This fic was written with several embedded links to optional music during the story and a bunch of references images at the end. These links are not present on the ffnet release, so if that interests you, check out the crosspost on AO3!
This is highly romanticized fighter jet nonsense. It is a love letter to Ace Combat, Project Wingman, and Fire Emblem Three Houses. You will find no military realism within these pages. If you came here looking for it, read the fic anyway, but temper your expectations.
If you're not familiar with military and/or aviation terminology, that's okay. I don't think a deep understanding of them is necessary to enjoy the story. However, there is an optional glossary of terms posted at the end of the fic, as defined by yours truly. You can also click this link (only present on AO3) to view the glossary in a separate document. There are also links (on AO3) to image references of the planes flown by different characters if you appreciate visual references.
Edelgard von Hresvelg, exiled crown princess of the Adrestian Empire turned political refugee of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, now legally registered owner of the Black Eagles private military company, banks her fighter hard to the right, aligns herself with their final attack vector, and smiles with pride as the rest of her Eagles mirror the movement in perfect formation. They fly in sync, her raptors a perfect triangle-shaped arrowhead, Ferdinand's strike eagles trailing in a shallow wedge behind them. Somewhere above the squadron, Dorothea surveils the skies with the all-seeing eyes of her AWACS. Below them, the ocean is clear and still, its calm and steady surface reflecting the anticipation inherent to the liminal moments between take off and battle.
She evens out her breathing, checking over systems she's already rechecked three times, and in the uneasy quiet of soon-to-be shattered peace, she visualizes their success. Her crimson raptors, soaring high and proud, drawing the attention of the fortress's ground based guns and missiles, and—hopefully—avoiding them. Her noble eagles, following fast and low in the raptors' wake, springing up over the island and releasing their AWACS guided payload of glide bombs to annihilate the spooled up ground defenses. Her Black Eagles, seizing control of the skies, grounding the enemy's fighters, and providing close air support as her airborne infantry drop in to secure the airfield, then storm the rest of the fortress.
It's a simple plan, but one that relies on excellent flying, elite coordination, and her people being flat-out better than any opposing forces they come up against. It is, as Dorothea has told her, 'an eminently, inimitably Edelgard sort of plan', which she chooses to interpret as a compliment. Her Eagles are elite, and Edelgard will always be happy to stake her victories on the mastery and skill of the friends, mercs, and soldiers that fly with her beneath her banner.
No warzone can stay silent forever though, and it's her AWACS operator that finally chooses to break it. "Hey, Edie," Dorothea says. "We're closing in on the target, so if you planned for a rousing speech, now would be the time for it."
She definitely planned for a speech. She had this speech ready three months ago, and with their first strike against the hidden remnants of Agartha no longer a fantasy but instead imminent reality, she can't imagine a better time or place for it. She flicks on her radio and broadcasts her words to all her aircraft.
"My friends," she begins, because her friends were how this began. "Today we launch our first strike against an ancient, unseen enemy. For centuries, the remnants of Agartha have infested our nations, poisoned our families, and wielded us as tools to settle their age old grudge against the sanctity of life itself.
"No longer! Today we go to war, and though our foe may cower beneath the cover of shadows, we will drag them from the darkness and crush their skulls in the morning glow of Fodlan's new dawn!
"I will not lie to you. We may not be cast as heroes. Our war may go unsung. But this war is worth fighting! We—each and all of us—are the only ones who can fight it; we are the only ones who know to fight it, and for that reason, we are the ones who must fight it. Our foe is constrained by neither flags nor borders. They are the enemy of all mankind, and have embedded themselves within all man's countries, but I know, and you know, that when humanity stands together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish!
"When they imbued me with their crest, they intended to make me a wildfire—a mindless blaze that would scour the world and pave the way for their ascension. But you—all of you—showed me the way to a brighter, infinite horizon. This fire that burns inside me was destined to destroy, but now we turn that flame to a new cause—liberation! Let us ignite the fires of liberation! For Adrestia, and her burning, shattered skies! For Faerghus! For Fodlan! And for the world!
"I ask each of you, my friends, one last time: Fly with me, my eagles, into skies unknown! Together, we will purge the world of Agarthan rot and cleanse these skies of the false-emperor's deception!"
A chorus of whoops and cheers crackles over the radio, and a small, relieved smile spreads across Edelgard's face. Her Eagles fly with her.
When the ruckus finally dies down, Dorothea broadcasts across their squadron channel. "Great speech Edie, and you absolutely missed your calling in theater, but you forgot one thing: as long as I'm your eyes in these skies, I'll sing your song until my throat is raw, so let's give these dastards front row tickets to a once-in-a-lifetime performance."
"With pleasure," Edelgard swears. "Black Eagle Strike Force: Engage! Crimson Team with me; we're going to draw the fire of their air defenses. Ferdinand, I leave the ground strike to you."
Indicators of acknowledgement flicker across her display, and she eases the throttle forward as her two flights leap ahead of Ferdinand's fighter-bombers.
"Anti-air decoy duty. I've gotta hand it to you princess—there's never a dull mission, flying with your squadron. You really know how to show a guy a good time."
Edelgard struggles to decide between fondness and exasperation. Sylvain.
"Mind your tongue, 'Philanderer'," Hubert hisses at him. "Or I will mind it for you. It's not too late to change the mission parameters to search and rescue."
"Hubert, 'Red Carpet', buddy… You wouldn't shoot down your good friend Philanderer, would you?"
For security (and plausible deniability) reasons, the Black Eagles' Faerghan Attachees stuck to their callsigns in the field, but personally, Edelgard thought Sylvain embraced the character of his—picked by his wingman, of course—a little too eagerly.
Hubert laughs, dark and insidious. "Of course not. Lady Edelgard would never authorize friendly fire during a mission." He waggles his right wing at Sylvain's wingman, Ingrid's gleaming blue Typhoon maintaining a steady position at Hubert's side. "But 'Kyphon' reports to a higher authority, and I'm sure she has no such compunctions."
"Just give the word, Edelgard," Ingrid affirms, as Crimson Team blazes further ahead and makes themselves a tantalizing target. "I can fly without him."
"Kyphon," Sylvain protests. "You are way too eager to get lazed by flak cannons."
Ingrid laughs, and it kindles a warm spark in Edelgard's heart to see the Faerghan woman so happy. Ingrid was born to fly; it only took a moment of knowing her to tell, and it was a crime against the world that so many people had dared to tell her otherwise. If there was one accomplishment in Edelgard's life that she could take uncomplicated pride in, handing Ingrid a blade to carve her own path and seize a future in the skies for herself was that accomplishment.
"Well, I guess I can't argue with that," Sylvain chuckles. "On your mark, 'Emperor'. Let's give 'em hell."
They blaze into the airspace above their target, and Edelgard's plane comes to life with a wailing chorus of warnings. The radar lock alarm blares, and she can see movement on the ground ahead of them as the fortress sparks to life with a burst of activity. Over the warnings, Dorothea's voice is even, but insistent. "They definitely see you, Edie, and they're awfully worked up about it. Just stay alive up there, and I'll get Ferdie the data he needs."
