Chapter 13 - Freedom Fighters

"All aircraft, scramble!"

Those were the words that Sortiliena had been dreading.

An all-aircraft scramble meant that the Belkans were throwing everything at them - fighters, bombers, you name it, chances are it would be there.

The Rectan Liberation Air Force had grown since the players had joined them; almost tripling in size overnight according to Fanatio, their Captain.

By today though? They were the smallest they'd ever been. At their homebase were only ten aircraft left; not all of them with pilots to fly them, and all of them hopelessly outmatched by a far superior opponent and far superior technology.

She'd heard Raios claim that their MIGs were easy prey to a competent pilot, let alone a skilled one such as himself (his words, not hers – especially as she refused to even call him a competent pilot.). Perhaps in a one-on-one duel, he may have had a point, but when twelve MIG-17s swarm a flight of only two F-86s from an advantageous position...

She tried her hardest to forget the panicked cries for help that both pilots had screamed in their final moments, as 23- and 37-millimetre shells ripped through both planes and pilots. If she didn't, and those memories slipped through, then she struggled to concentrate on anything but those screams...

Those screams would haunt her nightmares, and the worst part was that they were neither the first, nor did she doubt they would be the last.

"Thirty-one, starting up." She announced, flipping switches to start up her aircraft. The J33 engine of her fighter began to roar to life, whilst she armed her machine guns and set the flaps to take-off configuration. A quick waggle of the control stick allowed her to check her control surfaces were unlocked, and she was ready to go.

Despite the ten aircraft based there, only seven could generally be described as combat ready, and only three could be considered reasonable frontline aircraft, the rest were either obsolete, or missing some major component of their weapons systems.

"Twenty-seven, starting up."

"Ten, ready to go."

Herself, Renly and Eydis were the only three recruits left from their group, their ancient aircraft desperately stressed to their breaking points... sometimes literally, as had happened to Linel and Fizel, two of the youngest recruits who were wiped out when their T-33's wing had snapped off during a turn, whilst being chased by a Belkan MIG-19...

Neither of them had survived the resulting crash.

Just two more names to add to the "the list".

Their replacements were two pilots that had joined them from their last base at Casa Blanc after its destruction last week; a short, brown-haired girl, LLENN and the mysterious "Pitohui", a woman who'd adopted her moniker as her name.

Both flew ex-Belkan Air Force MIG-17s, painted into their own colours - LLENN's a garish pink, with a pair of bunny ears painted under the cockpit, whilst Pitohui's was slightly more sensible... in that it was mostly gloss black at a first glance. That all fell apart when you looked at the underside, painted in varying shades of red, orange and yellow, like the bird she was named after...

Which left only their captains, a woman named Fanatio, and a man named Deusolbert. Unsurprisingly, their aircraft were the best of the bad bunch, Fanatio having acquired an early model MIG-21F at some point, and painted the nose and vertical fin purple, whilst Deusolbert's aircraft was an F-102 Delta Dagger, easily the most capable of what was left in the fight, with various parts painted in red.

The base, Peniscola, was only barely functioning as an airbase anymore, and was the last vestige of an air force that had given the Belkans cause for concern. It was filled with the wrecks of the aircraft they'd lost, and the lives lost of with them. She had no idea how many people had been at the bases at Revar and Tamar, but she knew that the number of survivors was only in single digits from each...

"Ten, I'm airborne." Eydis's F-80 climbed into the early morning sky, as she made to gain as much energy as possible in the short time. Both captains had been airborne a few minutes ago, whilst the Shooting Stars spluttered to life, the aging aircraft deciding the least convenient time to be geriatric!

"Twenty-seven, climbing out." Renly told them, as she watched the second F-80 climb into the early morning sky ahead of her.

As she opened the throttle, she noticed a quartet of contrails to her eleven o'clock, with an additional pair ahead of the four… "Thirty-one, I see something..." She called, realising immediately as she spoke those words exactly what those contrails were… "All aircraft, break!"

That call came far too late, as the second Shooting Star disappeared from view, first engulfed in a fireball, then reduced to nothing but a cloud of shrapnel, fuel and fuel vapours, before the remaining confetti that had once been a plane fell gently to earth...

"Wh-what was that?" Eydis stammered, desperately trying to calm herself down.

