AUTHOR'S NOTES: Moving into the aerial portion of the Battle of Beacon with this chapter. More notes at the end.

Squadron Dispersal Area A

Joint Base Beacon, Wisconsin, United States of Canada

14 May 2001

1520 Local

"Beacon Tower, Juniper Lead," Pyrrha radioed. "We're scrambling. How's it look?" It wasn't exactly radio protocol, but there was no time for that. As the senior officer until Goodwitch showed up—assuming she ever did, and wasn't dead somewhere—Pyrrha knew she had to take command.

"Juniper, Beacon. Runways are clear but there are White Fang in the woods. You may get some small arms fire when you take off. Wind is out of the southwest at five miles an hour, ceiling is scattered to broken, visibility ten miles. Be advised, there is a large amount of GRIMM approaching from the west, bearing 170, range 100—raid count is now 24, including one very large GRIMM, codenamed Wyvern. Funky Two, Cardinal Lead and Crow 13 are engaged. Also be advised of three bandits overhead—one F-5, one F-22, and one possible armed X-29."

Now tell me the bad news, Pyrrha thought balefully. "Roger that, Beacon. Stand by." She switched frequencies to the squadron net. "All Beacon aircraft, this is Pyrrha. I'm taking over as force commander." She relayed the news about the GRIMM and the White Fang. "We won't worry about flight assignments for now. Whoever is first out goes up. Engage the fighters first, and then we'll worry about the GRIMM." She eased the throttle forward, checking behind her to make sure that she was clear of the C-130. There was no one to guide her; she'd already had to pull her own chocks. She turned the F-16 around. "I'll hold here and take off last. Who is first out?"

"This is Gwen. Out first." Pyrrha looked across the taxiway and saw Gwen Darcy's Typhoon come out of its revetment.

"Pyrrha, Bolin. Out second." The Turkish F-16 of Bolin Hori followed Gwen out.

"Roger. Beacon Tower, Pyrrha, are you listening?"

"Roger that, Pyrrha. Bolin and Gwen, you are cleared for immediate takeoff. Recommend combat departure."

"Yeah, no shit," Bolin replied. Pyrrha watched the Typhoon and the F-16 taxi into place at the end of both runways. She then looked up. The three ship formation of White Fang fighters were orbiting to the west.

Adam dipped his right wing and saw the two aircraft turn onto Beacon's parallel runways. "Neo, Roman, this is Adam," he radioed. "Hold position. Don't attack until they're in the air. We don't want them blocking the runways if they go down."

"Why not?" Neo asked.

"Don't you want kills, Neo? Strafing doesn't count." Neo said nothing more, but held formation. He was counting on her bloodthirsty attitude. If the runways were blocked, Blake wasn't going to get in the air. "As soon as they clear the trees, nail them."

"Bolin, Gwen, go!" Pyrrha ordered. The Typhoon and the F-16 lit their afterburners and roared down the runway. As both lifted into the air, they climbed hard, popping flares. Pyrrha saw no tracers come out of the woods, but then two smoke trails lofted out. "Bolin, Gwen, SAM! SAM! Break now!"

Gwen rolled, more flares dropping from her aircraft; the Stinger aimed at her chased a flare and exploded. The other tracked on Bolin, who was a fraction too slow, and detonated just behind his tailpipe. The F-16 somersaulted, went into the trees and exploded.

Gwen started her climb again to clear any further Stingers. Pyrrha saw the red F-22 suddenly roar past. "Gwen, break right, Raptor behind you!" she shouted. She watched in horror as the Typhoon made a hard break, but Gwen was out of energy; she'd lost too much speed dodging the Stinger. The F-22 easily compensated, and even at this distance, Pyrrha could see sparks fly from the narrow fuselage of the Typhoon, followed by smoke and flame as the Raptor pilot marched cannon shells down the length of the aircraft. The Typhoon stalled and began to roll over: Gwen ejected, but she was too low, and seat and pilot disappeared into the woods. There was another explosion.

Pyrrha flooded the air with Greek curses and banged a hand against the side of the cockpit. They were trapped.

Highway 12, Between Oakdale and Camp Douglas

Wisconsin, United States of Canada

1525 Local

"Sir," Corporal Lance Ballew asked, "what exactly does tabarnak mean? I mean, I get it's a Quebecois curse, but it doesn't really seem that nasty. I mean, I know some Cajun curses that are a lot worse…"

"You're going to hear worse ones in a minute," Major Jacob Gagnon growled. He looked at the map again for the third time in as many minutes. It had been the Wisconsin Highway Patrol's idea to use the frontage road—Highway 12—to reach the main gate and bypass the traffic snarl on the interstate. They hadn't counted on the frontage road being in even worse condition, as people in the surrounding towns fled the area, and returning base personnel tried to get back in. They had been staring at the sign proclaiming that they were entering Juneau County for the past five minutes without moving. It was three miles to the front gate: his men could easily make the run, but it would take time. Nor could they go offroad, not with the ditches, woods, and scattered buildings on either side of the road.

