Obligatory Disclaimer - I own nothing and all characters mentioned are fictitious and not meant to represent any one person in the modern world, nor their viewpoints. This story does not reflect the morals and opinions of the Department of Defense, and all branches therein.
Chapter 2: Rescue with a slice of Memory
September 13th, 2004 – 0953 hrs. – Over the Eusean Ocean, East of Allenfort AB, Usea
"So anyway, he goes, 'That's not an Aim-9! This is an Aim-9!' and blows the stupid bastard out of the air!" Halo 2, Toaster, laughed at his friends' joke, it was a good distraction from the so far long and uneventful flight out in the middle of nowhere. His nerves have kept calm, and the company of a fellow nugget, especially when their AWACS overhead was not exactly a talker, allowed him a chance to relax and reflect on his experiences thus far. He was lost in thought now, remembering the last time he saw his family at Comberth.
"Son, we have to go, and I mean Yesterday!" Tobias' mother looked quite unnerved to the young 17-year-old, and as such, he became nervous as well. The Television was repeating an emergency message in the living room. He was moving quickly to help pack some bare essentials for his family before they had to leave their comfortable 1 story home on the West side of Comberth, the harbor visible from his front porch.
"I repeat, all citizens of Comberth are encouraged to evacuate immediately, Comberth Harbor will soon be under Erusean rule. ISAF reports the loss of Commonwealth just outside Comberth 20 minutes ago. Get out while you still have time, and avoid any and all combat actions, including ISAF personnel engaged in combat...I repeat..." On and on it droned out, and his family was not at all paying attention to the important-looking man on the screen.
Tobias was already packed, he saw the writing on the wall weeks ago, but his family was stubborn and refused to believe their lying eyes as they watched the steady advance of Erusean tanks across mainland Usea on their box television. Then again, what did he expect, his father, a 43-year-old, and older brother, 29, both worked in the shipyard as dockers, and that stubbornness kept them both narrow in their views. At least his mother took him somewhat more seriously, but she said she would follow her husband's judgment, just as she did when Ulysses hit.
'It's too bad, we could have maybe survived if we left earlier, at least we would have had a chance to escape, now though, you're only going to get out of Comberth by foot, or by sneaking aboard one of those ISAF transport ships.' A thought came to Tobias' mind then, but he realized the futility of it almost at once, it wasn't like his family was going to be sneaky on a military ship, and even then, his father would beat him for even saying, let alone attempting to stowaway. Gunfire erupted then, and he turned and looked behind him into his house and looked with horror as he could see the barrel of his father's Remington pointed at him. Without even a second of thought, Tobias ran towards the harbor, pellets flying past him until he heard his father's voice scream at him.
"Get out of here you piece of shit! I'll not have a coward of a son take up wasted space! Run boy before I kill you, you miserable welp!" Tobias ran, unsure why his father turned on him so suddenly before it clicked. 'He wants to get himself out, the selfish bastard, his family would only slow him down!' He heard three more shots before he turned the corner on his home street, and he dreaded to think about just who those shots were for...
"Hello? Halo 2, you there?" AWACS Sky Eye was contacting him now, his voice breaking the trance Tobias was in, correcting his flight path. "I'm here sir, sorry, was lost in thought, what do you need?" He asked.
"Radar pinged the unidentified bogey, we're getting a transmission from it, pay attention, this'll help you judge situations when you are out there on the battlefield. Tell me what you think and be completely truthful about it. You too Viper 9." Sky Eye keyed in the two nuggets to the transmission one of his crew just caught on the wide band.
"Mayday...Captain...le...SAF...inopera...last...pos...5...est...peat...mayday..."
"This is all we're getting, the signal is very spotty as you could tell, your thoughts on this Toaster?" Sky Eye waited patiently for the young man's response. Toaster responded, "Well, it sounds like a distress signal, and by the sounds of things, his plane is inoperable, we probably can't save him." Sky Eye questioned Marker next, "Do you agree with Toaster's description? Did you catch something he didn't?" Marker responded almost immediately in a contemplative voice. "Wait, it sounds like he's a Captain, and he said 'SAF' you think he means ISAF and our radios just can't pick it up?"
Sky Eye grinned, he thought Marker was more intelligent than he was letting on, and this proved it. "My thoughts exactly Lieutenant, I'll call Allenfort and see if we can't scramble a rescue copter' to the crash site, let's let him know we are here as well so he doesn't panic."