"You know me," Sylvain drawls. "Wouldn't dream of letting a beautiful woman down."
Ingrid lets out a long-suffering sigh, but before Edelgard can interject another alarm rings in her cockpit, the automated voice chiming "missile warning, missile warning" as the first salvo lances up from the scrambling defenders.
"Look alive, Eagles!" Edelgard shouts, and yanks her flight stick hard to the side to break away from the oncoming missiles. "Mystic will do her best to interfere with their missile tracking, but that doesn't mean they can't hit you. Stay unpredictable, share flares, and don't get shot down! Noble will come through. We just need to buy them time!" Their perfect formation bursts apart as pairs of aircraft break away from each other to dance in circles around the enemy's frantic defenses.
"They're scrambling jets," Dorothea warns, as Edelgard leads a trailing missile to detonate harmlessly in a fluttering cloud of chaff.
She stays unphased by the update, her attention monopolized by the ground based air defense weaponry already lashing at her flight of supersonic fighters.
"We expected this. Ferdinand, Noble Team will engage the ground targets as planned. Fly low and keep your radars off; trust Dorothea to guide you in. Crimson Team will keep the skies clear."
As she speaks, she can see the first shadows of enemy fighters taking off from the airfield below, building speed beneath the protective cover of their anti-air defenses as they climb upwards to begin their intercept.
"Tally bandits climbing fast from the enemy airfield," she relays to her team. "We need to lead them away from Noble's attack vector. Splash them if you can, but stay high, fly defensively, and cover your wingman. Show these vultures how true Adrestian eagles fly."
"Fox two," Sylvain calls out, and Edelgard frowns as she hears the faint echo of an anthemic melody crackling in the transmission's background.
"Goddess damn you, Philanderer," Ingrid growls, exasperated. "How many times do I have to tell you? Stop bringing your stereo out on combat missions!"
"Hey, hold on for a sec," Sylvain responds, ignoring her indictment, and Edelgard turns her head to track him as Sylvain pulls his fighter into a high-G turn, the enemy fighter on his tail struggling to match his angle. She seizes the opportunity, rolling into a sharp turn of her own, slipping into position behind the pursuing aircraft as she trusts Hubert to keep her own six o'clock covered. Lining up the enemy in her sights is an almost-casual affair, so she waits for the pleasant tone of missile lock, holds her course steady for a comfortable moment, and fires. The missile drops from its internal hardpoint and gallops towards its target with killing intent. The sidewinder ignores the cloud of sparkling chaff that bursts into existence behind the fleeing fighter as it desperately jinks away, veering to intercept as its proximity fuse triggers and the missile violently detonates against the bandit's tail. The enemy plane starts careening downwards, billowing smoke from its crippled hull, and Edelgard takes care to avoid blasting the opening chute with her backwash as the enemy pilot ejects.
"Splash one," she reports, breaking away to seek out new targets.
"Thanks for the assist, Emperor." She can clearly hear the background music now behind Sylvain's acknowledgement. "Hey Mystic, can you confirm missile connect? I had to take my eyes off-target."
"I can confirm your Bandit is down," Dorothea lilts. "Great work, Philanderer. You're positively adequate today."
Ingrid snorts, and Sylvain laughs. "What can I say? Your Emperor brings out the best in me."
Edelgard wants to laugh too. Even with their air defenses active, the enemy fighters can't match her own. "Dorothea. Status of Noble Team?"
"Green across the board, Edie. They should be closing in on the target—"
"CASPAR INFERNO DIVE!" Caspar's battle cry, respectfully not communicated through his own radio, is so loud she hears it anyway over Lindhardt's, as Caspar's WSO reports the successful release of their payload of guided cluster bombs.
"—now." With Dorothea's command of the skies uncontested, their AWACS can guide the explosives unerringly towards their targets and cripple the air-defense capabilities of the beleaguered fortress. As if on cue, a staggered patchwork of explosions ripples across the length of the complex, and the hail of AA fire lancing through the sky stutters, and then falls silent.
This time, Caspar broadcasts his jubilation over the open squadron channel.
"I'm confirming total destruction of the designated ground targets," Dorothea confirms. "Good show, Noble Team."
Ferdinand doesn't bother hiding his pride. "A Noble could do no less," he preens.
"May we be joining your hunt now, Edelgard?" Petra chimes in, pleased and eager. "There are many birds in the sky still flapping, and Bernadetta is still having many arrows."
"As if you even need to ask, Petra." Caspar laughs. "The sky is clear and the sun is shining. It's the perfect day for a furball!"
Edelgard tunes out the banter. "Ferdinand," she orders. "Maintain formation with the rest of Noble and clear a nice landing area for our paratroopers. I'm sure Ladislava and Randolph are eager to have their feet back on solid earth, and Constance can't keep circling forever." She banks left and circles about, able to breathe easier now that the anti-aircraft fire from the ground is no longer a concern. The enemy's interceptors are still crowding the skies, but they're confused and disorganized. They weren't ready for an attack, and the swath of destruction her Eagles carved through the ground defenses and their first wave of aircraft must have punched holes in their chain of command that the survivors were still trying to fill.
She won't give them the opportunity.
"Hey, Edie?" Dorothea interrupts. "They're hailing us from the ground. Do you want to take it?"
"Put it through," she confirms, as she bears down on an enemy fighter. Lingering at the edges of the battle with no wingman in sight, it's an easy target. "Perhaps they wish to announce their unconditional surrender."
Her AWACS laughs, and then a different voice blazes over the radio. "Unidentified aircraft," a man jeers. "You're digging your own graves, attacking the mighty Adrestian Empire. Surrender your lives now, and perhaps I'll let you keep them."
Edelgard ignores the voice for a moment as she centers her target on her raptor's nose. Her radar chimes with hungry satisfaction, and she fires. A missile leaps free from its perch beneath her wings and streaks towards its target, ravenous. She tracks the enemy plane as its pilot notices the danger and tries to jink out of the path of the projectile, desperately evading, but the missile follows its target, and the subsequent explosion shears off one of the aircraft's wings. It spirals out of the sky, and the canopy flies off as the pilot ejects themselves from the cockpit.
She turns her attention back to her radio. "No. Any surrendering soldiers will be treated in accordance with the tenets of the Derdriu Convention for Civility in Warfare; any who resist will be destroyed."
"What a bold proclamation," the man blusters. "And by bold I mean completely foolish and utterly futile! I am Commander Metodey, and this entire island is under my command! Who are you to challenge me?"
"I am the Flame Emperor," Edelgard tells him, as she veers her plane back into the snowballing dogfight. "It is I who will reforge this world." She pauses one moment for effect, and then adds: "Total surrender, I will accept nothing less. Goodbye, Commander Metodey." She kills the call and sighs.
"Hey Edie?" Dorothea asks. "Are you sure you don't want to run away to the opera with me?"
"Focus on the mission, Mystic. The enemy is still shooting."
