Original story based on and including characters and material created by Project Aces for Namco Bandai. The author claims no ownership over them. Gunther Heimeroth character by Pokefanficwriter92.
"War is not just bombing a place. When war begins, it has no limit." - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
On Wings of Nightingales (Mercenary)
Chapter 6
Seven Pillars Memorial Museum
Stier Castle, Belka
June 2015
1353 hrs.
Albert Genette
I never imagined that I would find myself this close to one of the Belkan nuclear craters in my own lifetime. In fact I was only a child when my teacher rolled a television set into our classroom to show us footage of the nuclear blasts captured on my future channel of employment. But now that I was here, I realized that I also never imagined myself paying more attention to a computer screen than the craters themselves, as I punched in a name and number on a museum computer's search function while tourists and museum guides hovered around the castle halls.
I gazed out of the window next to it, past the ancient walls to the barely-alive township of Stiergarten below while it loaded. A large plastic panel by the window showed the layout of the town as it was on that morning 20 years ago. Indeed, it's still hard to believe there's anybody alive down there.
It was one of these views of the desolate land that President Vincent Harling must have to have endured during his confinement in this castle after his abduction, another being the crater that was once the town of Waldreich from the opposite side of the castle. It was also possible to see other craters from the higher towers of the castle.
Stiergarten was one of Belka's oldest settlements. Nestled in the valley under its namesake castle, the town actually started off as part of the fiefdom ruled from the Castle. This fiefdom included the larger trading town of Waldreich on the other side of Lake Edelwasser. Stiergarten only gained its name separate from Waldreich after the country's Unification in the late 1800s, when it became one of the hearts of Eastern Osea's wine country.
After the Expansion War, both the castle and the wineries became popular tourist attractions until the outbreak of the Belkan War. Authentic bottles of vintage Stiergarten 1994 run into the Z10,000 (BM 12,500) range, and auction sites are always on the lookout for forged '95s from fraudsters looking to make easy money. This was because vintage years of Stiergarten wine only ran up to 1994, as the harvest season would have started in the autumn the following year.
But that harvest never grew. Nothing grows here except the numbers of tourists that want the closest safe view of the nuclear horizon from the Belkan side of the border.
I turned my head back to the kiosk screen as the data that Annette Zweig gave me returned precisely one entry.
As I clicked, I hoped deep down that it would confirm what she had done on the day everything changed. And, perhaps, show that her survival changed her.
15,000 feet above Stiergarten, Belka
6 June 1995
1508 hrs.
OLT Annette Zweig
The skies had grown frightfully overcast since my squadron and I began passing over the Waldreichs, as if we had quite literally crossed into some evil land. What started with blue sky slowly clouded over into ominous darkness. Not that we weren't too bothered with passing the point of no return...at least at the point we were now. We alone stood between a fleet of bombers and their plot to obliterate the nation. We faced long odds against them and their escorts, and that wasn't counting the likelihood of forces loyal to Chancellor Drexler or even the Allies denying us a safe runway to return to.
The four MiG-31 Foxhounds that made up our flight were built for supersonic interception, but we were already using up our afterburners just to buy us a few more precious seconds to stop a fleet of bombers from delivering nuclear terror. We could just see their target below: the small city of Waldreich. Even from up here it wasn't hard to tell that the place had been fortified against imminent Allied movement, not that they knew what was really in store for them from the Eden bombers above. It wasn't long before an AWACS contacted us to let us know we were at least travelling in the right direction.
"Engel Flight, this is AWACS callsign Beethoven, I'm your flight controller for this mission," he began. He sounded more afraid than we were, and for good reason. For volunteering to aid us, he put his lone aircraft high above where most fighters could reach him and even an enemy AWACS to spot him. "I'll keep you updated on the Eden bomber flight headed to Waldreich and Mollsitz."
The lead plane in my flight responded. "This is Engel 2-1, we copy. Requesting sitrep."
"I have you on my scopes, bearing 0-8-0 north of Waldreich. Operation Eden bombers, range 20 miles at 0-9-niner. You'll only have a few minutes at the most once you get into missile range."
All eight of us in Engel 2, pilots and weapons systems officers alike, all perked to attention if we weren't already there.
"Wow..." Gunther began over 2-4's radio, "I still can't believe this is it..."
