ACES Online

Chapter 13 - Freedom Fighters

"All aircraft, scramble!"

Those were the words that Sortiliena had been dreading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Twenty-seven, starting up."

"Ten, ready to go."

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

Neither of them had survived the resulting crash.

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

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

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

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

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