"I am focused on the mission, Edie," Dorothea objects. "And I resent any and all accusations to the contrary. In fact, I just finished spiking the enemy's communications. Let's hear just how much of a tizzy you've worked that awful commander into."
And before Edelgard can hear otherwise, she's hearing what Dorothea hears, as her stalwart friend digs her way through the base's communication network.
"Why are those planes still flying?" Commander Metodey demands, his voice shrill and furious as it shrieks over the radio. "Tell our SAMs to shoot them down!"
An officer tells him, "The S-300's were totally destroyed, sir!"
"What do you mean they're destroyed? What happened to them!?"
The unfortunate officer's voice wavers as he says, quick and rushed: "A pop-up group of bandits bombed our anti-air defenses in their first pass over the island!"
"They bombed our anti-air defenses? With planes?!" Metodey's voice cracks. "They're anti-fucking-air defenses! The planes aren't supposed to win that!
Another officer chimes in, sounding panicked. "Commander Metodey!"
"WHAT?!"
"The airfield!" The newcomer cries. "Paratroopers! They're storming the control tow-" A crackle of rapid rifle fire comes over the transmission, and the broadcast goes silent.
"Paratroopers and a precision air raid?" The first officer exclaims. "Who even are these guys? Spec o-" the transmission cuts off abruptly, and Dorothea curses.
"They booted me out of their system. How rude." Then she laughs, clear and rich, the way she'd only learned to do once they were both free from the shackles of Emperor von Aegir's twisted Adrestia. "Oh, but that was priceless, Edie. It's moments like these that make me believe this all might be worth it."
"You can play it for everyone else in the after-action," Edelgard tells her, unwilling to fight the fond smile spreading across her face. "Some of us still have a battle to win."
"Oh Edie," Dorothea sings. "You've already won the battle. Those dastards just haven't realized it yet."
On the ground, thousands of feet below the Flame Emperor and her flock of eagles, Commander Metodey, professional lackey of the Adrestian External Affairs Division, feels the blood drain from his face as the sounds of his fortress collapsing atop his head swell and surround him. He turns to his communication's officer. "Sound a distress call. Do it on the emergency channel, then tell our planes to shoot down that 'Flame Emperor'." His knuckles go white where they clench the side of his chair, and wild desperation clouds his eyes. "If we claim that prize, all else will be forgiven."
Or so he hopes.
Things were going concerningly according to plan. Edelgard was almost relieved when the other shoe finally dropped.
"Heads up Eagles! I'm tallying multiple bogeys vectoring in from due east. It looks like a full squadron. They're not pinging friendly on the IFF and I don't think they're here for a tea party."
"Copy that, Dorothea. Ferdinand, maintain air superiority and continue providing close air support to the ground team. Noble Team's objective is unchanged. Crimson, with me. This is our airspace, so if these dastards want to share it with us…" She grins wickedly. "Make them pay in blood for the privilege." A chorus of acknowledgements sound off over the comm-link, and Edelgard allows herself a moment of admiration as her flight breaks away from the main engagement in smooth, synchronized formation.
Dorothea chimes in again over the radio, sounding displeased. "Bogeys are changing vector. They're on an intercept course with yours truly now — so much for Hanneman's masking system. Edie, be a dear and keep these hecklers off my stage."
"Lady Edelgard…" her wingman's voice rasps over the radio as Edelgard frowns at their AWACS's update. The best radar technicians in the kingdom hadn't yet found a way to beat Hanneman's masking system, and they had direct access to the specs and hardware to model and test their countermeasures.
"They're definitely Agarthan." She agrees. "They wouldn't give that tech to their puppets."
Her wingman hisses the name like a curse, and even now, a decade removed from their care, she feels her blood start to chill at the sound of it.
"Then they will die in the dirt they crawled from," Hubert hisses.
"Eight planes against a full squadron?" Sylvain laughs. The music in his cockpit was still playing. "Are we pulling our tactics from Kyphon's fairy tales?"
"They're historic magical realism!" Ingrid protests. "The magic present within the setting reflects how the knights of the day perceived and experienced their world in their time! They're not fairy tales! And I told you to turn off that stereo!"
"Focus!" Edelgard snaps. "Targets are beyond visual range. If you still have AMRAAM's, now's the time to use them. Datalink with Mystic and let the AWACS guide them in."
"We're not IDing the targets first?" Ingrid asks, alarmed.
"Trust me," Edelgard growls. "We know who they are. Fox 3-" she fires, and the radar guided missile surges away. She immediately arms another and the rest of Crimson echoes her signal and a volley of contrails traces cloudy streaks ahead of them. "Wait for hit confirmation then fire another salvo. Blast them out of the sky."
The Agarthan squadron reacts immediately, planes breaking away in multiple directions as the formation splits apart in response to the long range attack.
"Well, well, would you look at that?" Edelgard flinches as the distorted voice of a woman cackles over her transceiver. "The little birdie came back to roost! Fly over this way, little birdie. Kronya squadron's gonna take good, good care of you."
"They're splitting their formation, Edie! Tally eight bandits still on my vector. The rest are breaking off for you." Edelgard does the math as the first wave of AMRAAM's closes in on their targets. It's an excellent missile, with a tracking system engineered to home in on the countermeasures traditionally deployed against it, but versus Agarthan enemies even that will only go so far. Three find their targets, striking two planes from the sky while the third seems to suffer only glancing damage.
"Again," Edelgard says, as the Agarthan planes finally appear on visual. "Crimson 5 through 8, defend Mystic. 2 through 4 form up with me. We'll deal with the rest."
Fourteen Agarthan bandits lined up against four of her Eagles. They'd certainly faced better odds.
The radio crackles again.
"When I woke up one balmy night
the sky was clear and still,
So a little birdie came to roost
upon my window sill."
"Dorothea," Edelgard hisses. "Get this maniac off our radio!"
"Little busy, Edie!" Dorothea says, scrambling. "And I'm sorry! I don't even know how she's getting through. They're not in our data link — I checked."
Two more Agarthans fall from the sky as the second wave of missiles connects, and then they're in close as hell breaks loose and the swarm of enemy fighters crashes into her own and rapidly degrades into a mess of circling and counter-circling aircraft.
All the while, the Agarthan squad leader continues to crow over the radio:
"Her song she sang so sweetly
but her words were gray and dull,
so I pressed my claws against her face
and crushed the little birdie's skull!"
"I'm going to enjoy killing you," Edelgard growls, but she struggles to find any sort of angle to follow through on the threat. Outnumbered with three to one odds, she's pushing her plane to its limits just shaking the enemy's radar locks — and they always seem to be finding radar locks. Her cockpit is awash with the sounds of overlapping warnings and danger alerts, repeating in discordant harmony as if the Agarthan pilot's awful attempt at slam poetry wasn't already aggravating enough.
"Just hold on, Edie!" Dorothea pleads. "Ferdie's team is en route to provide support. Just hold them off a little longer!"