There was a knock on the side of the door. Gagnon looked out to see a rather incongrous sight: a skinny man with a shock of green hair, wearing a white shirt that wasn't tucked into his pants, and a yellow tie. "What the hell do you want?" Normally Gagnon was a pleasant man for a Delta Force troop commander, but this situation would try the patience of Job.

"Pardon me, Major. My name is Oobleck, Bartholomew Oobleck. I'm an instructor at Beacon."

Gagnon's voice softened, though only by a fraction. "What can I do for you, Mr. Oobleck?"

"Two things, Major. First of all, are you Delta Force, and secondly, if you are, may my friend and I ride with you?" He thumbed behind him, and Gagnon saw in the rearview mirror a somewhat portly man with a huge mustache, wearing the duty uniform of the Royal Air Force. "Unfortunately we chose this day to have lunch at Tomah. We can expedite your passage through the front gate—assuming we get there before the emergency is over."

"Why do you think I'm Delta Force?" Gagnon asked.

"You're wearing no insignia but your rank and the USC flag. That means you are not with the 1st Armored Division. Your battle dress is the older Canadian pattern, rather than that worn by local Army or National Guard formations. The truck is National Guard, though you are not, which means you have requistioned it, possibly without clearance. Your hair is longer than Army regulations, and several of the men in the back of the truck are carrying armament not normally issued to regular US Army formations. You speak with a Quebecois accent—Montreal, if I'm not mistaken—but there are no Quebecois-heavy units in the Army, aside from the regiments assigned to guard Quebec…and the disproportionate amount of Quebecois who ended up in Special Forces units. And since none of you are Faunus, I can reasonably assume you are not more White Fang who are simply late to the party. Of course, you could be Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, though most of those are Albertans—"

Gagnon gaped at the strange man. He was not normally at a loss for words. "Erhm…I'm afraid that's classified, Mr. Oobleck."

"Ah! As I thought. Thank you, Major."

Gagnon realized he'd just confirmed his identity to Oobleck. "You're from around here, then?"

"Originally, I'm from Montana, but—"

"Good. You can help me." Gagnon got out of the truck, and walked down the middle of the road. "People of Wisconsin! My unit needs to get to Beacon to kill terrorists! Your cooperation will be appreciated!" He spread his arms out to either side. "Please move your cars off the road!"

He half expected the people staring at him from their cars to ignore him, curse him, or make rude gestures. To his pleasant surprise, people began to drive their cars onto lawns, onto what little shoulder there was, and even into the ditch to clear the road. Ballew began moving forward as Port parked the car, got out and joined Oobleck in swinging into the back of the truck.

Gagnon motioned the truck forward. It was slow going, but at least they were moving. He ducked as something flashed by overhead. It was triangle shaped and moving fast, but he got a glimpse of it. "A F-117?"

Squadron Dispersal A

1530 Local

Pyrrha took a deep breath. "We have to keep trying. Whoever's next, start rolling."

"Ruby Flight, rolling." She watched as Ruby's red-trimmed F-16 rolled out and turned onto the taxiway, followed by Weiss' Typhoon.

A shadow passed over Pyrrha's F-16. She saw the F-22 come over again. "Damn you," she breathed. "Give us a fair fight."

"Roman, Neo. Guess who? Eleven low."

Roman looked over the nose of the F-5 and saw Ruby Rose's F-16 taxiing forward. "Oh, you can not be serious," he laughed. "Little Red. She's mine, Neo. Adam, tell the White Fang to hold their fire. I want to kill that little bitch myself."

"Understood." Adam relayed the message to Sienna Khan below. He understood the need for vengeance.

Roman circled patiently, like a shark, as another pair of F-16 and Typhoon lined up on the runway. Neo swung in behind Roman; she'd take the Typhoon. It was hardly sporting, but when it came to Ruby Rose, he wasn't really in a sporting mood.

Pyrrha fought down tears. She was ordering her friends into death. The White Fang were waiting, and there was nothing she could do about it. "Ruby, Weiss…go. Combat departure. Keep your speed up."

"Pyrrha, Ruby. We got this. Here we go." Ruby sounded calm and confident. Pyrrha didn't know if it was the confidence of youth or boneheaded optimism. The afterburners lit, and the two began rolling. Pyrrha watched the F-5 and the F-22. They were stalking the pair, waiting. "You've got fighters that will be on you the moment you're in the air."

"Weiss, tally-ho on the bandits." Weiss had seen them.

The two fighters shot down the runway.

