The Belkan war: alternative story

by Vergeltern

It did not take great mans to begin wars nor to end then. But to turn the tide of one they are required. This is an alternate history for the Belkan war. Follow an other sixth Unit of Ustio, a different Galm team, as their actions will turn the tide in a twisted, but maybe better way. This story is rated T, but can content some M rated chapter with some depicted violent scenes.

32. Chapter 141: Operation Aldernest part1

Tauberg Air Base, Belka, 24/06/1995, 21:00, Weather: medium cloud cover with light risk of thunder.

A few days had passed since their little mutual confession. Other days of boring CAP, and their boredom could not be remedied by stargazing, as the results of Excalibur firing on those earth-threatening asteroids were illuminating the sky a thousand times brighter than the full moon. But this evening, they knew something was going to happen. They wouldn't have added some afternoon lunch to this day but no dinner, other than for a good reason. It was better to bear high-Gs without much in the stomach, but they didn't want their pilot to fall from hypoglycemia.

So, here they were, most of the pilots on small chairs with that little support on the side that could be used to take notes if such chairs were used in university. But most pilots were too focused on the future mission to come to leave their eyes from the screen displaying the northeast of the continent, focused on Fato.

Iskanda and Pixy could recognize a name they knew too well: Bayes fortress. Sure, they had annihilated all personnel inside the eight-arms star shaped fortress, but the walls were still standing. There were no more BAWS, but their destruction had left enough room to house some long-range SAMs produced by Yuktobania and given to this Belkan puppet-state through their unholy alliance. And those batteries had already interfered with their logistical support, as the Mirage 2000C escorting the Erusean cargo convoy had reported having to intercept a few of them while flying in close proximity.

"Schwarze Luchs, your job is simple today. To take down this fortress, definitively. I'm sorry for history, but this is a thorn in our foot, and we better remove it before the wound becomes painful." Kupchenko exposed what their five-man squadron would have to pull out: to reduce this impressive fortress to rubble.

"We are making History, and by the end of the day this Fortress will be history." Iskanda asserted that the Fatoan army would bleed tonight there. Enough to fill the neighboring canyon or turn the nearby river.

"I like your enthusiasm. It might be more difficult than your little hit and run attack a few months ago. If they had lost their BAWS, all the other weapons' numbers were heavily increased. Furthermore, three Fatoan army corps are there shielded under reused tunnel shielding, and these have a lot of smaller anti-air weaponry. Also, Fato, Belka, and to a lesser degree, Osea and Yuktobania might send reinforcements." Kupchenko explained, while the satellite showed the concrete domes laying around the star-shaped fortress, and even a few Harriers around them. And those would be launched as soon as they were in approach. The scale of the battlefield couldn't be compared to the allied assault of the Hydrian Line, but the air-to-air battle might be as violent as one of the Battle-Axe operations.

"How many fighters do they have? Number doesn't scare us, but I wouldn't like to have to go back here if I run out of ammo or fuel if it lasts too long." Zveda pointed out that even the Femtolaser of the Melwaz couldn't fire forever, as it was supplied through some high-power electrical generator, which was dependent on the fuel supply.

"A lot, indeed. But to reduce their number, the Schwarze squadron will attack the militarized airport of Casina. Targets are the squadron on the ground, but while we can afford a squadron to slip through, we have a more important target here than just fighters." Kupchenko said, then punched a few keys on the computer near him.

The airport of Casina was displayed, surrounded by a canal that was used to move heavy cargo into the nearby city. Today, this canal was filled with warships, limited to the cruiser size by the limitation of the canals. The Airport had three runways, and a lot of hangars all around them. But a great number of tankers were parked outside hangars, and the satellite data was also showing refuelers circling around to provide refueling for aircraft patrolling the skies of Fato. They could fly for hours, only limited by the pilot's autonomy. If they needed to reduce the fighter presence, there was no better target.

"So, we'll play refueler-killer instead of deserter-killer. Interesting change." Zubov described the seemingly simple mission. Even if he was saying it was interesting, his voice betrayed a bit of disinterest. Raiding an airport wasn't that much fun. And it was also reminding him too much of his deeds in the Romneyan conflict

"Yes, and no. We might have to re-task you for other mission afterward, as the allied forces have shown more and more hostility toward Wieldvakia, since they stopped supplying Belka with fuel, and refusing Osean money as well." Kupchenko added, zooming out to show a map of Fato and the surrounding countries, with Wieldvakia at the East, Belka at the East, and Gebet and Recta at the South. North was only the coldness of the arctic.

"So, we are trying to make them run out of fuel? Simple but efficient." Pixy guessed, as Osea would need much more time to get them from the other side of the continent, and that would mean going through the Welloan water, which were notorious for the very high number of sinking in this area, as high as the water in the arctic ocean at the North of the Annean continent.

"Not entirely. Osea won't run out of fuel, nor of fighters. We cannot destroy enough factories, and they have greatly recovered from the EMP disaster, especially in fighter production. And they can always buy fighters from other countries. In contrast, making them run out of refuelers and tankers to choke their Belkan and Fatoan allies are much more attainable goals. And not a lot of countries have a great refueling aircraft fleet, outside of Osea and Yuktobania." Kupchenko countered Pixy while displaying the estimate number of their tankers, being the KC-135 Stratotanker, KC-10 Extender and KC-767 for Osea, with the latter having retained a small dish from its AWACS variant and used as the radar when flying refueler convoys, and Yuktobania using their aging Il-78 Midas.

"That makes sense, they had to pay a huge amount of money when they refused to deliver the E-767 to Erusea. Not that Erusea would be very helpful to Osean, considering how much the latter fined them after the Warmonger King era." Iskanda nodded, having remembered that they had to build their own AWACS called the E-320 due to Osea using the Erusean command for themselves.

"Exactly. That's why we want to destroy their logistical support planes. Armies without good logistics always end up losing, in all periods of history." Kupchenko nodded with a small head sign, satisfied to see that this new ally was learning some strategy from her last battle.

"I only have one question, Major Kupchenko, what's your role in today's operation?" Günthar spoke up, having understood their two-pronged operation, but not understood where the Gault squad was going.

"Legitimate question, Herr Zeichner. I have received ample data that makes us think that they might try to launch Osean bombers that are currently based at Brunnies, the Capital of Fato, and the first airport of the country behind Casina. They'll very likely try to attack us while our forces are divided, assaulting them. However, unlike Casina, which has little civilian presence nearby, Brunnies main airport is also near its port that houses an important refining facility. And if we want Fato to leave this war as a fully neutral state, it's best that we don't reduce Brunnies to cinder. Half of the Gault squad and a pair of DW-2s will go do some CAP between here and Blumenberg in case they attack from the West, while me and the other half will join with a pair of DW-2s and the Nest squad that'll leave Blumenberg airspace for once and come with us to intercept those allied bombers. Also, Blumenberg defenses have been increased in manner of manpower since the survivors of the defensive Donner squad from Hoffnung have finally recovered from their injuries sustained that day." Kupchenko set what his part of the job would be, more or less defensive fighters, while a map centered on Belka was displayed.

As he spoke, the map displayed the current location of their forces for this evening, as well as the plausible attackers. Osea could very well deploy various bombers, from B-52 to B-1 and B-2s, even if the B-52 fleet was the most vulnerable to Excalibur, lacking the speed of the B-1s, and the stealth of the B-2s. Yuktobania would very likely deploy their Tu-160 Blackjack, as their Bears would fare even worse than the Stratofortresses against the EW. Of course, they learned from that map that Donner squad had not recovered their F-35Xs as well, but were using F-14Ws, the replacement craft for the Schnee squad that had been stored at Blumenberg and had not been retrieved by North Belka before the city allied itself with the Pendragon Projekt.

"I wasn't accusing you of staying here while we would be out there in the fray, rest assured." Günthar stated, having learned that their commander wasn't willing to show his worth by staying here protected, but by committing himself to this war personally.

"There's no need for those excuses, Herr Zeichner. I would be a poor leader if I wasn't fighting as hard as all of you in this war." Kupchenko rejected the need for such politeness in this war. Politeness would be after the war, when the CSB would become a legitimate state with an official army, and not a mismatch of defectors and mercenaries, and would finally be recognized by all countries of this world, Osea and Yuktobania included.

"I think everyone has his Battle Plan. Of course, each squadron or group lead has individual autonomy on their respective engagements. I expect victories in all engagements, nothing else." Kupchenko concluded the briefing, and then logged off from the software, as most people were exiting the briefing room, to their hangar.

A few minutes later, all squadrons had taken off in quick succession, thanks to the massive runway of the base. Both Schwarze and Zluchs squad were going for the North-East, and would separate over Gebet, while Gault 1 to 4 went for the zero bearing, and Gault 5 to 8 for the Northwest.

"The wind of history is blowing with us today. May it grant us victory." Cipher declared, as they had taken off with a nice summer wind, a nice Zephyr to be precise. If his namesake wind was with them, maybe it would be enough to get the needed victory.

"Let the wind of change blow the face of our enemies straight away." Schwarze 2 said, in a threatening and more sinister tone. People had promised them a wind of change in the YSSR, but it never came. It was time they became that wind of change.

Bayes Fortress, Fato, 24/06/1995, 21:30, Weather: light cloud coverage.

The flight to the Fatoan Fortress has almost been uneventful. The two dark-painted squadrons flew until they reached one, and then separated, with respective wishes of luck shared between the two squadrons.

Of course, this time, not one of the pilots saw the usefulness in flying low and slow to keep their approach hidden. They didn't expect the Harriers to stay idle like those Pixy fought near the Skwala Peninsula. They expect them to be already launched, and by now ready to be used as almost-flying SAM batteries, while flak cannons would blanket the sky.

But that wasn't the first thing they had to deal with. The first was some long-range SAMs that Yuktobania so graciously provided to their new allies. But the lasers of the Melwaz rendered their attack to be like pointing a laser designator for press conferences at a B-52 bomber.

And of course, some voices the two former Ustian mercenaries hadn't forgotten interrupted them, as they were getting in range for their ERAAMs on the Harriers, which were as anticipated above the fortress. Some more SAMs were blasted in midair or evaded by smooth maneuvers from their leader, with the missile losing their guidance and disappearing behind them.

"You retreated last time, Ustian. How about you retreat once more?" Aquilus, one said, in his fighter with his eagle-like camouflage.

"We destroyed Bayes last time. We'll just do it again. Until everything's become dust, and you along with it" Pixy reminded the iron headed Fatoan pilot of the previous results, which had seen every Ustian pilot come back, with a zero to ten kill ratio for most of them.

"And this time, be sure that I have enough ammunition to shoot each of you." Iskanda asserted, still remembering the disgusting feeling she had had when she had to retreat with her very damaged X-29A.

"I thought this one died?" Aquilus three asked out loud, having heard that this very X-29A that had escaped them still standing through middle finger energy had met his maker during an assault of Excalibur.

"Oh, yeah, she died. Galm 1 is definitely dead. Only Schwarze Luchs lived." Zveda asserted, having almost shot down the X-29A, causing in some way the change of mind of Iskanda that had led to such change in the great scheme of things.

"Death only let me go so I could keep killing. And you, those Harriers, and everyone on this battlefield are on the Reaper's list." Iskanda asserted that this fight would be without mercy and without survivors for their former allies, while releasing a pair of ERAAMs, followed by all her wingmen.

"Bayes to Aquilus, stop the bickering and increase your speed." The Base commander ordered, seeing on his radar that the Schwarze Luchs might have destroyed everything if the Fatoan squadron didn't go faster.

"We could intercept the Schwarze squad on the way." Aquilus six proposed, as they had already noticed the eight MiG-31 X/V approaching Casino at great speed. They would be there before they got to Bayes.

"You have as much hope to succeed as those Harriers to survive." Zeichner answered rudely, with the Harriers getting hit one by one by their deadly long-range missiles. None of them survived, whatever they tried. Some tried to go up or down quickly using vector thrust, but ERAAMs were designed so no one could evade them. Only active defenses could, and no fighter of this era had much in this regard, outside of the Melwaz.

The fortress itself had some good defenses still intact, and it was demonstrated as they had to fire to destroy the burning wreckage of the Harrier to avoid them crashing on the fortress defenses. Pilots knew the danger when they accepted this job. And now, the few that had the time to eject were reduced to dust by Osean-supplied flak cannons. At least one could say those cannons were accurate, but only against half-destroyed Harriers.

"Don't speak about hopes. Yours were burned down at Hoffnung." Some arrogant Osean voice spoke, belonging to an advisor on the ground that was now in the fortress CIC.

"Abandon all hopes, Oseans. That way you may start to fight as men, and not as scared children." Zubov added on a sinister tone, approaching the Casina airport one hundred kilometers North of Bayes.

"This is Bayes CIC, just give me your ETA and don't engage the Vulture. Those are your orders." The Fatoan commander took the mike from the hands of the Osean marine commander and sent his orders to their meager reinforcements. Sure, more aircraft were going to reinforce them, but aircraft north of Casina might need to refuel there and refueling with Schwarze nearby was plain suicide.

"Around eight minutes." Aquilus one replied, a bit bothered by the second order. If they had to exclude a big portion of the sky to be outside of Schwarzes RAAM's range, then they would lose a lot of time. Time that would only mean further destruction for the fortress.

"We'll try to survive 'till then." The fortress commander promised them without great guarantee.

And unbeknownst to them of course, Iskanda had already a well-set plan in motion to destroy the fortress. Sure, it had been rebuilt since their raid, and each arm of the star had four flak cannons and a pair of AA guns, and each counterguard had a pair of flak cannons and a pair of CWIS, while four of those long-range Yuktobanian SAMs were standing in the middle of it, were the BAWS once stood, before they were reduced to smithereens by Ustio's sixth division.

What had changed were the small tunnels portion all around it, reused tunnel voussoirs that were disposed harmoniously all around it in two rows, like petals of a concrete flower. There, hundreds if not thousands of soldiers from Fato and their allies were stationed, as well as all their anti-aircraft equipment that was supposed to wait to engage, so they wouldn't be wiped by long-range fire. A nice protection if assaulted from the air, but only utter destruction was the goal of the CSB, not occupation. Still, Iskanda remembered that these voussoirs were pretty hard to destroy, needing numerous GPBs to be destroyed from the air during the retaking of Directus. Of course, one could argue that the HZM the ADFX-02 carried should be powerful enough to take them down, or her Hypersthene-primed rockets, if fired at their front entrance. That would require some precise low flying, but she knew they could do it. And if their nice arrangement was allowing them to get out quicker and without anything on their path for the ground vehicle, that also left some room for the enemy aircraft to attack them.

And Iskanda had learned the weaknesses of the Osean flak cannons while speaking with Hellenseite on the main disparities from a technological standpoint. She had even adapted her static FAEB to have an additional side effect on those cannons, and as she was climbing above the dense cloud of explosive fire that was for now interdicting low fly around the fortress, she readied herself to enact it. Timing would be paramount, even if it was hard to reach such a high degree of precision with such parameters. It was like asking her to put a thread in the eye of a needle while under high-Gs and with red or black sight. That may be possible if she tried one day... She felt a simple pilot seat was as comfortable as an armchair.

She was above eight kilometers when she began her attack, far away from the range of the flak cannons. She dived toward the center of the fortress, but that was not her target here. So, she rolled her craft partly to fly in a knife-edge position, and pull the stick down, and up, making her plane oscillate between one point North of the center, and a point south of the center. Then, as she was almost at the limit of the flak range, she executed a vertical Himmelman, climbing back toward the azure to enjoy the nice light and sound show the FAEBs she has just dropped with the right amount of timer and taking into account that the "static" part of them would stop their fall to a precise height.

"Did she drop something?" The Fatoan commander asked, having some trouble distinguishing the craft with all the flak exploding at regular intervals above their heads, filling the radar with noise.

"Hard to see. Also, we can't rule out that their bombs might be stealth coated. That would be almost impossible for the allies, but considering that they have flying laser platforms, that would be fairly realistic for them to resort to such technologies." One radar operator answered, trying to change the frequency on their radar to see through the tricks of this former Ustian mercenary.

"Why are those SAMs not in action yet?" The Osean advisor almost bellowed in frustration, as he could only notice how slow they were to get out of their makeshift bunker, from the screens of the CIC.

"They are beginning to get online. It's you who insisted we kept them in, re…" The Fatoan commander interrupted rudely the Osean who was acting like he owned the place, which was not false considering that the Osean marines deployed there outnumbered the Fatoan defenders by five to one. But the Fatoan commander was interrupted by a far greater noise. Two static FAEBs had just blown out a mere hundred meters over the fortress, shaking many defenses in the process, and the tremors of the explosions were felt in the depth of the CIC bunker, when chairs moved, or people standing up fell.

From Iskanda's perspective, the explosion had been magnificent. Of course, she had put down her visor to protect her eyes from the extremely bright flash. Every member of her squadron had done the same. For them, to be shielded against such light were common use, as the use of Femtolaser created light flashes where the fabric of the enemy target would be vaporized for example.

"What just happened?" The Osean advisor articulated after getting back to his feet, surprised by the violence of the explosion.

"We have some very bad news, sir. Very bad news." One weapon management officer repeated to emphasize how horrific the results of those two bombs were. He had now a red line across the panel displaying the state of their defensive armament.

"Spit it out, lieutenant." Their commander demanded, trying to maintain his composure, but a quick glance at the glaring red made him understand the battle had gone from survivable to doomed.

"What did these weapons do to our defensive armament we provided you to re-man this fortress?" The Osean asked once more, moving to see what could cause those secondary allies to feel fear.

"Apparently, the temperature at the explosion was so high that it acted like an IR-flash grenade that fried your Osean flak sensors." The weapon officer tried to give some answer to why most of their defense had stopped firing.

"You've heard them, their armament is kaput. Circle around and take two star-arms each." Iskanda proudly announced, while the lower sky was getting clearer with the flak stopping their unrelentless interdiction fire.

At this order, two of the four Melwaz increased their speed to go on the opposite ends of the fortress. On their way, they saw a few mobile AA weaponry move out of their hideouts, but they did not have the number to scare the highly advanced craft.

"Well, the mobile SAMs should better get in motion fast, or they won't have any support. Nor anything to support." The Fatoan commander criticized the Osean consign to not put anything outside before the attack started to reduce the losses early on.

"We might have to worry about the fixed Yukte SAMs, sir. That black craft is diving on us again." The radar officer transmitted that the Griffon had finished her vertical loop she did to enjoy the sights, and now was diving on the long-range SAMs supplied by Yuktobania, who had their radar at the front of one truck, and the missile silos on the trailer. There were eight of them, aligned with the eight arms of the star-shaped fortress.

"Make them intensify their fire." Suggested the Osean officer who didn't know that much about the characteristics of those LSAMs like the Yukte like to call them.

