The red tracers shot up into the air, but fell short of hitting the fighter. It did, however, succeed in grabbing the attention of the circling aircraft, which turned sharply towards him to search for the source of the tracers.

“Fire!” He shouted to his men.

Following his shout, a bright dot zipped up through the air, leaving behind a thin trail of smoke. It came from straight below the F-51, and flew upwards almost vertically.

“Now if my observations were correct,” Takeshi spoke to himself as the missile flew, “The F-51’s defense matrixes have a blindspot directly below the belly of the aircraft.”

The missile’s motor burned out, but its inertia carried it upwards. The fighter realized this too, and turned sideways sharply to dodge the missile, but it was too little and too late.

“Boom.”

Boom.

The missile quickly adjusted course and struck the F-51 dead center, its continuous rod warhead tearing through the structures of the plane like paper. [1]

In a ball of fire the fighter plummeted form the sky. Its left wing detached from the fuselage entirely, and spiraled to the ground, leaving a corkscrew-shaped trail of black smoke.

“One down.”

The other aircraft noticed this, and began sweeping the ground for threats, firing upon anything that moved with their 25mm guns.

Takeshi ducked behind a building to keep himself hidden, and looked across the street at where a hidden stash was. The bombing had removed enough earth so that the edge of the wooden box was visible.

Many such stashes had been hidden all throughout Valkyria by the "military", which served as resupply points if they ever needed to defend their town against an attack. In a situatoin like this, these seemingly redundant stashes became the backbone of any defensive operation.

Looking to see if the skies were clear, he darted across the road when the planes weren’t facing him, and hurriedly dug away the remaining dirt still covering the box.

Inside was a shoulder launched anti-air missile tube, some batteries, and two extra missiles. He picked up the tube, which already had a missile inside, and powered up the missile’s seeker head. To his delight, the old battery still had enough power left in it, and the missile came to life.

He looked through the viewfinder, and placed the nearest aircraft inside the red box. A high-pitched wine sounded, and a smaller red diamond appeared over the aircraft. The missile had lock.

With a pull of the trigger, the missile left the tube with a gentle puff of air. As soon as it got far enough away, the main motor ignited, sending the missile skywards at a tremendous rate of speed.

The missile launch warning systems on the F-51, however, spotted the missile launch and directed the defense matrix at it. Several lasers converged upon the missile, and it detonated harmlessly halfway from the fighter.

Before the fighter even had a chance to react, another missile came up at it from directly below, inside the blindspot of the defense matrixes. Once again it struck dead center, and the plane was sent spiraling to the ground.

As it fell, the canopy jettisoned, flipping backwards and away from the main body of the aircraft. Four ejection seats shot out of the cockpit, and four parachutes opened in the air, drifting slowly down to earth.

Takeshi picked up his battle rifle, and lined up the sights with the pilots drifting down from the sky. He grimaced at the thought of shooting these defenseless men, but if they were to reach the ground it would be problematic.

So he fired, and one by one the parachuting men fell limp in the air.

By this point, the other fighters in the air had realized the danger they were in. They were making passes at random targets, blanketing the area in cannon fire.

“Sir!” One of his men shouted as he charged through the undergrowth. “They’re going for the hangar!”

He looked up to see one of the planes slowly approaching the little hangar. “Don’t let them get to it! Give them everything you’ve got.” He ordered the man.

“Got it!” He rushed off. But before he got even a few steps away, he was vaporized by a hail of 25mm shells.

Takeshi dived to the ground too, just in time to avoid being turned to minced meat.

A dark shadow passed over him along with the deafening prowl of engines. The plane pulled up and turned around, ready to come for another gun run. But before it could do so, a missile shot up at it, forcing it to evade.

Quickly he scrambled back towards where the hidden stash was, only to find that it had taken a direct hit and was now a dent in the ground.

Cursing, he turned to see if the hangar was still safe. To his horror, an F-51 had already begun firing rockets towards it. Two of the first few rockets hit low, exploding a little ways down the hill from the hangar. But the third found its mark, and destroyed the far corner of the hangar.

With no other option, Takeshi raised his rifle to his shoulder. He took aim at the cockpit, held his breath, and fired three rounds in quick succession.

The F-51 was at least a hundred meters or more away. Though mostly stationary, it still wasn’t an easy shot, especially with iron sights.

He saw the tracers arc towards the golden canopy, and penetrated the polycarbonate like a needle through skin. The F-51’s were built for performance, and not for ground attack, even small arms fire could penetrate the relatively thin canopy.