"Granite Team, these are the last of them. Kill the dogs!"

In the distance, those four contrails had become dots, the aircraft generating them now visible. She'd heard rumours of Granite Team, a group of enemy aces whose sole purpose was to hunt down pilots who defected.

"All remaining aircraft, turn to 050, and run!" Deusolbert called out. "We'll hold them back, buy the young blood time to escape!"

"We're not going to-" Eydis began to raise an objection but was soon shut down.

"Ten, you heard him. Fall back and regroup." Fanatio ordered.

"Thirty-one, understood. Godspeed ma'am." She responded.

"Where the hell are Pito and LLENN! Don't tell me they've left us to die up here!" Eydis shouted angrily as they turned to the heading given.

"Eydis, calm down. We need to get out of here."

"Y-yeah, I know. You reckon that…"

"Right now, I'm not reckoning on anything. We've survived this long here; we'll survive this too!"

"I-yeah. Okay, I'm good now. Sorry. Head's in the game now."

"Good, because we've got company!"

From her five o'clock, a quartet of MIG-17s were escorting a flight of Il-28 bombers, no doubt on a mission to wipe their base from the face of the Earth. Somehow, the MIG pilots hadn't spotted them despite their superior position, and every opportunity to completely obliterate the Rectan Air Force here and now.

She thought to herself about looking gift horses in the mouth and said a silent prayer to any deity listening that those MIGs didn't spot the two Shooting Stars as they skimmed over the city. Perhaps, in any other circumstances, she reckoned they could've bloodied the Belkans' noses before they did any major damage, but today was a day where retreat was their only option…

/-/

That had been nearly a month ago now though, and in that time, Sortiliena, along with the rest of the remnants of the Rectan Air Force had been inducted into the Osean Air Force, following the events of Avalon, where the Command had decided they had been critical to the success of the day, and forcing the Belkans to prioritise defending every inch of their new lands, rather than trying to take any more.

The situation on the ground had become very stagnant, leading to something she'd hoped never to see in her lifetime – trench warfare. The lands towards the lakes had become a system of trenches, fortified beyond belief against any kind of land push, whilst a ridiculous system of SAMs, triple-A positions, and radar pickets had been set up to ensure any excursion into the area would be costly for the Oseans.

Not to mention the frequent air patrols that had a habit of sweeping into the border and harassing the few unlucky troops stationed there. She knew that several of the 23rd Fighter Squadron – their sister squadron at Canaveral – were already aces from those fighter sweeps alone, whilst others still had been present for not only the Battle of Avalon, but the Fall of Rechlin and the air battle that entailed had turned them into possibly the first aces of the war.

Today's mission though was nothing quite as drastic; a simple training exercise to get them familiarised with standard operating procedures in the OADF, and to foster a working relationship with other squadrons.

To that end, they'd been given the task to engage in a four-on-four dogfight, with a flight from the 23rd Fighter Squadron – Samurai Flight.

"Liena?" Eydis called. "You there?" She called again, only finally shaking her out of her thoughts as they approached the range.

"Oh, yes. Sorry, I was lost in thought."

"Jeez, that's all we need. A flight leader who's gone squiffy…" To say she was far from impressed by the pink munchkin in a MIG's comments would be an understatement…

"I have not "gone squiffy", I just lost my awareness momentarily. I am fine now." She told them in as stern a tone as she could manage. Being a flight leader was a new thing to her, and even after some surprisingly helpful tips from Eydis's new boyfriend, and Cmdr. Heirlentz, she still had some anxiety surrounding it.

Fighting solo, or with a wing woman like Eydis, were very different things to fighting as an actual unit, she knew that much, and although she'd flown with Pito and LLENN before, both had very different standard practices to them, and neither followed instructions too well… or at all, come to think of it.

"Yeah, good. Remember, we need to win this one! For Recta, for our honour, for…" Pito began to go on a bit, and she considered hitting the mute button on her, before LLENN thankfully interrupted.

"Free drinks?" She asked.

"That too." Pito agreed, and she sighed in frustration. Of course it would come down to that.