I looked out the canopy toward his plane as if to face him directly. "Me neither, but here we are."
"Beethoven to Engel Team. Looks like someone's trying to beat us to it. We have Ustian fighters engaging the Waldreich bomber flight, 10 miles out."
"How many bandits?" asked Engel 2-1.
"It's turning into a furball, we can pick out five. All with Ustio IFFs."
If I was already focusing all my attention and effort to catching up to Operation Eden, then the mention of Ustian fighters already clashing with the bombers turned attention into obsession. I feared my Foxhound wouldn't even be able to keep up with the Demon Lord, let alone shoot him down. And that wasn't even counting the fact that a potential nuclear apocalypse took much higher priority than shooting down a defecting ace.
"Roger. Tally ho on Operation Eden," Engel 2-1 suddenly announced. My grip on the flight stick tightened as I spotted the dogfight up ahead.
The gigantic BM-335s were easy to spot, almost as easy as the ones that already took hits. The much smaller fighters - escorts or otherwise - darted every which way around them like flies around a giant wounded animal. I already knew from my unfortunate firsthand experience that their armor would already be compromised by their age, but that was clearly beside the point.
"Two, no, three planes are down. But this has no bearing on our plans," came a transmission from the lead bomber, unfazed with his comrades and escorts plummeting downward into farms and wineries. Both Eden and Engel flights were on the same frequency.
"Do they intend to wipe our homeland off the map! That's crazy!" shouted Engel 2-2.
"That's my brother's government for you," Gunther replied, "Any ends will justify their means and to hell with anyone in the way."
Surely they didn't need all these bombers just for one town! One of them held the nuclear weapon, but there was no way we'd wait for the radiation detectors to go off.
"Weapons are hot!" my weapons systems announcer replied, to which I added, "Engel 2-3, awaiting orders to engage."
"Negative," replied Beethoven. "We'll give them one last warning while the Ustians have them held up."
I started breathing rapidly. These people were fanatics, they wouldn't listen to a warning that would give them the seconds we gained. The only thing we could count on was that the Ustians would still try to shoot them down. Nationalities aside, 'heroism' still came with a bigger paycheck.
"Warning. Change course immediately. Return to base or you will be shot down," Engel 2-1 began.
"Eliminate anyone that attempts to interfere," came the reply. "They're no longer our allies. Don't hesitate to shoot them down.
"They're really intent on carrying through with this!" Gunther replied.
"Like animals backed into a corner," Engel 2-1 replied. "They'll fight to the bitter end. Let's go."
"You got it, Engel flight," Beethoven replied, "Weapons free. Engage bomber flight at will. Do not fire on any Ustio craft unless they fire at you first."
"Engel 2-1, engaging!"
"Engel 2-2, moving to engage!"
"This is Engel 2-3, let's do this," I replied, before taking a deep breath. I now had to live up to the avian mantra more than ever: fly or die.
"Hell yeah," Gunther added from 2-4, "Engel 2-4, engaging!"
"Okay, Nachtigall, time to save the world! Keep 'er steady!" my weapons systems officer barked as I lined one of the bombers up in my sights. The missile-lock alert went off in the cockpit.
"Engel 2-3, Fox three!" he shouted, as we sent a pair of long-range radar-guided missiles raced out at the bombers. The other Foxhounds also launched their own salvos as well, and quite a few of them found their targets in the midst of the chaos.
Needless to say, whatever escort fighters were engaged with the Ustians also started coming at us as well. The four of us broke formation to divide their fire. I jinked hard to the right as an F-15 darted out at me from the furball. Maybe it was out of reflex, but the thought of that plane being the Demon Lord's caused me to bank the Foxhound so quickly that it actually jarred my weapons systems officer.
"Christ, Nachtigall!" he shouted, "I nearly had that one!"
"You can still see him, dammit," I replied, leveling the Foxhound out with the bombers in sight. "We only got a few seconds before the escort locks onto us."
I kept the plane steady long enough for my co-pilot to fire off a pair of medium-range Adders from the wings. We managed to see the missiles violently separate the tail section off a BM-335 from the rest of the fuselage, sending it spinning out of control. Although it was good to see another Eden bomber go down, I couldn't help but wince wondering how things would have turned out if I had suffered that fate myself over Valais. Of course, there was no time to reminisce.