"Sir, the issue is that their proximity fuse is only activated once Mach two is achieved, and for that the missile has to go further than she is right now. If we fire at her, it will have less effect than firing blanks." The weapon officer informed the Osean of the major shortcoming of this long-range weapon intended to copy the Belkan ERAAM in some ways, but with only the range in common.

Iskanda only had to descend in a spiral around the SAMs to avoid the almost armless projectiles that were numerous but not that hard to maneuver around for her kind of pilot. All the while she fired her HVRs and missiles against her opponent. She was glad that the range of her standards had been increased thanks to Projekt Pendragon's almost uncanny technological breakthroughs.

"Those non-firing cannons are good for target practice." Cipher mocked their opponent, who could not fire before they were in range, and now that they were flying only a few meters above the fortress, they would have been unhittable, had the fortress servants managed to manually aim the flak cannons.

"Yeah, and just one shot of EW on their autoloader and they're blasted." Pixy commented, having cleaned a counterguard of its armaments with a single HZM and some EW fire, before engaging his designated flak cannons, using the superior yaw mobility of the Melwaz -achieved with superior actuators in their thrust vectoring systems- to zigzag over the enemy defenses while staying leveled. He only left a trail of destroyed canons, like every other Zluchs squad member on their assault.

Zveda and Cipher used a bit more of standards and EWs, preferring to keep her HZM for later. That might have to do with their souvenirs of the Morgan, which had far fewer thermobaric missiles, and thus make them a bit more conservative of their ammo. Zeichner, simply blew the two counterguards with a volley of HZM and destroyed the weapon emplacement on the fortress itself with a quick EW run.

"Only two LSAMs are still operational, commander. All other external weapons were put out of commission." The weapon officer informed his leader who were standing there without transmitting new orders, seeing with despair the red line turned dark, as the weapons were going from "unavailable" to "reduced to pieces". After all the assault had been so sudden that they wouldn't have much time for any new order to have any effect on it.

"targets eliminated." Iskanda exclaimed, while her thirty-millimeter tore through one of the batteries, while the last blew up as Cipher and Zeichner concentrated their firepower on it.

"Let's get to business and hunt those ants. Let's squash them." Iskanda said while joining up with Pixy as he was flying toward a pack of enemy anti-air tanks. And apparently, they had some portable CWIS, as one was capable of intercepting one standard missile, but was torn open by an HVR soon after, the CWIS barrel having exploded with a single blast from Pixy's EW.

"Damn, those LSAMs were useless. At least the BAWS that were here could keep those Ustians at bay." The Fatoan commander almost regretted his colleague that died here in the precedent attack.

"Both were destroyed by that damned Erusean-originated merc. Where are the reinforcements and the evac teams?" The Osean advisor tried to keep his cool despite the not very good perspective of survival.

"Evac teams are hidden ready to act, but reinforcements were cut by a third after Excalibur struck the buddy refuelers." A radio officer just transmitted, with Osea using more and more buddy-buddy refueling to minimize losses amongst their refueler fleet and make some use of their slower EA-6B Prowler.

"Not very good, but we might survive this if they make it in time." The Osean officer shared his renewed optimism, as the evacuation forces were still untouched.

"I'm not sure about this." The Fatoan commander did not share his optimism a single bit, as more and more of the deployed AA artillery outside of the fortress was destroyed, with some even retreating in their bunkers instead of counter-attacking the CSB forces. And those wouldn't last forever, considering that only one of their thermobaric missiles was enough to blow up counterguards that were made of hardened steel-reinforced concrete.

"Tauberg to Zluchs, we have some Osean F-15C, F-15E and Yukte MiG-31s. Approximately ten of each, coming from the south." The radar operator of Excalibur informed them.

"Roger. Ground forces are almost not much of a factor." Iskanda nodded, while climbing after gunning a platoon of Osean marines that were trying to fire Stingers at her after she took down their mobile CWISs with some HVR she fired from very close.

While climbing, she saw Zveda doing the same with her Femtolaser. If her kills were just gunfire, EW fire might have made those Oseans suffer a whole lot more. Having your organs implode due to overheating was harder to survive than just getting pierced by thirty millimeters. But their suffering was their price to pay for their arrogance.

"How did so many of them go through the Merlins and the Hellige Kolumne?" Cipher asked, while joining with the 4 others, his ERAAMs ready to launch.

"Those aircrafts are mobile and fast enough. Also, they mostly flew over urban areas to shield themselves from our EW fire." The Belkan officer reported, disgusted that they used Ustians, Sapin and Gebetan or Rectan civilians as shields.

"That's cowardice at the lowest level. Let's show them what our answer to cowardice is." Iskanda openly criticized the Osean for their lack of brains, which they could only compensate for with their brawn.

"Yeah. Fire away, coward!" Pixy shouted at them, while firing a pair of ERAAMs, when they got into effective range a few seconds later, after rushing for those fighters at full speed.

"They can't, Pixy. ERAAMs have more reach than any of their weapons." Zeichner pointed out, while firing his own.

"Whatever. Already ten of them are dead. That makes a 1-v-4 situation." Iskanda said, after doing a small dive to evade some SAAMs -even if the maneuver was almost useless with her wingman blasting the missiles in mid-air.

"Sir, shouldn't we be in numerical superiority? Why are they laughing at us?" One Osean WSO onboard a F-15E asked, while their long-range fire was nullified by Belkan EWs.

"If anything, we are in numerical inferiority." The Yukte commander, who had been lucky to survive the first onslaught countered, after witnessing helplessly his SAAMs getting blown up only five hundred meters after leaving his craft.

"Didn't one craft manage to take down two Morgans?" One F-15C pilot, an Osean, who had heard of that event from some rumors amongst North Belkans that had learned that after the second B7R battle. He actually expressed genuine optimism and hope as he quoted this brief victory for their side, or what he thought could be considered as such

"That was me who did it. I'm not on your side of weaklings anymore, Oseans." Iskanda claimed this kill, which wasn't a very enjoyable souvenir for two of her wingmen but claimed it with a rejoiced voice though.

"You are blessed to witness the new technological advancement of our new Belka we are on the verge of creating. Kill them all, no mercy, and no restriction." Iskanda added on a more epic tone, and ended on a sinister tone, before pushing her throttle stick to its peak, pushing herself back due to the great thrust of her Ramjet engine.

"Ver." (Roger) Both Pixy and Günthar replied, also accelerating to their max speed, creating a massive cloud as they brutally went supersonic and kept accelerating to keep up with their leader.

"Es wird geschehen. (It will be done)" The two "Elbe" stated with one voice, being particularly good at working together more than with the other members, due to their bond they had developed since Gymnasium.

"Brace yourself, pals." One Osean pilot said, as nothing seemed to deter the five aircraft that were rushing for their blood.

Iskanda was the first to reach her set of targets, two pairs of different Eagle variants. They were coming at her with two F-15Cs up front to force her to do evasives with their QAAMs, and the F-15Es slightly behind with their SAAMs. But she was mobile and swift enough to evade their crossfire and retaliate with a missile on each F-15C, while having inverted her fighter to evade a close gunfire. Then she stayed inverted and yawed inverted while firing one HVR on each F-15Es, which were unable to evade the fast projectiles from such close range, and with modern warfare not teaching pilots to evade such things.

Then, without thinking to invert back despite the growing headache, she enacted a perfect Himmelman while staying supersonic, which was not a pleasure party with all those Gs she took. Though that was fast enough to catch the two damaged Eagles and finish them with a short strafing run while zigzagging between the two of them. Also, she had a good view on what her squadmates were doing, as more allied fighters were going up in flames all around her.

Pixy had his opponent attacking in a diamond formation, with three Yukte MiG-31 at the tip and one Osean F-15E behind them. Killing the leading craft with a pair of missiles was a child's job for Pixy. The two other Foxhounds were dealt with as he enacted a half barrel roll and inverted to fire from above at their canopy, blasting the glass and the pilots in it with his EW as he yawed from side to side. The last, he used another unorthodox way to end his life: flying inverted to dive below the Osean craft as he avoided his gunfire, he released an ERAAM. The missile had only been released for a few seconds when the Osean took it in his front radar. Although the missile was not locked, it had enough explosive mass to turn the Eagle in a ball of fire

Zeichner's adversaries were two F-15Es and two MiG-31s. He managed to get three of them by firing one of his HZMs, but one of the F-15E was flying a bit further away from the epicenter of the explosion and thus survived the blast. And after they crossed their path, the Osean actually managed to get behind the Melwaz.

"I've locked one." The Osean pilot rejoiced in advance. One kills out of thirty aircraft would be worth it against those next gen prototypes.

"Be careful, he's climbing." His WSO cautioned him, as the Belkan-made plane just evaded the SAAMs they fired at him by entering into a steep climb.

"Let's follow them. We might get the only kill here." The Osean pilot decided, looking around him to see a pair of those forward swept-wing planes annihilate six aircraft with their burst missiles, and picking the survivors with their uncanny directed energy weaponry.

"Alright, let's show those prototypes what our craft had in it." His WSO agreed, and the F-15E climbed with his afterburner set on maximum thrust.

But it was not enough to even get in missile range, while SAAMs were evaded by vertical barrel-rolls. It would be enough after their enemy climbed at least two more kilometers. However, they were in reach because he had enacted some head-to-tail maneuver vertically and was now facing them. Their end was caused by an internal explosion after some EW fire overheated their air intakes, screwing up with the pressure balance in their engine, and blowing up the entire craft apart, while the Melwaz was joining with the four other black aircraft to do a final assault on the enemy fortress.

"I thought you were almost done with that one." Iskanda showed some worries, as he finally leveled right next to Pixy's craft.

"The last to shoot me down was you. They aren't your equals in any way, so that wasn't going to happen." Günthar argued that only his own leader, or overtrained Belkan ace could match their skills and the capacity of their planes. And that had a very little likelihood to happen, Iskanda having helped defeat many of the greatest ace squadrons of Belka, either in the allied forces or afterwards.

"Well, stay safe, and don't get overconfident. That was enough to allow her to defeat the two of us." Zveda advised Herr Zeichner, knowing that they could still improve meant they had to look for improvement.

"Even I am not perfect. But don't go too high into those flights of philosophy. Let's get to business folks. I want to welcome Aquilus with a desolate sight of utter annihilation." Iskanda agreed with her squadmate, before stating her will.

"Delenda Bayes est." Cipher added in this old language, meaning this fortress has to be destroyed. To the last brick and the last man, if needed be. And it's with perfect resolve that the five-plane formation began their approach of the fortress that was ripe to the taking.

That, of course, didn't get the people in its CIC in a good move. They had seen how easily they had dispatched those AA tanks and later those rescue squadrons. Also, for an unknown reason, the Aquilus squadron was still not there. Their delay was infuriating the Osean leader, who was waiting for their rescue like some would wait for the messiah. Though, only exterminator angels were flying over their heads right now.

"Why aren't you here, Aquilus? I need answers! We didn't give you those expensive crafts imported from Leasath for nothing!" The Osean angered himself, angered by both the delay and the fact that those third world, if not fourth-world countries had the guts to negotiate extreme prices, as they know Osea had a lack of some specific parts whose production had been heavily impacted by the EMP disaster.

"We… tried to intercept some of the ERAAMs they fired at the transports we are supposed to secure the route." The leader excused, a bit confused, as in this task they had not been successful. Or the little success they had obtained was far too little for the price paid.

"Did you obtain anything?" The Osean advisor feigned to feel some compassion for the death of those Fatoans in these flying coffins that C-5s and C-130s were when confronted with the ultramodern armament of the CSB.

"We… managed to intercept two, but by concentrating all our fire on them." Aquilus' leader was reluctant to answer as the transport formation was now fourteen aircraft less.

"Just let them be and rush here. Don't you hear those explosions? Your comrades are being blasted to oblivion here." The Osean advisor ordered, as violent explosions were shaking the entire fortress, and on the main display of the CIC, four bunkers had suddenly vanished.

The four Melwaz were having a field day. Their tactic for destroying those armored shelters was simple: open a single gap, and then send a HZM in it. It didn't always destroy the shelters entirely, as it happened with Pixy, when he managed to fire at the door as wounded crews from AA tanks were trying to rush in. He blasted and splattered their bodies, before firing a pair of missiles on the door mechanism, stalling their motion. An HZM followed, and the blast vaporized everything standing in it.

Zeichner and Iskanda had teamed up to destroy a pair of them. The Melwaz pilot cracked their doors open with one HZM on each. Then, Iskanda fired a pair of missiles and a pair of rockets, and it was enough to set fire to anything flammable in there and blow the voussoir-build shelters sky-high even if they were low on the ground.

Zveda and Cipher attacked on their own, using their EW to blast an opening, and finishing with HZM the poor soldiers that Osea had set here. So many souls, and for what? for some antiquated view on how they had seen this battle take place, but never occurred here.

"It's like popping those things called piñatas. Such fun." Iskanda displayed some joy, as she flew over the destroyed shelters to attack some more at the opposite side of the fortress, crossing paths with some of her wingmen in the process.

"Well, a nicer metaphor than destroying anthills. That's not as fun as what you're referring to, for sure." Pixy sighted, witnessing with a bit of disgust the terrible losses they were inflicting. They couldn't see the shockwave reverberating inside of the shelters and tearing apart soldiers like the francium weapons had done for those submariners, but they could see its effect outside as it moved wrecked vehicles around on a dozen meters, and vehicles weighing a few dozen tons. Also, the shockwaves they produced when collapsing weren't small either.

And soon, in the inner sanctum of the fortress that the CIC was, the results of all those shockwaves could be felt, and witnessed on a small screen that had been added either since the Belkan retook the fortress, when they first rearmed it with the BAWS. They had only affected a Sergeant to watch over those signals, as they thought those things were intangible, Belkan being known for being sturdy, and thus building incredibly sturdy designs.

"Mister Advisor, I think there might be something more urgent than this squadron. Evacuation should be ordered right now." The Sergeant spoke up amongst the cacophony of alarms and screams coming from mikes in the bunkers up there. He actually had to repeat three times to be heard, due to the background noise.

"And Why? That fortress held firm in the last attack, so what's the issue here?" The Osean soldier reacted, not wanting to be denied his little moment of glory, even if it was just an already lost last stand.

"Well, all those shockwaves are taking their toll on the hydraulic and metallic beams the Belkan Engineering Corps had to set up here to prevent the collapse of the fortress. If our calculations are correct, when they'll have finished destroying all the bunkers, it'll be as if this fortress was the epicenter of a magnitude 9 earthquake."

"Our fortress cannot resist an earthquake of that magnitude." The fortress commander agreed that evacuation needed to begin if they wanted some of their people to survive the CSB attack.

"Great. All Oseans, leave for the choppers." The Osean advisor rushed to a communication post and transmitted his order. All equipment was already lost, or beyond saving.

"Leave and live, Oseans. We will coordinate the evacuation efforts from here." The Fatoan commander apparently resigned to sink into the ground with his land battleship.

The Oseans in the CIC didn't ask much, and quickly ran out of here, in hallways flooded by other fleeing Oseans, coming from the few Fortress parts still intact. Their goal was to go to some underground meeting point, which was still in a stable zone for now, and would provide them with a direct path for the chopper squadron tasked for evacuation. Even if a few of them, including the one from the CIC, were a bit reluctant to go that way, and were desperately trying to convince their brother-in-arms that choppers weren't a safe escape route with the CSB craft roaming around. It was a difficult task, and the close explosion didn't make their tries easy, as they would deafen people with their extremely loud noise.

Yet, they didn't know the others wouldn't need much convincing pretty soon. And what would cause their change of mind was the fall of a MiG-31.

It had been heavily damaged by the shockwave created by a HZM's explosion. Its badly wounded pilot punched the ejection seat immediately, and lost consciousness due to his wounds and the sudden high-G forces.

That pilot's fate did not matter for the choppers. But his plane's, it was going to, and a hell of a lot. Wings riddled with holes and without much thrust as engines were spewing only thick black smoke. And his last goal was a massive rock near the top of the canyon's slope. A massive rock that had sat there for millennia, perfectly balanced, as all things were before the CSB's attack.

The kinetic energy set the massive boulder a bit out of balance. It would recover its balance soon when it would lay motionless at the bottom of the ravine. However, there were a few things in between the top and the bottom.

"Don't climb or you're going to have them spot us!" The chopper leader screamed to one pilot who panicked as this small rockslide was raining on them.

"I don't want to die here!" The pilot shouted back in response, increasing his forward speed while climbing over a V-22 with his CH-47.

"You could have also survived if you just flew closer to the slopes, there was a protruding rock that could have shielded you." A CH-47 copilot pointed out, as his pilot used this strategy to survive. Sure, one or two rocks hit the side of the chopper. But it was not bullets nor missiles, something they might be subjected to very soon.

And the next message transmitted by a CSB pilot that was flying in the same axis than the Verdin Ravine, as he flew over the fortress and was doing a U-turn to reduce some more bunkers to ruins, cemented that fact:

"I have a CH-47 that showed up in the canyon and got back below my radar coverage. They might have some jammers in it, that would explain why we didn't spot them earlier while fighting those fighters."

"Tauberg here, we can infirm those data. We were about to send you the satellite data that showed us that in like, thirty seconds." One of their satellite observers announced, almost sorry to be late in his message. This specific radio operator was none other than Valais's own radio operator, Henri Blaise.

"Not a big issue, SchwertKönig. Choppers will be a nice appetizer before Aquilus." Iskanda said while half-laughing, before adding as she let her wingmen tore up the last bunkers of the fortress, while climbing to get those choppers from above:

"Just keep one last bunker for me, folks, I like to finish the job."

"Ver, Chefin (Roger, boss) '' Zveda answered, firing only at one bunker, and thus leaving one target for her leader. She wondered how Iskanda would destroy that one. With rockets, or some nice explosive Idea? She would get the answer pretty soon, as killing choppers would not take much time to their ace.

By the time all had answered her call, she was only five hundred meters away from the ravine, with Osprey and Chinook in sight. The Osprey could have tried to fly horizontally, but that wouldn't have got them any further. In comparison the DW-2 had all their specifications set to one thousand times higher, minus the troop capacity. These crafts were just half-dead prey she was finishing out of necessity.

"Plane incoming. Brace yourselves." One Osean pilot alarmed them, even though the incoming fighter was oblivious.

"Brace all you want, hell's coming from you." Iskanda threatened them in a very realistic way, as she began flying into the ravine, in front of some V-22s.

From there, she followed the ravine while firing all her short range guided and unguided ammo, leaving behind her burning wreckage, when there was wreckage to remain of the choppers. V-22s saw their fragile rotative engines be sewed from their wings, by a single missile or prolonged gunfire. CH-47 didn't fare better, with their fragile rotors ripped apart by the missile, gun and HVRs coming at them, when the choppers itself was not torn in half by HVR hitting their side.

