Original story based on and including characters and material created by Project Aces for Namco Bandai. The author claims no ownership over them.
On Wings of Nightingales (Mercenary)
Chapter 2: Open Wings
"For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing. A central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either." - Blaise Pascal
The following footage was excerpted from the "On Wings of Demons" 10th anniversary edition of the award-winning OBN Documentary "Warriors and the Belkan War."
"You will return to greet your sons and daughters as they conclude their year of studies," they told us on that dreary morning briefing in March.
It was a sentiment I believed wholeheartedly for those first two weeks. Although I never married or had children myself, I never realized how wrong they were until it was too late.
Callsign Nachtigall, Annette Zweig. Belkan Air Force, 8th Air Division, 7th Fighter Wing. With the moniker of Nightingale, she was best known for her independent and elegant acuity in combat. Today she works as a security advisor with a private military company.
I grew up in Drachenau, a quiet town between Anfang and Dinsmark near the Northern coast. As a child my favorite fantasies involved growing wings and flying in the sky, above the constant cloud banks that hovered over this cold city. I dreamed and daydreamed about flight, and it was eerily appropriate that our home was on a hill that overlooked the nearby airfield.
Most of the girls that I went to school with wanted to become anything from stewardesses to Members of Parliament, but it seemed I was alone in wanting to become a pilot. After all, it was the closest thing any human being could get to growing wings until the Engineering majors at the universities finally figured out how to make a jetpack or a flying car. I loved to draw airplanes in art class, write about flying aces for language class.
At one point, I even tried to audition as the Blue Dove for our school play about the Razgriz.
But times were tough. The Expansion War was winding down toward its end, and our newly-annexed eastern provinces were taking a heavy toll on our economy with a myriad of civil disputes despite the government's efforts to grant them autonomy. My conservative Northern family was stingy enough to keep ourselves afloat through it all, but they were also very bitter about the influx of Gebeto and Rectan immigrants to our town.
It was a sentiment they weren't alone in sharing, though going to school with the Ostkinder never personally bothered me. Perhaps it was because many of my school-teachers were from the more rural yet liberal south, also flocking to the northern cities for better opportunity. It was hard to say if they were really more open-minded and tolerant than the Northerners, or if they were just a lot more patient in teaching the Ostkinder the "proper" Belkan way of life, but I never really learned to hate them.
I had just entered secondary when Parliament began their Federal Law Review, intensely debating the consequences of granting independence to our Federation still in its infancy. The mere mention of the word "independence" completely changed society. The Easterners that once looked to the North for opportunity now relished the chance to move back out to a country they could call their own again.
And this incensed people like my parents, who thought it was bad enough that they were "polluting" the northern Belkan way of life while the government dawdled over autonomy instead of saving the economy. Now the government was just going to let them go back without consequence, they believed, taking our money with them?
This anger, this sheer hatred of the enemy was prime material for the wizened, old backbencher that held the single seat of an old far-right party in Parliament. While he publicly declined from stoking the debate and even quietly nodded as the Easterners gained their independence, he began building his bases of support behind the scenes.
He found support from every corner of society, from the steelworker and infantryman, to the middle-class parents worried about their Belkan native teenagers looking for something to believe in, the small entrepreneurs up to the biggest corporate CEOs, and even the generals and scientists of our vaunted military.
He had his connections in the media drop a nasty editorial in one TV show here, move some racial tension up to the front pages of a local paper there, and turn one of our neighboring countries into a scapegoat on the side. Before long he had managed to change the atmosphere in such a way that he actually had to act surprised when the people began to openly endorse his party to lead the government - with him as the Chancellor.
Wilhelm Drexler and his Belkan National Worker's Party easily overwhelmed their opponents in elections before I graduated from secondary school.
But the changes were apparent even before the elections. Although my thoughts were often in the clouds, I couldn't ignore the sound of the jackboots marching down Drachenau's main avenues or the hate-filled speeches on street corners warning all kinds of harm against the "ingrates" that seceded from our Federation.
The southern and Osean teachers I grew up with in primary found themselves harangued and blackmailed out of their jobs, and history and social studies classes began taking more revisionist and conspiratorial tones. When my classes practically began to repeat their propaganda, I often just silently mouthed it just to get it over with.
It sickened me, but not to the point where I wanted to protest about it especially when my other family members made attending the marches an almost weekly ritual.
The Eastern classmates I befriended in school left before I could say goodbye. Most of them had returned with their families in fear for those first few months after the election if they hadn't already packed their belongings and hurried back to their newly-independent homelands after they declared their freedom. And they were the lucky ones. The world barely turned more than a blind eye when they forcibly evicted the rest.
