ACES Alternative
{Author's Comments}
So, as the title reflects, this is not quite the ACES I normally write, but given there's been... a little bit of a slowdown in my ability to produce chapters of the main fic (currently, my production rate there could be described as "British public transport" in a somewhat ironic twist), I figured this little lull in productivity would be a good chance to put another idea out there...
I've had the idea of doing a fic set before AC 3 for quite a while, and I wrote this a little bit ago. Basic premise is the usual - ACES turns out to be a death game, only rather than the Cold War era setting... it's during the General Resources War of 2032 (which I actually didn't make up - this is the setting of Ace Combat Advance.)
Whether I'll actually have a release schedule for this one, I doubt it, so if this updates, it'll be when a chapter is ready to go.
As usual, hope you enjoy this story, and my ramblings haven't gone on for too long. If you like this, or want updates on when the next chapter of ACES is ready to go (hopefully the beginning of May), I have a Discord for these fics: https: double slash discord dot gg / 5bq7v47rs5
"General Resources are simply too big to fail in this market."
- The Hill Street Journal, January 2024.
"General Resources declare a boycott of their Leasath markets unless First Minister Halibut steps down, following controversial statements made about the company's human rights records."
- The Aurelian Cross, December 19th, 2029.
"Boycott of Leasath ends only twenty hours after it started, after First Minister Halibut is found dead in a caravan."
- Reporters Without Borders, December 20th, 2029.
"General Resources CEO pays respects to "a dedicated politician" after First Minister Halibut is found dead inside a locked bag in a caravan. Chief coroner claims "this is a classic suicide attempt"."
- OLN, December 20th, 2029.
"General Resources backed mercenaries implicated in coup attempt in Erusea. General Resources claims mercenaries were hired in a false flag operation, in order to "tarnish the good reputation of the company"."
- The Emmerian Times, January 7th, 2031.
Chapter 1 – Too Big to Fail
Above the skies of Erusea on that day in June 2032, a flight of four aircraft climbed through the clouds – a Sukhoi Su-35SM, an EF-2000C Typhoon EK and a pair of Saab JAS 39 Gripen Es. The aircraft wore the markings of the United Air Defence, and squadron markings for the Erusean Aerospace Force's 99th Squadron.
"Black Blade, Blue Rose. We have you on scope, heading two-five-zero. Targets are sixty miles off your nose, coming up for you."
"Understood, Skytrain. Moving to intercept."
In 2010, and following the instability wrought by the Continental War, General Resources Limited had set up the General Resources Guardian Mercenaries in order to protect their logistics chains, which for a company that was, at the time, the size of Apple, was not insignificant…
Of course, he wasn't so naïve to believe that said mercenaries were always protecting logistics chains, and there were plenty of reports of those mercenaries appearing in places they had no rights being – including being hired by an Osean general to kill their ace during the Lighthouse War.
Unsurprisingly, they didn't survive the fight.
By 2026, General Resources had had become more than a corporation; they had become a force that was more powerful than most nations, with a military (ostensibly for self-defence, but no one believed that) of its own. That posed an interesting question to lawmakers across the Usean continent and further afield: how do you make a company like that follow your laws on your land?
Unfortunately, it was a question posed too late by many of the countries, as, by 2030, General Resources had all but usurped power in many countries on the continent, and by 2032, the current year, they were the defacto government in parts of Usea and Anea.
The fact they had, quite literally, bought Estovakia from its own, maybe elected government told him all he needed to know about General Resources.
Which was where they had all come in:
Once they'd passed through the briefing that explained the history of the world they found themselves in, they had been given the task of deciding which path to take. In any other game, this would be given at least a little elaboration other than the numbers 1 through 5, and the difficulty level of each path.
Unfortunately, Kayaba hadn't been so kind to the players of ACES Online, and had reviews of the game been truly possible, he had no doubts that the "lead-lined window" that was the decision-making interface would've been one of the biggest negatives of the game!