She does her best. No matter how sharply she turns—no matter how daring her maneuvers—Edelgard finds herself caught on the nose of the enemy's fighters time and time again. The remnants of the garrison squadron and their Agarthan reinforcements seemed to be unnaturally obsessed with her. Even as the rest of her forces slowly pick them off, Edelgard is forced to frantically evade as her enemies take suicidal risks just to line up shots at her.
"On your six Lady Edelgard, missile!" Hubert cries, downing her newest assailant with a sustained burst of gunfire.
"Evading." Edelgard rolls immediately to her right then wrenches back her flightstick and lets gravity crush her into her seat as her plane pulls into a tight circle. Her warning indicators chime incessantly as she strains to push out sharp staccato breaths beneath the weight of the g-forces, and then she kills her afterburners as she hits the release for a burst of flares. They manage to distract the missile, and it detonates in the cloud of chaff safely out of range of her circling fighter. She twists her body around to track a second enemy plane with her eyes, then curses as she spots a third shape bearing down on an intercept course from above and throws herself into another sharp roll. "Tally two more bandits on my six!" she cries. "High and low! Hubert!"
"I have him," he bites out through his own crush of G's. "Just one moment longer…"
Edelgard twists hard as she fights to keep herself out of the opposing bandits' radar lock, vapor trailing off her raptor's wings as it carves another bone crushing turn through the air. She can feel the blood rushing away from her head, down to her feet, until finally her crests flare to life and her blood starts to burn as the poisonous magic forces it to circulate through her body. She fights to keep her view steady over her shoulder as the gravitational forces climb higher, 7… 8… 9… she forces air through her lungs as ten times the world's gravity presses down on her body, and keeps her eyes on the enemies chasing her. Faintly, she hears Hubert's strained "Fox two," in the background, and Dorothea's kill affirmative, and knows her adversary is now flying without their wingman. She's also aware, dimly, that Hubert can't keep up with the pace she's setting for the other Agarthan pilot.
In the moment, none of that matters. She pulls harder, the G counter ticks to 11. Her flight stick fights her, and she pulls with everything she has to keep it jammed back. She breathes like a machine, sharply in then violently out. Steady. Mechanically. And inexorably, the Agarthan jet drifts further and further into her sights. "I have him," she gasps as the missile tone chimes, and she rakes a staccato burst of gunfire through the bandit's wing as she throws her plane into a vicious roll that settles her securely behind the crippled fighter. "Die."
The bandit's canopy flies loose from their jet as Edelgard's missile pounces at her wounded prey, and she sees a black chute open up somewhere behind her as she blazes past the wreckage. "Emperor splash one," she forces out through her transceiver, as she steadies out her heading and wills her blood to calm. "Hubert, where are you?"
"Losing altitude," her retainer growls, and the cold shock of alarm does its best to cool her veins. "The slithering wretches put a hole in my wing. Right engine is… non-compliant."
"Can you land?" Edelgard demands.
Hubert scoffs. "Not so long as you have need of me in the skies, Lady Edelgard. If I can stay in the air to draw their attention from you, then I do so gladly."
"Hubert!" She growls. "I command you to-"
"Be at ease Lady Edelgard. It will take more than the likes of these to remove me from your side." She can hear the warning alarms sounding off in the background of his transmissions. "I will see you on the ground, my lady."
"Damn you, Hubert," Edelgard hisses, but she rolls her fighter upside down and pulls into a sharp diving loop to pursue any targets lured by the promise of easy prey.
It doesn't take long.
"Watch this, little birdie!" the awful Agarthan voice squeals over the radio. "Cuz you're gonna be next!" and before Edelgard can intervene, a hail of gunfire cuts through Hubert's wing, ripping it apart and tearing it free from the fuselage. She can't even afford a moment to look for the chute, as a matte black fighter climbs to her level and faces Edelgard down, nose to nose.
"C'mere!" the other pilot snarls. "I wanna clip your wings!"
Edelgard jams down on the trigger for her guns as the enemy fighter breaks left to avoid the strafe, turning her own fighter in the opposite direction to circle around for another intercept. If she can just—her radar goes off again, and she jerks her head over her shoulder to look back out the top of her canopy as another Agarthan dives down from behind to cut her off. "Dastard!" She throws her plane an upward roll, separating herself from the new assailant as she climbs, and the plummeting back down from the top of her roll to build gravity assisted speed as she breaks away from the other fighter.
It works, right up until the first Agarthan fighter takes advantage of Edelgard's built up speed to turn in tight behind her.
The situation continues to deteriorate.
"More bogeys Edie!" Her AWACS cries! "Due north this time. These ones aren't pinging clearly enough on the radar for me to get a good count, and you know how good my detection systems are."
Edelgard jams her flight stick hard to the side, pitching her fighter into a desperate roll away from the stream of gunfire nipping at her hull. Her heart seems to sink deeper into her chest as she takes in Dorothea's report. Her Eagles were stretched thin as it was; they weren't outfitted for protracted battle. They were each of them Aces, but even an Ace could only outfly so many missiles. "Try to hail them, Dorothea. And prep for a bug out. If they're not friendly, we're breaking off the mission."
"Edie…"
"I didn't bring us here to get everyone killed, Mystic!"
Dorothea doesn't challenge her any further. "This is AWACS Mystic, hailing all incoming unidentified aircraft," she broadcasts. "You are entering the airspace of an ongoing armed engagement carried out by the Black Eagles military company. We're all a bit busy here, so if you could be a dear and verify ID and intent before you get caught up in the furball, your consideration would be greatly appreciated."
There's a beat of silence, and then a woman's deadpan voice comes over the radio. "Acknowledged, Mystic. Transmitting IFF packet now. Please standby for handshake."
Edelgard lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding as the unidentified aircraft comply with the request, though they don't divert course from the beeline they're making towards the Agarthan facility.
As her tactical display repopulates with the updated IFF information, she sucks that breath right back in.
"You share this airspace with Enlightened Squadron, first sword of the Holy Knights of Seiros," the pilot — the Knight — cooly pronounces. "The Knights of Seiros are sworn to eradicate all fonts of sin that taint the heavenly skies, in the name of the Goddess, and by the will of her champion, Seiros." The pilot recites the oath with an almost clinical dispassion. "You fight our enemy. We will join you."
"Acknowledged—" there's a momentary pause as Dorothea verifies the callsign of the speaker. "Enlightened 1. Since you're eager, I suppose we can share the stage with you just this once. I'm transmitting our squadron's IFF transponder info now, and I will be very cross if you shoot at any of my pilots."
"Copy, Mystic. All planes designate mercenary IFF's friendly; terminate all other contacts. Enlightened: Engage."
The Knights of Seiros charge into the fray, afterburners igniting as they close the distance between themselves and the remaining bulk of the Agarthan squadron.
Quietly, on a private channel, Dorothea says, "Sorry Edie, but I'm not turning away free help."
Her AWACS's private commiseration is quickly overshadowed by a jubilant bellow as Caspar shouts across his transceiver: "Hey, Kyphon! Did you see? Thunderbrand's in that squadron! We get to fight bad guys with Thunderbrand! This day could not get any cooler!"
Edelgard wishes she could share his enthusiasm.