And even if they could manage to survive this brutal assault, they would be hit by other flying wreckage, or by the cloud of debris this destruction was creating. Also, the one or two Static FAEBs she dropped at one point when her other weapons were reloading and to let her gun cool a bit did wonders, annihilating the nearby chopper, and with their shockwave depriving them of their lifting capacities and sending them to crash down in the ravine, when they would not toss them apart on the ravine's slopes, like leaves in an autumn wind.

Speaking of the one that got them noticed, he almost managed to survive the effect of a blast as he was flying slightly higher than the others. But a V-22 was violently pushed against him by the explosion, with the rotor almost rotated into plane-position, as its pilot tried to gain speed to escape the grasp of the blast. And the rotors cut through the CH-47 side, causing both craft to be lit up and explode in a massive fireball.

Iskanda kept flying in the ravine for a few hundred meters, closing on the rocky circle where she had fought those Su-27. She was butchering those choppers, despite all their attempts. Flares didn't work, and even if they did, the proximity fuse would overwrite the IR sensor and still detonate near the choppers. For her, it was like using a 75-millimeter cannon to clear out a hallway. Nobody was safe from her wrath.

All the smoke, added to the violent noises of the explosion and crashes, benefited those Osean advisors as they were still trying to convince their marines not to go to the landing pad. Of course, when the few units that were scouting at the outside, on the path of the pad, saw the massive pillars of smoke and heard these numerous explosions, they quickly set their mind to follow the advisors. By now, they had two other escape plans remaining.

Though, they were a bit puzzled by the sudden diminution of explosions coming from the fortress itself. That was because the few gunboats, corvettes and missile boats stationed in the canal, that had been a very small nuisance to the CSB fighters, were now the only nuisance left, and thus their prime targets.

Also, the few barges that were moored there didn't stay idle either. From small containers came out light AA vehicles, more APCs than true anti-air artillery, while their crew was readying some Stinger launchers as a last-ditch effort.

The attack from the Melwaz came, swift and efficient, from their close four aircraft formation, with each of them separating to focus on a set of targets. While, of course, the counterattack of the stranded Oseans didn't leave a scratch on their hard armor.

Herr Zeichner used solely standard missiles which were enough to destroy the smaller ships and individual artillery pieces. Pixy on the other hand used a pair of missiles he fired to converge on a singular spot, with the blast being powerful enough to decimate the single soldiers or sending the light AA guns right into the canal.

The two Erbe were even more brutal. They fired a volley of standard missiles from afar as unguided rockets, not bothered a single bit by the small missiles and the Osean bullets fired at us. They zoomed up, evading the weak fire the Osean were putting against them, and while they evaded the Stingers that were just annoyances, their missile tore the fragile militarized cargo transport ships to pieces. One of them took a missile near the water line and sank rather quickly. The canal had less than a few meters of depth, but the sinking ships were still catching their unlucky marines with them, sucking them below the water as they went under. And for the few that jumped in the water, thinking they would be safe from the explosion, they were riddled by metallic pieces propelled at fantastic speeds that were as deadly as a firing squad at point blank range.

Only a very few Oseans and Fatoans emerged from the canal, using the small ladders there and there on the banks of the canal. Immediately they ran as they heard the sound of jet engines coming around to finish the job. Yet, it wasn't followed by the sound of gunfire. Only their own body armors exploding like if someone stuck a kilogram of C4 to them, as Kevlar was not really a good defense against EW fire.

And so, even less survived. Some that left their body armor in the water and would only suffer extremely grievous wounds as only an arm was almost shot off by EW fire -luckily for them, the heat was enough to cauterize these wounds. Maybe a dozen of very lucky ones, maybe blessed by some goddess of mercy, did get out of there without too many injuries. The four Melwaz pilots knew they could do another pass to end these miserable lives, but they were supposed to regroup with Iskanda afterwards, and honestly firing HZMs to chase foot soldiers would only be a waste of resources. After all, they hadn't needed a single one to sink those weak ships.

"Besides, didn't Iskanda say: no glory without testimony? We need a few to live to tell the tale?" Zveda reminded them, talking without showing any concern for the life they just erased or turned into nightmares, as they joined up toward their leader who was now climbing over the canyon after slaughtering the transport choppers.

"And dead men tell no tales." Pixy added after sighting heavily. On his part, he had only finished a few soldiers that had tried to fire back. Those that left their rifle to run, he let them run.

"That's right, I did say that. And that's why we won't burn Oured to the ground. That doesn't mean we won't erase one or two ugly Osean building there." Iskanda confirmed Zveda's saying, as she ended up her climb to arrive in view of the circular part of the canyon. This circular shape was supposed to be an impact crater that was only one or two millennia old, according to some geologic research she found at Tauberg during her free time.

"Fire everything we've got on that fighter!" An AH-64 pilot shouted as she came into view of this specific area.

For an unknown reason, a big group of AH-64 and Mi-30 had managed to hide there. Iskanda's radar should have shown her those craft when she was in the canyon slaughtering the over flying metallic boxes. But then she remembered that the Su-27 that tried firing their XMAA at her from the outside misfired them all. Maybe this impact had been caused by a ferric meteorite, and thus it could mess up a bit with their radar.

Whatever it was, it wouldn't change their destiny a single bit, she was certain of it, as she shook off those missiles by getting into vertical flight suddenly, which was too much for the limited seekers on those missiles. And then she dropped a pair of FAEBs as she leveled above them, yawing as she dropped them to get the two in separated halves of the circular portion. They would only become more wreckage to add to the eight Su-27's, which were still laying there in wait, with some parts stuck in counter-currents at the bottom of the canyon. How much time would the carbonized aircraft and the burned bodies remain here? That was a good question, without any good answer.

"Choppers are roasted and toasted." Zeichner described with a huge amount of mockery how much this fight was unfair, as numerous pillars of smoke were coming from the ravine.

"Don't talk about food, I could get both hungry and angry, for blood." Iskanda snapped back at her wingmen, while they were joining with her.

"You cleansed those insects pretty well." Pixy commented how little chances of survival she had left to those Osean, rolling his plane more than what was needed to turn to get a good view on the slaughter she just made.

"Squashing vermin is quite fun, you know." She said with a joyful voice, while setting her bearings on the last bunker.

"As much as fuming them out like prairie dogs." Zveda added, having had a bit of fun slaughtering those bystanders as they ran out of their ablaze bunkers.

"Yeah, fun but not more of a challenge." Cipher almost complained, sighting a bit after ending his sentence. He missed those fights to the death when their current leader was still an adversary seeking for their blood, actually.

"I've got the final target in my sight." Iskanda oriented the subject of their talks toward the battlefield once more.

Her Griffon skimmed mere meters above the treetops, before unleashing a pair of HVR that pierced through the single intact bunker, while all the others were nothing more but piles of concrete and heat-distorted steel. Then she went a bit rightward, while flying knife edged. She had already thought of this strategy while mercilessly killing those Apaches and Hinds. And she was about to set the final piece in motion.

She suddenly pulled the plane as if she wanted to make it fall on its back, but as she was flying with a ninety-degree angle, it made her enact a very fast head-to-tail maneuver. Of course, her maneuver was fancy enough to hide what she was really doing, which was slinging one of her FAEBs in the bunker she just busted open a few seconds ago. The Oseans in it had even the unpleasant sight of seeing the bomb slow itself down using its nitrogen thruster inside the bunker, precisely at its center point.

Then it exploded, tearing apart equipment, bodies, and the bunker itself as the shockwave resonated within the steel-hardened cemented walls. This was the last shelter for the Osean forces that were destroyed, and in it all the forces that hadn't the time to evacuate. Their losses would be consequential, as very little forces but the ones manning the guns inside the fortress had succeeded in evacuating, while most of the forces deployed on the outside of the fortress had fought to the last man and were killed to the last man.

"Look at the fortress. It looks like it's caving on itself." Zeichner commented, as the tremors of the FAEB had also been the last straw for the support system that was preventing its collapse until now. And now, nothing but a few metallic pieces who were slowly plowing under the strength of gravity was preventing this destruction.

"Finally, that symbol of the past will be erased. It's where my old self appeared. No, that Iskanda is definitively dead, laying there with the dead."

"Bayes will be the first sign of the might of the Traue Belka. Look closely, proud Osean fortresses, it's the fate that awaits you." Pixy sent to all Osean fortresses, would they be land-based, or their massive battleships and aircraft carriers, a very serious threat.

The collapse occurred slowly, then it suddenly accelerated, as if some underground ammo dump had just detonated. Maybe they had induced some fire with their bombing, the pilots thought, as they gained some altitude to see the proud walls of the fortress be reduced to a massive cloud of dust and cinder, in which they could perceive some flames here and there.

There was another reason for the quickening of its destruction. An internal reason, that the Melwaz had little direct power on it. That had to deal with the Fatoan commander himself, a few seconds before the final bunker exploded:

"Is the evacuation of the fortress complete?" He asked his subordinates, while keeping a close look on the status of the hydraulic supports that had almost a red line all across the display.

"Well, they have lost their main way of evacuation, and Aquilus is still one minute away from us. But they have the secondary escape plan and have succeeded with this one if those Oseans are quick enough." The lieutenant put in charge of this task answered, switching between the few cams they had in the level of underground tunnels the Oseans were.

"Good. Sergeant, deactivate the last failsafe." The commander ordered with an imperious tone, wanting this battle to end.

He had all his reason to wish it to end what was always a losing battle from the start. If it was a battle from the start. This "Battle" was only a lure for most of the units involved in it. All those Oseans marines that had been stationed here had been sent here to defend, as the CSB somehow tricked their leadership into believing they had received Eruseans paratroopers they would use to assault this fortress and turn it into an Excalibur bis to compensate for their loss of satellites. Nothing on such a scale ever happened, as the CSB plans about Bayes were simple: just to destroy it.

"Sir, the fortress will be unusable if I do that." The sergeant doubted for a second the orders of his commander.

"I intend to render it unusable after today. This fortress alone is the reason why we have been forced to continue fighting their war. A war we have nothing to gain from anymore. The only thing we'll gain is a bigger memorial if we keep fighting this useless war." The commander summarized the reasons for this apparently foolish act. Fato had been promised great territories by the allies, but some anonymous sources had reported to them that the allies also promised North Belka to get back their territories they sold to Fato a few years ago.

"You… are right, commander. Let's hope other people in our military think that way." The sergeant complied with the order, and the display for the structural supports turned black, while a high-pitch siren was turned-on, screaming for the evacuation of its last Fatoan servants.

"They'll soon have to think it that way, or they won't have the ability to think anymore afterwards." The commander replied a bit abruptly, knowing that a lot of people who didn't think that way was at the Casina air base.

" Now let's leave for the old quarries beneath the third level. There's a secret cave tunnel that leads to the ravine. There should be some equipment there to allow us to traverse it." The Fatoan commander stated, while opening a secret door behind a false cabinet that neither Belkans nor Oseans knew of, even if it was right under their nose in the CIC they left only a minute ago.

As they were descending some high ladders toward a relative safety as the upper level of the fortress were crumbling, making the ladders vibrate slightly, watched with awe by the pilots hovering above them in the skies that were at peace for an instant, a soldier raised a question :

"Do you think the Oseans will have learned something of this battle?"

"Yeah. The age of choppers has met its end today from those pilots. South Belka has begun a new age with their flying gunships." Their leader stated, without many thoughts toward all those pilots they had seen die, even from their position. The pillars of smoke coming from the ravine were so huge that everyone could see them a few dozen kilometers away.

And over their heads, the battle would soon take a new turn, as the Aquilus squadron was closing on what was the last stand of those soldiers that in the end had finally come to realize the uselessness of this war for them. For Aquilus, this understanding would soon come, albeit with their death.

"Time for the return match. No mercy and no pity." Iskanda sentenced all those pilots that were willing to fight them to an immediate death. She was no guardian angel, only an exterminator angel. And she was going to exterminate all who were on her path to her destiny.

Casina Airport, Fato, 24/06/1995, 21:40, Weather: light cloud coverage.

For now, the eight Foxhounds had not really faced much resistance. At one point, they saw the escort of some transport dangerously close to their ERAAM range, but only the transport was close enough for the Vulture's team to release a deadly volley that took multiple marine platoons.

But now they were only ten kilometers away from Casina, flying high and fast. Not high enough to get undetected, and soon the waves were filled by radio messages of frightened airmen, while interceptors were taking off, and refueling operations quickened or put on hold.

Even a few long-range missiles grazed their flight, but thanks to their newly acquired mobility, they shrugged them off.

They could see the light getting turned on in every sector, with searchlights trying to blind them. From their position, they only had to tilt slightly to see the air base and its surroundings. It might have been extended since the beginning of the war, or maybe just after the use of nukes that reduced Excalibur's range. Because they didn't remember having heard from any Belkan based here before the partition that it had five runways, and more than thirty hangars. They were undoubtedly full, as there were many other crafts parked right near the multiple runways.

The area around it had three major points of interest: the city of Casina, a few dozen kilometers North from here in the middle of agricultural plains, the river which was surrounding the airport in a great meander -and in which one transport pilot that lost the landing gear managed to ditch the plane after sliding a bit of the runway, drifting in the river-. That had earned that man a medal reserved for fighter pilots only back then. The last interesting thing was the small hills South of it, bordered by the river, and on top of which some long-range SAMs were desperately trying to get them. Those weren't that dangerous for the Vulture, but they might get annoying, or even get people killed if they disturbed pilots in the middle of a dogfight.

"2, you're with me, we'll shoot anything in the sky. 3 to six, blast me those SAMs of those damn hills. 7 and 8, there are also a couple of ships that are a bit too quiet for my likings, sink them before they get loud." Zubov ordered, delegating his work a bit, as more defenses were put against their threat. Luckily, with refuelers still in the air, heavy flak wasn't to be expected, as such shells could be dangerous for nearby allies as well.

A concert of "Ver" followed those orders, while his wingmen were separating for their respective assignments. The eight Foxhounds spread out, still untouched by the light AA fire thrown at them, hindered by the refueler still completing their tasks.

And speaking of refueler, Schwarze one and two had already a prime target: a couple of Hornets were being refueled on a KC-10 Extender. It would be an easy target. Not even worth wasting their ERAAMs. The explosion would rip the fighter and the boom linking it to the refueler, destroying it in the process.

As such, the Oseans had a chance to react before the pair of MiG-31X/V was onto them.

"Cancel refueling! Detach and leave if you want to live!" The boom operator shouted at them, while he was cutting the fuel flow.

"Roger, leaving" The right hornet disengaged cautiously, using his airbrakes to fly slower than the refueler and managing to avoid one missile fired at him by Schwarze 2.

But his colleague had no such luck. First, instead of slowing down, he accelerated, leaving the probe, but only because he ruptured it, and the fuel still in the probe was spread on his fighter, especially on his canopy, heavily reducing his field of view. He was almost lucky that South Belka had lost some satellites against those nukes, and thus couldn't use Hellige Kolumne in an offensive fashion, as flying close to one in such a state would set his craft on fire.

Yet, a gun burst of Schwarze's craft did. He always used incendiary bullets to make sure no defectors would escape him, with these specific bullets capable of getting chutes on fire as well, even if fired inside a heavy rain. Then it was the time of the tanker to burn, after a little turn set his bearing right on his tail.

Sergei Karkov, aka Schwarze 2, didn't leave his target much time to breathe either. Or only for a last breath. The Hornet tried to outspeed him by diving after flying at very low speed while refueling, but outspeeding a MiG-31 was only possible for X-15s. The powerful engine allowed him to catch his prey in a matter of seconds, before managing to gun him during a turn, as the Osean was leveling to change his direction and hopefully throw off the South Belkan, hoping that his mobility would be decreased in the dive. That was, without counting on their newly added thrust vectors, that gave Karkov this perfect window of fire, shattering the glass and the two human bodies inside under an iron rain.

"Nice kill, zwei." His leader congratulated him, before speeding up to attack a group of four F-14Ds that were taxying on the runway.

"Let's hope that the Tankers don't explode before hitting the ground." He replied before letting out a small laugh, following his leader closely, and firing an HGM on some parked transport planes as he flew over the airport toward their new set of targets. Those Tomcats who were still thinking they had the ferocity of tigers were something funny for the Belkans, when they had seen more threatening kittens on the ground.

And as they were rushing toward those future victims, the other group of MiGs had reached the main anti-air battery. The number three, the designated leader of the four planes, had already risen above the ground, and climbed high into the sky as some SAMs grazed his plane without much danger for his life. They tried to adjust their fire, aiming for his back, but as they were desperately trying to land any hits on his craft, they realized that the three others had already fired a few HGMs each, clearing more than the two-third of the AA guns, and razing anti-air emplacements on the hill.

"AA fire has lowered in density, time to drop the hammer on those guys." Harald Brehme aka Schwarze 3 commented as he enacted a U turn toward the ground, all his weapons facing the few remaining batteries, that didn't manage to land one hit on the modified Foxhound, due to all the fire nearby messing their sensors, and the secondary explosions shaking their tanks.

"They might try to return fire, 3. Be ready for anything." Their number 5 indicated, as his radar still showed two intact bunkers, that could house a lot of ammo if they ran deep in the geological formation.

"Stingers will never sting us much. Mosquitoes on the canopy are more of an issue than these ants are. Let's stomp this anthill and bury them all." Sepp retorted, opening fire with his machine gun as they were finally in range, tearing through groups of soldiers. He was followed in his strafing run by the two other planes that had opened fire the firsts and were now hell-bent in sending these damn fools straight to hell.

As such, the few grounds troops that thought they could get a final shot at this lone MiG-31 pulling stunt against their anti-aircraft fire went down pretty quickly, cut down or set ablaze, as those pilots of the Schwarze squadron tended to also use high-caliber penetrating rounds to be sure that defectors onboard bombers or anything heavier than fighter would die. At least they didn't have to burn in their chutes afterwards.

There were even a few ammo crates that went off, injuring more soldiers, and restricting their field of view with all the smoke around the very few survivors. Those few survivors were decimated by a last volley from Schwarze three, with one going through a partially destroyed bunker, and detonating inside the tunnel network bored into the small hill.

"Look, they're getting swallowed into the ground." Schwarze 4 commented, as they flew above the collapsed landscape, turning toward the airport that had already three of its runways filled by wrecked transports, and even more burning wrecks on the parts linking the runways to the hangars and the former civilian terminals

"Let's help our leader finish this slaughter." Their number three said, rejoining after leveling above the burning hills.

And during this time, the number seven and eight had had to deal with the few ships moored into the meander surrounding the airport, but not without setting a few hangars and more refuelers or fuel tanks ablaze on their way there.

