.
'All callsigns, we've lost Sky Keeper.' Knocker said gravely. He left a brief pause to allow the information to sink in.
«... What do you mean, "lost?!"» demanded Golem Four 'Footpad', his voice alarmed, incredulous, and unbelieving all at the same time. «Are you telling me they've knocked out our AWACS? Who even does that?!»
Hell if I know, kid, is what Knocker wanted to say, but didn't.
'Whoever's out there, they're shooting to kill.' he said instead, hoping that his own apprehension wasn't evident in his voice. 'This ain't no pirate or merc attack here, so watch your radars. The only eyes we have now are our own.'
A grim silence followed. The two flights of Golem and Clover loosened their formations slightly, each pilot sitting anxiously on a knife's edge, as if expecting an attack to come at any moment. It was a moment of hanging silence, tense and foreboding. The enemy was out there, and while they hadn't been found yet, even the slightest flicker of reflected sunlight or radar contact would be all that was needed for all hell to break loose.
Every few seconds, Knocker glanced around and counted his wingmen - noting their position and altitude relative to himself - before covering off with a furtive scan of the dark blue of the sky above. As far as any of them knew, they had no idea of what was coming their way. There was no question of "if", only "when", and he had to be ready.
A bank of clouds were looming close. Knocker eased up on the throttle, and his wingmen followed. Clover Squadron went ahead of them.
'Clover One,' he said into the radio. 'Do you see anything?'
«Negative, no joy.» came the response. «Nothing on my radar - picture is clear.»
'Copy.' Knocker said, making the same observation on his own display.
The canopy became wreathed in billowing, streaming cloud mist. A gathering turbulence gently rocked the airframe. Specks of water vapor were spattering against the glass. There was another blurt on the radio.
Bursting out from the cloud bank, the Golem team was back in the open sky. In front and slightly left were the four F-15Js of the Clover team, and Knocker once again ran his wingman check; he counted two Super Hornets beside him.
Two...
There was a gap in his formation - Golem Four 'Footpad' was missing.
Knocker paused, suddenly assailed by another sense of impending dread. He glanced down at his radar - also showing no sign of Footpad - and headchecked again.
Oh, shit. 'Golem Four, Golem Four! Respond!' he tried.
Nothing but white noise came back.
In his heart, Knocker already knew what had happened, but still held a fleeting, futile hope that it wasn't so. An ominous, icy dread ran down the back of his neck.
«Golem Four, come in!» gasped Golem Three 'Boggard', having just realized that his buddy was missing. Knocker could see him in his craft's cockpit, frantically jerking his head around like a startled prairie dog. «Footpad! Where the hell are you?»
'Get ahold of yourself!' Knocker ordered, speaking to Boggard as much as he was to himself. 'Golem Three!'
«Spike! Spike!» Another shout, this time from Clover Two. «Missile alert! Incoming-...!»
There was a flash in front and a wash of static. Clover Two's F-15J ignited in a fireball, suddenly lanced through the fuselage by a missile that materialized seemingly out of the blue. The contrail was still visible, reaching down from up high like a spear of fire.
Knocker's radar warning receiver blared - he'd been locked. They all had.
'More missiles closing! Evade! Evade! All Golems, evade!'
«What? Where? Where is it?!» he heard Faun yelling. «Answer me now... boss!»
Jettisoning his drop tank and releasing a cloud of glittering chaff, Knocker hurled his Superbug over on its back and pulled hard. He felt his weight septuple as the centripetal force punched him down into the seat. His WSO squealed behind him as the world went from serene sky to confused tumble in a single, violent instant.
«Break! Break!» someone else yelled.
Swearing, grunting, Knocker pulled out of his evasive plummet, shaking off the lingering vertigo as he regained his bearings.
Something flew out at him from the void, sweeping fast and close enough for him to feel the kick of its jetwash.
It was a small craft with sinuously-curved delta configuration, with a front intake that hung down like a gaping, guffawing maw. Its body was painted in a two-tone woodland camouflage. There were no nationality markings, not even a personal emblem. It swept past him, rushing upward with inhuman speed into the luminous sky above the clouds.
Knocker recognized the design; an F/A-32A Erne. The number "006" had been stenciled in white just beside the cockpit - there was something familiar about that number he couldn't quite place...
'All Golems, engage!' Knocker barked, fingers tightening on the flight stick as he powered up. 'Engage! Weapons free!'
'And so, my next hunting season begins.'
Clown had never felt so powerful in his life. General Resource sure knew how to build a plane - the Erne was a fantastic design, far superior to that of his old F-16. It was faster, more responsive, more agile, an improvement in every aspect.