Still though, he had selected path 4, which was one of the most difficult ones, and following a relatively straightforward tutorial, getting him familiarised with the concepts that would become important – the use of missile jammers instead of chaff and flares, and the use of the "synthetic aperture" cockpits that most aircraft were now equipped with, being the two most important, he had picked his name in game, and been thrown in at the deep end.
That deep end being to hunt down a high-flying reconnaissance aircraft using a pair of Pulse Laser pods mounted to the F-15EX, a mission designed to introduce the players to the basic mechanics of the game before really throwing them into combat – the MIG-31R recon aircraft being fast, but otherwise a sitting duck for the Eagle II.
Soon after though, they were given an option to choose their aircraft for themselves, and amidst the collection, one stood out - a Yuktobanian built Sukhoi Su-35 Super Flanker, modernised to the Su-35SM standard.
Fast, agile and more importantly for him... painted all over black (bar the white radome and the dielectric panels on the tail, but he could live with that), the Super-Super Flanker (or Ultra Flanker, as Kirito had christened it) was a pretty good choice for a starter aircraft, although it lacked a number of features he reckoned were going to be crucial going forwards: it lacked low-observable features of the useful kind, and it was very much a fighter, not a fighter-bomber.
On the first, his concerns had been proven when Eugeo had managed to draw him into a mock dogfight in the Electrosphere, into visual range and although he'd won that fight... it had been close. The Typhoon EK he flew may have been an electronic warfare variant of the fighter, but it was still very agile...
On the second, it wasn't as if the Su-35SM had no ground attack weaponry - it could still carry a decent number of unguided bombs and heavy anti-surface weaponry, but it lacked the avionics to really be an effective multirole aircraft.
Still, that higher focus on air-to-air capabilities made it almost perfect for the most common mission that his flight did - what were unofficially known as Interception Feints. Eugeo's Typhoon EK had the ability to spoof radar signatures using its onboard AESA radar, and when combined with the radars on the girls' Gripens, it had given them a plan to change the fortunes of the Blazing Angels:
Four aircraft would fly in formations that could be mistaken for a pair of Erusean transports, easy targets for opportunistic ASF fighters. When those fighters came up for their easy prey, they would have a nasty shock when the nice, easy prey of transports turned out to be a flight of four fighters, all of them knowing they were there... and ready to pounce!
He'd already become an ace that way, and the rest of his flight weren't far off that milestone either - Eugeo was on his fourth kill, whilst Tiese and Ronye were both on three each.
"I see them! Kirito, we've got bandits coming in from three o'clock."
"How far?"
"Right beneath us!" Eugeo exclaimed, as he ejected a sequence of flares from his Typhoon, his Typhoon's missile jammer being inoperative at this time, and only barely avoiding an R-74 IR-guided missile in the process…
"I see them. Four ASF Su-43s, Kirito."
"Got it Ronye, all aircraft, switch to mutual defence. We can handle them. Skytrain, bandits are Su-43 Berkuts, we're engaging."
The Su-43s used by the Advance Strike Force were the ultimate development of the first generation of stealth aircraft, developed in the late 1990s, and first deployed in the Usean Rebellion of 1998, flown by Albireo Squadron. These Berkuts though, were heavily modified from the base Su-47 used during the conflicts of the early 21st century, gaining far more significant ECM capabilities and even greater manoeuvrability than the Su-47 he was familiar with.
In a straight fight, the Berkut was more than a match for his Ultra Flanker in the horizontal plane, but the Berkut suffered heavily in the vertical; the additional weight of the equipment and strengthened wing box having decreased its thrust-to-weight ratio significantly, and left it a significantly poorer aircraft in the vertical plane.
"Eugeo, he's yours!" Letting his gamer's ego take over here would've been a death sentence for him - the Berkut was below him and behind him; an awkward position for him to attempt an attack from... but perfect for Eugeo though.