The three rounds he fired must have hit something important, because the plane turned and drooped its nose. The rockets continued to fire off in volleys, but hit nothing besides trees. Then the plane stabilized itself somewhat, just barely enough to stay in the air.

Takeshi took aim again, but three missiles flew towards it simultaneously. Two were zapped down by the defense matrix, but the last made it through and split the plane in half.

It rolled onto its side, and crashed into the hill in a huge fireball.

The last two remaining fighters saw, and simply turned and flew away. Several missiles chased after them, but all were zapped out of the air by the defense matrix. The skies above the town was finally empty, with nothing but columns of black smoke rising up to the heavens.

They had downed three enemy aircraft and repelled the attack.

At the loss of how many men? Takeshi didn’t know. But he could only imagine that it was a lot, far more than he was willing to accept.

While he was lost in thought, a distant explosion sounded from the hangars, snapping him out of his trance-like state. He looked up, and realized that the fight was not over yet.

*****

“All systems ready, canopy closing.” Two-five reported as One-five and Two-six buckled themselves in. “We can fly.”

“We still need to wait for Lenn and his team.” One-six reminded them, turning his head to look at how things were going for the New Asians.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ying take a hit to her leg and fall to the ground.

“Not good.” He muttered.

His teammates noticed too, and were leaning out the sides of their seat to look at what was happening.

They watched as Lenn and Kang leapt out of their plane and ran towards Ying.

How admirable that they’d go to such lengths for their comrade. They thought

“One-six, turn this plane around.” One-five ordered.

One-six accepted that command and did so without question. He too understood that, with no suppressing fire, the enemies would be free to overrun their position.

Halfway around the turn, he spotted a grenade bounce off the wall and into the hangar.

“Grenade!” He called out.

In the safety behind the polycarbonate windshield, One-six watched as the grenade exploded, sending out a sphere of deadly fragmentation. He could hear some of them bounce off the skin of his aircraft, and see the little puffs of dust get kicked up as they skipped across the ground.

Ying, who was closest to the explosion, had sustained pretty major injuries. Even though the way she fell meant One-six didn’t quite have a clear line of sight to her, he knew that a grande exploding from such a small distance would surely have dire consequences.

He watched as the New Asian pilots rushed over to their injured teammate’s side and knelt to the floor.

One-six reached for his SMG behind his seat, ready to lift open the canopy and open fire if a soldier stepped into sight. But before he could even reach for the canopy open lever, an enemy soldier stepped through the doorway and turned his gun on Lenn.

One-five had noticed too, and instead of waiting for the canopy to open, he dropped his gun and grabbed his gunnery controls.

“What are y-” One-six began to ask as One-five depressed the trigger.

The soldier disappeared behind a beam of yellow tracers, and their plane vibrated gently as the 25mm gatling gun opened up. A wide path of dust, leading out the same direction as the barrels, was blown away by the shockwaves of the 25mm shells, leaving a hazy white line along the floor.

One-five adjusted his aim down a little, letting the shells hit the ground and detonate, killing everything outside the entrance to the hangar.

A curtain of smoke rose up from the gun, which was housed just below the nose, and obscured their view forwards. It wasn’t until One-five saw the New Asians entering the cargo bay of their plane, did he decide to release the trigger.

By then, they had already gone through most of their ammunition, and alarms were beeping to signal that the gun had begun to overheat.

“Did they make it?”

“Yes they did.”

“That was all the 25mm ammunition we had.”

“You would have done the same too.”

“…”

One-six noticed that the fighting had almost died out completely. There were no more sounds of guns firing, no more roaring of engines, no more rocket or bomb explosions. Perhaps they had already lost, and the town was in Europa’s hands. Or maybe that had won, and their attackers had gone home. He desperately wished that it was the latter.

“She’s still fighting,” Two-five pointed out, looking over at the New Asians, who were carrying Ying to the cockpit.

One-six felt a wave of admiration and respect in his chest. If only he could have such dedication and passion from the bottom of his heart, and not just from an order given by a higher-up.

Lenn signaled to him to lift off, and they took to the air together.

He waited for the VX-200 to break through the ceiling first, being the larger and more rugged of the two planes, and flew up into the air after the New Asian plane.

The skies were clear of any contacts.

“I’ll do a 360 sweep, One-five, start scanning with radar and infrared.” One-six commanded.

“Copy.”