There wasn't a lot of targets. Sure, it was more than the few barges with AA guns on it that Zluchs encountered at Bayes, but it was far from an Osean carrier group. It was merely a pair of Aegis, a pair of destroyers, and some smaller gunships and missile boats thrown into the mix, as those ships were a bit better to navigate inland in small rivers than those large ships that were more cumbersome than anything here. If one plane were to launch a torpedo, they would risk hitting the riverbank if they did evasive maneuvers.

"Guck mal (look there), Aegis." The number seven warned his brother in arm, as missiles were launched vertically from the ships, before doing a ninety-degree angle turn toward them.

"The smaller ones first, then those aegis." The number eight proposed this strategy, as he managed to escape his missiles by banking right hard, which made him arrive just above two gunboats as he leveled above the river.

"Ver, this'll be over quickly for this small fry." His brother-in-arms agreed, as he went for those at the north of the meander, a pair of missile boats and a patrol boat, firing missiles as he evaded some more anti-aircraft fire, and with his gun powerful enough to ruin the patrol boat.

At the south, the task wasn't all that difficult, given that the only threat was the Aegis in the middle, with the destroyer lacking in fire power to pose any threat. He destroyed the pair below him with a single HGM, before vaporizing one missile boat with a pair of missiles. The ship's servants still fired a missile even though they saw their doom incoming, and this was for nothing, as the MiG-31X/V just rushed forward, and the missile ended up hitting a tree on the riverbank as it was trying to follow the plane.

The last and more tenacious job would be to take out the aegis. Their CIWS would without any doubt take their standard missiles, and they didn't know of the HGM's capacity to bypass those systems. And they weren't going to wait for the whole squadron to come here and saturate their defenses.

"One each, it should be good." The Foxhound pilot coming from the north said, while climbing a bit, knowing that a vertical assault might have some success. Aegis ships tended to be more vulnerable to vertical direct attack, being more designed to counter sea-skimming missiles, or at least Osean designs. Because the South Belkan pilot was certain, those ships were old Osean models they had given to Fato, there was no other way those ships could have arrived here.

"How can these Belkans think it's a fair fight? We should be outgunning them by a dozen times!" One Aegis captain ranted, as his VLS were launching missiles almost non-stop at the one climbing over them, but with little success, resulting in only delaying the inevitable.

"I think we're lucky they don't have their Excalibur strikes, or we would already have sunk." The captain of the second Aegis pondered, not knowing if that was guaranteeing then a slightly longer survival in the long run.

"You wouldn't have sunk but exploded in flames." Schwarze eight replied rashly, while avoiding some more VLS launched missiles, skimming above the river, with the missile splashing in the water around him, as he enacted very tight turns at the brinks of stalling.

"Runway four is out of commission, they fired on a pair of refuellers that were stationed nearby, and it engulfed another squadron of fighters!" Some radio from the airport base announced, while the two pilots could see more flames and fumes coming from the airport in their position over the river

"What are the Fatoan squad doing?" One Aegis captain asked, while the two Schwarze were closing more and more on their targets.

"They were sent to Bayes. Not that I think they'll achieve anything there. They wouldn't have gotten anything here, though." One destroyer captain answered, his voice a bit lower, almost getting desperate, as their anti-air artillery wasn't helping the aegis, as the two Schwarze were either too high or too low on the water to get any hits on them. Buying them those expensive new planes to replace their damaged ones after their base got laserized by Excalibur would have been worth nothing, if in the end they achieved nothing here nor there. Or it was only interesting for the seller, some small country known as Leasath.

And by now, the Schwarze that was rushing above the water had gotten where he wanted to arrive. He tilted his plane as he arrived toward the southern Aegis, then pulled the stick to turn fast and thus face the Aegis from its side for an instant, and at this instant released a volley of four HGM from very close, before tilting back to levelled flight. The next second after releasing his missiles, he was going full afterburners over the burning Aegis, a bit shaken by the Gs he took, and with a somewhat strange trajectory as the momentum he got from that extremely tight turn was still affecting his craft.

"Nice turn, but I can also do fancy maneuvers." Schwarze seven observed from above, as he was diving toward the Aegis, firing a pair of ERAAM at high altitude, and then a pair of standard missiles as he went to a lower altitude.

He wouldn't have tried that if the ship were in open water and would have evaded his heavy air-to-air missile. But since they couldn't and with the ERAAM having more than enough explosive mass to rip the wings of a B-52, it was worth a shot at an Aegis ship.

Also, it would make their CIWS focused on that rather than him, and he was betting that they would be a bit too busy with those and thus would not get into his plan. He did have a bit more fire on his path compared to their number eight, as he got in range for the artillery pieces on the pair of destroyers to open fire on him. Though, their fire was erratic at best, and he only suffered minor damage.

His final act also involved some very risky high-G maneuvers. He continued his dive toward the portside of the Aegis, avoiding some more artillery shells and VLS missiles, while slowing his fighter. At the same time, as he approached the water level, his missiles had reached the Aegis, causing enough damage to shake the ship, and also diminishing his CWIs in number.

And as he neared the surface of the Casinr river, he pulled the stick hard, enacting a head-to-tail maneuver, changing his course very abruptly, and inverting back as he fired his HGMs on the enemy ship, with three hitting the target, and a last one getting hit by a CWIS and losing itself in the woods on the other side of the ship.

"Aegis down, aegis down." He celebrated, as both planes that ended up rushing over the woods were circling around to finish the two last ships.

"Huh, irgendwas ist seltsam da unten (something is strange down there)." Werner aka Schwarze eight pointed out, as something exploded in the woods, and then triggered some secondary explosions.

"Yeah, just saw that. My loose missile apparently hits something. Let's investigate." Roshard, aka Schwarze seven suggested, as some more things just blew up, setting a few trees here and there on fire.

As they approached, they saw what appeared to be cruise missile launchers, which had been well hidden in the forest. One or two former servants tried to fire stingers at them. They almost sighted, as they had just spent the last minutes evading VLS missiles that were much faster and more dangerous than those toys for pedestrians.

One or two missiles and a short strafing run later, the last launchers exploded, surrounded by disembodied soldiers, as the shockwave of the warheads that those cruise missiles contained was very volatile, and left no hope of survival for anybody in its wake.

"Now, onto destroying some destroyers." Werner re-set their objective, after wondering why those cruise missile launchers were pointing eastward, and not westward. There was only Wieldvakia in this direction, and it was a neutral country, as far as he knew it. Though, what did true neutrality mean nowadays?

But the number of destroyers that needed to be destroyed would be less than the two left. The reason why was the action of their brother-in-arms, which were slaughtering everything moving on the runway, being planes taxiing or AA guns trying to deploy to be blown up en masse by HGMs, or set ablaze by incendiary bullets.

A group of C-130 tried desperately to take off, only for them to be slowly picked off one by one, gunned on all their length and width, crashing on the runway when their fuel tanks didn't just set these craft ablaze. But the first one was luckier than the others, being attacked by multiple missiles, which he managed to fool some using their chaff and flares dispensers. Though, he didn't fly for long. They had only managed to lift their plane off the ground at an unhealthy angle, with the tail grazing the runway as they took off at very high speed.

"I don't think we'll survive this." The pilot muttered, actually terrified of the fire below his craft, who were killing mens he had known for years without much mercy than the pilots causing them

"Indeed, you won't." Schwarze three said, sealing their fate with an ERAAM that hit the plane on the left wing.

"We're losing thrust on the portside." The copilot of this lone survivor screamed, as none of the engines on the left wing were responding any more.

"No kidding, we've lost the entire wing. Just look by the window!" The pilot snapped back, overcome by fear and desperation, as the C-130 had become a solo wing. And unlike Pixy's F-15C, it was sturdy enough to survive such a loss.

It went down pretty quickly. And on one of the destroyers, to make things worse. In a desperate attempt, the officer in charge of the ship ordered his man to open fire:

"Fire on the transport!"

"But sir, it's one of ours." A gunner objected

"I know full well it's one of our planes, but it's coming right at us. Destroy it! Now!" The captain screamed to the gunnery officers, but it was far too late. Their action did separate the burning wreckage falling onto their ship, but it was only more debris that hit their ship a few seconds later.

A pair of HGM launched by Schwarze eight was enough to split in half the last destroyers, while the other was rejoining the others, and helped in exploding some last planes, on which mechanist were trying to set ZLTO rockets, as all runways were gone or full of burning wreckages. There were only more bodies that their commanding officers were not afraid to toss. If, of course, he wasn't already dead when Schwarze five fired a volley of HGMs on the ATC and the building around it, which were mainly former civilian buildings of steel and glass, which the HGM went through before detonating inside, leveling the building.

"Well, Casina Air base is history." Sepp summed up how well the destruction had gone, the fire spreading everywhere, with five lines of burning refuellers replacing the five runways.

"Yeah, and Osea and Yuktobania lost a great deal of their refuellers today." Schwarze 2 reminded them of what was the goal of this operation.

"Still, I wonder what those launchers were for." Schwarze 7 wondered out loud, as no cruise missiles had been sighted heading toward the CSB. Furthermore, they were not pointing at all toward Tauberg or Blumenberg.

"We might learn that afterwards, 7." Zubov stated, not liking what this could imply. That attack at theoretically neutral countries might be in action, and that could soon involve them too.

"Schwarze six to leader, I'm tracking some columns of trucks coming from the city itself. Should we target them?" Another member spotted some vehicle a dozen kilometers away from here, possibly reinforcements.

"Ground radar indicates no weapons platform amongst them. What do you have to say, Tauberg?" Zubov asked the main base for data, as wasting ammo was not in his habits.

"Satellite pictures indicate those are just firefighters. They might want to control the spread of the fire." an analyst from Tauberg replied, zooming in on some satellite data. They might have lost some Merlins and reflectors, but less of their geostationary long-range scanners, which were out of bounds of most ASAT missiles, although they required expensive optics, compared to the common spy satellite orbiting at 100 kilometers.

"Let them do their job. We might have some more tasks to do tonight, so we better keep our ammo for our enemies." Zubov considered that a few firefighter trucks would not save any hardware from the inferno that they had turned the airport into. At least, they would limit the damage done to the surrounding areas.

"I think we'll have a task for you right now. We have some requests from Wieldvakian officers of their defensive forces. Putting them on the line." the liaison officer from Tauberg indicated, as some pretty nasty strategies were being enforced by Osea and their new allies.

"This is the Wieldvakian defense officer Joseph Kepinski, Czarty (devil) squadron leader. We have two situations in which help is immediately needed: One at the border, and the other one at sea, and the border is on your way to the sea rescue operation." A Su-25C pilot who had retreated a bit from the sea operation to have a good signal was asking for help, or the operation would be seriously jeopardized.

"Ver, Kepinski. We're not used to rescue operations, but we'll do our best." Zubov complied and set his bearing to the point designated on his radar, on a specific area of the border between Fato and Wieldvakia. There were already some points on his long-range scanners, so there were already some big allied or Belkan birds there.

"Gut, we're counting on you, Vulture." Kepinski replied, before re-engaging their opponents, which were an unholy alliance of Belkans, Fatoans, Osean and Yuktes navy fighters.

And after these little talks, all of Schwarze was heading at full speed toward their locations, determined to change their image, from revolution butchers and deserter hunters to neutrality keepers.

North of Bayes Fortress, Fato, 24/06/1995, 21:45, Weather: light cloud coverage.

From the proud fortress of cold stone, only a warm fire remained, which in some way, reminded the five people flying about it of its shape, a spectacular octuple star. The star that it once was amongst the defensive structures could have met a simple and easy end by becoming a museum, but history had decided otherwise. This star's fate was to end in a flash, getting a bit of light in its last moments. Now it was in agony, like a crippled star slowly consuming itself into a black hole, slowly disappearing from reality.

Though, the last battle, which had only its soul as an objective to win over, was about to start. Its delayed defenders were incoming, with a small contingent of marines which were supposed to reinforce it, as the allied thought the Belkan forces would try to take it by force to create a second Excalibur, using Erusean paratroopers that would have been brought by the air convoy coming from Erusea a few days ago. The trick had been well made on both continents, with Erusea indeed launching some paratroopers with the initial convoy to fool any Osean spies, only for them to turn back under the cover of an arctic storm, and go back to the mainland, in a remote northern air base near the arctic sea.

Of course, one can say those marines were better here than at Casina, where only flames were waiting for them now. Even if they had only exchanged one circle of hell for another, and they didn't know if they had gotten down or up, in all honesty.

Because, only demons hungry for blood were waiting for them here. Actually, they weren't just waiting for them right over its burning ruins. But rushing toward those last reinforcements, which would only back up a graveyard.

"You're far too late, Aquilus." Pixy pointed out, as they were only a few kilometers away from having ERAAM range on the dozens of C-17 and C-130 they were escorting. Pixy did see a slight change in their radar signature, a broader one.

"You haven't left the area. We might be too late to save Bayes, but not too late to stop you!" Aquilus 3 retorted, from the cockpit of his Leasathian-made F-16XL, courtesy of the allied forces.

"Last time, I had to go due to my damaged plane. Whatever the damage I'll sustain today, you'll all go down by my hand." Iskanda snapped back, unhindered by her plane, this time. Besides, last time she killed three YF-23s with her gun alone, with her plane as airworthy as a brick.

"All those that thought for you have died since." Aquilus 1 tried to show his allies that those mercs were not invincible, though they had not died there, nor were they defeated by allied forces.

"Not all, Fatoans. And her allies are more powerful than you'll ever be, Osean slaves." Zveda added, readying to fight those delta-winged Falcons.

The unkind exchange kept going for a few dozen seconds, with F words or other insults fusing from the Osean and Belkan escorts. Though that exchange was broken by those they were protecting, the more vulnerable amongst the allied forces in the vicinity.

"Those South-Belkans might have a point. I doubt we'll make it further away than here." A C-130 copilot commented, while on his radar the effective range of the enemy's ERAAMs was closing on their trajectory. He knew this area was as much of a danger zone as Hellige Kolumne.

"We'll bail out and rejoin the survivors. Their evacuation point was not that far." The leader of the marine platoons onboard those transports stated, deciding what seemed to be the best for his men, realizing far too late that they had been played. All those young Osean eager to go to war had eagerly chosen their death and were too committed to their supposedly righteous war to even see it coming.

"They need time, Aquilus. Let's try to gain some with our lives." The F-14D squad leader reminded them of what this mission had become after they hastily fled Casina: a desperate exodus.

"Ja, come here so I can send all of you to hell. Don't you see the nice pentacle I turned your proud fortress into?" Iskanda chimed, while she was only two hundred meters from ERAAM lock.

"What?" Aquilus six let out a little surprised sound, when he looked in the direction of Bayes, and only saw huge pillars of smoke and flames.

"Feuer. Pixy let's kill Aquilus. Take care of the others for me." Iskanda separated her team, while they were releasing their ERAAMs on the closest transport craft. They had already begun to turn and run, but that wouldn't save them, or only mere seconds in their miserable lives.

"We'll be fine." Zeichner ensured her, having full confidence that their technical over-advancement could overcome greater numbers, like they had already done over Waldreich.

And all had not a bit of fear as they followed their volleys of missiles to engage the defensive squadrons from up close, while fired upon from SAAM range by all enemy fighters. The five Zluchs quickly separated, with their leader and her first wingmen taking the fight to Aquilus at medium altitude, while the three others were skimming above the ground toward the proper escort squadrons.

"Fire at them! Why can't you hit them?!" A transport pilot shouted at his protectors, who could have been firing blanks and getting the same results.

"They have active defense systems. And SAAMs cannot keep up with her crazy evasives she's pulling out." Aquilus 4 defended their meager results of their fire, which wasn't even delaying their enemies by more than a few seconds.

"They told us those crafts were top of the line, but they are only top of the line for Osean standards... not South Belkans." Aquilus seven showed a bit of doubt in their alliance they had concluded with this supposed super-power, trying to fire and aim a pair of SAAMs on the Griffon that should be an easier target with his lack of defensive armament, but the pair was evaded as the Griffon suddenly climb vertically. Then its pilot enacted a vertical U-turn, and as she fell toward the ground, thus evading a few more SAAMs from the other F-16XLs, before leveling close to the ground and keeping the attack faster than before.

"And that damn Melwaz is impervious to missile fire. Wait until he gets into gun range, they cannot intercept gun rounds." Their leader suggested, as most missiles, either theirs or XLAAs from the F-14Ds a bit further away, were ending up splashed in mid-air, creating more danger by the debris from the explosions than by the missiles themselves.

"Who knows? Maybe I can." Pixy said out of the blue, knowing very well that kinetic projectiles the size of bullets would require very advanced targeting systems if he wanted to counter them, but the effect of his little sentence was more of a psychological effect. If Aquilus believed their Belkan craft were undefeatable, then they might lose their fighting will, and fall even easier to their doom.

But they never had the time for one or the other side to fully prove their theories. For a simple reason: Pixy's EWs had better range than their F-16XL's gun. After a small dive which allowed him to evade some hastily launched missiles, he set his plane on a very small climb, to face the wider delta wings of his enemy, which were only an easier target for him. The two at the center fell to direct energy fire, with their engine spewing only flames, while their wings had fist-sized holes in them.

"Brake, brake formation!" one pilot screamed in fear, after getting far too seriously hit to be considered fightworthy, and not even airworthy anymore.

"Zu spät, Fatoans." Pixy commented as he went through the two flaming wrecks, but not without firing a missile on each of the two remaining fighters among the four attacking him.

Those last two saw their death coming a few dozen seconds later, after Pixy enacted a J-turn, and finished what his missiles had already started with a pair of HZMs, obliterating the two fighters, and reducing to smithereens the still burning flying wrecks.

Iskanda, on her side, had no difficulty taking out her target, even if they were two more than Pixy's. Swaying her Griffon from side to side, missiles and guns barely grazed her, and then she retaliated with both guns and HVRs, in a very risky maneuver. She flew in a horizontal spiral, pushing her engine to its peak while barrel-rolling continuously.

"Can't that merc fly straight? I can't get an angle on her!" Aquilus 3 complained, as his pair of missiles he just fired ended up being fired for nothing, as the Griffon that had been swirling clockwise inverted its motion and swirled counterclockwise.

"I won't let you get to me, morons. Go to hell!" Iskanda retaliated, while finally firing back, launching an HVR on one plane right in front of her, and tilting a bit his craft at opportune moments to align her gun on two other planes, snapshotting at the delta-winged falcons.

Then, she interrupted her horizontal spiral, only to zoom in at full speed, which her new more powerful engine was allowing her to. One F-16XL who was the further away from her tried to incline his craft to get a good angle, but before he gained enough of an angle, she was already falling on him from above gun blazing, reducing the Falcon to cinders, while also trailing some shots at the two other Aquilus planes, which were respectively Aquilus 1 and 3.