"Everyone, get ready. These Oseans have a lot more practice in their planes than we do ours, so they know a few more tricks…" She may have won an award for understatement with that one – they had only had their new planes for about two weeks, after Lisbeth, the mechanic at Canaveral had declared their planes as "condemned", and that "the wings were one tight turn from snapping off" on her plane.

Eydis had gone with a Mirage V, a more multirole oriented choice than her two friends' Mirage IIICs, whilst LLENN and Pito had "borrowed" the two commanders' MIG-21s, and had Lisbeth make some… modifications to the weapons systems, to allow them to carry a far greater range of ordnance than before. She, on the other hand, had chosen something more… out of left field – the Saab JA 37 Viggen, a large single seat multirole fighter/striker with impressive STOL characteristics, being able to take off and land within only 500 metres.

She'd only read up on it afterwards and discovered that she'd chosen an aircraft that's name translated to either Thunderbolt… or Tufted Duck. If anyone asked, she was sticking with the former.

Especially if Pito asked.

"I have them on radar. Remember, we aren't to use BVR weapons here… Pito."

"Why am I being singled out?" She asked, insulted by the statement. "Besides, I like to wait till I can see their faces anyway…"

"Range, 30 miles off our eleven o'clock. We're above them."

Two contrasting calls came at once: "Remember, win at all costs!" Pito said with the confidence of Napoleon Bonaparte… and quite possibly the height too, alongside the ego.

"This is a training exercise, remember!" Eydis rebuked, already anticipating Pito's… gung-ho habits.

"Range, ten miles. I have a visual on them!" Passing below them at eleven o'clock were a four-ship diamond formation, a single ocean blue F-8 leading the formation, whilst a pair of Phantoms made up the middle of the diamond, and a single F-1 strike fighter took up the rear.

"Samurai, you know the drill!"

"Caliburn Flight, engage!" She called out, though not before Pito and LLENN had broken formation anyway, much to her annoyance.

"Caliburn?" Asked Eydis, slightly confused by the new name. "Eh, good enough." Knowing Eydis, she was shrugging her shoulders before throwing the Mirage V into a split-S to engage one of the "hostile" aircraft.

She looked about from her vantage point, before checking her radar scope. The Viggen had a rather advanced onboard computer, when compared to anything she'd flown before (though, considering she'd previously flown an F-80, a pocket calculator might have been considered an advanced computer by comparison…), and far from the image of grace she supposedly presented on the ground, there was a degree of fumbling with the Viggen's avionics, as she tried to work out where Samurai Flight were in comparison to herself, whilst the battle raged on around her.

"Oh no you don't!" She muttered to herself, as the F-8 began a climbing turn to approach her six. Still getting used to the far less agile Viggen's performance, she pushed the plane into a diving turn, attempting to use her superior position, and far more powerful aircraft, to force the F-8 to fight in the vertical, somewhere she reckoned the Viggen could hold its own.

Unfortunately, the F-8's pilot wasn't playing ball, almost immediately recognised what she was attempting to do, and snapping the F-8 over into a dive to break away from the engagement for the moment…

Her radio crackled to life with three messages at once: "Dale, Fox Two!", "Pitohui, guns!", "Issin, Fox Two!" cried all three pilots, their voices drowning each other out.

"Confirmed kills. LLENN, Pitohui, Dale, leave the combat area."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Eydis groaned, frustrated at the bloody nose they'd just been given. "Liena, just us now. I've got the F-8, you spot them!"

Hm, maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as she'd thought it'd be…

/-/

When Klein had seen the match up, he almost couldn't believe his luck – their aircraft, whilst not superior per se, certainly had more advantages than the Rectan flight had.

Between the pair of Phantoms, they had a decent situational awareness, and his F-8 was almost as agile as the pair of MIG-21s, and considerably superior in terms of the Mirage 5 and Viggen, the latter of which being a good all-rounder, but a mediocre dogfighter, whilst the Mirage was more attack orientated, lacking a radar of any kind, but still carrying a decent armament in its twin IR guided missiles, and twin 30mm DEFA cannons.

For once, it was a relatively fair match up, that would come down to pilot skill above all else.

And it had.

Those two MIG pilots were clearly recent converts from the MIG-17, which could turn with the best, but was a poor choice to fight in the vertical, whilst the MIG-21s they flew were still agile… but trying to fly one as you would a MIG-17 would get you into a situation you didn't want to be in – very quickly too, as the pink one had found out when Kunimittz and Harry One had got onto her tail, being pursued at speed by the second MIG, itself pursued by Issin.