"Break right, Kirito, I have him." Eugeo stated calmly, and Kirito took the chance. Yanking the stick to the right, the Flanker snapped to the right before he pulled the jet into a sustained 8G turn.
Condensation poured off the wings of the Su-35 as it entered a spiral towards the ground, and Kirito strained to keep a visual on not only the pursuing Berkut, but also his HUD. The last thing he wanted was to lose so much altitude in the turn that he dropped below the clouds...
Behind him though, he caught the glint of Eugeo's silver Typhoon, and the IRIS-T missile it had just fired. Seconds passed, and the IRIS completed a 180-degree arc through the air, the small missile detonating immediately underneath the Berkut.
The forward swept wing fighter almost immediately levelled out momentarily, just long enough for a cloud of smoke to engulf the jet as it entered a nosedive.
Off to the distance, a small spec became a much larger one - the pilot had ejected safely and was now parachuting down to the earth below...
As for the Berkut, the last he saw of it was one it became enveloped in fire, before the singular fireball became multiple.
"Eugeo, splash one Berkut." His wingman called out.
"So, how's it feel to be an ace now, partner?"
In the real world, jet aces were almost mythical - there were very few who hadn't become aces in a very different era of combat, and even those that had become aces then were rare.
On Earth, the days of swirling dogfights like the ones of WW1 and WW2 had long since ended as weapons systems outranged the human eye, and weapons systems became so much more complex, and so had the aces of that era.
Even in all-out war, becoming an ace was exceptionally rare; something that stood even in the days of those swirling dogfights too.
"It doesn't feel any different really." Eugeo answered, before snapping back to the warfighting mood. "Tiese, Ronye. Do you need help?"
"Nope, Eugeo-sir. We've got them under control here. You do have one heading back towards you though, sirs."
"Understood Tiese. We're on him." Kirito glanced down at his scope - one small dot at 40 miles, off their two o'clock. Well within parameters for an Adder shot, he thought. "Kirito, Fox Three."
From below the Flanker, a single Adder-X dropped away into the slipstream, before a plume of smoke blasted back, the missile disappearing into the distance.
He hadn't even gotten a visual on the aircraft when the dot disappeared off his scope, a puff of smoke in the early morning sky, resembling the aftermath of a disappointing firework going off, being the only clue that there had ever been an aircraft there in the first place...
"Kirito, splash one Berkut." He called, confirming his kill – his sixth of the campaign so far.
"Ronye, splash one!" If he squinted, he could just about make out the line of orange and red that was likely a blazing inferno in the distance...
The aircraft the girls flew; the JAS 39E Gripen was an aircraft that looked far less intimidating than it really was; a lot like the girls who flew them, come to think of it. To an untrained observer, it resembled a scaled down Typhoon with a single engine instead of the Typhoon's twin engines, and a completely different intake arrangement, but in reality, the Gripen was very much the Typhoon's equal…
It shared many of the same systems as the Typhoon, with superior manoeuvrability and a far more rugged airframe, designed to be kept on the frontlines in even austere conditions, as well as a degree of low-observability features in order to survive on the battlefield.
A potent mix of small size, good firepower from its combination of long-range Meteor and short-range IRIS-T missiles, and excellent onboard systems, all made for an aircraft that only an idiot would underestimate...
Apparently, someone at General Resources hadn't gotten the memo there.
In the end, it had been only five minutes since the fight had started, and all four Berkuts had been dispatched with relative ease - three had fell to the IRIS-Ts they carried, one to Eugeo's earlier, another to one of Ronye's and the third had been hit by one of Tiese's, whilst the final one had been dispatched by his Adder-X shot.
All for not even so much as a scratch on their paintwork - which itself was good news, otherwise Liz would've killed him after what had happened to his last Flanker.
The scratches still hadn't faded from that one, and he wasn't referring to his plane there either...