Aquilus 3 was chased down by Pixy, and would soon explode, as his afterburners had already exploded when the Melwaz fired at its side. It had been a child play for Pixy to get in his six after a small horizontal loop.

Aquilus 1 wasn't in a better position either, as the Griffon pursued him relentlessly. And the pilot was slowly losing its cool. Who wouldn't, when pursued by a crazy pilot who was straight out laughing at him, as his little attempts at breaking the pursuit were seen as laughable by his pursuers.

"Don't you see it? Osea tried to send me to hell, but their actions have just opened the gates of hell wide. Don't you see the nice pentacle that your fortress has become, the hell in which I'll soon drag you into?" Iskanda declared, while laughing madly, slowly firing at the F-16XL, picking the fighter bit by bit, like a cat playing with his not-yet-dead prey.

"Technically it's an eight-arm star, so that would be an octacle, not a pentacle." Pixy pointed out, while firing a single missile to the damaged Delta Falcon like it was nothing, leaving the pilot to its death while leaving this area to go help the three others slaughter some transport planes.

"Damn it Pixy, don't ruin the mood. Hell, and the Ripper rejected me, Fatoan. But you'll go down that well since you failed so miserably at protecting this fortress." Iskanda claimed her almost-immortality, or what she thought could be considered immortality.

At least, this caused Aquilus to shut his mouth, he who had been ranting as he tried to evade, was now silent. Hell was waiting for him. The predator pursuing him had stopped playing with its prey. Using his rearview mirror, he saw the Griffon going supersonic as the air dissipated around him, and flew below him at an amazing speed, far outclassing his Delta Falcon.

The Griffon's trajectory didn't stay straight for long, quickly curving, yet without leaving the supersonic range. The amount of punishment this pilot could endure impressed him, as he stayed motionless, having understood his fate. That kind of pilot was the kind of person that could make and unmake countries and empires. He was just a disillusioned man that had dreams and was convinced by little men that he could realize them by fighting against such enemies.

It was with this last thought, the thought of having only been a pawn in someone's else game, that he found some tranquility as the death come closer under the form of a pair of HVRs launched directly at his cockpit from up close, as the Griffon had finished his half loop at high speed and was now falling on him like a bird of prey. They broke through the canopy and reduced both pilot and plane to burning crips.

"Nice showdown, leader." Pixy praised his sister-in-arms, as she leveled near him after her high-speed dive.

"You were not bad either. Let's join the others, they might have left a few transports to finish for us as Nachspeise. (dessert)" Iskanda replied, and the both rushed to where the three other Melwaz had fought the escorts and already disposed of it.

On their way, they saw some crashed transport planes, or rather their remains, with white dots on the ground where the enemy soldiers had succeeded in bailing out, high-lighted by the moon which had replaced the sun in this clear night sky. There were quite a lot of those white dots, so these Osean marines might have gotten lucky.

There wasn't much left to deal with, in all honesty. As Aquilus was dealt with quickly, their foes had also not lasted that much.

They had flown under Aquilus' flight while they were focused on their leader and Pixy, and from there had kept their course while dismissing the fire of the enemy fighters with ease. Evading wasn't necessary, or only the debris of what they intercepted. The F-14Ds were the tougher opponents, as they could send more XLAAs per volleys than the Hornet and Tornado could. A thing bothered the three South Belkans: these F-14Ds had an Osean blue-grey camouflage, and the Tornado Gr4s a brown two-tone camouflage. This meant that Osea and the other superpowers were not afraid to send their forces deep in Belkan-controlled territory. If Belka had yielded to this will, then they were more and more of a puppet state to them, like current Fato was a puppet of the Rald.

"So, this only means one thing. Rald is losing more than they can produce." Zeichner analyzed, while intercepting a handful of SAAMs, and evading a volley of XLAAs by a small dive.

"Whatever their nationality, the issue will always be the same. Their death, and our victory." Zveda countered, seeing no disparity between Ralders and allied forces.

"We are near HZM range. Just pairs should be enough to clear the forces enough." Cipher indicated, as both formations were coming closer and closer, and with the HZM having an XMAA-like range.

"Be ready for anything." The Osean leader facing them ordered, though he knew what he needed to be ready for: death.

The first exchange of fire between the twenty-four planes of the "unholy" alliance and the three Melwaz began. The tactic of their enemy was just basic overwhelming fire. But with their EWs more efficient than a dozen CIWS, their fire had limited effect, if not any. On the other hand, the six HZM that left the pylons of the Melwaz and went right through the enemy formation were much more devastating.

The devastation came five seconds later, when their hypersthene warheads exploded, engulfing a few fighters each in balls of bright orange flames. And even those outside the flames could still feel the shockwave hundreds of meters away, and suffered internal components, or internal bleeding for the pilot.

"I can't control my wings! The actuators just ruptured." An F-14D pilot shouted, while only his left wing had extended while he was trying from a flat spin induced by the blast. He just spiraled on his yaw axis until he hit the ground, while all formation broke apart, and many other planes were shot down, with their geometric wings being quite vulnerable to such shockwaves.

"Damn, more than half of us are down. Fire back, damn it!" An F-18 pilot added over the voice of panicked pilots who were shot down quickly as they were a bit too focused on the explosion, and with most of them having broken formation when all hell broke loose a few seconds ago.

"Where are those damn South Belkans? We need to regroup and resist!" One Yukte pilot that had managed to recover from the shockwaves in his Tornado tried to dominate the erratic chatting, and impulse some motivations in their squadrons once more.

"Where are they?" he repeated, trying to find them on his radar or in his visual range, but his radar had taken some impacts, and his IR sensors were pretty much useless after the explosion that had saturated them.

"Just right below you" Cipher announced, as he had enacted a downward U-turn after crossing the line of allied fighters, and this had brought him right under their new de-facto leader.

A little measure of Schräge Musik later, and the Tornado was split in half, with a pair of missiles striking at another Tornado right next to him, a third one was taken down as Cipher leveled above him, and tilting his nose down, fire his EW on the back of the canopy, blowing it up as well as the pilot inside of it. The fourth, the last one put up a bit more of a fight. He went head-on, but made sure he was far above him, maybe trying to get outside of the arc of fire of the Melwaz' weaponry.

"Nice try." Cipher recognized that this Yukte, had he received some top fighter, such a Su-37, could have been a great opponent.

Because, in the following second, the Tornado pilot saw the Melwaz climb on a very steep angle, then rotating on itself while climbing, and tilting its nose toward him. His fighter was turned into a torch by the powerful armament of the forward-swept wing fighter, and he could barely bail out before the flame reached him.

Two surviving F-14Ds, albeit two damaged ones, were pursuing his sister-in-arm. They were pursuing her after she opened fire on their little group of five Tomcats in an arrow-like formation, eliminating the two at the center with precise EW fire, even managing to fire at the one at the back as she flew between the two burning craft, and fire a missile on the ones at the outside of their formation, damaging their engine enough to cause them to shut one down. And let's say that a Super Tomcat with only one engine was far slower than a Melwaz.

"I don't think the engine will allow us to reach this fighter." One copilot said, which the pilot acknowledged, but answered nevertheless:

"We've got to try, or all those marines up there are dead, dead you understand?" He said with a panicked voice, knowing his sacrifices to be irrelevant in the great scheme of things, as the Melwaz evaded two pairs of XLAAs.

"You're already dead, you know?" Zveda let out, out of pure sarcasm as she pulled up two J-turns in quick succession, firing an HZM between the two, as she faced her pursuers for an instant.

They try to fly away from their impending death, but their engines that had already been pushed to their peaks by this forced pursuit when they should have retreated let them down. After all, flying with one engine was only for emergency situations, and only to go back to base, not to chase supersonic jets.

Two more, Zveda numbered, while she rushed toward the fleeing transports. Numbering wasn't that useful now. Their killcount would go well above the hundreds at the end of this war, if they lived to tell the tale.

The hornets which Zeichner engaged were not much of a threat, with only four of them having survived the first onslaught. He fired a pair of missiles head-on as he shortened the distance, while evading with ease their own missile. His target caught fire as the missiles slammed into its air intake and was still burning as the Melwaz zoomed in above the three other hornets, who were trying to fire their SAAMs, but the Melwaz was too mobile for those to get good locks.

"I've seen hornets on the ground that were more threatening than you are." Zeichner mocked them, while he kept climbing.

"Let's see if you'll still talk when we'll have stung you with bullets!" One Osean pilot retorted harshly and pitched up to follow the Melwaz in his climb, imitated in his action by his last two squadmates.

"You're just mere flies. Hornets and Wasps have more elegance in their flight style." Zeichner commented, while they were trying to catch up with him, but couldn't. The hornet wasn't known for its speed, after all.

"Just stay still while we sting you!" One other Hornet pilot said, aiming a SAAM at the ADFX-02, but failing to get a hit, as the ADFX-02 pivoted quickly on his axes, climbing sideways.

Any other plane would have stalled and fallen, but the ADFX family were meant to fly by all weathers, and at nearly impossible angles of attack. As such, pitching down at this moment did not cause many issues. It only caused some for the hornets, who could not adapt to this change of situation.

"Let's swat those flies." Zeichner stated with a more humoristic tone, firing an HZM at their little group.

"Run for your lives!" One last Osean pilot screamed, while leveling and trying to get out of the blast radius of the HZM.

The two others were either less pragmatic or more patriotic, as they chose to fly toward death. Or maybe they knew that if they flew toward it, the proximity sensor of the enemy weapon would be triggered earlier and give one chance to the last one to run.

Though he didn't run for long, as Günthar adjusted his aircraft's nose on him and fired his EWs at the back of the plane from above while he was still descending, this resulted in the hornet's tail being torn off in a massive explosion. A small cockpit portion was all that remained from the craft, from which the pilots spent no time bailing out, but before the co-pilot ejected, an ERAAM reduced the aircraft part and the man caught inside it to cinders.

"Trying to steal my kills, leader?" Zluchs 5 said, while rejoining with Iskanda and Larry, which had just vanquished their foes in less than a minute tops.

"Just finishing a dead prey, nothing more." Iskanda replied, almost bothered that the pilot survived. That person would have a long ride from here to Osea, if he even made it.

"Let's finish those transport planes, then. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel." Pixy chimed; a bit relaxed to have those somewhat harder opponents out of the picture. Had they received the last fifth gen, they would have been a threat, he acknowledged.

"I don't think that is a really good way of fishing, but whatever... Let's add some nails to those flying coffins." Iskanda stated what their next objective would be: the eradication of all Osean marines they had deployed in Fato.

"Zveda to leader, having opened fire, though some lead transport planes have drop some chutes here and there." Her wingman transmitted what she just witnessed, with her and Cipher's Melwaz being the first to re-engage these targets.

"If they want to have a walk from here to Oured, they're free. Zluchs to Sword of Kings, can you try to track any convoy in the area? Look for hidden roads, or train tunnels." Iskanda reacted to this small change of tactics from the Osean. A significant number had already survived the collapse of the fortress and escaped on another way of transportation that she hadn't noticed back then, focused on her chopper slaughter. She didn't want them to regroup and roam freely. That's why she went full ramjet toward the transport aircraft after firing one ERAAM, with Pixy's and the Drawer's fire added to hers.

"Our escort is down. We're going down. Jump, all of you!" Was a message that they would hear a lot in the next minute or so, as they cleared the last of the transport. Already twenty of them had went down with their two volleys of long-range missiles, and by the time they went into close range, those messages would be more hectic and erratic, showing the stress of the pilots, as they could only realize the uselessness of the flares against HZM and EWs from Zluchs 3 and 4, that reached this range the firsts.

"All of them are on us. Break the formation in all directions. We are not far away from the evac..." One of the pilots said, with his flares popping out of his C-17's tail to fool the fire of the enemy leader. It had only worked very little, with an HVR colliding with some flares and exploding a bit before the plane itself.

But the survival of the plane met its end when the Griffon climbed over him, before inverting and firing a pair of HGMs in this position, aiming for the wing root of the plane. The theoretically strongest part of the airplane didn't offer much resistance to Hypersthene, which resulted in the transport plane becoming a "No wing".

"I don't want a transport plane to compete with me." Pixy stated as he saw this and finished the "No wing" transport with a pair of missiles, which turned to smithereens the main body that was gliding into the air out of control.

"Don't worry Solo Wing, no transport craft can be a solo wing and fly to tell the tale. They lack your and your aircraft's finesse." Zeichner tried to cheer up the more experienced merc as he snapped the wing of his target with a pair of missiles, then flew around his stricken target, bypassing it by the now wingless side, and turned toward it, firing his EWs on all its length.

The massive burning object illuminated the clear night as it crashed amongst the trees of the surrounding forests. Between all those crashes and the massive fire of Casina, the firefighters of Fato wouldn't have an easy night, or at least the men of the Pendragon Projekt seemed hell-bent on giving them hell.

This last fight was even shorter than the prior dogfight against their escort. Here, the only risk was to hit debris of transport planes when they fly close to them to use their missiles, or her HVR for Iskanda's case. And it was with those that she downed the last target, firing on the front of the enemy plane at a certain range, then another closer, and the second rocket went through the gaping hole she had turned the cockpit into. The explosion, or more accurately, implosion, tore the aircraft apart like the first was made of wood and canvas, obliterating the men inside in the process.

In the end, few Oseans escape the slaughter, as jumping in an area where planes were falling over was not a great guarantee of survival. A few dozen would actually join the evacuation point, while the more daring tried to give them some time, firing the few stingers some managed to catch before jumping off the burning transport planes.

"They have some guts to attack us with these primitive weapons." Zveda conceded, as she had to evade a close one by diving suddenly, skimming over the tree limit, with the missile flying above her head. But she had clearly seen where it had been fired from. And no lock was needed to line up her EW on this point. She didn't see any great explosion thereafter, but no more missiles came from this point. The Osean soldier had surely been killed in some horrible manner by her death ray.

"Well, if their fighters had the same kind of determination, they might amount to something." Iskanda had to agree that those outnumbered soldiers mounting a last-ditch defense against planes was a bit of bravery, or rather temerity.

"I don't think they would be much of a threat to you, leader." Cipher pointed out, while the Griffon had just avoided two SAM crossing on her trajectory by doing a looping, and then he saw her fire an HVR on each side as she yawed her craft during her looping.

"I never said they would be a threat." She replied absent-mindedly while gunning at some more soldiers on the ground, which had just fired three SAMs at Pixy, who had intercepted it. "They will just make me less bored than I am right now, and that would be a great thing."

"Sword to Zluchs, we have almost found their evac point. But we've also got some planes incoming from the direction of Ustio, could you investigate?" Tauberg announced while they were finishing the clearing of those clearings, with most marines that had tried to take a defensive or offensive stance having been blown alive by the EWs, or gun without mercy by the leader.

"Ver, regroup on me, squad. We have an unknown to track." Iskanda ordered, as she avoided a last missile, and after a last head-to-tail maneuver, silenced the Osean resistance on the ground as she snapshotted the vicinity of the SAM site. She could have dropped her two last FAEBs at some point, but against such ants, it would have been an overkill.

"Ver, ready to investigate and intercept." Her four wingmen said, and quickly formed around her, with Pixy and Zeichner at her left, and the two Erbe at her right.

There was nothing that could now improve the situation for the few Osean marines, dispersed on the ground, or cowering in fear in their means of evacuation. There were still many things that could worsen their fate, though. And unfortunately for them, karma had apparently decided to be one hell of a bastard today.

Ellya Viaduct, Fatoan-Wieldvakian border, 24/06/1995, 21:55, Weather: small fog banks.

While the remnants of the Osean marines were running after getting slaughtered by the Zluchs, another slaughter of allied ground and air forces was about to begin. A great armored division encompassing tanks, self-propelled artillery-units, AA guns, armored troops carrier and lighter trucks for logistics were progressing on the Ellya Viaduct, a long piece of architecture stretching for more than two kilometers on the border between Fato and Wieldvakia. They weren't alone in there, they had the support of four AC-130s of Osean facture, as well as MiG-29Ks, Su-33s and Typhoons from Yuktobania. There were ten fighters of each type, with the MiGs painted in light brown camo, the Sea Flanker having a dark green and brown camo with black radome, and the Typhoon with a very pale camo, very noticeable under the moonlight.

Until then they had progressed well, blowing up the highway railings and barrier that the few Wieldvakian border troops and autoroute worker had tried to set up as a barricade, from where they fire a few anti-tanks rockets before the high caliber explosive shells of the AC-130 reduce their barrier to smithereens. A few of those Wieldvakian fighters retreated using light cars that would not blow up on the heavy anti-tank mines some other had laid while they defended for some time. On the other hand, the bit of fog that was floating above these swampy areas was not even a nuisance as long as they would be on this bridge that had been built over said swampy areas to allow the circulation of heavy vehicles such as trucks, or in today's case tanks and other armored units.

Defusing the mines proved to be a very lengthy job for the Oseans-affiliated troops, as they didn't want the bridge to collapse if one exploded, but the small number of the explosive charges allowed them to bypass this obstacle in the end. There were a few more tank traps and even some last-minute improvised explosives devices that incapacitate one or two vehicles, but the whole column was impossible to stop. Also, the local forces lacked explosives powerful enough to seriously damage the bridge.

That's why they had called for the only one's brave enough to face Osea on this continent right now: South Belka. And while CAS or SEADS was not their preferred job, Schwarze team was never one to back down from a fight, and rushed from Casina Airport as fast as their top-of-the-line MiG-31X/Vs allowed them to

"Oh Cyka, fighters inbound. fast ones." The Yukte An-50 monitoring the area quickly noticed, identifying the bogies as hostile immediately. They could only be hostiles.

"Don't worry, comrade. your death will be quick enough." The vulture announced with a thick Yukte accent, while releasing a pair of ERAAMs at the enemy craft, followed by his brother-in-arms which targeted the enemy fighters and support craft.

"Schwarze 4, firing missile." was one of the many messages that were sent, as the two groups of fighters exchanged their missiles.

Though, the extra range of Schwarze meant that they were outclassing even the XLAAs of the Typhoons, and they were far too mobile for the SAAMs of the Fulcrums to get a good lock on them. And so, while they were rushing toward the ground forces advancing slowly on a long line on the 4 lanes of the bridge, most of them were untouched by the enemy fire.

"This is combat engineer Guderski callsign Postmen to the CSB forces in the Area. Focus is needed on the self-propelled artillery pieces. If they reach just the two thirds of the bridge, they'll be in range to shell our oil fields that have ceased to provide them oil." A Wieldvakian officer spoke from some unknown location to both allied and CSB forces, with his voice heavily cut by statics and other radio anomalies.