They turned a wide circle in the sky, looking around for any hostile targets. They picked up Lenn’s plane several times, but quickly identified it as being friendly. Even though their IFF showed the VX-200 as a hostile, they knew that was no longer the case. [2]

The “blue” were now the hostiles, and the “red” were now the friendlies. Or at least, this specific VX-200 piloted by Lenn and his team.

Soon they noticed the many wrecks of F-51s littering the ground below, and it became clear that they were the victors. They collectively sighed a breath of relief.

“Mission accomplished?” Two-six asked.

“I’m not very sure what our mission was to begin with, but I’d say yes.” One-six answered.

A little while after, Lenn’s plane fell into formation besides them, and through the cockpit One-six saw Lenn signal with his hands.

He told him to land just outside the rock overhang, so they descended together in formation. It felt a little weird to fly in formation with a VX-200 after having fought against them his whole life.

It had already become quite dark, with only the sun’s dispersed light illuminating the edge of the horizon. The main hangar located beneath the overhang was almost completely destroyed, so there were no lights to illuminate the landing zones. However, someone, probably Takeshi, seemed to have realized this, and had placed spotlights hooked up to emergency generators to at least illuminate a landing zone with some amount of light.

Using their onboard landing lights, One-six could see survivors huddles together in the very deepest parts of the overhang. They had saved at least a hundred or so, but he knew that the town used to house over a thousand.

But at least they saved some. At least they had saved more than just themselves.

*****

“Everybody to the overhang!” Takeshi shouted, waving at the small crowd of survivors. He walked over and beckoned them to follow him.

He and a few of his men had gone up to the backup hangar to assist the European pilots and New Asian pilots. Halfway up the hill, they heard the grumble of a 25mm gatling gun. And by the time they got there, the two teams of pilots had already taken into the air. The only remains of what appeared to be a vicious gunfight were a few dying European soldiers. They put a bullet in the head of each one just to make sure.

Takeshi realized that they must have turned their gatling cannons on the soldiers, as he found lots of burnt human parts just littered around the place. Rifles and pistols don’t usually turn people into shreds of meat.

Some of his less experienced men gagged and puked, but he himself was used to it. Although the smell and the scene did reawaken some pretty unhappy memories, it didn’t really bother him much.

After that, they decided to focus on the rescue operation. With two planes providing aerial coverage, they could safely search and regroup any survivors. Of course, a more thorough search and rescue operation would need to be mounted later, as many were probably still buried below the fallen buildings.

He and his men had split up to look for survivors and bring them to the overhang where the others were waiting.

What a blessing that there just happened to be a huge naturally occuring shelter right besides their town, which now provided desperately needed protection against the elements for many hundreds.

“Is the fighting over?” One of the survivors, a young girl, asked with a trembly voice. Her parents were nowhere to be seen, and Takeshi assumed that they had become separated in the mayhem.

Takeshi thought for a moment. “I suppose.”

“Have we won?”

“I’m not sure whether we won or not.” Takeshi smiled. “But at least we hadn’t lost.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say that they had won. When he looked around at his town, it was nothing but smashed up bits of wood and concrete. The glory of the once bustling trading center was nowhere to be seen. With a quick estimate, around 70% of the town’s buildings had been completely destroyed, with the remaining 30% suffering varying amounts of damage.

Yet, against all odds, they had survived. Or rather, a lot of people, far more than should have, survived. They had managed to repel the European attack, and had another chance at rebuilding.

But Takeshi knew that it may soon change. This battle, though bloody and costly, would be nowhere as pivotal as what was about to come.

After that, he wasn’t sure if Valkyria would continue to exist or not. Even though a lot of people survived, it was uncertain if the town would be rebuilt. He didn’t even know if it could be rebuilt, for the damage was so extreme.

And by “what was about to come”, he meant the end of the war. He meant Europa’s absolute victory, and New Asia’s absolute destruction.

A victory, which those two teams of pilots had decided to stop.

A destruction, which those two teams of pilots had decided to prevent.

[1] continuous rod warhead - as opposed to a standard fragmentation warhead, a CR warhead uses a continous rod folded up and rolled into a cylindrical shape around an explosive charge. Upon detonation, the rod deforms and expands outwards into a continous ring, which is more effective for smaller warheads compared to a purely fragmentation one (more chance of hit, more damage, etc). It is used in most modern air-to-air missiles and man portable anti-aircraft missiles.

[2] IFF - identification friend or foe, a system used in the military to determine whether a detected contact is a friendly one or hostile one.