In light of my reviewing some other pieces of work in the Ace Combat category, particularly "On the Job Training" (Rei Ronin), I have decided to try and use first-person narrative for the first time in one of my fanfics. The reasoning is that it looks interesting and far easier to add the breadth and scope I am trying to accomplish. For those two that have guessed the fact, yes I am Canadian (as the CF-188 comment hinted towards).
At any rate, on with CH.2, please enjoy.

I do not own Ace Combat 5 nor any of their trademarked characters or plots.

Ghosts of War

CHAPTER 2: "Derivation"

-CV Vulture, off the Osean coastline, North Sea-

The several hours immediately following the "black bandit" incident, the CAG's office, and worst yet, another "switch-story" recounting was mercifully followed by ten hours of glorious sleep.

Yeah, right.

I was probably only fifteen minutes into my bunk before a rough shake to my shoulder rudely brought me back to consciousness. My first thought was that there must have some emergency for someone to come wake me, a bare Lieutenant, personally. My second thought was to how they managed to get through the locked, steel door and into my quarters to do so. This was my first close encounter with civilian intelligence-types, and regrettably, nowhere near the last. Not fully being awake, I agreed to follow him, and seeing that I had crashed still dressed, I quickly found myself in a small room onboard ship that I had never previously been, in a section of the ship normal aircrew like myself were usually not permitted. Tucked up close to the Vulture's CIC, this room was extension to the Intelligence Office, manned by civilians of the Foreign Intelligence Service and Ministry of Sovereign Security. To nip a cliché, this room I was in now walked right of a crime drama, altered only ever so slightly so that one still knew he was at sea (the uncovered wiring and pipes running above my head gave that away). To my left sat Commander Irving, Vulture's Chief Intelligence Officer, recognizable from one of the first briefings I was forced to sit through when I arrived onboard a month ago. Across from me however, was a new face, dressed in navy work dress but without rank or ribbons.

Spook.

Irving spoke first.

"Lieutenant, I just want to assure you that this is all perfectly normal procedure following any incident. We just want your account of yesterday's engagement, as you remember it, and in full detail. We aren't going to make any accusations here, and everything you say is protected." He calmly stated in what was obviously a very prepared and well-used speech. I did not have the opportunity to ask any questions before the grilling began.

"Lieutenant, following the last transmission from the E-2C Overlord, just prior your first encounter with the unknown aircraft, what was your reply and actions?" The spook asked roughly enough to get me immediately on the defensive. I did what any self-respecting fighter pilot would do under the circumstances,

I dove into CYA (cover your ass) protocol.

"Well, uh, he stated that we should be in visual range of the contact, and I replied that uh, Lynx flight was actively looking for the uh, contact."

Mistake number one.

Before I was even finished, the spook had produced a portable tape recorder from beneath the table. For the same damage he did, the spook might as well have come across the table and given me a swift knee to the groin. Four seconds of my own sarcastic voice, blended together with the beautiful humming background of F-18 power plants was enough to get his point across before he said anything.

"Mr. Kroener, you pilots are all the same, but for the next five minutes shit-can the ego and answer my questions accurately. I trust we're clear?" A curt flick of the head was all that was required for the session to continue.

"Now, what kind of aircraft did you intercept?"

I left the interrogation a little over an hour later heavily covered in sweat and feeling more than slightly violated. As fate would have it, that feeling and bodily function was to became the trademark of most of my further encounters with civilian "Intelligence". In a long fifty minutes, I had told, word for word the events of the previous day. In the last twenty, I had been firmly "convinced" that my flight lead and I had flown right into the center of a thunder cell, and a close burst of ball lightning, which could easily be mistaken for as engine exhaust, had caused a malfunction in my lead, Top Hat's, weapons suite.

The only thing that could have made the story smell more of crap was if they had found a way to include a UFO in the mix.

Despite how disgruntled I was over the interrogation however, it was precisely the amount of attention that Top Hat's and my little "accident", was receiving that really got my head turning around the situation as I took my second shower in as little as four hours.

By the end of that shower I needed someone to talk to, someone who would take me seriously, even if I could rarely accept him the same way.

"No, I never gave thought to where they came from. And you shouldn't be talking to me about this! I don't want to get involved with these spooks you're telling me about. Hell! I didn't even know we had any onboard, what good is joining the navy if you still can't get away from creeps like those?" Jester grumbled pointing at me from the lounge chair in his quarters. By this point I had nearly worked myself up into fervor.

"No, of course you haven't, and it seems like nobody else has either. Tell me," I argued back, standing up, "what the hell is out there?"