Roman put his F-5 into a shallow dive, and switched to guns. He'd be too close for missiles in any case. He decided he wouldn't quite be nasty enough to stitch shells across Ruby's canopy; if she bailed out, fine, but if she didn't, oh well. He'd leave it to fate. He centered the gunsight on the back of the F-16 as the nose rotated off the ground.

"Roman, Neo, break right! Break right!" Adam's shout had Roman's hands moving before his brain even registered the fact. He fought against the Gs to find out what was attacking him as a Sidewinder sailed past. The F-5 didn't have the best vision to the rear, so he snapped back to the left, trying to sight his enemy. Then he saw it, turning towards Neo. It was a F-117 Nighthawk, which wasn't supposed to carry Sidewinders.

Then he had bigger problems. The F-16 and the Typhoon were in the air, and they were turning in his direction.

"Crow 13 to Beacon." Pyrrha heard the call. "You got some time. Don't waste it."

"Yang, Blake!" Pyrrha yelled. "Go, go, go! Coco, Yatsu, you're next! Start moving!"

The F-15 and the F-14 were already rolling down the taxiway, faster than normally would be considered safe. Pyrrha could swear that Yang was trying to drift the F-15 as it turned onto the runway, lit its afterburners, and took off.

Adam saw the black F-14. "Fang Six. Don't you dare fire on the F-14 or the F-15. They're mine." He smiled as the two aircraft rose into the air, and throttled back. He wanted Blake to get plenty of room.

The Treeline

1535 Local

Ilia Amitola was glad Adam had ordered the White Fang to hold their fire. Yuma's Stinger team was right next to her team, and she would've shot him had he fired on the F-14 she knew was Blake's, CIA cover or no cover. She saw Adam's Moonslice angling in behind the two fighters as they rose into the air, but there was no way to warn Blake about that. That was in hands other than Ilia's.

"Two more coming up!" Ilia saw a Mirage F.1 and a F-2A now moving into position to takeoff. She saw the Spanish markings on the Mirage and wondered if it was Emerald Sustrai; they hadn't been briefed on whether or not Emerald had maintained her cover. Fortunes of war, she thought; if Emerald got killed, that was one less problem Ilia had to worry about. Yuma's team had reloaded their Stingers and waited at the edge of the treeline.

She glanced back at the western treeline, where the woods met the main part of the base. There was a firefight going on there, with gunfire occasionally rising and falling, as targets showed themselves and didn't. That looked to be a draw: the White Fang were in good cover, and the base Security Forces were not about to charge blindly into that cover.

"Wish we could take a shot," one of her team sighed. The Javelins weren't much use against aircraft. They went vertical right after being fired, to attack a tank from above where its armor was thin, and they couldn't guide fast enough on fast movers. A helicopter was not impossible, but a fighter was. He turned back to Ilia. "Should we move over and support the High Leader to the west—"

"Holy shit!" Royce called out, grabbing one of the Javelins and setting it up. "Tanks in the treeline, across the runway!"

Task Force Karelia

1537 Hours

Karelia stood up a little higher and looked over the slanted front plate of her Abrams' turret. "Yeah, it's still there, Heather."

"Well, shit. I can't see very well with that thing hanging off the front end, Captain," her driver replied. The thing was the ten feet of base perimeter fence wrapped around the front of the tank, stuck there after they'd hit it at forty miles an hour. It had dragged under the tank, somehow not getting wrapped into the treads, as they bounced through hiking trails in the woods. Karelia's second tank had taken the lead and torn through a second fence—slower this time, crushing it rather than carrying it—and now they were emerging from the woods, the runway in sight.

There was a flash from the woods, and a brief smoke trail. Then something shot straight up, trailing flame, and Karelia knew what it was. She dropped into the turret, slamming the hatch, screaming on her mike, "Javelin! Javelin! All Kilo elements, move, move move!" She looked at her gunner, whose face was already pressed to the eyepiece of the sight, and sighted through the vision blocks. "Designate, Gunner, HEAT, antitank team!" The tank surged forward.

"Identified, antitank team," he confirmed. Through the infrared sights of the Abrams, the gunner could see the glowing heat of figures moving in the treeline. HEAT—High Explosive Anti-Tank—was not really the best weapon to use against infantry, but he just needed to keep their heads down long enough to close the distance. Besides, they had nothing else: the tank was loaded to fight GRIMM, not infantry. "Range 700." None of the four occupants of the Abrams thought about the Javelin that might be at that moment coming down on their heads; there wasn't time.

"Up!" the loader called, slamming the shell home and clearing the gun breech.

"Fire!" Karelia called.

"On the way!" The breech slammed back, ejecting the spent shell. At the same time, the Abrams rocked with a nearby explosion.