That had taken three of the four aircraft out of the equation before anyone could really react and left the score surprisingly in their favour; three aircraft left on Samurai, for two of the Rectan chicks.

The Mirage had taken to trying to run down his Crusader, but being left in a nasty situation when it flew straight into a trap, being downed in a head-on pass by Issin, who'd taken the chance to fall back and snipe her with a simulated Sparrow shot.

Which left just one: the flight leader, Sortiliena, who had been able to evade his initial pass, but had been left in an unenviable position, alone and outnumbered 3:1, and relying on only her own sensors and aircraft to keep her informed of their positions. "Boss, I can take her down."

"Nah, no BVR shots."

"I can see her from here, it's not BVR!"

"Nah, he just wants-"

"That's enough from you, Dale." He immediately turned off the radio for a split second as he thought about how to tackle this. Sorteliena was clearly a good pilot, having countered him exactly as he would've done in her situation, but even a good pilot would struggle to survive in a three versus one fight for long.

It felt unsporting to just order Issin to fire a Sparrow shot at her, and force her to go evasive, straight into his path, but this was a simulation of an actual fight; the Belkans wouldn't go easy on her and if they were using this tactic themselves, then familiarising them with such a tactic would be the smart thing to do.

"Issin, lock her up and fire."

"Gotcha, boss."

The Viggen had a surprisingly advanced countermeasures suite; flares, chaff and ECM all being part of its onboard countermeasures, so evading an earlier model Sparrow should be child's play for an experienced pilot such as herself, but then, he wasn't planning on taking her down with the Sparrow.

He'd looked at the strategies of several Belkan ace teams, and one in particular showed up quite often; one he called "Apex Chicken". A trailing aircraft, usually the number two in the flight, would fire off a pair of AA-7 Apex radar guided missiles, intended to miss the target, but come close enough to force the defender to break into the path of the leader.

"Issin, Fox One." He waited the few seconds of flight time that would be required for the Sparrow to approach her aircraft, before he began his part of the plan.

"No go, Issin. Missile trashed."

He pushed the throttles forward and attempted to use the F-8 as as close of an analogue to the MIG-23s they were likely to face as possible – that meant hitting fast, and getting out of the way just as fast, before coming in from a different angle. In any other situation, the F-8 would've been a poor analogue for the MIG, the F-8 being an agile dogfighter of an aircraft, whilst the MIG was closer to a drag racer in the air; extremely fast, but almost incapable of making a turn at speed.

"Ronin, volley two, Fox One, Fox Two." He called as he simulated the launch of a pair of Sidewinders, one radar guided Charlie, and one IR guided Delta.

"Ronin, confirmed kill. Fight's off." Despite her best efforts, at least one of the Sidewinders would've scored a hit on her, and for the first time in about five minutes, Klein felt himself breathe easily.

"Ronin, Sortiliena. Good job out there." Despite losing that fight, they had put up a pretty good show for pilots very inexperienced in their new mounts, especially given they'd gone from a flight of straight winged Shooting Stars and subsonic MIG-17s, to Mach 2 interceptors and fighter-bombers with no intermediate steps and deserved some praise for actually succeeding in downing Dale, despite the odds.

"Thank you. Not good enough though, clearly."

"We've had months of practice now and actual combat in these, you've had two weeks of academics. Not a fair comparison, ya know?"

"Yes, I suppose it isn't, in that context. Thank you"

"All aircraft, fight's off. Return to base for debriefing." He wasn't a hundred percent sure, but he expected there to be a frosty reception between the two flights once they landed…

/-/

Sortiliena wasn't one to sulk usually – after all, every loss was a lesson to be learned. An opportunity to study where you'd gone wrong and build upon your skills to make sure that mistake or error didn't happen again, as her parents had taught her.

Or that was what she told herself, anyway. She wasn't sulking, just… taking a break from the rigours of command, and dealing with irritating, and obstinate subordinates!