The Knights of Seiros weren't mercenaries. They didn't work for coin, and they might just kill someone who tried to buy their services on principle. They operated instead as vigilantes, styling themselves as an international police force, independant from the major powers. The Knights were sworn to a nation, insofar as an organization could be sworn to a dead nation obliterated by nuclear hellfire, and as far as Edelgard was concerned, made them not so different from the Agarthan remnants that also haunted the world. Unlike the Agarthans, however, the Knights of Seiros didn't trouble themselves with hiding, and if one didn't happen to fall under the inauspicious categorization of 'sinner', most people were usually quite happy to see them. Mercenaries, however, typically ended up on the wrong side of the Knights' morality compass.
Edelgard, on a good day, tended to straddle that compass's needle, so it was in moments like these that she was immensely grateful to operate with her stepbrother's blessing.
She tracks the pings on her radar as the knights fall upon the Agarthan squadron with all the righteous fury of a zealot assured of their goddess's blessing. She has neither the time nor space to appreciate their engagement beyond that. The Agarthans won't give it to her. Gunfire licks at her wingtip as the horrid little slam poet's circle intersects again with her own.
"Night night little birdie! No more flying, time for dying!" The Agarthan sings gleefully over the percussion of her clattering guns, and Edelgard pitches hard to the left as a string of red tracers light up the space her right wing had just occupied. The sound of her radar alarm adds to the wicked cacophony, and she breaks frantically as she tries to shake the other pilot's lock.
"What is wrong with you!" Edelgard finally shouts back, shattering her self-imposed silence as the Agarthan fighter turns impossibly tight to close the distance between them and settle into place behind her.
"Me?" the other pilot cackles. "I've never been better! Thales is going to be so proud when I kill you."
She sees the smoke from the missile even before her alarm goes off as the warhead closes in on her from behind, its angle inescapable. She glances at her empty flare indicator and bites back a curse. "Over my dead body," she hisses.
"That's the idea!"
Edelgard waits for a fraction of a moment, letting the missile close to the perfect distance, then she slams down on the air brakes and wrenches back on her controls. The motion throws her nose up, and she rapidly bleeds speed as she pulls her plane into a sudden vertical climb. Air drag hits the underside of her fighter like a wrecking ball, evaporating her momentum, and Edelgard yanks her flight stick back and to the right as she kills her thrust and rips the stalling aircraft into a rightward flip. Her raptor rolls to the side like a dancing leaf adrift on the wind, flipping nose over tail, and the missile streaks past harmlessly as she tumbles through the air. The enemy fighter follows the missile, and she catches a glimpse of a gleaming visor jerking over its owner's shoulder as the other jet, black and menacing in the way of all things Agarthan, blazes past her.
"But—how?"
Edelgard fights gravity's grip and her own floundering momentum for control of her aircraft, reigniting her thrusters and pulling out of the roll as she stabilizes her descent, her fighter lurching forward. "What the fuck was that?" she hears Sylvain say, but she pays him no attention. The Agarthan had pulled away from her as she fought her way free from the stalled inertia of the tail slide, but not far enough away to escape her sights. She levels out her plane and the radar sings with lethal anticipation.
Edelgard fires, and her last missile leaps free from its internal hardpoint, streaking forwards to close the gap with her erstwhile pursuer. They don't have time for evasion. She sees the other pilot jerk their fighter into a frantic climb, but the missile connects and the enemy aircraft erupts in a flaming burst of igniting jet fuel and fragmenting shrapnel. The explosion is close, and Edelgard winces as a fragment of metal carves into one of her wings, triggering another round of warning alerts as her fighter's computer protests the damage.
The radar spike warning doesn't go away though, and Edelgard's blood runs cold in her veins.
"They have another lock, Edie!" Dorothea cries out. "Break! Break!"
She doesn't need to look at the readouts of her control panel to know she has negligible speed and weak thrust; she only took back control of her fighter from gravity seconds ago. She won't be breaking away from anything, and she has no flare capsules left to make up the difference.
"I've got him!"
She has Ingrid, though—gallant, noble Ingrid—and apparently that's enough. Even a pair of pursuing bandits isn't enough for her to leave Edelgard's tail unguarded. "Good tone… Release!"
Edelgard whips her head around just in time to see something explode against the Agarthan plane bearing down on her, and the jet immediately starts to spiral downward, trailing plumes of black smoke.
"Bandit down, Kyphon!" Dorothea cheers. "At least you know how to treat a lady right."
Ordinarily, Ingrid's flustered acknowledgement would've prompted Edelgard to laughter, but her attention is captivated once again by the chiming alarm that's replaced the radar warning. Missile warning. And her with no speed or countermeasures to deter it.
She keeps her cool. "Missile spike, 5 o'clock," she informs her team. "No countermeasures left. I'm punching out."
"Copy that, Emperor. I'll send Mercedes for search and rescue once the stage is clear." Dorothea's burst of professionalism belies her worry, but Edelgard's grateful for the balm of it. She yanks the ejection handle, and nothing happens. Her heart leaps to her throat, and she yanks again. Suddenly, she's no longer a bird, soaring freely through the skies. Suddenly she's a girl, trapped in a cage, a plaything for rats, helpless before the whims of Agarthan cruelty, and while she might've survived the caress of their knives and needles, she doesn't think she'll survive the embrace of their missile.
She stamps down the panic, and lets the Flame Emperor take over. "Ejection failure," she relays calmly. "Evading."
She barely has thrust, and the missile is traveling at least three times her speed. She doesn't have a chance of breaking away from it, but the missile could malfunction if she gives it time to. It's technically a chance, which is a better chance than she has if she surrenders.
"Edie!" she hears Dorothea over the radio, and their AWACS is no longer containing her panic. "Kyphon, support Edelgard!"
And Ingrid, brave and foolish Ingrid, who can't help but prioritize her over the Agarthan hounds baying at her tailfeathers, tries to change course for an intercept.
"Disregard that, Kyphon!" Edelgard snaps. "I'll be fine. Maintain air superiority."
"Edelgard-" she sounds agonized, so Edelgard reiterates: "Our troops are on the ground, Kyphon. Maintain air superiority."
But as Ingrid, hurt and furious, growls out "Yes ma'am," the dispassionate voice that heralded the arrival of the Knights of Seiros comes over the radio and says, "Enlightened 1, supporting."
And as the Agarthan missile bears down on her, Edelgard's raptor is rocked by the violent boom of a supersonic jet blazing past her tail, and trailing in its wake, a cloud of glittering emerald emergency flares. The missile veers off into the cloud and detonates harmlessly, a safe distance away from the engine of her fighter, and Edelgard lets go of the breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Missile evaded," she exhales, and she can't stop her voice from wavering slightly in relief. "Thank you for the assist, Enlightened 1."
And perhaps it's wishful thinking, but when their voice crackles in over the radio, Edelgard thinks she detects a wry hint of pleasure amidst the general coolness of her tone. "You're welcome, Emperor." She waits for the radio to click off, but to her surprise, the woman speaks again. "Emperor," the knight of Seiros says. "Form an element with me." She issues the instruction with a certainty born of absolute authority, and Edelgard almost instinctively defers to it.