Eventually, the incessant propaganda began to worm its way into my mind as well. I had decided long before I graduated that I wanted to go into aviation as a career, and with the economy already geared toward militarization I figured joining the Air Force Academy would be the best chance I had of actually realizing that dream.
For far-rightists, Drexler's armed forces were surprisingly receptive to the idea of having more Belkan women in the ranks, though I was initially encouraged to put my obsession to good use in the laboratory or engineering department.
I suppose it was derived from some ancient Valkyrie notion that only Belkan women could give birth to Belkan men, so they had to be not only social but physically and mentally fit. Of course, their ideal also went that men would do the fighting while women took care of the more clerical tasks and homemaking, but with the New Millennium approaching they found themselves relaxing that rhetoric as more women signed up to fight for their country.
But 'fit' was an understatement. With officer's rank required for any pilot position, every airman and airwoman had to undergo an extremely rigorous training program. This included survival training...as well as a simulated capture and interrogation session using practically every method in the book. I not only learned how to love my country, but how to defend it to death and almost past my own dignity. Where the recruiters relented, my "interrogators" - often simulating vodka-hardened Yukes or Osean rednecks - were much more merciless.
And this was all before flight training even began.
The timing couldn't have been more apt. The prevailing mood among the army was already that of impending war. Every soldier in every branch was being mobilized for an invasion, even though most of us initially had no idea what country we would "reclaim" first. Judging from how much their country was denounced in that morning's rhetoric, we deduced that it would either be Ustio, Recta or Osea.
Ustio was especially singled out for having been the only prosperous member of the Federation outside Belka itself. The propagandists most consumed in their lunacy didn't just denounce the Easterners. They printed maps in propaganda posters of the ancient Reich which once spread from the Bannion to the Spring Sea.
I was assigned to the 8th Air Division, 7th Fighter Wing. Weiss Squadron was one of the many new squadrons the Luftwaffe set up in the years before the war, consisting of a mixed bunch of 'nuggets' and pilots that had earned their wings in the interim after the Expansion War.
We all flew freshly-manufactured F-16s, and I distinctly remember commenting about "that new plane smell" after getting into mine for the first time. Any one member of Boss Kellerman's Silber, it seemed, had at least thrice as many flight hours under their belt as all of Weiss combined, thus the squadron name being jokingly likened to a blank sheet of paper - "White" in Nordlish.
I figured that they literally just gave planes to anyone with the factories in Sudentor and Hoffnung working almost non-stop. And with so many new pilots added to the Luftwaffe in the 1990s, the list of callsign names ran slim quite quickly. I ended up with Nachtigall, after the small hunting bird. It wasn't nearly as grandiose as Grabacr or Gault, but I figured it would at least have more sentimental value more than "Weiss 5." But before any of us knew it, we had very little time to savor our enjoyment.
The evening before the invasion, Chancellor Wilhelm Drexler declared the Federal Law Review unconstitutional before his Parliament. In that rambling speech, he declared that every country that seceded over the last seven years had done so illegally, and the Great Lakes and Crescence territories we had lost were "stolen by foreign corporate connivance."
That meant the Belkan Armed Forces had every authority to seize these "provinces" back from their "illegal" Osean- or Yuktobanian-sponsored governments by any means necessary. But more than that, it also meant taking revenge on the nations that the Party believed were responsible for Belka's plight and occupying theirs in return.
This was not just about restoring a Federation. Their agenda was no less than the creation of a new Belkan Empire, from the Bannion to the Spring.
At the stroke of midnight on the 25th, three million soldiers, sailors and pilots marched over the 1991 border into six different countries, putting the entire continent and both Cold War rivals on notice. We vowed not to stop until every enemy capital was finally conquered and their territories and peoples reunited under the Black, White and Gold.
My squadron and I had already suited up well before Drexler had taken the podium. Our orders were to attain air supremacy in Ustio and secure the skies above our armored brigades. Other squadrons in the same base were bound for Ratio and Recta.
I can still remember exactly how I felt as my F-16 lifted off from the runway that night. Believe it or not, I kept my eyes closed as my F-16's landing gear lifted off from the ground. This was my first real flight, without any trainers or guided targets. It really felt like I was finally growing the wings I dreamed of. Yet at the same time I feared nothing, not even death. Like the bird, I accepted that I would have to live my life from here on out by three simple words: fly or die.
There was just one problem. I didn't exactly have an opportunity to put that philosophy to the test.