He was grinning. His long-awaited vengeance against his one-time comrades - the same comrades that had betrayed Trigger and left him for dead - was finally at hand. Nearly one year to the day had passed since June 6th, 2019. One whole year he had endured, bearing the burden of failing his responsibility, of inner turmoil and agonizing shame. Now it was all about to be unleashed, to be vented and heaped upon the ones he held responsible in a glorious retribution.
Clown inverted and dived back down. One of the Golem aircraft - Boggard - was trying to get away.
«He's in my blind spot! I'm done for!»
With a blazing roar of the Erne's single afterburner, Clown charged at the fleeing Super Hornet and locked it up with an AIM-9X missile. It jinked right and popped flares, but Clown followed it through. The rasping lock tone buzzed affirmatively in his ears.
'That's it, baby.' he snarled. 'Come to papi!'
He fired.
«Missile! Missile! I can't-»
Boggard's Superbug became a winged fireball, spinning like a blazing cartwheel. Then it broke apart in a shower of flaming metal fragments that rained into the sparkling blue sea below.
Clown didn't even glance to confirm the kill. He snapped around and found his next targets; the three remaining F-15Js. One of them - the leader - broke off and flitted away to the right. Meanwhile, the other two swung left, confused and panicked. Clown went after them.
He smiled again. This was way too easy.
«We've lost Boggard!» shouted Faun, panic rising in his voice.
'Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!' Knocker repeated, desperately hoping that someone else out there was listening. 'This is Golem One, Fort Grays Aerial Recon. Can anyone hear me? We're under attack! One aircraft; an F/A-32 Erne. No markings... But he's tearing through us! Need immediate support! Can anyone hear me?'
As he spoke, he saw the murderous Erne in the distance, chasing two Clover F-15Js into the cloud layer. He tried to get a radar lock with an AMRAAM, but couldn't make it stick - the bastard had an Integrated Electronic Warfare System pod equipped, and was abusing it for all it was worth.
«Golem Squa-... -this is the AWACS Long C-... -LRSSG. What-... -r status? Verif-...»
Ignoring the jumbled garbling on the radio, Knocker swore. That single aircraft had torn up half of his squadron in the blink of an eye, and was now going to town on the Clovers. And the worst part of it was there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it. All of them were helpless like cornered chickens against its vicious onslaught.
«They're all over me!» gasped Clover Four, between ragged breaths. «Get them off my-...!»
Clover Four's last words spluttered out of the radio, then nothing - only a bright yellow flare of fuel and ordnance being touched-off, muted into a dull thump by the heavy cloud bank.
«Aargh!»
A few seconds later, Clover Three went down too, wreathed in orange flames as he spiralled down and out of the clouds.
The Erne pulled out and banked left, circling around. Clover One's F-15J emerged behind it, spitting incandescent tracer fire in a raging vengeance for his fallen squadron.
«You will die for that!» the Heiwanese Major snarled, speaking over an open channel.
«We'll see.» came the smug, unfazed response.
Knocker recognized that voice. It was... no, that was impossible. Clown had disappeared from the face of the Earth a long time ago. Surely, he couldn't have...?
The hostile Erne twisted back around and began to climb again. Clover One powered after it, still starved for vengeance. The Heiwanese flight commander tried a shot with an AAM-3 missile.
«Clover One, Fox Two!»
It was a good lock, and the Erne hadn't deployed countermeasures. And against an infrared-seeker like the AAM-3, the IEWS couldn't work against that.
But, as it turned out, it didn't need to.
«You are already dead.»
«What?!»
It was a quick and sudden maneuver, almost too quick for the human eye to follow. The F/A-32's single thrust-vectoring nozzle swung straight up, catapulting the whole plane up into a vertical, backward somersault. The incoming AAM-3 sailed right past, losing its lock and wobbling off harmlessly into the void. Unprepared and unexpecting, Clover One failed to react in time.
That delay would cost him. As the hostile Erne's nose swung up on the somersault's finish, it opened fire. A stream of 20mm shells raked Clover One from tail to nose, with the last shot puncturing the cockpit and pulping its occupant. The engines blew. Fire streamed along the fuselage, and the last Heiwanese F-15J drifted listlessly into another cloud bank, swallowed up and never to be seen again.
Knocker and Faun had saw it all. Now they were the only ones left.
«The entire Clover Team was destroyed!» Faun shouted helpfully. «We're sitting ducks!»
The Erne had disappeared into the clouds again. They were gathering now, roiling and agitated like spectators at a pit fight.