"Bogey's turning around to your six, Engel 2-3! Evade!" shouted Beethoven as I tried to line another bomber up in the HUD.
The hulking form of the flaming 335 shadowed out my Foxhound for a split second before I pulled the Foxhound into a loop, deploying chaff against the Eagle's missiles. Blood rushed to my head, tilting it toward the ground with gravity as my plane seemed to loop right over the bomber formation. This was probably the first and only time I had ever gotten a view of the BM-335's grand wingspan from this angle, and it only lasted a few seconds before I righted the plane level, heading away from the fleet and the dogfight.
"Missile evaded!" my co-pilot shouted, "We're not out of the woods yet!
"I've got him," came 2-2, "You go after the bombers, 2-3."
"Copy 2-2," I replied as I circled the plane around to the rear of the formation. Tracer bullets whizzed by as the side and rear gunners of the 335s tried to draw a bead on the Foxhound, but th.
"We're making short work of the bombers!" my co-pilot shouted as I turned back around to face what was left of the Eden formation. "These Ustians are good!"
"I just hope we don't have to worry about them when we're done," I replied, as I passed a 335 and aligned to pursue.
There was only one bomber left, still stoically airborne as if oblivious to the dogfight going on all around it. I could just see Stier Castle passing under its nine o'clock as I edged my plane into pursuit. That BM-335's rear-mounted vulcan cannon began spewing tracer rounds in my plane's direction as I jammed the airbrake to give us some distance.
"That's it, Nachtigall, just keep 'er steady..." my co-pilot said, "Fox three!"
Two more radar-guided missiles dropped from my Foxhound's hardpoints and darted past withering gunfire and into the last remaining bomber. They tore into the fuselage and practically vaporized the BM-335's bulk, sending a smoldering pile of wreckage down into the grassy plains below. If that plane carried the warhead, then the explosion would incinerate the material without detonating it, and leave the core smoldering away somewhere for a cleanup crew to find.
"All bombers confirmed destroyed! Great job Engel 2 flight, looks like you saved the world after all," Beethoven announced, to the cheers across the radio channels. "Word from Hammersmark is Engel 1's almost done mopping up. Looks like the Ustians are happy too. I'll try to patch you in."
I was anxious to hear what the mercenaries were thinking at this point, as much as wondering how they would react to this as I was curious to know if the Demon Lord really was among them.
"...no impossible jobs for us mercenaries!" shouted one, a pilot that had to be younger than I was.
"Read 'em and weep, Belkans!" exclaimed another.
"Hey!" was Gunther's jokingly insulted reply. The two of them laughed it off, though.
I simply took a deep sigh of relief. We had really done it. We really believed we saved two towns and everyone holed up there from nuclear vaporization. Of course we didn't know if the other attacks would succeed, even from up here, until after we landed. And that was if Beethoven could find us a nice stretch of tarmac to land on. For now, we could take solace in the fact that some of us didn't follow our own army to destruction.
"Hey Zweig," my weapons systems officer asked, "...two missiles hit that last one, right?"
"Yeah..."
"Because I think we only fired one."
"You sure?" I didn't know whether it mattered, the missiles did their job.
"Pretty sure. Whoever fired the other one is flying next to us."
I tried to turn to see who it was. I couldn't see him from my cockpit, but at least he didn't appear to want to attack us just yet, anyway.
"Engel 2 to Ustio flight," I said, craning repeatedly to see what the other pilot flew. "Thanks for the help."
"No problem," came the reply, quiet and almost reassuring, "The pleasure was all mine."
My relief suddenly dissipated as I suddenly felt gripped by an unshakable fear. I could not put a name to that voice, but at the same time it felt as if that voice was as familiar as a relative's. I turned my head as much as the cockpit would allow to see if it was who I thought it was, not noticing that Beethoven continued to transmit.
"Beethoven to Engel 2. A single aircraft has just appeared on radar just south of the combat area."
"Engel 2-1 to Beethoven, can you identify it?"
"Its IFF seems to be off. It's directly over Waldreich, vector 1-niner-2. That's odd, I'm getting some strange readings from it-"
"What the-?" was a mercenary's simultaneous reply.
Time seemed to stand still as I finally caught a glimpse of the other plane.