"Skytrain, this is Black Blade One. All four Berkuts down."
"Targets confirmed down, One. Black Blade, Blue Rose, I'd call that a good day's work! Return to base for debrief."
"Understood. Returning to base."
/-/
In films, the ace was always greeted by a massive crowd and a party, and if there'd been a romantic subplot, their love interest, before being whisked off somewhere, usually by the massive crowd carrying them...
In the real world however, that simply didn't happen. The landing back at Artiligo had been nothing short of routine, and other than the girls making a small fuss about them using themselves as bait and over Eugeo's newfound ace status, there was no big party on the tarmac before the four of them were whisked in front of Diavel.
"Well done you four. I've got to admit, that tactic is still surprisingly effective against General Resources. If I didn't know better, I'd wonder what idiots were in charge of the ASF squadrons to keep falling for it!" They did know better though, and that someone was a hothead named Kibaou.
According to Diavel, Kibaou was an excellent pilot, an okay strategist and a terrible hothead - not qualities you want in a squadron commander, he'd thought - and his pride and pig-headedness made him extremely susceptible to feints like the one they favoured.
That was all well and good, but it didn't change the fact that the situation was more dire for them than it was for General Resources.
If the ASF lost a plane, they could probably have a replacement the next day, and if they lost a pilot, a replacement would be there by the next week...
If they lost a plane, then it would take months to get hold of a replacement, and there was no guarantee that replacement wouldn't be some old museum piece either, such was the issue in fighting one of the biggest arms suppliers in the world...
If they lost a pilot however, they lost a friend and a sizeable portion of the strength of the squadron... essentially, they lost something irreplaceable.
Then you had them - the Blazing Angels.
The Blazing Angels were less of a squadron, and more of a disparate group of pilots formed from other, now disbanded and destroyed, squadrons that had only ever numbered twenty pilots on their strongest day. A far cry from even the Mercenary Corps of the ASF, let alone the ASF itself...
"But yes, if all continues as it has so far, we may be in a position to force GR back to the negotiating table. Buy the Erusean Air Force some time to rearm and allow them to mount their planned offensive. We have certainly given them the bloody nose to prove that the UAD is no paper tiger..."
Being a paper tiger implied the United Air Defence existed on anything but paper, Kirito thought bitterly. Far from the name's suggestion, they were not united and air defence was probably pushing it a little bit too. Two squadrons worth of museum pieces, even if they were flown by people who Diavel had described as "squadrons of Mobius Ones", were probably not going to turn back a corporation who could solve any problem by simply throwing money and resources at a problem…
If they were to stand any chance of surviving and prevailing, they'd need resources and reinforcements, and currently, neither of those looked too likely.
/-/
For once in his life, Akihiko Kayaba found himself doubting his own creations.
Not his intent, no, his belief in that was absolute, but rather, his doubts lay in his implementation – ACES Online was always intended to be what many of the uninformed masses would have labelled his manifesto. He hated that idea to its very core – after all, a manifesto implied he was a terrorist, and by the word's very definition, implied he intended to inflict terror.
No, he would prefer the term "revolutionary", as that was what he wished to cause – a worldwide revolution to overthrow the corporatocracy that he found himself worked to oblivion under, and at its very core, an expose of the corruption of human nature that unfettered capitalism and the fake philanthropy it espoused…
Which was an excellent idea in his mind, but he had failed to account for something really quite important… that his ideas were not everyone else's.
Many of the players had chosen the easy option; the one that rewarded them with the best equipment, the highest pay… and an employer that would perhaps be viewed by even Amazon or Google as "corporate evil.". Those people had chosen their roles in the story, as sad as he was to say, and they would not be viewed in a positive light…
The players who stood against such evil though, they were the ones he believed this story would be written around – a cautionary tale of a company "too big to fail" and the heroes that wrote that cautionary tale.
Or so he believed. Only time would tell if he would be proven vindicated…