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Chapter Three
The day came and went as I read the ACM book, remembering every trick in it. I went to sleep and woke up to the sound of an
air raid siren! I shot out of bed, put on a flight suit, and jumped into the nearest plane in the closest hanger. I was in
luck because this plane was the ADFX-01 Morgan. Pixy managed to get the ADFX-02.
When we all got airborne, I heard: “All Aircraft, this is AWACS Sky Eye. This has been a test of your Emergency Response
Time, as well as your reaction time. Good work everyone, you may Return To Base. (RTB) once you’re there, go to the
Main Briefing Room; an officer will brief you on the current situation.”
I reluctantly landed back at the base, and followed the small crowd to the briefing room where a solider wearing the uniform
of a Soviet Union officer stood. We all took a seat, and once we settled down, he began the briefing.
“Good morning, Comrades,” he began. “I am Alexei Stribitzky of the Soviet Union Military.
“We are currently at war with a species of aliens who mean to take control of our physical bodies. These aliens are
called Yeerks. They enter through the ear canal and wrap themselves around the brain.” He took out a small remote and
pressed a button on it. The projector above our heads went ‘cha-clunk’ and a picture of what I guess a ‘Yeerk’
was displayed.
“As you can see,” the officer said, continuing the briefing, “In this state, they have no natural weapons,
and are extremely easy to defeat. It is only when this parasite wraps itself around the brain that it becomes a problem.”
He pressed the remote again, and I saw what looked slightly like a cross between a dinosaur, a hawk and a razor blade.
“This is what is known as a Hork-Bajir. These are normally herbivores; however, since the Yeerks enslaved their species,
they have become the cannon fodder of the Yeerk army.”
He continued on with the briefing for some time, and a few newbie pilots actually puked after a while. I must admit, I felt
a little queasy too, but I knew that I wouldn’t be facing those ground forces. I’d be facing off against things
called Bug Fighters, Blade Ships, and Pool Ships.
From what the Soviets could tell us, almost all of the hardware the Yeerks had didn’t have very good manoeuvrability.
However, attacking things like the Pool Ship would be like me trying to shoot down the XB-0 all over again. I shivered at
the memory. That thing was HUGE!
Anyway, soon after the briefing, we took off to go into a mock air battle. It vaguely disturbed me that we’d be using
live ammunition instead of simply playing laser tag, but orders are orders. We all took off in our preferred planes, and went
to engage each other. Pixy again, went up in the ADFX-02, so I was more or less stuck with the ADFX-01. Now, that’s
not really a bad thing, but there is one downside to this plane: I can’t carry all three special weapons at the same
time. I can just carry one at a time, so for this ‘mission’ I had the base personnel equip my plane with the default
laser cannon.
Once everyone was airborne, we started to fight. I launched a few sidewinder missiles at the first plane I came across, which
happened to be the Yellow Squadron’s leader, and I closed with him. The enemy plane was aware that I had let lose a
few missiles his way, so he now started manoeuvring to evade them.
“Yellow 13 to all Yellows;” he said. “Engage as a formation, no single-ship attacks.”
Pixy moved to my left and launched several Sidewinders of his own, targeting the number two slot in the five plane formation.
The pilot did a Cobra Manoeuvre and easily lost the two missiles.
“Bird Dog!” a woman called. “I got one on my six! Shake him off!”
“Hold on, Tomboy, I’m coming!”
Now, other planes dove in on the two of us, and I was now no longer ‘Cypher the newbie’, I was once again ‘Cipher:
Demon Lord of The Round Table’. I pulled into a sharp vertical climb, then killed my speed three seconds later and went
straight down, activating the laser cannon, and slicing apart two enemy planes in less then a second. I adjusted my plane
slightly up to hit the next enemy plane, and managed to clip a section of his tail assembly, causing him to spin uncontrollably
in an expanding globe of destruction.
My laser wore out after that, and I went to engage the Yellows who where now ganging up on Solo Wing. I could tell that he
had already lost his laser, so he was now using his Multi-Purpose Burst Missiles/Sidewinder Missiles/Gun combination. Once
I got a Yellow within firing range, I let off a burst of the gun.
The enemy plane started pulling a hard turn to the right, but I anticipated that, and sent my shells slashing across the plane’s
fuselage. Shrapnel was sent flying as the enemy plane started to fall apart in mid-flight, and I saw an ejection seat fire
just before fuel from a wing tank gushed into the air, then the fuel ignited in a savage fireball.