I only managed to notice the plane had blue-tipped wings as the world was suddenly bathed in blinding white light.
In the silence before I opened my eyes to the apocalyptic rumble that shorted out my plane's instrument panels and silenced the profanities my co-pilot shouted in response, the Demon Lord vanished into the shadows yet again.
The rumble died out to the sound of frantic radio transmissions between the Ustians and whoever was left from Engel Flight. Beethoven had gone silent, perhaps permanently. And I was in a daze like everyone else trying to figure out what was going on...though I didn't have to figure out what just happened.
Someone had somehow managed to complete Operation Eden in Waldreich where an entire fleet of bombers had failed. It was as if the entire dogfight had just stopped, and everyone simply forgot what they were doing up here.
"Engel 2-1! 2-4! Do you read! Anybody! Respond!" I could hear my co-pilot shouting from behind me. "God...what have we done!"
I couldn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do or where to fly. I gripped the flight stick to keep the plane level, but that was it. Perhaps the magnitude of the mission's sudden collapse didn't even warrant a response. Or maybe it was perhaps we had lost our only reason to fly.
The Foxhound seemed to float in the sickeningly turquoise sky for what felt like hours before I suddenly found clarity. I didn't know why or how it happened, but I began to inexorably nudge the interceptor toward the one marker in space that came to mind. Not for direction, not for a way to escape, but to keep me from floating away to oblivion.
Before long, I could see an F-15 Eagle with blue-tipped wings come into view. And, it seemed, just in time as well.
Someone was trying to kill him.
"Buddy...I think I've found a reason to fight," came a voice over the radio. It was different from the one that scared me earlier, but no less ominous.
"Pixy? What the f-!" exclaimed the voice of the Demon Lord, overtaken with surprise. The last thing I heard from him before the transmission got cut off was a missile alert.
Whoever this "Pixy" was, he flew the exact same type of plane as the Demon Lord's, only his was entirely gray with one wing painted bright red. My Foxhound, being in whatever visual range could be afforded in the blur, was the only one that could help him.
Something inside me told me to let him die as vengeance for the humiliation above Valais and B7R. I would be safe if I just managed to hobble my plane around the mushroom cloud and back to Hammersmark or Sudentor or some clear swath of ground to land on.
And yet although it sounded like the same voice of conscience that tried to talk me out of the grand briefing at Neu Eisendorf, I refused to follow it. I gunned the afterburners and headed straight for the two.
"Nachtigall! What are you doing?" my co-pilot shouted, on the brink of tears. Sharing the same cockpit meant I could at least hear him clearer than anyone else out there.
"We couldn't save anyone below," I replied with an almost nihilistic determination, "We might as well save someone up here."
The Foxhound caught up with the two dueling Eagles quickly. However its lack of nimbleness meant I ended up over-correcting when the Demon Lord's evasive patterns pulled his pursuer into equally-tight maneuvers that the Foxhound found itself too heavy to imitate. How the Foxhound could keep up with the Demon Lord was a mystery in itself, as much as figuring out what drove me to try to save him in the first place above the increasingly infrequent complaints from my co-pilot.
That I would find out only later, after it was too late. But now, all that mattered was clearing out whoever was on his tail. And although the tracking capabilities of my missiles had been neutralized, I still had control over the cannons.
23mm rounds burst out from the Foxhound's gatling cannon at the red-winged F-15. The aim was almost spot on, but the pilot had reflexes on his side as he bugged out, escaping with a nicked stabilizer.
"Cipher! You've got one on you!" shouted a much younger voice over the radio.
"We got one closing in head on-" my weapons systems officer shouted. I could barely hear him over the din of our Foxhound engines still working. Not that I would have heard him finish his sentence.
I ducked as much as my safety harness would allow, as cannon fire suddenly appeared from out of the fog, punching holes through the cockpit and wings of my Foxhound, effectively disabling it. There were no alarms ringing from my cockpit as the Foxhound began to depressurize, but I could feel the wounded interceptor dying as smoke began to pour out of its sides and the thrust started to die down.
"Goddammit!" I shouted, "We've been hit! Lieutenant...Lieutenant?"
I didn't get a reply, and the red splatters all over the canopy revealed why. My weapons system officer was dead.