"Vulture to Postmen, setting artillery pieces as priority targets." Zubov answered, while reviewing on his radar the numerous artillery pieces that were escorted by tanks and anti-air artillery.

"We can do one run on them, and then we'll have to split up to face those fighters." Schwarze 4 pointed out, while they were already in range for their HGMs, and were carefully locking the many targets in order not to waste any ammo. As such, they only launched pairs instead of whole volleys, another measure to keep the most of their ammo.

"Strategy will be volley fire, then vier Feuerlinie. (Four lines of fire)" Zubov ordered, while he was firing his own missiles at the slightly less armored artillery pieces.

"Ver." His wingmen replied, while firing their own. A few missiles began to trail them, but some SAAMs didn't deter them away from their attack.

"We have to get closer if we want to have a chance to succeed in this retaliation operation." A Yukte pilot observed, while most of their long-range fire was shot for nothing.

"Then go faster, we've incoming fire. Use the phalanx tanks!" One tank crewman asked for, with the fast-firing guns spraying tracers into the sky the next second.

"One is splashed." a gun operator reported, when a missile was intercepted and detonated a few meters away from the bridge, still doing damage due to its cloud of shrapnels and the shockwave, but less than if it hit a vehicle.

Though, it was the only successful counterfire from the Phalanxes, and the next second, clouds of fire surrounded the armored vehicles, while the MiG-31 were enacting the "vier Feuerlinie" strategy.

Getting a bit away from the damaged vehicles, the eight fighters separated into two groups of four that flew on each side of the bridge, and then each fighter turned at a point to begin a strafing run on the enemy targets, with the ones further away from the concrete structure turning first, and the ones closest turning the last, resulting in 4 strafing lines. There, missiles, and guns were fired by two fighters coming from both sides by those fighters rushing over them, resulting in massive casualties for the Fatoan armored division.

Also, the relatively small size of the bridge meant that parts of the casualties were caused by the vehicle falling from the bridge, with its railings not meant to bear the weight of MBT, rather small trucks.

The Yukte fighters that had lost more than one third of their total number by the long-range fire of their opponents were greeted by a field of damaged and destroyed vehicles, of burning wrecks and exploded barrels.

"Damn, and I thought vultures only fed on dead bodies." A Typhoon pilot commented about the damage the Fatoan armored corps just suffered.

"Let's avenge them, then." A sea fulcrum pilot said, while locking on the Vulture itself with his SAAMs.

"All planes, attack at once. With all of us together, we can fight this doom!" Their squadron leader tried to boost their morale, in spite of their losses they suffered and the losses they couldn't prevent.

"You'll only meet your doom." Their enemy replied with a harsh voice, before giving his orders:

"3 and 4, attack those gunships from up close, meanwhile we'll cover you."

"Roger, we should be able to exploit their limited arc of fire from up close" Harald acknowledged, before diving and enacting a Split-S, followed by the number 4.

"Rhino leader to escort, hurry. We have no hope of standing our ground against such firepower." The leader of the AC-130 squadron asked, with some fear in his voice. He had faith in the Osean machinery he was flying in, but not to such a level that it would negate the imminent danger of a pair of CSB enhanced fighters.

"We'll do our best to help you, Rhino." The Yukte leader replied, although with not much hope of success on his side. At least he had seen one ERAAM getting downed by the light machine guns of twenty and forty millimeters on the gunships.

"Aren't we outnumbering them almost 3 to one?" A Yukte Su-27 pilot said, filled with overconfidence due to the relatively low losses the squadron he was part of had seen so far.

"Don't be foolish, Kamerad. Zahlen allein bedeuten nichts. (numbers alone mean nothing)" Karkov retorted to those who could've been his brother-in-arms, putting a heavy load of condescension on the word "Kamerad", which he only hated for now.

"Still, don't go alone against them." Zubov suggested to his wingmen which approved immediately, and the next second his number two set himself on a trajectory close to his own. Their current flight path would send them right on the seven su-27, while the number 4 and 5 would go against the Typhoons and the last two against the Sea Fulcrums, with the enemy groups only made up of five fighters.

"All Yukte fighters, open fire! sink them under our mass." A typhoon pilot in his pale camo suggested, giving in to fear and this leading him to choose what was easy, just firing XLAAs without much attention.

Only a few of the Schwarze squad members manage to fire one ERAAMs or two before having to dive due to the overwhelming barrage of enemy medium and long-range missiles that couldn't be simply avoided by a barrel-roll. It was enough to cause some disarray in the enemy ranks, whose goal were mainly to rush to the rescue of the Osean gunships. They were only comforted by the sight of small, distant explosions, as their guns were used successfully as active defense systems.

They didn't lose too much time diving to get close range missiles on the slightly less mobile Foxhounds. Though, the advancement they had received since the first time they landed in the lair of the Project Pendragon were going to make this battle much harder than what the Osean Shadow Group faced over B7R, and those were slaughtered to the last men.

"I can't land a hit on those damn vultures." One Typhoon pilot angered itself, as the fighters in red and black were toying with their fire, yawing around his axis of fire.

"And I thought vultures weren't agile." a fellow Sea Fulcrum pilot ranted, fed up by their inability to even land hits with either gun fire or missiles on those planes that seemed to have turned into eels that were more slippery than the namesake water snake.

This specific pilot was desperately trying to get his missiles on them, pitching down to cruise their trajectory, after seeing that their SAAMs trackers couldn't keep up with the surprisingly agile Foxhounds. These two were twisting, crisscrossing each other's path as they went closer to their line of fire, which for now seemed to be harmless.

"Let's do some barrel-roll." Schwarze 7 announced, and with these words him and the number eight barrel-rolled outward of their enemies' field of fire, before firing a pair on missile on the MiG-29K outside of the enemy formation, which had bled a bit too much speed trying to get a perfect sight on their foes, and thus found themselves unable to evade their fire.

"Two planes are down! Break up formation and regain energy!" The lead craft of the brown colored craft signaled, before entering into a steeper dive to recover the lost energy and evade the enemy fire. But, unfortunately for him, the hunter killers already had a plan for him.

"Crossfire should work on those Fulcrums." Schwarze eight suggested, and both him and the other Foxhound curved their bath while accelerating gun blazing toward the three last Fulcrums that were desperately trying to dive away from their enemies.

The faster Foxhounds caught up on the slowed Fulcrums, curving their path so that they would cross on the enemy leader's. The first outer two fell to individual gun fire, while the one in the center was the last to die, falling to their converging crossfire that riddled both the plane and its occupant with bullets, and it burned down before it would impact the ground.

While they were leveling, they saw that other enemy groups had been taken out with a pretty high success rate.

The number 5 and six resorted to the same type of initial maneuver, but instead of just using simple barrel-rolls once they were out of their direct line of fire, they went for something riskier, and a bit harder and load-factor intensive on their planes and themselves.

"Feuerlinie (line of fire)." Was the brief order Schwarze 5 transmitted to the number six, while they were flying on the flanks of the enemy formation.

"Ver." He replied with the same briefness, rotating his craft inward before he pulled the stick hard and fast, to drastically change his plane's position.

Both of them turn inward, aligning their path for a glimpse on an axis perpendicular to the typhoons, this allowing them to attack the EF-2000 from their three and nine hours.

"Just run for the AC-130's, they need support." One Typhoon pilot said, as he saw the Foxhounds managing to break their rotating moment and soaring at high speed toward them.

"I'll try. Thanks for your support." Their leader replied, leaving his wingmen to an uncertain fate, or rather an obvious one: death.

"Not support. Sacrifice is the word you're looking for." Schwarze five harshly corrected the Yukte that was fleeing them for nothing, as he wouldn't do anything that would save those Gunships.

The next second, they were in the gun range of the typhoons that had already taken some shrapnels as they fired on this perpendicular line. And while some bullets grazed their fuselage, their accurate gun burst blew the delta-winged fighters apart.

Then they pushed their afterburners to their peaks, and caught with the lead typhoon in no time, long before he could threaten their numbers three and fours, firing a total of three missiles on their last target, splintering him in a thousand metallic pieces. They were pretty sure that the unlucky escaper's face had become paler than his arctic camo, as they heard him scream for help, and even, mercy. That only made them laugh at him, as they fired their last salvos on him.

All but their most daring pilots had dived before the enemy fire. But Zubov and Karkov did not. They just kept flying, with their plane set to induce some angle of attack oscillations, although with their fast fighters the trajectory oscillation had a shorter period but for a few dozen meters of oscillation, making their planes go each time very close to the stall point, and thus flying like this for an extended period of time very risky, but this also made it very hard for the enemy to fire at them.

"Can't they fly straight?" One Su-27 pilot said, as their erratic flightpath had already made him waste three missiles.

"If they were fellow Yuktes I'd say they drank too much vodka." Another joked about their strange flying, even if the time wasn't up to jokes, with their losses mounting on all sides, and their mission being already a failure, if one were to look at the losses the armored Fatoan column had already suffered.

Schwarze one and two almost succeeded in closing on the enemy formation without being hit. However, when facing seven Flankers head-on, one could expect to take some damage. It was minor damage, only on the tips of their wings, or small holes in their rudders. On the contrary, the damage they inflicted through their own fire couldn't be considered to be minor. Three amongst their ranks had to bail out, crippled by precise head-on fire near their front air intake. Their little advantage in this engagement had been a trade off from being slowed down by those AoA oscillations, allowing the MiG-31X/V to fire more than what their enemy dished out at them

When they got in gun range, they shifted their strategy, having communicated by hand gestures as their planes were really close from one another, and also not to inform their enemy of their doings. Zubov kept flying straight, firing all he had on the fighter that had the unluckiness of crossing his path, while Karkov had done a great horizontal half-loop to get on his enemies' three hours, gunning their side while his commander gunned them from the front.

However, as he soared at great speed gun blazing through the enemy formation, a late Flanker that had escaped his wrath and had almost succeeded in evading his leader's fire by climbing steeply suddenly levelled on the MiG flying sideways, and did a number on his engine, surprising a bit the South Belkan pilot who let out a scream.

"I got you! I'll get one Vulture today!" The Yukte exalted, already rejoiced of his still insecure kill, turning very sharply to follow the MiG that hadn't lost much speed despite having lost his afterburners.

"No, you." Schwarze 1 retorted, having climbed just after his now damaged wingmen freed his line of sight.

And it wasn't long before a missile impacted the last Sukhoi from below, critically compromising his fighter and depriving him of seeing a man of the Vulture go down by his actions. It made his craft enter a flat spin, then a snapshot from the lead black and red Foxhound achieved to turn his plane into a ball of fire.

Yet, even if he survived, he would have only seen the MiG-31X/V recover, albeit with great difficulty, but recover nevertheless, and that former Yukte pilot would have met his former potential compatriot with a hefty gift of penetrating bullets. So, he wouldn't have any tale to tell, and wouldn't have lived longer than he fared against their leader Schwarze 1.

Meanwhile, Schwarze 3 and 4 had been attacking the AC-130s. They had seen their resolve get a bit stronger as they managed to splash some ERAAMs fired on to them by the pair of MiGs on the group of four gunships.

But to intercept this weaponry, they had to put their craft in a strange Cobra-like position, with their gun pointing on a higher axis than usual. They kept this posture, climbing with a very steep angle, as they thought they could retaliate against the fighters as well after trashing their long-range fire.

"Fire as soon as they are in range. Don't save ammo." Their commander ordered, less focused on ammo than his life. What was the point of keeping it so more would explode if they were critically hit, he asked himself, while the pair of black and red Foxhounds were closing in.

"Locking the mortar won't be easy on those fighters." one of the weapon operators commented, not in an easy position himself, as they had to strap themselves to their seat not to fall due to their aircraft's higher-than-usual inclination.

"But a 105 shell would definitively put a dent on those MIGs" Another weapon operator replied, trying to get the shell on a path that would hit the fighters attacking them.

Though, only the fire of their light and medium machine guns grazed the two fighters as they zoomed in very high to get out of their firing arcs, almost laughing when they saw the heavy cannons fire, only to have the shell lobbed down by gravity, and actually impact the bridge as they hit the ground.

"Time to cut the wings of those big Hähn." Schwarze 4 announced, as they leveled around five hundred meters above the AC-130s.

"Well, beggars can't be choosers, but at least we ain't the ones who'll beg for our life here." Schwarze 3 added on a more disinterested tone, seeing not much worth in taking down those defenseless big birds.

"Let's cut them down!" He said as he dived toward them, with his finger ready to press the release button for the HGMs.

The two MiGs fell perfectly on the still climbing AC-130s, who couldn't move much in such a risky position. They chose live or die with this strategy. And now they knew what the result would be. Death was waiting for them, as four heavy missiles fell from the sky, directed at their high wing-roots.

What followed were screams of terror, as the powerful HGMs ripped one of their wings. Pixy wasn't going to have any concurrency from those Solo-winged AC-130s, as none of them were capable of maintaining their stability, due to the relatively heavy load of shells they were carrying. Two of them collided in mid-air, leaving no hope for their operators. One was cut in half by the aerodynamic forces as they were merciless on such a damaged plane. Some crewmen tried to jump, but had their chutes set on fire by burning debris and didn't outlive the ones that chose to stay in the falling wreckage.

The last just impacted the swamp not that far from the bridge, with the light of the explosion slightly reduced by the fog banks covering the area.

"Schwarze 1 to eight, sitrep." Zubov ordered, as he just joined with his heavily damaged wingman, and more of those that were tasked to hunt down the enemy escort were joining as well.

"The big birds are trash. No survivors on their part." Schwarze three reported, heading back toward the bridge where the remaining armored vehicles were trying to mount a last-ditch defense.

"Gut. Pieces of trash belong with the trash." Schwarze five expressed his satisfaction with the operation for now, that had seen their enemy met pure and simple annihilation.

"Recht. Postmen, do you have some point we could target to cripple the bridge without using too much ammo? I mean, there are no cables we could cut." Zubov inquired, as some missiles and a bit of anti-air fire was seen coming from the Fatoan armored corp.

"Well, the most fragile point would be the keystones of the bridge, at the center of the arcs between two pillars. That should collapse enough of the bridge's deck to make the job of the cleansing squadron a whole lot easier." The combat engineer informed them, as he was in front of an interactive map of the bridge in the other highway barrier at the end, where the road was leaving the bridge at the limit of the swamp. Usually, this map showed traffic jams using detectors on the railings, but they were good to localize the progression of an armored column on it as well.

"Gut. Tauberg, set us points for the joint strikes, bitte." Zubov transmitted the new data to their HQ.

"Daten wurden empfangen. Zeigen Schwachpunkten. (Data received, showing weak point)" Was all that their operators replied, and soon the targets were added to their HUDs, as a lockable point.

"Verstanden, Leute?" (Understood, people) Zubov asked by pure verification, knowing his men to be intelligent enough to know what portion they would have to fire on now, with the great square fairly visible in their HUD, with the diagonal lines of said square crossing at the point needing to be destroyed.

"Ver, leader." His squadron unanimously replied, and all began to pitch downward to align their fire with the targeted area.

The armored forces hadn't spread out too much since their first attack that slaughtered the big self-propelled artillery pieces that had lighter armor than the dedicated tanks. That was all they had left, Tanks and APCs, and very few AA artillery. To mitigate this, they resort to using their anti-chopper stingers some APCs have onboard, with the soldier spreading fast on the bridge to have multiple SAM sites, if such things could be considered to be proper SAM sites.

The target of the Schwarze team would only be three keystones, as their enemies were spread out over only three arches, with little to no forces outside of those areas. What would be left would be picked by whatever forces the Wieldvakian had planned to send there. Though, as they approached it, they realized that without proper anti-air guns, even piston-propelled biplanes could destroy some tanks if outfitted with a good variety of bombs.

"3 and 4, you've got the western most point, me, 2 and 5 on the middle one, and 6 zu 8 on the easternmost section." Zubov shared the work, as they began their approach lower than the bridge, going through some fog banks on their way toward the concrete structure.

"Roger, time to see if cowards swim well once they begin flooding from bullet holes." Schwarze six said, as he began to lock on the specific point.

"Try to concentrate your fire the most, we are needed somewhere else, so don't waste your ammo." Karkov reminded the others, as he got into locking range for his HGMs. They had already used a volley at the Airport and at the beginning, so he only prepared two to fire. Six of them would be enough to blow up some concrete structure.

"Fighters are coming for a final strike! Fire the stingers!" An officer shouted on his radio, but what was answered wasn't good news to him.

"Sir, they are below the bridge level, and the railings are two meters high. And we can't fire through them." A soldier operating one said, as he was desperately trying to fire one through the small gaps of the railing, which weren't large enough to fire his stinger at the right angle.

"Just fire one to get a hole and fire the others through the hole. Do you have a black hole instead of a brain, or what?" The officer shouted once more, and the next second, the fighter saw small explosions on the bridge, and pieces of railing fell from there.

And the next seconds, a rocket barrage was in full course, but it was far too late. They had wasted precious seconds, and in those precious seconds, the HGMs had already left their pilons, set on a collision course with the keystone areas. Also, it was very easy for the fighters to send back a single missile at the stinger operators since they knew where they were fired from.

"Impact in 5! Grab onto something, quick!" Was the kind of message that filled the waves for some time before the impact, with soldiers ceasing to fire to run. Some even jumped from the bridge, where they had destroyed the railings.

The pilots of the black and red aircrafts actually had a pretty good view of what was happening, as they had accelerated to go faster than their own HGMs, before silencing a few Stingers servants. The number 3 and 4 had come from the north, while the six others attacked the two other parts came from the south. Then, they did a small U-turn over the bridge, and all rejoined as they flew to the North-West, with some rolling their plane partially to see the results of the impact.

They had never seen earthquakes, or some specific wings make bridges oscillate. This is what happened here too, but the terrific explosion of the more than twenty hypersthene-primed warheads were the cause, not natural disaster. And the major difference with those natural disasters was the speed of destruction of the structure, as in such occurrences, the energy was smaller, then accumulated and released. The energy of those explosions was way too much for their iron-reinforced concrete keystones, that were pulverized, before the bridge deck oscillated once or twice on a North-South axis.

Then all collapsed, with more explosions, from the vehicle catching fire, or some misfired ammo. Only small portions were left of the third arcs that were now gone to dust, or just deformed metallic parts, on which some very unlucky soldiers were impaled as they fell through the destroyed bridge. The luckiest were stuck on the top of the pillars, the only thing that was left between the intact portion of the bridge.

"Postmen to Vulture, we felt the turmoil even here, two kilometers away from their position. Whatever should be left, we can contain them until the cleansing squad is available." The Wieldvakian commanding the little team on the ground confirmed that this operation was a success for now.

"Good to hear that, Postmen. Our unit is in need of your help for a sea rescue operation." The Wieldvakian that contacted them sooner over Casina, Joseph Kepinski, called them once more, as more and more allied reinforcements were showing up. Of course, not his allies, but they were called allied forces after all.