She wasn't one to sugar coat things; she knew she'd made some serious errors during that fight, not least that she'd failed to actually command her flight and left them to their own devices. That had cost them dearly against a far more tactically sound adversary, and in the fight, it had been the reason that LLENN and Pito had been "shot down" as fast as they were.

Had she taken note of that failure immediately, she could have reigned Eydis in, before she'd attempted to take on Ronin, and been bounced by the Phantom in front.

As it stood though, she hadn't, and that had cost her the situational awareness she'd desperately needed in such an engagement. That lapse had allowed Samurai chance to reform, and re-strategise, and in the end, that had been the deciding factor in the engagement – that advanced sensors mean very little when you A) have no idea how to use them, and B) are too pre-occupied with trying to fly the plane, to use them.

All in all, she realised how utterly shambolic her performance as flight leader was. Had that been an actual engagement, she had no doubts that all four of them would've died before any of them really knew what was going on…

The thing with that was that she wasn't annoyed by that; failures happen after all, and what Ronin had said was right, they were all fairly new to their aircraft. No, it was her flight's attitude after they landed that had, for want of a better word, pissed her off.

Pito had been even more of a pain than usual, only in a different way – rather than her usual lack of social grace, mocking her for her failure, she'd been furious that she'd played chess with their lives; that she'd used them for bait (not true) and that she'd played them as sacrificial lambs (also not true), whilst she stayed in her ivory tower.

Exactly what the ivory tower was in that chess metaphor, she really wasn't sure, but it hadn't helped when LLENN had told her that, whilst Pito was being irrational, she had been a really poor flight leader out there, and that she needed to improve, else one or all of them would die at some point…

That had been worse to hear than Pito's inane ramblings, at least she only barely understood the madwoman's point, whilst LLENN had made her point so crystal clear that it was almost transparent!

Then there was Eydis. Although Eydis had made her best effort to defend her, it was clear she was disappointed in her; whether that was in her ability to actually command them as a coherent unit, or that she'd failed to notice the Phantom that got her, she really didn't now.

All of which was why she was sat in a bar, drinking a glass of wine at 3pm. Had any of her family seen her now, she honestly couldn't say how much of a disappointment she would be to them, for whatever – that she was drowning her sorrows at a single failure, or that she had failed in the first place.

Whilst she may have been busy drowning her sorrows, she hadn't failed to notice the man sat next to her. Taller than her with a handsome face, spiky, almost crimson hair that was tied up with a bandana, he was giving her a funny look. "Would you mind not staring please, I have already had a bad day…" She asked, equal parts polite and frustrated.

"Huh, you're Sortiliena then?"

"I would ask how you know my name, but I suspect I do not wish to know."

"It's your callsign. Wasn't really that hard to work out."

"I suppose that makes you Ronin then." She realised. "I apologise for that, you do sound somewhat different without a microphone, I have to admit."

"Heh, no problem. Some guy comes up to you and starts chatting to you, I can see how you'd get the wrong impression. Name's Klein, by the way. Ronin's just a callsign."

"Talking, I don't mind, Klein. The staring, I could with less of though."

"Ah, fair enough. Sorry about that." Klein looked towards the bartender; a very tall African American man, who was currently washing a glass. "Agil, one of my usual please!" He then turned to look at her again. "And one, uhh…"

"A glass of red for me please. Put both on my tab, if you would." She looked back to him. "I suppose I should honour the terms of our agreement, should I not?"

He looked genuinely clueless by the question, before asking one of his own. "Uhh, what agreement?"

"I believe my colleague made a bet with your flight that whoever won would be in receipt of free drinks?"

He looked blankly at her again. "Wasn't us she made the bet with; I'd have known about it… I think."

"You want me to take that drink off your tab now?" The bartender, Agil, smiled, although it was pretty obvious that he found the whole situation rather amusing, given that smile wasn't far off a smirk…

"A Serlut honours her agreements… even if they turn out to be made up by an infuriating sadist." She stated, before deflating slightly. "This really has not been a good day for me."

"I guess your guys weren't too happy about losing that dogfight, huh?" He asked, and she did her best to avoid snorting at the question.

"That would be an understatement. If one is to be believed, I am a queen in an ivory tower using my flight as pawns, if another is to be believed, I am a liability that will end in their demise. If the third is to be believed, I am a disappointment, though they did not say that."