"Oh God...oh God..." I whimpered, tears starting to trickle from my eyes.
I was now effectively blind and deaf in the blur, unable to communicate. I followed my now-ironically-named survival instinct and triggered the canopy release, immediately subjecting me to possibly radioactive wind even before I pressed the eject switch.
The rumble of jet engines and combat faded as I fell further and further away from the dogfight. Even as I deployed my parachute I couldn't tell which way was up as I plummeted into the cloud of radioactive ash slowly washing its way over the earth below. I reflexively held my breath, but I ended up exhaling almost as soon as I entered the cloud.
I looked "down" hoping that I would hit solid ground and somehow scurry my way over to some place to hide from this nightmare. But that luxury was denied as my body seemed to contract in on itself, talons from hell suddenly scratching at the seat.
It was only when gravity stopped pulling that I noticed my parachute caught itself on the branches of a tree.
There was no comfort to be found even when I finally fumbled about to unfasten my safety straps and free myself from the ejection seat, resuming my fall through the cloud for a few seconds. Pain shot through my legs as the ground seemed to get the jump on me, probably dislocating something as I found myself unable to even kneel without causing great pain. Screaming in pain was natural yet futile. Worse yet, I was still almost completely blind in the cloud of radioactive dust that slowly wafted over the area.
Every breath I took seemed to draw in copious amounts of ash and other debris, setting my innards on fire. Every movement my limbs made in any direction took every last drop of effort in that vain hope that I would somehow reach shelter from this radioactive storm. It was a burden that got insurmountably heavier with every squirm, dulling and eventually suppressing my senses. Soon, I could barely even see the ash. My helmet's goggles prevented the dust from burning the eyes out of my skull, but it wasn't as if sight mattered as I felt the last of my strength draining from me.
As everything went black, I could still somehow hear the clouds of dust and snow and rain blowing around my corpse. I wished for those winds to bury me in the rubble of Stiergarten.
But in time, the howling winds too faded, leaving me numb in oblivion.
The last thing I could remember hearing was Huckebein's voice on the radio before I shot him down.
"That was a good flight, Anne. See you on the other side."
We wouldn't.
Maybe if I hadn't lured myself to that fateful rally in Neu Eisendorf, or if I had let Huckebein escape instead of shooting him down, nothing would have changed, neither my fate or that of the country. Maybe it would have only meant eight nuclear weapons would have detonated above those towns instead of seven. But I was much more certain of something else.
When I decided to help that plot by shooting Huckebein down, I already sealed my place in history. I was a collaborator. I thought I could redeem myself in my desperate attempt to stop it...but in the end I knew this was the ignominious death I deserved. The blood of 20,001 people was on my hands, including the co-pilot I dragged to his demise. If they somehow found my body, they would identify me and condemn my eternal memory to villainy.
I found some twisted solace in the fact that I wouldn't be able to change what was now etched in stone. Yet I had also come to an even more profound realization, regrettably only in time for my demise.
I saved the Demon Lord's life, if only for the few moments before I was shot down. And more than that, I now felt as if it were necessary, like nature taking its course.
People like the Demon Lord didn't survive and profit because they knew that any human being would forsake the values they held so dear when pushed far enough. Most people, sane or otherwise, came to that conclusion sooner or later.
No, they lived because they knew how to take advantage of it. People like Heinrich Strossen and Ashley Bernitz, even Colonel Buchner and Gunther and Michael Heimeroth would not last in the world that these nuclear bombs created. Their obsession with preserving their versions of morality would certainly be their undoing. But the Demon Lord would always find an opportunity in people like them, in Belka, or Osea, or Ustio, in whatever organization came knocking to prosper for himself. And there were always more opportunities to take their place when they had their fill.
My mind, as the process of death went, was the last thing to go. Before I completely succumbed to death's embrace, I decided that I wouldn't fight the Demon Lord anymore, at least in the sense that I antagonized him since the war began.
Rather, if I were somehow incarnated into another life, I should instead strive to compete with him and even try to become like him. Maybe even to replace him in legend or infamy.
Today, I still believe that arriving at that revelation granted me that reincarnation.
When I regained consciousness on a surgeon's table a few days later, I felt as if I were reborn.
To Be Concluded...
Author's Note: Yes, PJ just shot them down. Irony.