"We do have one damaged plane, so we might not be there as fast as we could." Zubov pointed out, as his number two had had some damage on his afterburners, and if it could supercruise, would not be as fast as the others. And in those dire times, it was not good to be left alone anywhere.

"That's understandable. Right now, we're only dealing with standard hornets and Tornadoes. Nothing we can't hold our ground against." Kepinski replied, a bit busy with a pair of Gr4s that were trying to use their SAAMs against him.

"According to Kepinski's data, your ETA and the allied reinforcement ETA are quite close. But at reduced speed, Kepinski'll have to hold for ten minutes." Tauberg informed them that this delay might have a cost, and not just in time, but in lives as well.

"And if we go very high?" Zubov suggested, knowing they would go a bit faster if they flew in the stratosphere.

"Run a pressure check on your craft, Schwarze 2. Jetzt. (now)" Their operator asked, as he didn't want a pilot to die from hypoxia before he could notice it.

"Ver." Karkov indicated, while they were on a small climb, that would get them to around four thousand meters, a still breathable height for pilots with good training.

"So, what's the results?" The main interested asked, with here the main interested being Kepinski, who needed to know if they would be overwhelmed or not, as he had managed to force the Gr4s to come closer, before pitching up his plane suddenly, and level on their tail as they extended their geometric wings to decrease their speed, and he unleashed a deadly spray of 30mm shell, snapping both planes' wings.

"Well, I have nothing wrong on that side. I might have a bit less power to run the OBOGS, but I won't have hypoxia. It'll be just a trail in some very high-mountains." Schwarze 2 indicated, as his plane computer was displaying him. Pressure ok, but less power meant less oxygen at some point.

"We'll fly at 12 kms, that should enable us to fly fast enough without risking your health too much." Zubov decided, and all of them set up to the last layer of atmosphere right below the stratosphere.

"Also, where are all those planes coming from?" Schwarze 7 inquired, while they had some time to chat with their operator before the next engagement.

"Very likely, from some iced runway somewhere in the arctic. Typhoons can't take off from carriers, but they can from such runways, if it's well maintained." Their operator guessed, from the approach vector of the fighter they had faced here, as well as from the other Yukte squadron that had been sighted by the Wieldvakians at the north, were Kepinski and his Su-25Cs were desperately fighting against numerical advantage with sole willpower.

"Interesting. Let's go there as fast as we can, Wieldvakia need us once more, Kameraden." The Vulture indicated, finding it a bit strange that they were assigned protection and rescue missions today, considering their backstory. But shielding one side could be achieved by slaughtering the other side attacking them, and they were pretty good at that.

And with these words, the silence came back on the Ellya Viaduct, though it was only a silence of the dead, only slightly disturbed by small explosions of burning vehicles, and screams of pain from dying or wounded allied soldiers.

Northwest of Bayes Fortress, Fato, 24/06/1995, 21:55, Weather: light cloud coverage.

They had only made it to the armored train in the underground passageway that had been set up. Theoretically, they were supposed to use this as a staging point, and use those armored trains to invade South Belka, which still had some railroad intact. Trains had been judged to be better than C-5s if Excalibur was still a factor. After all, their superlaser couldn't go through a tunnel, for obvious reasons.

But now, the Osean advisor has seen that no one would reinforce them. And that this plan would go nowhere. How many had already died in those choppers that they were supposed to leave with, he wondered. And the forces that were massing at Casina must have been reduced to cinders as well, he concluded. All their plan needed was a bit more fuel they were supposed to get by capturing some Wieldvakian tankers. Though, that would have meant waiting for a few more days, the time to treat and turn the raw petrol into usable gas and jet fuel for their escort and the distraction forces.

At first, they were supposed to evacuate through the air. This possibility was removed from the equation by only one plane, only one plane was enough to slaughter two chopper divisions. So, they resorted to the last thing they could use, which they had already used to bring the assault corps of Ransack during the Battle of Hoffnung. It wasn't safer nor more secure, as it had been destroyed as well, and by the same fighter pilot, if their intel was right.

He was right to fear for his safety. The trip was safe while they were in the tunnels around the fortress that were not accessible from the outside. Whatever safety they had was reduced to zero once they went outside, with the com channel indicating them that the enemy was tracking them:

"Zluchs leader to Tauberg, can you see if there are any movements of troops on the ground? Trucks? Trains?" The South Belkan leader asked, having just cleansed the sky of any allied or North-Belkan-aligned planes. Now was the time of the annihilation of enemy forces.

"Tauberg to Zluchs, IR scan is in process. Trains aren't stealth, so this should be quick" The former Ustian operator now recruited by Pendragon replied, which this sole response caused shivers to grow on the Osean's advisor's spine. This was a battle they couldn't even hope to win.

Blumenberg, Belka, 24/06/1995, 22:00, Weather: high altitude clouds

Ten craft were patrolling the airspace North of the CSB's temporary capital. Two DW-2s in their pitch-black camo were escorted by 4 Su-27 with white body and black and grey splinter camo, and 4 Su-47 with black and dark grey camo, black radome and their wingtips and rudder tips painted with yellow and white.

"This is Blumenberg to Gault 1-4 and Netz. We have some slow-moving targets, as well as their escort."

"Shouldn't we just wipe them all with Excalibur?" Netz 1 wondered why they couldn't just vaporize those bombers and their escort, like they had done many times before.

"Well, Oseans have made a few moves indicating there'll be some kind of long-range strikes, but of unknown nature. Also, we have a short window of fire on some of the bigger Ulysses parts to ensure a successful redirection." Kupchenko informed them of those little contingencies they had to deal with. What good would they achieve in this war if they couldn't protect the world they were fighting for, he asked himself, as he was now more and more hesitant on whether to strike some Ulysses part, or enemy assets.

"Precisely, we are trying to make the biggest part impact the moon, instead of blowing them up into thousand more heavy asteroids that could still vaporize a neighborhood." The calmer voice of Hellenseite spoke, allowing the pilots to have a glimpse of the complicated calculation that had to be done to effectively fire their superlaser at this space threat.

"Roger, Tauberg. What are we dealing with here, then?" Netz 2 asked, seeing some Osean fighters on his radar, but flying at a slower pace than what they should do if they wanted to have some speed advantage over their opponents.

"Merlin operators identified them as B-2s when they took off from Brunnies' airbase in Fato not long after the start of our assault on Casina. However, radar has a slightly different signature than B-2s. They might have some stealth weapon pods, or some unknown weaponry they are testing here." Tauberg replied, a bit wary of Osea's use of more and more prototypes. Sure, these weren't the "Death Star" laser system they put on their B-52s, but they weren't going to underestimate them.

"Let's probe their new toys. Schwarze Falke 3, fire ERAAMs!" Kupchenko ordered, while the tip of the enemy formation -Osean F-15Cs and F-16Cs, and Yukte Su-32s- were almost at SAAM range, though nearly all enemy bombers were well into the range of this South Belkan-made weapon.

"Ver, Feuer!" The DW-2 weapon officer released a volley of 4 long-range missiles that streaked at high speed toward the enemy formation, breaking the sound barrier in a matter of seconds.

"Blue shadow, we have missiles incoming. Do your job." An F-15C pilot picked the shot, which was visible on their radar only twelve seconds later, when it reached over Mach 3 and its speed negated its stealth coating.

"Roger. systems at full power." The commander of the modified B-2Ls sporting an electric blue camo indicated, while the trackers on the Su-32s were transmitting precise data to their primitive tactical laser systems.

"All systems are operational, let's show Project Pendragon that our scientists can also play with photons!" A Weapon officer transmitted, while their onboard electrical generators that were taking all the room usually used by their bombs were delivering their power.

"One is splashed! Two is splashed! Three is splashed!" A B-2L copilot cheerfully announced, as the ERAAMs were exploding in mid-air one after the others.

"Vier ist nicht. (Four is not)" the weapon officer of the second DW-2 countered, after trying to raise its altitude to go over the B-2Ls. It went out of reach of the enemy active defense system and impacted one of their Su-32s on its tail, almost cutting the plane in half due to its sheer speed and explosive power.

"Damn, they redirected their course. Concentrate fire on the Gunships, they can't go as fast as those missiles." Blue Shadow leader commented, as their firepower had almost succeeded in repelling South Belkan technology.

"They want to attack? You can try, Oseans. But that does not mean you are allowed to succeed." Kupchenko retorted, letting his arrogance take over a bit, before returning to a more strategic mindset:

"Tauberg, put me a Hellige Kolumne to interfere with their lasers."

"Ver, reflector in position in three second." One satellite operator indicated, while the data was quickly transmitted to thousands of kilometers by directed radio waves.

"Schwarze Falke, use your VTOL ability."

"I see the idea, ver." Schwarze Falke 4 acknowledged, while they opened their wings to perform this risky maneuver.

"To all fighters, let's hunt those fools. Anti-fighter duty, keep your speed high so their laser won't track you easily." Kupchenko sent his final order, before diving toward the ground to get some more speed before the engagement would begin.

He was followed by his teammates in his dive, while the Netz team flew straight toward the enemies, which were more F-16Cs, while most F-15Cs were getting at low altitude to engage what they considered to be the more dangerous and thus the most rewarding opponent.

"All Osean craft, focus on Gault. Time to avenge our fallen brother!" One F-15C pilot exclaimed, while getting a fast lock on one Su-47.

"You'll only join them tonight." The Su-47's he had locked replied, after climbing fast to avoid his XMAA, and then retaliated with a SAAM. The F-15C tried to fly away, but as the Belkan was above him, he managed to keep track of the Osean and ended his life.

"Nice kill Gault 4." Netz 3 commented, while above the elite squad they were exchanging volleys of XMAAs with the enemy F-16Cs supported by some F-15Cs.

Luckily for them, one of the F-15C flew right in the line of sight of a B-2L that was preparing to fire on the Netz squad, as he evaded one XMAA. The shot wasn't as powerful as South Belkan EWs, but it left him with only one engine left, as it damaged his right engine outlet.

"Damn, can't you aim properly?" The F-15C pilot ranted, as his right engine spewed only black smoke, and this lack of mobility left him prey to one Su-27 that managed to gun his left air intake, and thus totally disable his plane.

"Those Oseans are not really tough opponents." Netz 4 pointed out, as they were now crossing the enemy line, with only a handful of F-16C and one F-15C having survived the heavy exchange of fire they had been submitted.

And following these words, he quickly got to the six of the last F-15Cs and gunned him a few seconds after the Osean pulled a vertical yo-yo, but he managed to fire at the right moment. Then he climbed quite high to go higher than the B-2Ls and their low power lasers.

Netz 3 took out a pair of F-16Cs from very close, rolling partially his craft to the left, to fly between the two fighters, gunning the one he had at his left, while releasing a pair of missiles on the one to the right. Due to the angle, only one missile hit, but as it was a critical hit on the air intake, it was enough to turn the Falcon into a ball of fire.

Despite having to fly in erratic patterns to fool the Su-32s tracker that were transmitting the data to the B-2Ls, the Su-47 scored a number of kills at long range, being very accurate with their SAAM fire even in those conditions.

"Our escort is being cut down." A Su-32 copilot observed, while the fight at low altitude had dissolved in what he remembered the survivors of B7R told him about: Belkan with superior skills and tech outmaneuvering them on every occasion and gunning down Osean and Yuktes alike like fish in a barrel.

And well, the first to die were the few F-16Cs that had decided not to go against the Su-27s. The small one-engine jets fell short, thinking they had the size advantage. But Gault 3 showed them otherwise, when he managed to slow enough while rolling down, and while barrel-rolling, flew between the two advancing F-16s he had let go on his tail, only to trap them. He didn't stop his rotating motion to fire one SAAM at each, with the very short distance leaving him with no margin of error.

Then, the powerful F-15Cs were picked up one by one, having suffered numerical losses before the close-quarter engagement began. One that picked up one nice kill was Gault 4, who was quite efficient at killing those who once were his brother-in-arms. He did it after crossing the enemy line of fighters, letting two F-15C pursue him, one after the other. Swaying from side to side, he avoided their fire, while slowing down progressively, but his advanced thrust vectoring system allowed him to keep control of his plane despite the low speed, while the F-15C had to fly with their nose up to keep their lift high enough.

But at one moment, he pitched up, tricking them to climb, when it was only to enter a stall he would perfectly control. He pulled hard the stick to the left as his whole plane was shaken by the intense vibrations, right at the moment the first Eagle caught up with him. A hail of bullets filled the Osean fighter, which exploded only a dozen meters later.

"Where did he go?" The second Osean asked, having seen his fellow wingman explode while the Belkan was nowhere to be seen, in his field of view at least.

The second didn't fly much further, as he had also climbed to follow the Berkut, tricked by the wits of the South-Belkan pilot. He flew above him right as Gault 4 was putting the pedal to the floor, regaining full speed, and getting in gun range in less time that it would take to say it, finished the other Osean the same way he ended the first.

"I told you this counter was not ready yet, commander." The second in command of the "Blue Shadow" squadron expressed his concern over their survival, while they saw through one of their long-range cams one Su-47 at near-ground level, ID'ed as the enemy leader dispatching three F-15Cs alone.

"Yeah, and we didn't score a single hit on their gunships. Their Hellige Kolumne creates too much interference for our lasers to go through it!" A weapon operator onboard a B-2Ls added, at first frustrated from the results, and now afraid by it. Like at Wesson, their feeble technology was ruled over by Projekt Pendragon.

It was simple, he shot the left one down with a pair of missiles, and the one at his right, fired his gun after evading the Osean's fire by a small dive. But how he dealt with the third, situated five hundred meters behind the two others was a bit more impressive: the Berkut evaded a pair of missiles by doing a looping, and while doing the looping, fire a SAAM, and manage to guide the missile during his maneuver, resulting in an SAAM getting slammed right into the Osean craft, which he never saw coming.

Actually, this Yukte copilot that previously complained got a good look at the enemy leader, as he fired a pair of SAAMs toward him and another Strike Flanker. Both broke apart, hoping they could get out of the tracking system, but they moved too late. Only one of them died, with no chance of survival, as the two SAAMs relocked on him.

"Help! I'm being pursued." The pilot of the Su-32 shouted over the waves, fearing his imminent fate, as his cumbersome plane was unable to avoid the precise gun burst of the enemy Berkut.

"I cannot help you. They have me out…" The last F-16C pilot answered, but his answer was cut short, after two missiles fired by two different Su-27s impacted his plane, with Netz 2 and 3 doing a nice aileron roll afterward to celebrate this kill.

"I'll help you get you out of this..." Kupchenko began, half laughing as he was getting closer and closer to have a critical hit on the Strike craft.

"uh, how?" The copilot asked, suddenly puzzled.

"By killing you of course." Kupchenko completed his sentence, before climbing sideways, only to invert his plane and dive a second later right on their cockpit, which he filled with Belkan bullets. They did bail out, though they were already filled with bullets and empty of blood when their chute opened, and Kupchenko's bullets hit the rocket propeller of their seats, exploding their remains to dust.

"Feuer on those Su-32s!" Netz 1 ordered, while they had climbed above the B-2Ls' arcs of fire, and his squadron unleashed a deadly volley on the Yukte crafts. Only a very low number, evaded those or had the luck that their enemies fired two missiles at one plane when one XMAA was more than enough to take down a single fighter.

For those, a quick death came from the two Su-47 that fired their SAAMs after rejoining with Netz, while Kupchenko and Speidel, their number 1 and two, were flying extremely close to the B-2Ls, firing their gun at their laser pods, that couldn't track such agile targets.

"Blue shadow 3, 5 and 7 have lost their defensive system. We can't maintain defensive fire if we have one more volley." The copilot of "Blue Shadow 1" sent a notice to all aircraft, though it had only one meaning: they were all going to die now, and for nothing.

"Gut. Schwarze Falke 3, Feuer, Feuer!" The weapon officer on the first DW-2 released a volley that circumvented the Hellige Kolumne by the east, guided by data from the Merlin satellites.

"Falke vier, Feuer!" The second gunship quickly followed the firing order, with their long-range missiles going at the west of the ionized area.

"Try to intercept their missiles! We can't go down like this." The Osean commander shouted, but to no avail. Their intercepting forces had dwindled down even more by this time, with even their electrical generator getting pierced by gun fire, after a Su-27 flew above them, before enacting a Split-S and gunning them from below.

Some more B-2Ls received some Schräge Musik, destroying their generator while more fighters were saturating their meager intercepting capacities. Even RTLSs on the ground were more capable, they analyzed, compared to what they had been capable of doing to the allied forces earlier in the war when deployed close to the front lines.

Those who weren't already flying wreckages fuming from every outlet and those who already were, all were obliterated as the ERAAMs accelerated above Mach 3, and split their enemy on impact due to the below average structural resilience of the spirit bomber. Some try to dive but turning at a few hundred kilometers couldn't do much against missiles going twice, or even thrice their speed. All were destroyed, this little Osean attempt at mimicking their powerful DW-2s ending in utter failure.

"Threat is neutralized. Netz, refuel at the base, and wait there in stand-by. We'll continue to patrol the area until the other squadrons come back from their respective operations." Kupchenko sent them back to their guard duty while their enemies were all falling in flames, when they had not already exploded in mid-air.

"Ver." The Netz squad unanimously replied and departed to the city itself.

"Tauberg, cease the Hellige Kolumne, threat is no factor. And from what the other squad leader transmitted, their operations are resounding successes, and we are on a good way to gain some more allies and remove Fato from the war." Kupchenko summarized what Iskanda and Zubov had sent him, the pure and simple annihilation of any enemy facing them.

"It's good to be on the offensive once more." Gault 3 added, tired of just defending without seeing an end to this conflict. But now, under Kupchenko's impulse, he was beginning to see it. It was going to bring him to his homeland at some point. Though it wouldn't be pretty, the former Osean was sure of this fact with absolute certainty.

Northwest of Bayes Fortress, Fato, 24/06/1995, 22:05, Weather: light cloud coverage.

"I have a big contact that just came out of a tunnel at five clicks South of your position." Henri transmitted to the five black planes.

"Great, let's do some snake-hunting!" Iskanda exclaimed, rejoicing to see the end of this mission.

"Following you, lead." Her squadron replied, and all engaged their afterburners, dead set on destroying the final remains of the Osean marine corps deployed here.

Iskanda didn't just look at where it was, but also where it was heading. There were a bunch of bridges and tunnels in this area, as the railroad was crossing multiple valleys. Ideally, she wanted to trap them on a bridge, and blow the bridge structure. That was easier than to destroy the whole train, if they could let gravity deal the final blow.