"What about your wingman?" she asks instead.
"He's RTB. I pushed us too hard."
She's straightforward and to the point, which Edelgard likes, and Edelgard's out of missiles and down her wingman, which she likes much less.
"You should be advised," she warns, "that I am winchester on missiles, and my guns aren't much better."
"That's fine," says Enlightened 1, and as if on cue, an ash-gray fighter with an unfamiliar double-canard wing configuration slots itself into formation at her side as perfectly as if Hubert himself had done the flying. "They're trying very hard to shoot you down, so if you lead, I'll follow, and I'll shoot them down before they can even get a lock on you."
Hubert would reject the strategy outright. Edelgard thinks she might love it. Enlightened 1 adds, "And don't hold back your flying. I can keep up with you."
"Very well," Edelgard allows, and hides the way her heart starts racing. "It's a fine plan. Dorothea," she radioes. "Enlightened 1 and I are forming an element. Fold them into Crimson Team, Flight 1, and designate Crimson 2. We have Agarthans to conquer." Then she engages her thrusters, dives into the furball, and places her faith in Enlightened 1 to keep her covered.
Enlightened 1—currently Crimson 2—shoots down four more Agarthan fighters as Edelgard leads them on a dance through the sky. The knight was right, of course, about the Agarthan's obsessive focus on her, but even her enemy's rabid attempts to kill her can't detract from the magic of flying with her new, temporary, wingman. Edelgard's crests burn in her blood as she pushes her aircraft beyond human limits, to the edges of what the airframe itself is capable of withstanding. She can feel gravity's yearning, it's desperation to punish her for her hubris, but her crests keep her blood pumping, staving off G-LOC as she plunges through turns that would kill a normal human.
Enlightened 1 keeps up with her, every step of the way. Her coverage is perfect, never breaking element, and ever mindful of threats approaching from Edelgard's flanks. The Agarthan resistance collapses in the face of their joint assault, and Edelgard herself bears down on the last of them, plunging violently downwards to dive at a retreating fighter, a ravenous eagle in pursuit of slithering prey. She flicks on her guns, depresses the trigger, and carves a staccato line of perforating cannon fire up the length of the enemy jet until her chambers click empty.
Smoke sputters from the bandit's engine, and even from her vantage above, she can see the splatter of red smeared against the jet's shattered canopy.
"Crimson 1, full winchester," she broadcasts. "But that looks like the last of them."
"I'll say! Edie, since when do you fly like that?"
She's not sure how she can explain that she's always been able to fly like that; that her artificial crest comes alive in the sky, and makes her into something other than human. More than human, she hears Thales's insidious whisper. How does she explain the necessity of holding herself back, of not flying where her wingman can't follow? She doesn't know where she'd even begin, so she just says: "Enlightened 1 provided excellent support."
"I'll bet she did," says Dorothea, but before Edelgard can nip that right in the bud, her impromptu wingman's voice crackles over the radio and re-seizes her attention. "You're a really good pilot," Enlightened 1 remarks. "Thank you for flying with me."
"Praise isn't necessary," Edelgard deflects. "But I feel much the same. You were… incredible, my wingman."
Silence flickers over the connection briefly, but then the other pilot says, "We saw you land troops on the island. Are you seizing the airfield?"
"We avoided the runway with our ground strikes," Edelgard offers, by way of answer.
"That's good," the knight says, and for a flicker of a moment her seemingly unshakeable aloofness seems to waver. She sounds pleased, Edelgard thinks, and for some reason that makes something warm spark up inside her. "Can we land there once you've secured it? I… feel like it would be a good idea for me to talk to you. I'm Byleth."
Her mind begins to run through all the multitude of reasons why it would be a terrible idea to allow a squadron of Seiros's Knights access to the Agarthan fortress they're planning to commandeer. It's not a quick process; she can think of dozens of excellent reasons.
"Okay," Edelgard tells the other pilot. Then she realizes that Byleth isn't an unfamiliar call sign but in fact the knight's freely offered name, and adds irresponsibly, but inevitably: "Edelgard."
They're not the first ones down to the airfield. Hubert had to stick an emergency landing on an empty runway during the worst of the furball, and once Ladislava had the field secured and the control tower manned, landing priority had to go first to the damaged and dubiously flightworthy. The fighting had been furious, and even though a frankly miraculous number of her birds were still flying, the fierce dogfighting ensured not many flew away unscathed. Then their AWACS had been a priority target for the Agarthan fighters and was apparently leaking fuel, so Dorothea needed priority access, and then one of the Knights had a mechanical malfunction and Edelgard wasn't about to tell their temporary allies to land one of their planes in the water while she controlled a perfectly serviceable Adrestian airstrip.
All of this amounted to the Flame Emperor and the First Sword of the Goddess languidly circling the occupied airfield as they waited politely for their turn to land. Thankfully, Byleth seems content with biding their time in easy silence. Edelgard supposes that such a thing is probably a natural skill for devout adherents to an archaic faith, then chides herself for being uncharitable. She can't bring herself to respect the goddess, but that's not a fair reason to think less of those who do. Byleth saved her life up in the skies, and flying with her had been… At any rate, whatever she wants to say is worthy of Edelgard's full attention, and Edelgard intends to give it to her.
"Crimson," she tells her remaining fighters. "Reform under Crimson 3. Kyphon, you're in charge while I'm on the ground. Keep an eye out for any straggling reinforcements. I want long range patrols in the air as soon as we can refuel the planes for them. We won't have AWACS support until Mystic is flightworthy again, but that's no reason to let ourselves be surprised."
"Copy that," Ingrid says, all business. "Good luck down there."
Their descent, when their turn comes, is uneventful. Edelgard leads, and as she touches down on the tarmac she realizes: she's on Adrestian soil for the first time since she was smuggled out of the empire. She allows herself a moment to take it in; the runway that once was theirs but now is hers, and considers that as far as homecomings are concerned, this one is sufficiently auspicious. Then she follows the directions of the paratrooper flagging her further down the field, following his signals as she taxis off the strip and out of the way of Byleth's landing fighter.
Raptor settled, Edelgard tugs off her helmet, pops the canopy of her F-22, and slides down the side of her plane until her boots meet the tarmac. The world wavers when they do, and she leans against her raptor's side until it settles, doing her best to ignore the burning in her blood as her crests viciously protest her sudden absence from the sky.
"Lady Edelgard!" She blinks and Hubert is at her side, shouldering the burden of her weight as the worst of the attack passes, until the ground is steady again beneath her feet and she can say:
"That's enough, Hubert." Then she adds quietly, "Thank you."
He nods once, takes two steps away from her, and steadfastly refuses to stray any further from her side.