10000 feet over Directus, Ustio
28 March 1995
1623 hrs.
The first 72 hours of Fall Zirkel - the name for the invasion of Ustio - had gone off like clockwork. The Ustians had been caught completely off-guard by the advance of the Army Group Southeast and its armored assault brigades. What they matched with Southeast in their numbers, they had failed to reinforce with tactics. As a result, our sorties often started and ended in different airbases deeper in Ustian territory.
On the other hand, our 7th Fighter Wing faced very little opposition in the skies apart from what few attacker squadrons the Ustians possessed. These consisted primarily of Sapin or Ratio-built trainers converted into light attack aircraft. And because there were so few of them to be divided among so many of our own squadrons, the only aces that emerged from these first few dogfights over the Ustio front were the ones from the Air Force's "Color Guard" that were already aces to begin with.
The other pilots and I quickly grew as envious as we were frustrated, having come back from our missions to be regaled with stories of fighter pilots over the Eastern front earning their ace wings practically on their first missions.
It could not have been that our intel was wrong if we could get detailed numbers of their ground forces and their positions. But our own attacker squadrons had done bombing runs on airfields only to catch them mostly empty, as if they had all evacuated ahead of Fall Zirkel for one last stand somewhere. All we had to do when we captured those airfields was to sweep out the wreckage and move our equipment back in.
Fortunately for us, this suspicion of a last stand became a reality when my squadron was ordered to a combat sortie at the Gates of Directus. I flew tail on that formation as we took off from a municipal airport we captured about 50 miles up. All of us were looking forward to landing at Directus International and strolling through the arrival gates, if only to make this particular mission more interesting.
"This is AWACS callsign Schalke. Weiss Squadron, do you read?" came the voice of an AWACS plane.
"Weiss Leader here, we're following the river Crescere into Directus," replied flight leader Rowland Schtolbrok, "We can see the city up ahead."
"Roger that, Weiss Leader. I got the five of you on my scopes entering the combat zone, 10 miles north of Saint Charles ward."
"Hey Wingelbauer, I think I can hear the cathedral's bells already," Sven Mudra, flying Number Four, added eagerly.
Directus was one of the more laid-back capitals of the Osean East, its architectural heritage preserved amidst the country's economic growth. The cathedral at the city center was effectively Ustio's national landmark and until the Law Review no Belkan could say they had traveled their country without getting a picture of themselves next to it. Predating the Renaissance, legend had it that its bell could be heard from as far as the border with Sapin and that it had never been replaced since the church was built.
Most remember when the bells tolled for freedom a few months later.
But having flown over the city during the invasion, I distinctly remember when they tolled for their city's impending defeat.
"Weiss Squadron, I've got your orders from Army Group Southeast," began another transmission. "Sanitize the skies above Sant-Karl and Gaston Districts. Afterwards maintain combat air patrol until the 25th Armored Division crosses into Sant-Karl."
"Weiss 1 copy," Schtolbrok replied.
"I'm sending you IFF data on the Ustio squadrons now. Heads up, there's a whole lot of them."
"God in Heaven," the flight leader replied as our HUDs suddenly lit up like a neon-green christmas tree, "That's where the entire Ustio Air Force has been."
"You got that right, Schtolbrok," agreed Weiss 3, Adler Wingelbauer. "Tigers and trainers and Fishbeds, oh my!"
The Ustians proudly refused to hold onto whatever aircraft we had stationed in their territory after they declared independence. At the same time, they were so caught up in their newfound prosperity that they never really prioritized modernizing their military beyond basic defensive capability.
As a result, most of the aircraft they had in their inventory at the start of the invasion were surplus hand-me-downs from other continental powers, most of them predating the Expansion War. They could acquire those on the cheap and in bulk to cover up their pilots' inexperience and lack of training.
Of course, it wasn't that they hadn't acquired more powerful aircraft than the ones they threw at us during the invasion, but the "Color Guard" had shot those down before we could even reach the combat zones.
"At least we're not shooting down one of our own," I replied with a smile, "Wouldn't want all the good stuff to go to waste."
"There's about 30 of them there," Three added, "Divide it up equally, we'll all be getting our ace wings today!"
"Sorry to burst your bubble, Weiss Team," was Schalke's supposedly disappointed reply, "You'll be competing with the 12th and Gelb for your kills today. Southeast still doesn't want to lose too many of you."
"Gelb? I thought they were all the way over in Sapin," Mudra groaned. "Goddammit, I was hoping to get a kill this time."
"If you're still running your silly competition," Schalke continued, "Zweig, Bodmann and Schtolbrok have a head start with two each."