There was no time to go around it, so I went right through it. Shrapnel pinged and rattled on my plane’s fuselage, and
soon I was in open sky once more. There was an explosion below me, as the enemy plane’s ammunition cooked off in a more
savage secondary explosion that sent even more shrapnel of all sizes flying off in all directions.
I went onto the next enemy plane, and fired two missiles at it. Those missiles went straight sown the front air intake of
the enemy plane, and it exploded seconds later with tremendous force.
All the other planes just circled in awe and terror as they saw my little transformation as one by one, I shot them all down.
It seemed that the Soviets had installed some kind of failsafe into the ejection seat so that in the microseconds before the
plane got fatally wounded, the ejection seat would fire and prevent any casualties from a friendly fire accident.
Once I landed, I got out, and went to the Mess Hall, now feeling like an idiot for letting my skill reveal itself after all
these years. As I entered, everyone I had shot down looked up, and stared at me.
I had another Belkan War flashback...
I entered the Mess Hall of Valais Air Base in Ustio after a particularly successful engagement in the B7R Airspace. Everyone
looked up, and congratulated the seemingly unbeatable team of myself and Solo Wing Pixy.
We had both shot down the extremely deadly combination of Schwarze, Schnee, and Silber Squadron. A few of our allies had been
shot down in the process like First Lieutenant Jack Bartlett, but he had been picked up a few minutes later after I reported
it in. he also came back with another pilot. Bartlett clamed he was his squadron’s leader. Everyone had seemed to buy
that, but I had this nagging suspicion that that wasn’t the case.
The flashback ended, and I grabbed a tray, filled it up, and then took it back to a table away from everyone else. As I was
eating, another woman, who was also a pilot judging by her flight suit, came by me and sat down. Following her where a few
of her friends, a pilot with an almost indestructible look to him, a black pilot that looked to be around thirty, and a very
young pilot who couldn’t have been more then twenty-one.
They all sat down, and I recognized the shoulder patch insignia as that of the Razgriz Squadron. Blaze, Edge, Swordsman, and
Archer. All of them where lethal pilots, almost on par with me and Pixy, or Mobius Squadron.
The woman, Edge, had an engagement ring on her finger, and I could see an identical ring on Blazes’.
Wanting to break the silence, I said: “So, you probably want to know where I learned to fly like that, right?”
Grimm started to nod, but I saw Swordsman elbow him in the gut. I sighed as I saw that, and said: “I suppose this’ll
get out sooner or later, so I’m just going to say it: I’m Cipher, the Demon Lord of the Round Table.”
Grimm’s jaw dropped, and I continued: “I know, I know, you’re shocked about this, but if you want to know
why I was hidden all these years… well the truth is, I didn’t want to become a celebrity of some kind. I can’t
stand all that attention. So I simply decided to disappear. I changed my name, had some plastic surgery, and now I’m
just a well-off civilian.”
“So why’d you resurface after all this time? I mean, you’ve laid low for fifteen years, and now you pop
back up wanting to go back to work and not a mercenary this time,” Nagase asked.
“Well, a part of me always wanted to go back up in the sky, and take my word for it, being a mercenary isn’t all
it’s cracked up to be. As for why now? Well, I’m not to sure. Maybe because it’s a completely new war unlike
anything we’ve ever seen before, maybe because it’s my time, maybe because sooner or later, I’m gonna become
broke, and I’ll have to go into work again, so I might as well do something I’m good at. Like I said; to be honest,
I really don’t know.”
The four ‘Demons of Razgriz’ nodded in comprehension.
Ha. The ‘Demons of Razgriz’, I wonder where they got that nickname from. Probably me, just modifying it slightly
to encompass the four members. Er, well, maybe just the ‘Demons’ part, but the ‘Razgriz’? I didn’t
know where that came from.
See, in my Universe, ‘Razgriz’ is a storybook character that is essentially, a Demon and a Hero. It’s a
bit difficult to explain, but that’s the jist of it.
Anyways, once we were finished eating, we went back to our quarters, although before we did, I said to the Razgriz: “You
know, you can tell everyone about me. I’d prefer it if you didn’t, but you can if you want.”
After that, I went back into my quarters, and started to fill out some of the paperwork that was accumulating on my desk.
I supposed it was one of the many things I’d have to get used to if I was actually joining the military as a real pilot,
not a mercenary…
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