Edelgard hides a smile as she tucks her helmet under one arm, and takes a moment to survey the captured airfield. The corpses left behind by the ground attack must have been cleared out before she landed, but she can still spy several splotches of blood near the hangars, and a pair of shattered APC wrecks continue to smolder where they were dragged off the tarmac. Even after a cleanup every battlefield tells a story; this one tells the story of a precise, ruthless assault team and a collection of unready defenders who failed to find their footing when the enemy descended from above. Her own planes dot the airfield now, while the grounded assortment of enemy fighters lined up in one of the base's hangars promises a tantalizing influx of material and coin.
Her ground team certainly earned their bonus.
Further down the strip, she sees the twin engines of the grounded Knight power down, one after the other. The fighter model is unfamiliar, but its capabilities undeniable; not at all the kind of military hardware that could typically be manufactured without capturing the world's notice. Then again, if the Agarthans could have their hidden labs, then why not the knights? She's still considering that when the plane's canopy levers itself open, and its pilot all-but-jumps to the ground. Edelgard blinks, impressed despite herself, as the pilot sticks a 3 point landing, stands to her full height, and wrenches off her helmet revealing a messy shock of sandy hair, closely cropped with a short ponytail resting against the back of her neck.
The knight looks up, their eyes meet, and Edelgard watches warily as the Knight marches towards her, carried by long, purposeful strides.
She makes a show of looking around, and even through the performance Edelgard can see the ticking tactical analysis of a veteran soldier's mind. Edelgard's eyes flick briefly to the Knight's helmet, to the callsign emblazoned in red text over the jagged emblem of a six-pronged sword. Not just a knight then, but the knight. The knight who flew, once for Faerghus, then for herself, and now most famously for the so-called voice of the goddess. "I have to admit kid," Thunderbrand drawls, and Edelgard immediately resists the urge to bristle at the condescension of it. "Your people did pretty good work. I thought we'd be pulling pieces of you out of the water, but I'll give credit where credit is due, you ran this op like professionals, even if you did need us to swing the air war."
Edelgard scowls at her. "Your assistance was helpful. Your intervention was not necessary."
Thunderbrand shrugs. "Looked like you were about to get intimate with a missile from where I was sitting, but I'm sure you knew what you were doing." She pauses, looks down at her—and Edelgard hates how easily the knight can do that—and says, "You're in over your head, kid. I don't know what grudge you have against Adrestia, but you don't have a clue what kind of storm you've just flown into."
Her sixth sense tells her Hubert is about to erupt in her defense, so Edelgard gives a single minute shake of her head, crosses her arms, and trusts him to recognize the signal for what it is. Let me handle this.
"A very Agarthan storm, I hope," she tells Thunderbrand, and savours the petty spark of warmth that swells in her chest as the Knight's eyes widen with surprise. "I intend to have more than a squadron of Agarthan fighters listed in my payout ledger by the time our work is done. Much more."
"Okay," the other pilot grunts. "Maybe you do know what kind of storm you're flying into. It doesn't matter. I respect what you're trying to do here—really, I do—but we've been at this a lot longer than you have, and the Knights of Serios don't need outside interference getting in the way of our mission."
"Well, perhaps if you'd made any tangible progress towards eradicating these monsters in the last—" Edelgard makes a show of checking the watch she isn't wearing "—three hundred years, it's been? Maybe it wouldn't be so necessary for us to do the job for you."
"Impertinent-"
"Catherine." Enlightened 1—no, Byleth—is as cool and collected in person as she was over the transceiver. She joins Thunderbrand and stands at the other Knight's side. How had Edelgard not noticed her landing? "I will join the Black Eagles as an attachee on behalf of the Knights of Seiros. We can coordinate our attacks and engage the remnants of Agartha on multiple fronts." She nods once to herself, seemingly satisfied. "It's a good plan."
It's a plan the pilot apparently decided on without any of Edelgard's input. She should feel disrespected by that. Edelgard likes the plan anyway.
Catherine almost chokes on her disbelief, and a chorus of voices rise up to join the conversation. Catherine exclaims: "You can't just leave the knights to join a band of mercenaries!"
Hubert hisses: "You overstep your authority, knight."
Dorothea, who apparently also managed to sneak her way into the conversation, trills: "Oh, Edie would love that-"
Edelgard jabs at Dorothea with her elbow, but her AWACS diva dances away from her.
Byleth ignores all of them and says, "Dad was a mercenary. He said it was a good life."
"I'll bet he did," Catherine mutters. "It doesn't matter. You know there's no way Lady Seiros will approve of this."
Byleth shakes her head. "I asked Auntie Rhea before we landed. She said yes."
"What?!" Catherine and Hubert's outcries resonate in synchronized harmony, and Edelgard places a calming hand on her retainer's back.
"Calm yourself, Hubert," she says softly. "This can work to our benefit." He relaxes ever so slightly, and Edelgard lets out a soft hum of relief.
Catherine does not calm so quickly. "Why?" she demands.
"Because that's Edelgard," Byleth says, pointing at Edelgard, and Edelgard resists the reflex to stiffen as Catherine's eyes widen with recognition. "Auntie Rhea flew with her great, great, great…" she pauses, her face scrunching up as she counts to herself under her breath, and then adds one more "great" before "grandfather. She said they were close." A ghost of a smile flashes across her face, there for a moment, but gone in an instant.
"What?!" someone's voice sputters, and it takes Edelgard a moment to realize it's her own.
Byleth looks at her directly, and her eyes dim. "Auntie Rhea was very upset about what happened to your family, but she was happy when I told her you were here, and alive. She likes the idea of our families destroying Agarthans together. She said it must be fate." Then Byleth smiles, a soft private thing meant for Edelgard alone, and says, "I don't know if it's fate, but I liked flying with you. I would like to fly with you more, if you'll have me."
Byleth is making it her choice, Edelgard realizes. Something inside her knows that if she turns the Knight down, Byleth won't begrudge her the decision. She'll take her squadron of Knights, and they'll fly away and leave Edelgard and her Eagles to their own devices despite Catherine's protests, and then, perhaps, they'll never see each other again.
The prospect of never seeing Byleth again—of never again sharing the skies with Enlightened 1—sits wrong with her, like a sickening stone settling in her stomach. Flying with Byleth had been like… like nothing else. It felt right in a way that was unexplainable. She wants to fly with Byleth more, as well. She wants that desperately.
However, Byleth is a Knight of Seiros, and though they're not the Agarthans, the Knights are still a part of the poisonous influence of the old world Edelgard had once sworn to destroy. She'd sworn, back when it was only her, and Dorothea, and Hubert standing against the world, that she would not compromise in that.
But they had believed they would be fighting alone back in those dark days, and they'd been terribly, wonderfully wrong about that.
Seiros had flown with Wilhelm I. Edelgard hadn't known that, and she wished she'd never known the mental image of their… closeness, but suddenly that mattered. Seiros was also, apparently, the 'auntie' of an endearingly awkward fighter ace. The carefully constructed image Edelgard had of the merciless Seiros, anchoring humanity to the past in her endless campaign of vengeful retaliation, was compromised by the influence of that information.
And if Seiros was capable of compromise, then Edelgard didn't like what she'd be saying about herself if she wasn't.