"They're coming right for us," I pointed out on my radar.
"That they are. Schalke to Weiss, you are clear to engage, weapons free. Happy hunting!"
"Hey Schtolbrok!" shouted Norbert Bodmann, our Weiss 2, "I bet I can become an ace before you!"
"You willing to put money on that?"
"Couple hundred marks sound good," Two replied.
"You're on!" Schtolbrok replied, before my cockpit suddenly started ringing with missile warnings.
I shot a quick gaze at my radar, finding the dots had multiplied. The Ustians had fired off a salvo of semi-active missiles as soon as they could spot us.
"Everyone break!" Schtolbrok suddenly shouted, all five of us breaking formation in sync, evading the incoming missiles with ease.
The Ustians were also breaking formation, not wanting to start a game of chicken. On the edge of the radar, a lone aircraft had turned a little too steeply, and I was in a prime position to get on its tail. I was already gunning the throttle before I straightened out from evading, catching up to the trainer before its pilot could see me coming.
Unfortunately for him, trainers never performed as well as the real thing and missile lock was achieved with little effort. I decided not to waste one on him and instead chewed up his fuselage with the Falcon's M61, revealing the trainer's only real advantage - a more convenient ejection mechanism.
I gunned past the burning trainer and swung around to face the furball. The cathedral lingered in the distance like a blade of stone-colored grass. Above the city, my squadron was already making short work of the trainers...and soon they would have company.
A pair of Super Flankers suddenly blazed past my three o'clock, their powerful booster leaving a rumble that rattled my plane like the runt of a stampede. But my F-16 kept its composure, while the enemy trainers parted like the sea.
Two-man squadrons were uncommon in the Luftwaffe. They were only organized if and only if High Command had evaluated two exceptional pilots, usually from two different squadrons, as exceptionally talented but lacking in a certain individual quality that would be more than adequately fulfilled by the other. Equip them with the best planes from the Südbelka Munitionsfabrik and an they effectively had an Air Division of Two.
Orbert Jager and Rainer Altman matched that description, and their twin Flanker formation evoked respect from comrades and fear from their enemies.
The drawback, of course, was that half as many people in that squadron meant twice as much pressure. And because of their talent, they were expected to perform twice as well under twice as much duress. But the nation needed heroes for this war, not just exceptional squads and leaders.
Until that time, we were all competing for our share of the glory. Those that couldn't keep up were left to pick up the scraps.
One of which was a trainer that was actually putting effort into tracking down one of my wingmen.
"Four to Squadron, I have one on my six!"
"Jesus, Mudra, that's the second time this week!"
"This is Five, I'll help you out."
Whoever was piloting this particular trainer certainly knew how to push it to the limits - probably a flight instructor himself pushed into combat. This particular chase had our aircraft diving closer to the old buildings of Directus' northeast wards, and I found myself having to pull up early in case my F-16 could not maneuver as well. This forced me to try to predict when my wingman and the pursuing trainer would pull up from a dive.
I found such an opportunity as I started to get dizzy.
'Now...' I suddenly thought, as my finger tightened over the fire button. A Sidewinder rocketed from my wing, flawlessly tracking the trainer's heat signature.
The trainer broke off his pursuit, but couldn't shake his new pursuer. The smaller aircraft seemed to disintegrate in mid-air as it plummeted straight to the ground. I only noticed it out of the corner of my eye as I passed it.
"Target down," Schalke announced, "Looks like Five stole one from Gelb, she's tied with Two now. Threat level is dropping fast."
"Hey Zweig, thanks..."
"No prob, Four. You'll still owe me a beer though if you lose," I replied, unable to force humor.
By now I felt one with my machine enough that my reflexes had become almost machine-like. As soon as flames started erupting from the trainer, I quickly checked my radar for the next target. The dots were slowly disappearing as our squad and Gelb chewed up the Ustians' aircraft one by one and sending the rest fleeing for their lives where once they had been so anxious to lunge right at us.
One of them - an A-4 Skyhawk - fled right into my field of vision. It knew I was going after it as soon as I banked into its path, its afterburners flaring as it raced to escape.
I squinted at the HUD, trying to keep track of the cannon's reticule as the Skyhawk dived even more dangerously close to the rooftops than the last trainer. But the last kill seemed to have given me the confidence to continue after this one.
I could almost see the individual tiles and chimneys before the Skyhawk then pulled up sharply, barely evading a brief burst of fire from my F-16's Vulcan cannon. I followed suit as soon as he started climbing though, a much easier task given my newer aircraft and higher altitude. With fewer enemies, I figured I wouldn't let my Sidewinders go to waste.