'Golem Two, stay with me.' Knocker said sternly. 'Maintain element - do not break off!'
Faun had been on the edge of panic. But, feeling a strong hand, he managed to regain some control over his composure, and tightened up his formation in quicker time than usual.
«Roger, forming up.» he said, with a forced confidence.
'Good. Stay with me, and we'll get through this. You hear?'
No sooner had Knocker said that, when a cannon shell from somewhere punched through his port wing. Instinctively he banked hard right, but his plane's response was loose and lethargic. He glanced at his damaged wing - and saw the mutilated aileron, twisted into a peeling mess by the 20mm impact.
'Shit!' he spat.
«Boss!» Faun shouted. «Boss, he's on our tail!»
Knocker headchecked, and blanched internally; the F/A-32 had surfaced behind the pair, its sharp lines carving through the clouds like a shark through water.
'Damn...' he growled. 'This is the kinda shit that really chaps my ass!'
«Still on us! Still on us!» Faun repeated. «Boss, I'm spiked! I have to break!»
'What? No! Stay with me, Golem Two! Faun! Faun!'
It was too late. Releasing a flurry of countermeasures, Faun pulled up.
The Erne followed him, spraying gunfire.
Panicking, Faun dodged and jinked around, bleeding energy with every desperate thrash. Knocker could only watch, horrified and helpless to act, as his wingman struggled in vain against the looming Erne that effortlessly replicated his every move.
'Golem Two, get a hold of yourself!' Knocker was pleading now. 'Golem Two, get away from the enemy!'
«Boss, please!» Faun squealed. «Help me!»
The Erne closed in. Then it fired, and Faun was no more.
Knocker punched the side of his canopy glass. Twice... Twice now, that he had lost his wingman to an opponent that was toying with them. Had nothing changed since that time with Brownie...?!
He swore. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his burly hands around the neck of that bastard Erne pilot and strangle the life out of him.
Now it was coming back for him. Once again, the dismal toll of the radar warning receiver was ringing in his ears.
Knocker twisted the flight stick and jinked hard, slamming the rudders. With a damaged aileron, the Superbug reacted gingerly, uncertainly, but he had to try. He had to get away. G-forces punched him again as the world around him rotated, then became a spiral.
The Erne circled in. It had him, dead to rights, and no amount of evasive maneuvering was going to change that.
I'm dead meat... Knocker's mind pounded.
His hands began to shake on the flight stick. He whirled around again, losing momentum and energy on the turn. He headchecked - his pursuer was still with him.
I don't get it, why isn't he opening fire...?
Swearing, he tried again, this time swerving in the other direction. The Erne was still on him. Knocker headchecked again - he could see it clearly. It was close, hovering lazily behind him, as though deliberately holding itself back.
As if toying with him.
He's a predator... The weak get eaten...
'Golem Two, support!' he cried out desperately, glancing round. There was nothing but open sky. 'Golem Three!... Four! Can anyone hear me?! I need support!'
The missile alert began to howl.
'Somebody!' he gasped. 'Support!'
An AIM-9X detonated about ten feet behind him, spattering a rain of shrapnel into Knocker's Super Hornet. The impacts scythed open its belly, sending sparks and unspent fuel spilling out into the air, spiralling out in a helix as the plane lost control and began to tumble. Stress fractures caused further damage to other components, and more sparks began to flick into the now-exposed fuel tanks.
The resulting explosion shattered the Super Hornet's fuselage like a bottle, vaporizing the rest of the plane and Knocker along with it.
Clown levelled off and scanned his radar; the picture was clear. No hostiles remaining.
He was still tense. Somehow, it was hard to believe that it was really over - even after he had seen Knocker's plane explode like an overripe melon with his own two eyes, having delivered the killing blow himself with a deliberate, toying cruelty.
But he had done it. Gradually, the reality began to establish itself in his mind; he had finally hunted down and destroyed the ones who had ruined Trigger. Sky Keeper, Knocker, and all the other fools who followed them... They were dead now. By his own hand, he had made it so.
Trigger... I've avenged you.
Still, even as he said that to himself, it was... strange. During the battle, he had felt a great rush, a thrill, at exacting the glorious retribution that he had revenge-fantasized about for the entire past year.
But now, as he sat there in the macabre aftermath of his carnage, he felt... nothing. There was no catharsis, no sense of fulfilment or glorious triumph, like he had promised himself. Not even a sense of regret at having so brutally murdered those who were once his brothers. Just a hollow emptiness. The whole act seemed to feel no more significant than a series of moves and button presses. Impersonal. Distant.