Karelia watched the thin trail of smoke the HEAT round left. It took less than two seconds to land in the treeline, blowing trees into splinters. She got on her own sight. The infrared signature of the White Fang were glowing even hotter now, and she remembered reading about how people who were terrified tended to glow almost pure white in infrared sights. She didn't see anyone down as they went across one runway. "Stop tank!" she shouted. They couldn't block the runway. "Gunner, Coax, infantry."

The gunner switched over to the coaxial machine gun, located right next to the main gun. "Identified. Infantry in the treeline, range 250."

"Fire."

The Abrams' turret began to move left and right, sending 7.62 millimeter bullets scything through the trees. A second round exploded in the trees, sending splinters raining down on the White Fang as Karelia's second tank pulled up next to her. She twisted around in her seat and saw her third tank burning at the edge of the trees they'd just come from. "Fuck," she snapped.

There was another problem to address too, and that required her to risk her life a bit more. Taking a deep breath, she opened her hatch, hoped that there was no enterprising White Fang sniper around who liked to kill tank commanders that stuck their heads out, and did exactly that. Her tanks were parked in the median between the two runways, and neither were blocking them—there was even enough clearance of the main guns. Wondering if she was about to die, Karelia stood up completely, waved her arms frantically, then dropped back down in the turret as a bullet clanged off the hatch.

"What the hell, ma'am?" her loader asked.

"No way to talk to the flyboys. I hope they got my message." She stole another quick look, then spoke into her mike. "Target, cease fire!" The tanks stopped firing, and they shook as the Mirage F.1 shot past in afterburner only feet away, and rose into the sky. The gunner didn't wait for Karelia to give an order; as soon as they were clear, he began hosing the treeline again.

Ilia grabbed Yuma, who was bleeding from where a bullet had torn straight through the membrane of his wing, and dragged him clear, ducking as machine gun fire went through the trees above her. The rest of the Javelin team was dead. "Fall back!" she shouted. "Fall back!" She watched as someone fired an RPG at one of the tanks, only to see it bounce off the front of the turret. The gun tracked on the RPG gunner and another part of the forest exploded.

Ilia turned over Yuma to Royce, and found Sienna kneeling in a small clearing. "Tanks on the runway, High Leader. We've lost our Javelins."

Sienna nodded. The White Fang's part in this was over now. She blew four blasts on her whistle, the signal to disperse. The survivors would now break into small groups and exfiltrate to the east. She took the radio headset from her radioman. "Adam, Fang Six. We're withdrawing. Good luck." Then she ordered the radioman to drop the backpack radio, pulled a pin from her last hand grenade, and gently placed it under the radio, the spoon held down by the weight of the backpack. Whoever picked up would be in for a fatal surprise.

The machine gun fire slackened again, but it was only to allow another pair of aircraft—a Jaguar and a Lavi, Ilia noted—to take off.

Above Beacon

1540 Hours

Ruby and Weiss turned hard right, trying to get behind the F-5's tail, Weiss dropping back to cover Ruby, who had the lead. Blake did the same, touching her speedbrake just a bit to let Yang take the lead in their element. Yang was tracking on the F-22, which was turning in behind Weiss—but Ember Celica was in the Raptor's blind spot, below and behind. She caught the F-117 ducking out to the west; Qrow Branwen evidently did not want to get caught in the middle of the developing furball. His Nighthawk might be modified, but it was still at a disadvantage against any of the aircraft in the air.

Next question, Blake asked herself as she looked around, following Yang into a gentle right turn. Where's Adam? Then she spotted the Moonslice, well to the rear, but still behind her, and her radio crackled. "Running away again? Is that what you've become, my love? A coward?"

Blake knew Adam was baiting her. Both Ember Celica and Gambol Shroud could easily outdistance the Moonslice. Her responsibility was to cover Yang's tail, not engage in a duel with her ex-boyfriend. If he engaged, that was one thing, but right now, he was just sitting there. But despite herself, she still answered his call. She always had, after all. "Why are you doing this, Adam?"

"You and I were going to change the world, remember? We were destined to light the fires of a revolution! And this, my dear…this is the spark that lights the world on fire." The Moonslice came out of its gentle turn, and Blake saw the nose coming around to bear on Velvet's Jaguar. "But keep running, if you like."

Blake snapped the stick hard over to the right, making a hard turn to engage Adam. "I'm not running!" she snarled, baring her teeth under the mask.

The nose of Moonslice shifted around to face her, as they approached each other head-on. "You will," Adam promised. "But you're going to suffer for your betrayal first."

AUTHOR'S NOTES (PART II): Many thanks to TopHatGuy for giving me the correct orders for tank crews to engage targets. (And I probably got it wrong for the Javelin warning. This is why I write air combat more than ground combat that doesn't involve 'Mechs.)

Next chapter: Blake vs. Adam, Weiss and Ruby vs. Roman, and Yang vs. Neo. Wait, is that how it's supposed to happen? And then Cinder needs to get into the fight...and then there's those pesky GRIMM...