Thomas opened a wide band transmission then, "This is AWACS Sky Eye of the ISAF, we read your transmission and are on the way to your estimated crash position. We are on the way Captain. Estimated 2 hours to arrival. I say again, help is on the way." He got a short transmission soon after, though all he could make out was '...knowledged'
"Get me Allenfort, ASAP!" He called to his crew, "Tell them it's urgent." After a few minutes, Allenfort's base commander's voice came in, "Sky Eye, Colonel Brey here, status?" Sky Eye asked the Colonel, "Colonel, take a listen to this transmission, can we scramble a rescue helicopter to the crash position?"
After listening to the garbled transmission, Brey responded, "Approved, get that Captain back to Allenfort stat, I'll call Intelligence to debrief him, as far as I know, we don't have any flights patrolling the East, let alone an extra Captain just flying around randomly. If you can contact him again, keep him calm until the helicopter arrives, and stay on site until it arrives. Keep the nuggets with you, after that you can return as well, Brey out."
Sky Eye switched back to his two nuggets and gave them their orders, "Alright then, Viper 9, Halo 2, looks like we are staying out here until the rescue helicopter can arrive, let's get to the crash site ASAP and secure the area around it."
"Halo 2 solid copy," said Toaster, "Viper 9 wilco" responded Marker. Together with instructions from Sky Eye, the two men turned and headed for the expected crash site at all possible speed afforded to the Mig and Tomcat.
"Welp, looks like I'm going to crash any minute now. At least the seas are calm enough." Reale spoke to himself, preparing to eject just before he hit the water. Thankfully, he made sure to pack an extra waterproof container and quickly stored what electronics he had on him inside it and kept it inside his top pocket inside his flight suit. After taking one last look around for anything he missed, he grabbed the ejection handle muttering "here goes nothing."
Johann pulled hard on the ejection handle, and thankfully, his canopy popped open, and he blasted out of his cockpit, arms crossed across his chest, his mouth slightly open to avoid damage from the shockwave. He tumbled about 100 feet into the air before his parachute opened up and he gently floated to the waves below him. As he watched his plane sink, it gave him one last gift, a bright orange life raft floated up and expanded rapidly. After hitting the water and getting out of the seat and straps to avoid drowning, Johann climbed aboard the raft and breathed easily, chuckling at his rather unfortunate circumstance, but taking a moment to thank his plane for keeping him alive in its last moments.
Reale checked himself over, his forest green flight suit was intact and without tears, though sadly, he noticed his squadron patch for the 'NATO Tigers' 79th Fighter Squadron was missing, likely lost to the ocean deep. He noted his flare gun on his left side and checked to see that he had one flare for it. His personal sidearm, a gift from his father that was passed down from its first use by his great grandfather, a Colt 1911, with cedar grips, and a cobalt blue barrel, with the names of the battlefields it saw use in scratched on it by his forebears, those being: 'Belleau Wood' 'Iwo Jima' 'Khe Sanh' there was room for more and Reale was hoping he could make his mark on this piece of his family's legacy. Finishing his gear check, Johann looked to the dark-blue sky and began dozing off, his thoughts turning to his days in Officer Training School.
"Reale! You and Gallager are up first, Chohon and Marquez after." Johann saluted his instructor and, like Gallager, climbed into his training plane, a T-38 Talon. After running preflight checks, he took off, the beautiful Texas land coming into view as he leveled off at 3000 feet, Gallager on his left wing, Chohon and Marquez on the right. His instructor came onto the radio then, issuing orders. "Reale, you will be fighting solo this dogfight against your peers here, if you manage to survive longer than 5 minutes you pass this test, if you somehow shoot down all three opponents...well, we'll see what reward you get. This dogfight will use simulated munitions ONLY...Marquez. The fight will begin in 10 seconds, the hard deck is set at 2000 feet, try to stay within 25 miles of the base, ready? GO!"
Immediately after the start signal, Reale, who had been running maneuvers in his mind for his opponents, went for his first move. He raised flaps to lower speed and inverted his plane to roll downwards. As he expected, Marquez fell for the bait and tried to outrun him, but before he could get much more than a couple hundred feet, Reale righted his plane and got behind Marquez, shouting out the trademark "Guns, Guns, Guns!" to which Marquez, with a noticeably frustrated tone, gave the reply "Knock it off!" Chohon and Gallager meanwhile sped away to the left, getting a couple thousand feet distance before doing a wide loop to the right, getting into formation to attack Reale.