"First, just strip them of their defenses. Just EWs and missiles, no Hypersthene right now." Zluchs 1 set their conditions for their first assault, while some AA guns were deployed from cupola on top of the train, as well as SAM launchers here and there. It was clearly less armored than Ransack's train, which also possessed Howitzers.

"Ver, focus accuracy over destruction." Pixy answered, finding it almost funny that this was the order given before the attack of Hoffnung. In which, in all honesty, Osea focused more on destruction rather than accuracy.

And with those words, the five planes engaged the enemy moving fortress. CWIS, AA guns and SAMs opened fire on them, but for four of them, SAMs were no factor as they weren't numerous enough to saturate their own interception capacities. And CWIS couldn't stop photons.

"Intensify anti-aircraft fire!" The Osean advisor shouted to the weapon operators, looking at their consoles, trying to concentrate the arcs of fire on at least one aircraft.

"I'll attack from above. Circle around and cover me." Iskanda informed her wingmen, as the train was gaining more speed, hoping to reach the next tunnel and bunker down there.

"Ver, lead." Zveda complied, focusing on the SAMs targeting the Griffon, which began to ascend.

"I'll follow the leader, the three of you are enough to keep them busy." Zeichner decided to have a more proactive stance in this fight for once.

"It's fine. A bit of initiative is welcome." Iskanda accepted this little change in her plan, and the two craft climbed quickly in a partial looping, before interrupting it halfway, their head toward the ground, and then diving on the train.

She knew that most weapons did not possess ninety-degree elevation and were more vulnerable to this kind of attack. This was one downside the RTLSs did not have, as elevation with a laser emitter was quite simple to set, since it wasn't affected by gravity.

Then, as they were at the vertical above the train, she emptied her gun on the defenses, sometimes piercing the armor and killing the soldiers inside of it. Zeichner's EW had less penetrative power, but resulted in as much destruction, causing defensive armament to burst into flames, or to further destroy the heaviest pieces that had already taken a fair amount of punishment.

At the end of their vertical strafing run, as they dived on each side of the train and then climbed back to rejoin with the other, the train was set ablaze in a few points dispersed on all its length. It looked like it was coming from hell, with all those flames coming from it.

"They will enter a tunnel soon. The easiest way to block them will be afterwards." Iskanda said, refraining herself from following them in this tunnel. Those train tunnels were extremely narrow, and the Griffon was wider than an X-29A. Also, with all the smoke the train was spewing out, she wouldn't see much in it.

"Roger. Let's see the next bridge, or the next tunnel. Tauberg, care to display that?" Pixy asked, as the Osean-rented train was disappearing in the tunnel leaving behind it a trail of thick black smoke.

"Displaying it, only a few clicks from your position. You should be there in no time to stall this train for good." Their operator from the sword of kings indicated, as the precise satellite data and geologic survey were crossed together to show the structures in those mountains in a 3D display on a nearby monitor.

And inside the train, the mood was quite the opposite of the South Belkan squadron that only had them to squash. There was nothing they could do to improve their fate, they had been forced to recognize it, when a fellow marine leader asked them to stop the train in the tunnel, which the driver refused, for simple reasons.

"First, the brakes are heavily damaged. Second, if we stop here, we will end up choking from the fumes, as there are still uncontrolled fires on multiple areas of the train."

"What other options do we have?" The Osean advisor wondered, as most of the train was now heavily damaged, and another attack would not leave many people alive in it.

"We have to fight!" One younger marine said, only to have all reprobative looks converge at him. If looks could kill, then he would have been submitted to a firing squad of MBTs.

"Fool, there is no point in fighting an already lost battle. This impregnable fortress fell within minutes, and our lives are barely hanging by a thread." A more experienced officer snapped back at this young warmongering person, slapping the back of his neck to make him reflect a bit on his saying.

"There is nothing that can save us. The best thing to do would be to stop near some flat area, and disembark as quickly as possible, and scatter in the area." The advisor tried to come up with a plan, and even this one seemed impossible. These fighters would have no trouble picking them one by one. And in all honesty, he was only asking himself one question: what was more painful: death by explosion in the train or blown up by some almost sci-fi-esque technology?

"Alright, I'm reducing the speed in case they blew up the bridge." The driver informed the officers, which were all right behind his post, one of the more protected areas of this train.

But once they stepped outside the tunnel, or rolled outside to be more precise, they were met with a bad sight: of the next tunnel entrance that the enemy fighters had made collapse with their powerful weaponry.

"Don't let them retreat. Destroy the one they came from!" Zluchs 1 ordered, and volleys of HZMs and HGMs were released toward this target.

The last anti-air artillery pieces sprung back to life, only to be knocked out by missiles fired from the Melwaz, causing only more fires on the train.

"Full power on brake! I don't care if they melt!" One officer shouted to the driver, who had already put the engines on full reverse, trying to cancel out the great inertia of their heavy train in this slightly downward slope.

"What's the next move, leader?" Zveda asked, as she fired a pair of missiles on the train, seeing it oscillate slightly under the power of the explosive.

"Making it fall into the ravine. Even if they don't die from the explosion, the fall should reduce their body to jelly." Zveda explained, wanting to do here the same thing she had done with the train of this Osean cruel officer named Ransack. Though, as they had more powerful weapons here, destroying the bridge would be a whole lot easier.

"I'm sorry to divert your attention to something else, Zluchs, but we have some slow flying thing entering the airspace. A lone B-2, apparently." Tauberg interrupted them as they were lining up to attack a single point on the still slowing train, which might come to a stop on the rumbles now blocking the path to the tunnel entrance, if they were lucky enough.

"Roger that. Zeichner and Zveda, just stay in the area, and blast me anyone who tries to come out of this train. But don't blow it up entirely yet." Iskanda agreed reluctantly to give those Osean troops a bit of a breathing room and gave her order so she could have the honor to deal the final blow on those stupid Oseans.

"It won't be long to catch up to a B-2A." Pixy pointed out, as the spirit bomber was a subsonic craft, while their planes could flirt with the 3000 kph limit.

"Why do we bother to catch it anyway? ERAAMs are good enough against such a close target." Cipher shared his mind on how this big bird should be brought down.

"Don't waste ammo on it, Zluchs 4. I bet only one missile up their air intake is enough to blow them out of the sky." Iskanda countered him, as her Griffon was speeding up and actually going slightly faster than the Melwaz.

"Ver, lead. Though, if you miss your HVR shot I have the right to try my EWs on them." Cipher agreed with a bit of reluctance only balanced by the fact that this B-2A was not of any significance, as he sped up to keep pace with his leader.

"As she would even miss." Pixy counter-argued with the South-Belkan, not remembering having Iskanda ever miss such a huge target, when she had been able to score kills with her HVR at greater distance than standard missile range.

It wasn't long before she was in range of the bomber that had tried to turn out of their line of fire, but she had her HVR line up on its engine and was ready to fire in a couple of seconds. Besides, she could always strafe the bomber if it managed to pull some last second evasives. It wasn't that she was concerned with the honor of having the kill, but she did want to stay above her wingmen, especially since this training session.

But neither Iskanda nor Zephyr had to engage the flying wing bomber in the end. Because its crew reacted in the strangest way any of them could expect:

"This is Volcan 1. We are willing to join the South Belkan forces." An Osean female pilot intervened, as the Griffon was lining up for the kill, with her voice influenced by a heavy load of fear, shared amongst all her little crew, as they all saw the fighter going for them head-on.

"Highly interesting." Was Iskanda's first response, as she had to put all her mental force not to fire on the target.

"So, I cannot try to shoot it down?" Cipher ranted, feeling frustrated that he was denied this kill.

"Not until I say so." Iskanda said between her teeth, not very happy either about letting those people live when most Oseans deserve to be shot down just to learn modesty, from her point of view. Furthermore, what would be the usefulness of a B-2A when their DW-2s could do the same role, with their decrease in stealth balanced by higher speed and survivability thanks to great air-to-air capacity equivalent to flying fortresses of the 1950's.

"We have valuable intel on some Osean weapon program that could interest your leadership." The Osean pilot spoke again, trying to buy her a ticket to at least some safe place, and at least, the survival of her and her crew.

"This will be taken into account by our leader at Tauberg. I, I am fonder of people showing immediate results, and immediate proof of their new loyalty." Iskanda recognized that Kupchenko might appreciate any new sources of intel, but any newcomers need to show their new flags to one of the officers situated right under their supreme commander in the very scarce chain of commands that made the Projekt Pendragon's army.

"I see. What do you want? I can transmit some of the data already if you have an onboard computer." The Osean voice was now slightly hesitating in her response, not feeling very calm about the request that this still threatening fighter that had done a U-turn after flying over, and had still her gun trailed on them, at the place where her bomb bays were, and back with two ultra-advanced prototypes with near-otherworldly weaponry.

"I said I'm a person of immediate results. Not of data. I want facts, not thoughts." Iskanda answered with a somewhat harsh voice to the hesitating Osean pilot.

"Are you sure we can trust her?" The copilot in the small cockpit of the B-2 showed his colleague, having written the short message on his hand phone.

"Let's see what she wants" She wrote on her own device, her hands still shaking by fear, as the Griffon was still a grave threat on their back.

"My desire is for you to blow up that train full of your wounded and helpless marines. Don't you want to spare them a lengthy death by starvation?" Iskanda gave her wishes to the Osean craft, speaking in a falsely amical voice, as she tried to put a very meager doses of compassion in her tone.

"We cannot comply with such wishes!" His copilot wrote to the Osean lady, not at all with the idea of dropping those heavy bombs on his brother and sister. He actually had good friends in some marine units, but could some be on this train? There could have been some involved in today's operation, though they might all be already dead, considering how much of their forces had been killed by now.

"If we do that, we'll end up in front of a firing squad, not a court." Their radar operator, who had left his seat to partake in their silent conversation for their final decision that would seal their fate, showed his own message, with no one daring to say a word in the deadly silence that had felt the cockpit following the message of the South Belkan squad leader. Usually, they only had two crew members, but this one had one more person used as a radar operator and radio interception personnel. This meant they had less bombs, but more electronics onboard. Though, having more than the others could not change much in their situation

"WE HAVE TO. Carrying the Mission is superior." The pilot showed her final decision on her small screen, not deterred by a few losses that they couldn't hope to prevent in any way.

"If you try to flee and bail out, be sure that I'll tear your chute and the body suspended to it to ribbons." Iskanda threatened the Osean pilot and her crew of some horrible fate only she could enjoy thinking about.

"I will comply with this order." The pilot agreed and began turning toward the railroad. She had now tears in her eyes, having not prepared to do such deeds to carry on this mission, and saw a very sorry, and slightly angry face of her copilot as she looked at him.

"Gut, gut. Open your bomb bays then. If you don't drop your bombs above it, then my dear friend cipher will show you that Femtolasers can intercept and destroy bombs." Iskanda kept the death threat on this B-2 crew very seriously, diving to rejoin her two other wingmen that were mercilessly slaughtering any Oseans that were trying to get out of the train.

"I'll keep a good eye on this one. Go laserize some fleeing Oseans for me, Pixy." Cipher conceded, as he was relegated to some kind of weird escort role.

"Roger, opening bomb bays." The Osean copilot indicated, his mind struggling to keep coherent thoughts as they set their craft to enact a bomb run on their own forces

At this point, they were almost glad to only look at their target through their ground-radar targeting screen. Because if they had any long-range cams, they would have seen the desperate situation those Oseans were in. One marine team leader suggested, as they heard the transmission:

"We cannot expect any rescue. We have some mountain climbing gear. Perhaps we can try to rappel down this bridge and disperse into the valley?"

"Try with some of your intact teams, while we buy you some time." Another marine leader agreed with this last plan, while walking toward a hatch to the armored ceiling, one that hadn't been blown up yet. He talked and walked with pain, having received some sharp shrapnels from small explosions in a compartment at the rear that was only filled with dead bodies by now.

He went up there with a shoulder-mounted missile, and without losing any second, pressed the trigger of his weapon. The backlash almost made him topple over from his firing position, and after his shot, some more soldiers went on the ceiling to open fire on the two Melwaz that were busy destroying the last SAM position guarded by a pair of CWIS located at the rear of the train.

"Zveda, Firing EWs." She indicated, as she intercepted one missile in mid-air, and retaliated with her EWs on the high-caliber gun that was busy intercepting a pair of missiles from the drawer.

"Watch out, Zluchs 3. Stingers!" Zluchs 5 warned her quickly, surprised, and worried by the sudden change of situation, as the rockets were hastily fired from the front area of the train.

"Thanks for the notice." She expressed her thanks, as she zoomed in thanks to the enormous thrust of her slightly oversized engines. They were a tad thinner on the ADFX-02 than on the ADFX-01, but nonetheless offered a power to weight ratio greater than most jets and incredible climbing capacities.

"The diversion worked. One flew away!" The wounded Osean officer announced, while some marines were hooking ropes to the bridge or the structure of the train, and were beginning an extremely risky rappelling, as a single blast could make them fall from great heights.

"But the other just turned toward us. fire more!" One of his soldiers noticed the other Melwaz that was rushing onto them from the back area of the train, only a few hundred meters away. He was one of those that had made the choice to sacrifice in the hope that their comrades could make their daring escape.

However, before they could reload their stingers, or even fire already charged ones, the enemy craft opened fire as he skimmed above the destroyed roof of the train, over its destroyed defensive armament. The lethal energy discharges made everything explode around them, followed by a pair of missiles that blasted them out of their position, or just blasted them to dust for the luckiest one.

One marine that were rappelling down tried to catch one soldier falling from above, only to fall with him. Those who were barely hanging to those ropes and to their hopes could only watch as they fell to a horrible death. Death they shared a few seconds later, as they looked up after witnessing this terrible fate.

"Ants can't beat warrior hornets with sticks and stones." Zveda said in a solemn manner, as she had dived from her little climb after evading this very low threat that had been fired at her. And as she dived, she fired one of her last HZM toward the bridge, where the ropes of those marines had been set up.

It didn't matter that they had been set up properly or not. Not that the blast dislodged every rope or destroyed every anchor point. What mattered was the sheer power of the blast, which pushed those soldiers like a cyclone would push ants. All died from this fall, some were already dead as they fell, their body armor pierced by fragments from the powerful explosion.

"It's… the end... for us..." The Osean advisor that had felt the explosion inside the train muttered, with his will completely annihilated at the same time as this last attempt at escaping those murderous South Belkans. And to make everything worse, their death wouldn't even come from them, but from Osean defectors. He wished the worst things to happen to them, as he could see from an opening in the train the slow B-2 approaching them, closely watched by one of those forward-swept wing fighters he had trouble pronouncing the name, while two others were heading downward, likely to rejoin with the two that had just blasted their last fightworthy marines to Oblivion.

"But for us, it's only a new beginning. Celebrate your new allegiance, Vulkan 1." Iskanda chimed, as the B-2 was in a good bombing position, with Cipher having told them to do their bomb run in the same axis as the train.

"Long live South Belka." The Osean pilot pronounced these words with anxiousness and anger, as she complied, sick at heart. She was anxious of her becoming, and angry of this cruel Belkan lady to ask such an act of supposedly good will to show theirs. And just hearing her callsign said with a Belkan accent made her sick, even before she released her heavy bombs that would finish to kill all those brave marines that had been deployed to keep the control of North Belka on this country -useless waste of resources to her-.

Two seconds later, the Osean pilot Amy Pitt dropped her bombs, pulling up slightly as she heard the sound of the bomb falling into the air below her. There were a few reasons for her to pull up: to evade the blast at low altitude, to make some of her bombs miss so some Osean might survive, and above all, not to have the dreadful sight of her actions in her view.

Still, the blast came far faster than what she anticipated. Had some ammo exploded on board the train, which could have been set ablaze in the armored unit? No, it had to be something else. Something with far more power.

She understood what it was when she saw the delta-winged craft of the enemy leader fly parallel to the valley, and at the same elevation the former bridge was. Only then she heard the thunder of her twenty-four heavy-penetration bombs, which had any explosive to annihilate most ground fortresses, or blast a carrier or a battleship if they avoided their defensive fire.

Also, she could see that this unknown prototype has no more weapons under its belly. That could explain the first explosion she heard.

And indeed, it was what had happened : Iskanda and Pixy had emptied their air-to-ground arsenal on the isolated train, join in their fire by the two other Melwaz that had waited for them, with Iskanda focusing her fire on the arcs of the bridge, which didn't sustain their firepower for long, and collapsed under the weight of the armored train as their structural integrity was dangerously compromised, with the final shot being the last HGM pair of Zluchs leader.

For Amy Pitt that had first fought that she had missed, this was outrageous. Why had this South Belkan requested her to bomb the bridge if she was going to do it anyway?

"Can I ask you why you bomb the bridge before us?" His copilot dared to ask what she wouldn't.

"You can." Iskanda let those two words, like if their mind didn't have any significance -which was the case.

"I sensed reluctance to follow my orders, so I did your job anyway. Besides, if you want a thing done well, do it yourself." Iskanda added, her voice filled with disdain as she disapproved of this new Osean defector. Nothing could make her trust Oseans since they betrayed her on the ground a few months earlier.

"Don't worry, your bombs did shatter and reduce what was left of the train to dust. So, you did your job about shortening their painful survival as such bombing cannot leave any survivors." Iskanda completed her biased appreciation

"So, whatever I did, did my acts matter in the end?" The Osean bomber pilot inquired, in a very troubled tone. She had just seen utter powerlessness as she chose her personal duty over the survival of others.

"Of course not. But rest assured that your reluctance to do what is necessary won't get you good value in the eyes of our leaders." Iskanda finished this very unkind talk, dying to fire her last gun rounds into their engines and see it crash in flames, but she only needed a bit of time before she would act. Oseans wasn't welcome at Pendragon, and she would make them understand that.

And with these words, the B-2, and its very dangerous escort -more dangerous toward the plane they were escorting than whatever would engage them- left this scene of slaughter, while the remains of the metallic wreckage were still hot from the flames of the explosions. All South Belkan pilots had the sweet taste of victory in their mouth, but for their new defector, this supposed victory had a very bitter taste, almost making their copilot throw up when he realized what they had been forced to do, and just for the enjoyment of the crazy women leading this squadron.

None of the three really knew how they would be treated at Tauberg. Despite appearing as defectors, and South Belka's army mainly composed of defectors, they didn't feel any goodwill. Only murderous intents, that would be expressed sooner or later, and all three thought it would be much sooner than what they hoped.

Half of chapter

Well, just this half is bigger than some chapters. That's the price to pay for creating a three-pronged operation in this chapter.
Some of those names I took for the Wieldvakian fighter pilots, or ground soldiers are inspired by Polish resistance fighters of WW2. In my AU, Wieldvakia is some kind of Poland. I discovered most of them by watching videos of the youtube channel "The Front".
See you in the second half, Reapers and Readers.