"Water, evidently. I mean this is a carrier after all."

I should have really expected that kind of nonsense, but it still took me three seconds to pick up my jaw.

"No smart ass, beyond that?"

"Anea?" He asked, starting to see where I was going, at least that's what I hoped.

"Wrong vector, these guys came from a more southerly angle."

"Yuktobania?"

"Bingo. MiG's from the southwest." I stated, proud in my brain's accomplishments, only to have the flak open up.

"Doesn't mean anything. That's still Northern Yuktobania, merc' country, and MiG-31's have been on the market for a long time now." Jester fired back, more serious than usual, which by and large was rare, for as easy as it was to accomplish.

But I had already thought this one through.

True, mercenary outfits had been prominent in numbers since the Belkan war fifteen years ago, and even in a time of relative peace, many had still managed to maintain strength, but there was one fatal hole in Jester's argument.

"Those foxbats went to burners when they nearly smoked me Jester, they must have had fuel up the ying-yang. How many merc' outfits out there have tankers?" Again I concluded decisively. Granted, he probably did it subconsciously, but Jester's brain obviously figured the flak wasn't enough and tossed a SAM back at me.

"We're not snuggled up close to Osea Switch, we're in the middle of the North Ceres Sea. Now what if all those things you saw hanging off the MiG's rails were drop tanks? That easily puts them in range of us and back, plus fuel to spare." Jester stated coldly as I just stood there brain working overtime but fresh out of chaff.

"Well…" I stumbled, my competitiveness trying to fire back before the brain had loaded any ammunition, "…what were they doing out this way then?" It was a terribly weak response and we both knew it. Jester leaned back into his chair and smiled, he had just landed one up my tailpipe.

"I don't know, maybe testing out their birds, maybe someone is paying them to see what's out in the North Sea, they're merc's who knows?" Was the slightly mumbled reply, Jester didn't care how weak it was, he had beaten me fair and square. But I was still in afterburner. Fine, they were merc's, but I wasn't bugging out just yet.

"That would be one of hell of an expensive test flight, so suppose it was recon, they had to have some way of knowing our general vicinity, I mean you don't send MiG-31's with their radar off to search an area of ocean unless you know what you're looking for, right?" This got Jester interested again, if only slightly irritated.

"So what, satellite?" He asked, coming to the same conclusion I had reached.

Ten minutes of perusing through Defense-Net, the far more resource rich version of the internet, and we had been able to pull up the schedules of all satellites passing over the North Ceres Sea for the past three days. Two stuck out. I blurted out my thoughts first,

"Bingo, a Yuktobanian rock flew by two days ago!"

"Didn't we agree they weren't yukes? Besides that was several hundred miles off, now way an image sat would be able to see us from that range, but here, look, one civvie image sat registered to Grunder Industries flew nearby yesterday. You can buy the images they shoot off the internet for pretty cheap."

Based on the fact both were image sats, we now had definitive proof that the planes I had encountered were mercenaries on a recon mission.

But they both weren't image satellites.

Had we bothered to do a bit of research instead of just patting each other on the back for having "figured out" the puzzle, we probably could have learned that the Yuktobanian bird, launched during the Belkan War, was actually a radar equipped search satellite specifically designed to find fleets at sea.

That, and that the next pass of that satellite would float nearly right over our heads within the next half hour.

I returned to my room an hour later to find another yellow post-it note on my door. At first thinking it was another jab, I nearly ripped it down, but the note was covered with pink ink. Nobody I knew would write with pink.

Hey there flyboy, hear I missed you in the mess last night. Too bad, heard some pretty good stories. I have a break at 1015, see you in the aft mess hall for brunch
-Harper

Let's be honest, finding attractive girl in the Navy isn't exactly as easy as it is in one of Oured's nightclubs. Finding an attractive girl who's interested in you despite the infinite swarm of other fighter pilots hovering around a carrier's decks was also no easy find. And finally, finding an attractive girl who is interested in you to the point that she arranges the date is abut as likely as doing a barrel roll in the Wright Flyer.

Is it even possible?

My watch said 1009 in blinking black characters. Needless to say, I didn't bother to stick around and figure out the Flyer problem.

Note clenched in my right fingers, I took off for the aft mess, seven hundred feet back and three decks down. On my left hand my cheap quartz watched ticked away, racing me to get to 1015 first.

The general quarters alarm beat us both.

So, what do you think of the style change?

In planning, this was only supposed to be the first half of CH.2, but as I broke through page three of the draft I figured I should make it it's own separate entity.

Anyways please R&R and I will try and throw CH.3 up asap.

-silverphantom