"Yeesh, they don't mince their words, do they?" Klein gave a look of sympathy to her, as their drinks arrived – a pint of beer, and a glass of red wine, as ordered. "I get that feeling though, being annoyed at someone for costing them something." He admitted, before continuing. "But then, being leader does mean making difficult decisions sometimes, and they'll be the wrong ones at times. I guess the advantage I had is that we were all friends before this, so there's a kind of trust between all of us."

That time, she did snort. "Yes, I can't imagine any circumstance where I would describe my flight as friends. I would barely describe them as friendly. Pitohui and LLENN are mercenaries, who were too concerned with their kill count in Recta, and I…" She thought back to that final air battle over Cor, where they had used the scramble as a decoy to allow themselves to escape unopposed and felt a rising anger at their actions then. Eydis had been right; they had left them to die!

"Umm, Sortiliena?" Klein asked, concern clear in his voice and on his face. "You hold that glass any tighter and it'll shatter!" He attempted to lighten the mood, with surprising success.

"Y-yes, sorry. I was just reminded of our final mission over Cor."

"Well, I guess how I learned to lead won't be all that relevant if no one likes each other, but I can offer some pointers, if you really want?"

"It could be of use, yes."

"I always think of it as whatever you ask someone else to do, you should be willing to do yourself if asked. If you aren't willing to do it yourself, then you shouldn't ask someone else to do it. I also showed my guys that I was willing to stay at the front, no matter how dangerous it got, and that I'd watch their backs as well as they watched mine."

"Considering who I have on my flight, I feel like I should be watching my back." She retorted, though she did agree with him. She would not follow someone who led from behind, so why should she lead from behind? "Though I understand the point."

"Honestly though? The big thing is experience, and currently, I don't think any of your flight have that in those planes. Those two merc chicks, LLENN and Pitohui, wasn't it? Both of them fought like they were still flying MIG-17s, and that was what got them shot down. That one's on them. The chick in the Mirage?"

"Eydis."

"Eydis, she made a mistake in trying to chase after the first target she saw, but it wasn't an unfixable one. In a real situation, her RWR would've gone crazy when Issin locked her up. You guys didn't have that, so your guys were lacking situational awareness in that fight. Maybe you could've used the Viggen to a better advantage; launch hit and run attacks, maybe, but I'm not sure it would've made all the difference once we'd knocked the two mercs out…"

That had been a far more detailed analysis than even she'd been able to offer, and she knew how her flight flew! Still though, it allowed her to really think on their flaws as a unit, and work on ways to improve them; whether that was through training or through actual experience, she couldn't say, but it would happen eventually.

Whilst she knew her silence was one to reflect on what was said, it was easy to see how Klein had taken it as her being upset by him, a complete stranger criticising her team as it were (even if all of his critiques were absolutely correct and justified) "I'm not saying you're a bad leader, ya know, just an inexperienced one!" He quickly added, trying to escape a hole he was not in.

She found herself smiling at that as she took a sip of wine. Considering her initial impressions of him had been a complete lech, only interested in one thing, the fact he'd shown himself to be able to analyse a complex situation fairly had certainly proven her wrong on that one. "I understood, don't worry. I should go and find my wing-woman, before she does anything too ridiculous, like…"

It was at that moment that she heard a speaker crackle into life, and for her wing-woman to get up on stage, her (clearly mortified) friend, Alice, next to her as she started to sing.

Actually, she was surprised that Eydis had such a pleasant singing voice. She'd attempted to play the drums at Cor, and it had resulted in the drums being thrown off a cliff, in a scene reminiscent of the old joke: Two drums and a cymbal fall off a cliff. Ba dum tiss.

"Like karaoke?" Klein asked, very clearly holding back laughter at the unfolding scene.

"Like karaoke, yes." She replied, herself very amused at the scene.

Perhaps today hadn't been a win for her, but it wasn't a complete loss either. She'd learned some more about her abilities and where she needed to improve, alongside now having access to certain material, if Eydis ever tried to tease her about things…

She turned from the impromptu stage show that was Eydis to face Klein, who was currently watching her wing-woman in such a way as one might watch a car's headlights... if they happened to be a deer, anyway. "Oh, and Klein? It's just Liena to my friends. Sortiliena is my callsign."