Was this what he really wanted, then? This was the moment he had been waiting for so long. He had deserted his post, and let himself marinate in a foul stew of guilt and self-hatred for a whole year. All that drinking, all those days spent in the bar, all that time spent thinking about what could be and what could have been...
And he had gotten his wish. He had sold his soul to General Resource for it, but he had succeeded. The ones responsible for Trigger's downfall had finally paid the price for their cowardice and treachery. Justice had been served - it wouldn't bring back Trigger, that was much obvious, but the kid had at least been avenged.
So why... Why was Clown still not satisfied? Why was the gaping void in his heart still there? Why was the closure he so desperately sought still eluding him? Was it because it was too easy? Or... was there another reason entirely?
«You did well, Clown.»
Pulled back from his thoughts, Clown looked round. It was Dision, waving a greeting from the cockpit of an F-22 painted in pure carbon black. He was gently hovering off Clown's starboard wing with its dorsal airbrake - a feature not found on base model Raptors - flexing as he decelerated to cruising speed. And he had apparently been watching the entire combat.
«They were too dangerous to be left alive.» he said nonchalantly. «How are you feeling?»
Clown swallowed. '... Better.' he lied. He had to force it out. 'I... killed them. All of them. The ones who sent my boy Trigger to die. I'm not sure if this really fixes anything. But... I feel better.'
«... Good.» Dision said. «Harness that feeling. Nurture it. And with it, destroy your enemies.»
My enemies have already been destroyed, was what Clown wanted to say, but didn't. He couldn't - at least, not for certain. Not until he had his closure.
«So...» Dision went on, taking an expectant tone. «Do you think you'll stay with us?»
Time to decide.
Clown wondered about that for a moment. His sole condition for joining General Resource was that he be allowed to take his revenge on the Fort Grays Aerial Recon Group - to erase them from the sky, like they had erased Trigger. To his great surprise, they had not only approved his treasonous murder fantasy, but actually helped him do it. They had given him the F/A-32 Erne to fly in battle, as well as stunningly-accurate intelligence on IUN-PKF troop movements and operational plans. Without their help, Clown doubted that he would have been able to stage his attack so smoothly.
And he was being well-compensated for in other areas, too; his first paycheck was already enough to set him for life. And that was before he got to the very generous perks - health insurance, dental, subsidized housing... even the still-standing offer of hooking him up with a girlfriend. At the very least, it seemed that Dision really hadn't been lying to him on that night in the bar, which at least made him slightly trustworthy.
The real question in Clown's mind, however, was whether or not these material rewards would eventually prove enough to smooth the still-lingering pains in his heart. The answer was almost certainly a resounding "No!", but, against this, it had to be better than going back to the streets of San Salvacion, where he would spend each day desperately scraping for change enough to survive from one hangover to the next.
And perhaps, by staying with General Resource, he would also be better placed to truly find out what really became of Trigger. Maybe then he would find his closure.
He glanced down at his instrument panel. '... I'm low on fuel.' he said flatly. 'We should get back to carrier.'
«Agreed.»
With a roar of thrust, Dision took his customized Raptor into a right bank and swept away into the luminous sky. Mutely, silently, Clown followed him.
There was no turning back now.
Northwest of Comberth Harbor, Eastern Usea
2 June 2020
High above the windswept hill country north of Comberth Harbor, riding the turbulence at forty thousand feet, the lone E-767 bearing the markings of the OADF Long Range Strategic Strike Group held a steady surveillance pattern. Its suite of comms equipment and avionics, most distinctly the large radome unit that rotated slowly on its back like a giant carousel, enabled it radar coverage with a radius of 250 miles - enough to manage several battlefields simultaneousy.
Freshly-toasted BLT in one hand, and slipping on his headset with the other, Long Caster stepped back into the pressurized, air-cooled gallery inside the airborne command center. He was tense.
The veteran mission controller walked along the operating workstations, where rows of other headphoned operators manned radar consoles and comms terminals. There was a racket of reports and data streams from a thousand different exchanges occuring all at once, a great torrent of information rushing in like a raging flood that would swallow the unprepared and uninitiated in an instant.
It was a rare skill; to be able to listen to a dozen conversations at once and rapidly pick out the important details. Yet, everyone from frontline pilots to general staff officers relied on the information extracted from those conversations to make accurate and informed decision-making, often amidst the fury of battle. A single miscommunication could cost hundreds, if not thousands of lives - in some of the most extreme cases, wars had been lost not to superior firepower or economic might, but by simple human miscommunication.