The missile made swift work of the Skyhawk's fuselage. A small puff of smoke burst from the cockpit as well as the pilot activated his ejection seat, while his craft continued its almost meteoric rise before stalling. I eased back on the throttle for a moment as I watched the burning hulk defy gravity for just a few more seconds, seeming to linger in stasis like a cartoon coyote before it leaned back and pointed a course to its grave several thousand feet below.
After that, there was nothing but the clouds ahead of me, slowly beginning to glow with the incandescent orange of the oncoming twilight. Looking up as I'd done so innumerable times in the past, it seemed not even the fires of war never scarred the skies as much as the land.
It almost felt like a place I could call home.
"Weiss Squadron, this is Schalke. Nothing but clear sky in the Sant-Karl and Gaston wards," came a triumphant dispatch from our AWACS to dispel my fantasy. "And it looks like you all made it out safely too. Great job."
"Hey Schalke, did you record our kill totals?" asked Bodmann.
"Sure did, Weiss 2," he replied. "Gelb swiped most of them, but one of you got your ace wings today."
"Get ready to pay up, Rowland!" Weiss 2 added confidently.
"Okay, Weiss' first ace is...our number Five."
Schtolbrok burst out in laughter over Bodmann's surprised cursing. I just smiled to myself quietly. "Gelb got that one that Bodmann was chasing, sorry."
"You got beat by a girl," Wingelbauer joked.
I shared in the humor. "Four hundred marks and a beer for me, boys. Pay up."
"No time for whining," Schtolbrok said, finally calming himself. "We might have seized Directus but the Ustians aren't done fighting yet. They're gonna make it hard for us up in the mountains."
"Seriously," Bodmann replied, "They barely stood a chance against us, let alone Gelb. How hard could they be?"
Sant-Avigny Air Force Base, Ustio
1818 hrs.
Much to our continued disappointment, we did not end up strolling through the arrival gates of Directus International, which continued to evacuate foreign civilians back to their home countries. Instead we returned to the same base we took off from. As soon as I got out of debriefing I was approached by a junior officer who told me to report to the command room.
The base commander, his secretary and some of the junior staff were waiting with celebratory smiles on their faces. The commander, in particular, was standing before a small case on his desk. I smiled calmly, knowing quite well what was inside, though somewhere deep in my mind I imagined finding some kind of engagement or wedding ring inside from some fan.
The plain, black cross with an inlaid triangle pattern did not seem like much, but the basic Belkakreuz Second Class medal was awarded automatically to any pilot that had shot down five planes verified in combat. It could be upgraded later on to a First Class with further decorations after surpassing certain kill totals. There were other decorations for exemplary performance and chivalry in the air, usually above and beyond the call of duty. No doubt there would be hundreds of those pressed and handed out as the campaign went on.
The commander took the medal out of the box and put it around my neck, in the proper ceremonial position, while reciting the usual proclamation regarding valor in combat and so forth.
"Sorry for the lack of ceremony, Lieutenant. Our little blitzkrieg has made the pomp and circumstance a bit of a luxury."
"It's all right, sir," I replied with a courteous smile. "Thank you."
"Keep that in your locker before your next briefing," the base commander replied. "Fall Zirkel is still ongoing, and we will need every pilot airborne as much as possible, though you and Weiss can get some rest for now. Dismissed."
"We will, sir, thank you." I gave a salute, turning to leave. However, before I could take my first step out, the base commander interrupted me.
"By the way, Lieutenant," he asked as I turned to face him again. "What did you think of your last sortie? You can be frank."
"I guess..." I stuttered, taken a bit off-guard. I looked out the window. "It felt...a little too easy."
The base commander smiled. "Well, this is Ustio after all. Most of those pilots were probably newer than you are. But you performed well, that's what counts."
"Thank you sir."
"In any event, you should only expect more of a challenge up there..." the base commander then leaned forward in his seat, "The Ratianos will be sending their fighters as we approach their borders. They will defend what they have stolen with their lives, so I should only expect you will fight with more vigor."
"I will, sir," I replied, putting on a soft smile before I left.
I dropped that smile as soon as I was sure the base commander could not see my face.
I had pursued and hunted my prey on orders. I had started earned the reward and glory for them. But apart from the bet winnings still owed to me, I didn't feel like I had gotten any satisfaction out of it. The visceral thrill was there, but it wasn't being diverted to anything.
Something was missing from the dream I was now living.
And I would finally find out what that was...on a cold and snowy day over the mountains.
To be continued...