My name is Andrew Gaunt. I'd arrived on Seiper Air Base three days earlier, working as a war correspondent for the Osea Broadcasting Company. It wasn't a glamorous job, a fact compounded by the fact that the Belkan War, which had happened nine years earlier, was still deep in the minds of the Osean people.
The tarmac stretched out over the upper Seiper valley, blown over with thin wisps of snow and raked with gusts of bitter wind. I had nestled myself deep in the lee of a stack of crates, both to escape the vicious wind and to glower over my ill luck when they caught my attention. They were a pair of fiery girls, one a redhead, the other a brunette, being hounded by some of the pilots already on the base. Both rookies were quite attractive, looking seriously out of place amongst the largely male cadre of pilots.
But that wasn't the source of the veterans' disdain – the two pilots had flown in earlier that day, in mismatched planes, part of two wings of similarly disparate aircraft. Mercenaries, come to augment the now badly depleted Nephil Republic Air Force.
Earlier, I'd learned that the pilots were from a company which specialized in dispatching mercenaries to the far ends of the world. That corporation, Umbrella Defense Systems, had earned a particularly bad reputation, even with other guns-for-hire; they were renowned for abducting promising pilots and deploying them into combat with little, if any, combat preparation.
That the pilots were catching flak for it seemed ridiculously unfair. Still, a job was a job, and I was supposed to chronicle the war. Easing around the boxes, I raised my camera to catch a photo of them; the telephoto lens whirred as it brought them into focus.
The redhead must have caught me out of the corner of her eye, because she glanced over at me, the other just a moment behind her. Her fiery hair was drawn back into a braid, looped over the back of her head; a severe style contrasting with her wild, unruly bangs. Underneath her angrily slanted eyebrows were startlingly blue eyes, her nostrils were slightly flared, her mouth a grim line. The expression of her companion was perhaps even more tightly drawn, both conveying a kind of sad defiance.
For the past two days, rumors had been flying around the base that a big operation was imminent, waiting only on the band of mercenary pilots that had just arrived, a rumor confirmed shortly after their arrival. In a few hours, they would launch their attack.
I didn't know their names. I doubted that I would ever have the chance to know them beyond this one, brief moment.
The camera clicked rapidly, conveying them forever to memory.
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"This is AWACS Oculus to all craft. Additional enemy fighters detected. ETA 5 minutes."
"Oh, wonderful!" Griped Ranma, throwing her old, poorly maintained J-35J Draken sideways, deflecting around a streaking missile. She swiveled around, her plane shaking unnervingly as she jostled along the lowest edge of it's performance envelope, swooping low along the ground. Her attacker, in what was probably a far better maintained jet followed, but her planes superior innate maneuverability bought her the time she needed.
"Fox 2! Fox 2!"
Her tail suddenly peeled off, not quite in time to evade the missile that sent it plummeting to the ground. Ranma swallowed dryly, then resolved to see how much of her pay she could divert to seeing to her jets maintenance. "Pavise 3, splash one!"
Ranma scowled and launched into a tight turn, feeling somewhat annoyed with Akane. Not with the fact she had just saved her life, but with the fact that the other girl just seemed much better at this than her. The MiG-21bis that contained her onetime fiancee quickly vanished in the melee, and Ranma was again alone and fighting for her life.
"I hate this stupid other-world crap." Ranma griped mentally, pulling off a barely controlled Split-S that put her roughly on the tail of what she was pretty sure was an F-5E Tiger. Her computer beeped almost immediately, and purely by reflex Ranma launched one of her two remaining missiles; the first had had a bad angle and been evaded, the second had been decoyed.
The third missile, launched from almost directly behind at nearly point blank range, however, was dead on, plowing directly into the Tiger's engine before exploding in an oily fireball. A less direct hit would have simply dropped the plane as a flaming wreck to impact on the ground below, one that the pilot could escape.
Ranma veered away from the fireball, evading the burning shrapnel that spat violently from it, releasing a rather belated, "Fox 2!" There was no way the pilot could have survived that, she knew, but there was no time to dwell on it. Her and Akane's lives hung in the balance. Not that they really had much in the way of lives; trapped else-world in a band of dishonorable mercenaries, with Akane's sisters being used to ensure their cooperation.
And as if to add insult to injury, Ranma's curse did not seem to be cross-dimensionally transportable. Entirely unlike Ranma, who demonstrably was.
"Pavise 4, Bogey down!"
"Like I didn't know that." Ranma thought caustically. At least she was starting to get the hang of things now. Her plane remained a bucket of bolts, but she could deal with that. The enemy seemed to want her personally, and she could deal with that too. Actually it was kinda reassuring; it reminded her of Nerima back before the Old Freak had... she gave herself a shake. "Mind on the present, Ranma!"
She pulled up and about, bleeding off speed before falling upon an unfortunate Phantom, shredding the less maneuverable craft with an extended burst from her 30mm cannon. She was at the outer edge of the furball now, and she could see the Tornado GR.4 Fighter/Bombers she and the other mercs had been assigned to escort clearing the battle zone as well.
Though not without attracting attention. A small number of miscellaneous enemy fighter craft had broken out of the engagement and were closing rapidly on the cumbersome attack craft.
Ranma was turning to intercept, even as the Tornado Squadron sent out the call for assistance. "This is Greaves Squadron. Enemy fighters have locked on to us; requesting assistance."
Her computer bleated that she had a lock on the lead fighter, and she let fly. The hostile aircraft took the shot better than she expected, too damaged by the near miss to do more than peel off to try and live to fight another day. She switched to the next in line, but found she didn't have to do anything about the remaining enemies, who were all quickly set upon by the locally superior NRAF forces.
"Bombs away!" She heard Greaves 1 exuberantly report. She glanced over to see them circling the enemy air base, a number of fires spreading around crumpled buildings and several very noticeable craters pockmarking the runway. "Attack run complete! Confirming! Enemy airfield inoperable!"
"Roger that Greaves 1. AWACS Oculus to all craft; mission complete, return to base."
And with all possible haste, the Seiper Air Bases remaining fighter complement did just that. Having achieved near total air superiority, evacuating the airspace over the now destroyed base was simple, something even the greenest of the mercenaries could do. They left in their wake a burning air base, it's impotent reinforcements, and many of their own.
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(Posted Tue, 23 May 2006 07:23)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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