But the crew of AWACS Long Caster were some of the best in the business. They had all served together during the darkest days of the Lighthouse War, and their skills had been trialled and pushed to the limit under the most appalling battle conditions. Such was their trade.
The post-war era had brought with it new challenges, however. Since the end of the war, the Osean Federation had been consumed by domestic pressure to focus on recovery and internal reorganization. Despite flowery, often tearful public appeals from a certain Erusean Princess, no one in Osea had any appetite for further military missions in Usea, even missions of the humanitarian variety. One by one, entire bases had been handed back to their Usean hosts, or simply left shuttered and abandoned - eventually leaving only the LRSSG as the only meaningful Osean-flagged offensive force on the entire continent.
And now, this policy of feckless indecisiveness seemed to be showing its consequences; forty-two hours ago, a joint Osean-IUN air patrol group - including the monitoring AWACS - had gone missing in sector NA-P2700; the turbulent waters of Far Eastern Usea. The last thing anyone had heard was a desperate mayday alert and SOS sent by the Osean flight lead; reporting an attack by unknown enemy forces. The deathly silence that followed, and the group's failure to return to base, all but confirmed their loss as result of hostile action.
By all accounts, it was a brazen, unprovoked attack. Nobody could say why. Intel reports were still streaming in over the partially-restored information network - along with disjointed, often panicked communiques from local forces.
Sector NA-P2700... Long Caster reflected, taking another bite out of his BLT as he surveyed the workstations along the gallery's length. That place has always been bad news, like a rotting Caesar salad.
He stopped beside a radar operator, a bleary-eyed O-3 who had been working continuously for the last forty-one hours, and gently ordered him to take a break. Another officer, hustled in from the break room, quickly took his place and picked up exactly where his colleague had left off, without asking - or needing - any sort of context.
The chaotic pandemonium of the whole situation reminded Long Caster of the dark days following the communications breakdown - when all of the Osean forces were suddenly cut off from one another, and no one knew what was going on. All anyone could do was fend for themselves, carrying out the last orders they had been given, standing alone in a world that had very painfully gone down the shitter like a Mexican banquet. At least that time, there had been a happy, if bittersweet ending. But now... could they get that lucky a second time?
That much, Long Caster feared, depended very much on how the LRSSG itself would respond. As was so often the case.
From the edge of his peripheral vision, he noticed a young comms officer gesturing at him from a console on the far side of the gallery.
'Sir?' she said, looking up from her display, clasping a hand over her headset's microphone. 'You might want to hear this.'
Licking the crumbs off his lips, Long Caster stepped over.
'What's cooking, Lieutenant?' he said, voice rasping slightly from a rogue lettuce leaf stuck in the back of his throat.
'I'm getting a signal. A message... from the IUN outpost in Selatapura. It's a civilian SOS.'
'What?' Long Caster asked, raising an eyebrow. Two SOSes in as many days? This was not normal. 'Are you sure?'
'Yes... Hang on...' There was a long pause as the young comms officer strained her ears and concentrated. Then her face jolted back, as if struck in horror. '... Oh no.'
'What's wrong?' Long Caster asked, trying to ignore the drop in his gut - and not just from a half-digested BLT.
The young operator gave him a desperate look and swallowed, before making an announcement that silenced the whole chattering crew,
'The Space Elevator is under attack!'
Long Caster dropped his sandwich.
End of Side Story
Assault Record #4 - Knocker
Aircraft: F/A-18F Super Hornet
Rank: Captain
Unit: 506th Tactical Fighter Squadron, OADF
Nationality: Osean
Dossier:
The serious, hard-nosed flight lead of the Osean Golem Squadron, preferring to do things by the book - he reserved a special dislike for daredevil stunts and reckless tactics. During the Lighthouse War, he lost his wingman 'Brownie' to a lone Erusean fighter ace, later codenamed 'Mister X'. Although not showing it outwardly, the loss motivated him to swear never again to lose another wingman.
Knocker also flew support during the failed rescue of former President Vincent Harling. In the aftermath, he served as a key witness in the trial of Mage Two 'Trigger' - testifying against the young rookie, citing the latter's track record of "daredevil stunts" and "reckless tactics" as grounds for being the likely perpetrator.
After the war, he continued to lead the Golem Squadron in a peacekeeping role. However, the entire squadron would later be ambushed and killed by Knocker's former colleague 'Clown' while on patrol in the Usean Far East.
Author's Notes:
▪ We're never told what happens to Clown and the rest of the Mage/Golem crew after their first four missions. This chapter explores one series of possibilities, taken to a logical extreme.