Still, she would express her acceptance in a way that was professional, maintaining the illusion that this was a strategic alliance. It wouldn't do to let her Eagles or the Knights see the influence her personal feelings had over her decision.
She says, "I would like nothing more than to fly with you again."
Dorothea coos, then lets out a startled yelp as this time Edelgard's elbow stays on target and sticks against her side.
Aircraft Flown: (All hyperlinks go to images of their associated planes)
Noble Team: Ferdinand's Noble Team flies the F-15E Strike Eagle, because of course they do. It's a variation of the two-seater standard F-15, taking an airframe designed for air-to-air combat and outfitting it for ground-attack operations as well. Edelgard is a very big fan of air superiority, so naturally she outfitted her ground-attack team with a fighter they could still win a dogfight in.
Crimson Team: Edelgard's personal air-superiority team mostly flies the F-22 Raptor because of course they do. The Black Eagles take branding seriously, and I mean come on—it's the modern Ace Combat mascot plane. You knew it was happening.
Enlightened Squadron: Byleth and the rest of Enlightened Squadron are flying the Fodlan equivalent of the new Chinese J-20 stealth fighters, because the weapons and capabilities seem uniquely suitable for their current operational situation, but MORE IMPORTANTLY because the fighter's also known as the Mighty Dragon. Consider that low-hanging fruit snatched.
Sylvain and Ingrid: The Faerghan members of the Eagles fly the Eurofighter Typhoon, because that's the closest I can get to riffing on the Tempest King thing Dimitri has going on in game, and also because it's easy to associate Faerghus's knightly virtue thing with medieval European chivalry, so they get the fancy European jet.
Adrestian Garrison: The initial Adrestian garrison squadron is flying Mitsubishi F-2's. There's no special reason for this. I just thought it was important to have the cool looking japanese fighter jet see a bit of rep in a fanfic based on a bunch of Japanese IP's.
Kronya Squadron: Kronya squadron flies jet black Su-57s. Ordinally I might feel bad about playing into stereotypes giving the bad guys Russian jets, but given current events…
Glossary of Terms:
AA: Anti-Air. Ground based weapons designed for combat against aerial threats.
AMRAAM: Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile—The AMRAAM missile is capable of tracking and destroying targets beyond visual range AKA further than 20 miles/37 kilometers away. When it's far from the target, it relies on either radar information taken just before launch from the plane that fired it, or ongoing radar information provided by another fighter aircraft or AWACS via data link.
AWACS: Airborne Warning and Control System—basically, a big plane flying around with a complex radar system capable of detecting aircraft, ships, missiles, etc. at very long range. They can direct fighter and other aircraft strikes, mask the radar signatures of allied aircraft by providing threat and target data themselves so the allied plane can deactivate its own radar (which is otherwise detectable while it's active). In essence, being the AWACS operator makes Dorothea the stage director, and she knows absolutely everything that's happening on the stage at all times, but also what's happening around and behind the stage, and outside the theater building, and in the whole surrounding city block as well.
Bandit: An identified enemy aircraft.
Bogie: An unidentified aircraft.
Break! Break! : Break has multiple meanings within aviation, but in the context of an aerial engagement, it is a shorthand term that means rapid turn. When Dorothea uses it, for example, she is directing Edelgard to turn immediately to try and disrupt the enemy plane's radar lock.
Bug: Rapidly exit a dogfight
Canard: A type of wing structure in which a small forewing is placed in front of the main wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. See the linked image under "Enlightened Squadron"
Circle: Basically, the loop a fighter plane flies in during a dogfight. Most dogfights boil down to some variation of trying to outcircle each other, and there's different terms for it if the two planes are turning in the same direction, or opposite directions, or barrel rolling around each other. It's like a game of trying to pull off tighter circles than your opponent to get better and more sustained firing angles versus them, but without sacrificing so much speed that you inhibit your own ability to maneuver.
Data link: Basically, a fancy radio communications system that can provide voice channels as well as navigation services. Every user linked in can identify themselves to other linked users at very long ranges, and some fancy platforms can even pass all that information on to the others. It's basically discord for the military, if you ignore all the ways it's absolutely not.
Dogfight: A close range aerial battle between fighter aircraft
IFF: Identification, friend or foe—An IFF system basically broadcasts a ping to other aircraft or vehicles and waits for a response that identifies them as friendly. If it gets the response, it flags them as allies. If it doesn't get the response, the ID remains unknown, and hostility has to be determined by other metrics.
Element: A formation of two aircraft, a leader and their wingman. It's romantic, when you think about it.
Flight: A small unit within a larger air force structure, typically composed of two to six planes.
Fox two: Fox is a shorthand code used by NATO pilots to signal the release of air to air missiles. Fox two indicates the launch of an infrared homing missile (heatseeker), most commonly the AIM-9 Sidewinder. Your basic missile, basically.
Fox three: Like fox two, but for radar guided missiles like the AMRAAM instead.
Furball: A situation in which many dogfights are occurring simultaneously within one airspace
Good tone: slang to indicate a missile lock. It's a reference to the sustained ringing tone produced when a radar system achieves radar lock.
Punch Out: Eject
RTB: Return to base
S-300: Surface-to-air missile system developed as a loose equivalent to the Patriot system you've probably heard about shooting down a bunch of planes and missiles in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Metodey is right. They're definitely supposed to win those.
SAM: Surface-to-Air Missile. A form of AA.
Sidewinder: See "Fox two"
Spike: A spike is a missile threat triggering a radar warning.
Squadron: An air force squadron is typically between 12 to 24 aircraft, usually split into three or four flights, often separated by aircraft type. The Black Eagles squadron is comprised of 16 planes + Dorothea, divided into two 8 plane teams, Crimson and Noble, which are themselves divided into two flights of 4 each.
Tally: Enemy in sight
Visual: Friendly in sight
Winchester: Out of weapons
Hey all! Haven't uploaded anything to this account in… quite some time! I've been working on some longer projects for other franchises, but this idea wouldn't leave my head, so enjoy this funny story about fighter planes instead. If you think the girl of your dreams intercepting a missile and then merging into your element isn't romantic as hell, I dunno what to tell you. You're wrong.
Anyway, I might come back to this one day, make it a series, and write some more entries in it. I dunno. I have some ideas, but I ended up spending like a month messing around with this, and I really do wanna make headway on my other projects. If you made it to the end, you have my utmost gratitude, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the experience. Romanticized military drama is pretty far outside my wheelhouse these days, but fighter planes are incredibly cool so I had lots of fun writing it.
If you did enjoy, I'd love it if you could click that kudos/like/favourite button, and I'd especially love it if you could leave a comment/review behind as well. I love hearing from people who read my work, especially if you've got critical feedback you're holding onto. You never stop fighting to improve as a writer, and I know I've still got a long way to go.
Additional Note: I am aware that I have the Eagles broadcasting their actual names over the radio instead of callsigns/tacnames. This is *not* good operational security and If I was more concerned with military realism, they would not be doing this, but neither Ace Combat nor Fire Emblem is particularly concerned with military realism and I felt it would make for better reading if I stuck—for the most part—to the characters' names.