'As I thought, Gallager is taking the lead, he still is gun shy so will probably attempt to get a sidewinder off. I can probably get him with guns again, but with Chohon covering him, I'll probably be knocked out, what if...' Before he could finish his thought, Gallager fired a 'missile' towards him, and he was forced to climb rapidly, spinning and firing off his flares to jink the infrared sensors on the missile, pulling back the throttle to further spoof the heat-seeker, which, according to the instructor watching below, missed Reale. Johann leveled off and moved back up to speed, heading slightly away from the remaining two opponents.
Chohon broke away then, getting on the back of Reale's plane, who began rolling and steadily moving to the left to avoid Chohon's gun piper. "Damnit stay on him Cho, I'll get him." Gallager said, though what he didn't realize was that he was still speaking on the open frequency, and Reale, taking advantage of this, began a rolling climb towards where Gallager was getting set for his run. Gallager flinched, and Reale fired a 'missile' towards the now perfect target that was Gallager, before completing his lag roll on Chohon, coming in behind the pilot and trying to get in range to use the gun. At the same time, Gallager swore loudly, "Son of a bitch! He got my ass, Cho! Kill this bastard!"
With the last two trainees at 5000 feet, Cho decided to perform what is called a 'Low Yo-Yo' immediately, he dove for the hard deck gaining speed before rolling left and climbing and banking left towards Reale, only, he wasn't there. Johann had Chohon's actions down in his mind, and sensing an impending attack, broke off and climbed rapidly to 10000 feet. When Cho leveled off, looking for him, he dove from the sun and 'fired' his last Sidewinder within 1 mile from Chohon, making it impossible to jink the missile. The instructor called out after the missile 'hit' saying, "Well I'll be dammed, looks like I owe the colonel a bottle. Well done Reale, as a reward, you passed your last exam! That's right, you're officially a fighter pilot now, go on ahead and land so we can get your party going, excuse me, I meant paperwork."
Johann was not really paying attention to the last few words, rather focusing on the statement that he was a fighter pilot now, and completely ecstatic about it. He turned his old trainer towards the base, his mind lost in thought...
'Man, I can't believe I managed to gun down Marquez so easily, it was like he wasn't even paying attention.' Reale thought to himself after he woke up some 2 hours later by his reckoning, the Sun now near its Zenith. He yawned and looked around, hearing the distinct noise of fighter jets approaching. He soon spotted them coming from the Northwest, though he couldn't make out the make of the planes, he could tell they were flown by amateurs. 'After all, you wouldn't want to be caught side by side when outside of friendly territory, loosen up that formation you are the perfect target right now!' Deciding that it would be best to alert the pilots to his exact location, he grabbed the flare gun he kept on his left side, loaded it, and fired it straight into the air. He noticed their reaction immediately, banking towards him and slowing down considerably, no doubt getting an exact fix to that AWACS he heard earlier.
As they got closer, Johann adopted a very confused look on his face, 'why is there a Tomcat flying with a Fulcrum? Since when did we get along with the Russians enough for that, let alone perform Search and Rescue together?' The planes broke off then, the Tomcat remaining level to provide top cover, whilst the Mig sped ahead to circle the life raft a few times, pitching its wings as it did so in case Reale was deaf and couldn't hear the engines approaching him. Both planes then flew over him and performed what Johann liked to call 'the NASCAR sprints' lazily circling overhead with half-mile turns and 2-mile straightaways for about ten minutes at about 2000 feet overhead. He appreciated the view, reminding him of Daytona when he visited as a kid, he scrunched up his face then in a look of suspicion, his target was the planes, they didn't look exactly like Russian nor American models by his reckoning.
'ISAF, eh? I thought they disbanded after Afghanistan, their work complete. And that symbol, it looks vaguely familiar, like something out of a lost dream, but ISAF's logo was green, wasn't it, with half-moon Arabic on the bottom?' Before he could scrutinize the planes further, the distinct sound of a chopper approaching reached his eardrums, again from the Northwest. An S-92 rescue helicopter soon appeared overhead, again to Reale's confusion, it had ISAF written next to its cockpit. Additionally, the blue-grey coloring of the helicopter, was entirely confusing to Reale, 'Don't we paint our rescue helicopters red and white so they can, you know, stand out?' A basket was lowered down then, to which Reale gratefully climbed into, giving a small salute to the life raft before he was lifted up into the belly.