"Albert, pass me that duct tape. This bastard is talking too much," commanded a tall man, wearing a stylish, chartreuse colored Rheinland Military uniform.
In the shady corners of the gloomy room, a soldier nodded, then stepped to a grim, iron table, on which tools of different sorts were placed. These instruments, ranging from hammers to short-range electric shocking devices, were chiefly used to pursue methods of torture. The soldier picked up perhaps the most outdated and devious-looking one, a roll of duct tape. One would not want to imagine what pains that device in the right hands could inflict.
A third person in the room was observing the soldier carrying out the orders of his superior. He on the other hand, had no military uniform on. He was wearing a torn business suit, covered by stains of blood and dirt. The eerie coloring was mostly the result of several wounds embracing the upper body parts of the said person. Neither was the look on his face one of the pleasant kind. This man observed the soldier's steps with fierce anxiety. On the other hand, he was entirely helpless, being tied to an iron chair. His only tool of resistance left was a verbal one, which he indeed did use.
"You fascist vermin! I have rights! I demand a lawyer! This is in violation of basic human rights!" he kept yelling, to no avail.
"The lawyer is already present," the tall man noted without even trying to hold back an impish smile, "so is the judgment. I'm afraid I represent each, mein Herr."
As the other soldier arrived with the duct tape in his hand, the tall man raised his left hand, waving towards his approaching underling.
"Thanks you for your assistance, Albert. I will handle the rest of this... process," he now smiled at the tied-up prisoner. "As the saying goes; silence is golden, duct tape is silver."
The tall man grabbed the duct tape from the hands of his assistant and nodded towards the door. The soldier walked out of the room while having to listen to the echo of desperate screaming coming from yet another prisoner he rendered under such a terrible fate.
Outside the horrific room, Albert let off a sigh. It was not the first interrogation scene he has seen, he even thought it was one of the more reserved ones just now. After having to witness a Military deserter being violently tortured and killed, he stopped caring, even though the message was obvious.
Tortures, imprisonments, arrests and straight out killing people without a trial were getting unusually common. The Rheinland Military leadership made a 180 degree turn in the past few months, changing from a bunch of corrupted, worthless politicians to vicious, diabolic tyrants, attempting to wage war against the rest of the world.
That's how things were, around the turn of the 8th Sirian century, back when Liberty warships were not the strangest appearances to be seen around Rheinland.
Albert lit a cigarette, put his left hand into a pocket and started walking down the greenish hallways of the Westfalen, in an entirely nonmilitary manner. Who gives a damn about standards anyway when the world is about to end? He may be the next one the High Command decides to get rid of. Lighting a cigarette in a non-smoking hallway at least saves them the trouble from making up a charge of an equally ridiculous extent.
"Unger!" a friendly voice echoed through the hallway. It was reassuring to hear anyone in the Military still retaining his peaceable approach, although the only way to achieve such was to stop caring about the rest of the world.
Albert fixed his sights upon an approaching pilot, still carrying his helmet in his hands. He had a mild grimace on his face, sparked by noticing his companion.
"Hallo, Eichel," Albert replied in a neutral tone, but casting a smile on his face.
Eichel stepped to his comrade and they shook hands.
"You had a hard day, I see," began Eichel his lecture, "you're acting as if the world was ending again."
"Maybe because it is indeed ending."
"You need a few beers, mein Freund. That ought to cheer you up. Me and the boys will fly back to Hamburg for the weekend. Try some places out, chill, you name it."
Albert looked away, fixing his sights on the non-smoking sign above an airlock.
"I still have a patrol to complete."
"What gives? It's Friday already. I doubt the Hauptfeld' will give you a hard time out there."
"Marina... I haven't seen her for weeks," concluding his statement, Albert sighed.
"Duh, I'm sure she'll turn up eventually. She has done this before, hasn't she?"
"She should have called at least... I'm worried because of all the people disappearing lately."
"Man, don't stress yourself. Booze always helps with such troubles."
The soldier sighed, again. He obviously didn't agree with the statement, but it has indeed been a while since he last saw the bottom of the glass. Even though it obviously is a mere temporary solution, alcohol might have offered him at least a siesta.
"Fine, I'll be there," he replied with general sorrow in his tone.
Eichel patted his friend on the back and started walking towards the diner.
"See you in the evening, then," he departed with his usual, pleasant smile.
Albert stepped into a barren hangar bay, following a few hours of break. There were merely a few other pilots around and the patrol vessels were all gone, save for three fighters belonging to the pilot's wingmen. All ships command could spare were transferred to "classified locations", along with the necessary crew. It was no secret that Rheinland was mobilizing against Kusari, after the chancellor suddenly changed his mind about getting his fleet into Bretonia. The other vessels which remained aboard the Westfalen were constantly on patrol, securing the borders towards Liberty.
Some of them never returned.
"ATTEN-TION!" screamed an NCO upon his entry to the hangar.
All the pilots ran to the middle of the hangar and stood up into a line, standing fast. The officer approached them and began observing the pilots' uniforms and equipment, walking in front of the line with a demanding look on his face. As usual, he dropped several unnecessary remarks at the clothing and load out of the otherwise perfectly similarly geared personnel.
"Feldwebel Unger!" he yelled into Albert's face.
"Sir!"
"Why are you wearing that uniform like a clown? You think this is some circus?"
Of course, he was wearing the uniform as it was meant to, just like the rest of his comrades, staying near him in a line. The NCO still treated them as if it was boot camp, with which he earned a large portion of disgust in the eyes of Albert and his colleagues.
"No, sir!" he replied at hand.
"Go and fix that coat then. It looks ridiculous."
Albert had no idea what looked so ridiculous, or what he had to fix. Military standards demanded one kind of reply.
"Yes, sir!"
The NCO walked off to harass the next pilot. Albert held back something between a grin and a sigh. The man was just two ranks above him, but he still treated him like a rookie. Young he sure was, but the necessary military experience, he already did have at hand.
It took five minutes for the "inspection" to finish. Another ten to get into space.
A patrol wing of three Wraiths burst through the sky, leaving a lime-green contour behind them as they passed. A shift of a few hours length were to go, but the soldiers were already exhausted. Albert himself didn't heed much attention to his flight, he switched his formation autopilot on as the vessels burst through the sky.
"Waypoint three coming up, all clear on sensors."
"Confirmed, keep formation and let's head out to four."
Albert whispered thanks to the technological marvels being built into his fighter craft, since assuring the continuity of his patrol took a few mere clicks. The NCO being in charge had to be the only one to focus on keeping the wing in space.
It gave him enough time to think of the problems of the late with a clean head, the constant troubles he had to face during his duties being the least worrying ones, as he knew that his comrades cope with equal conditions. Hell, they still were better off than the ones shipped to perform tasks at these so-called "classified locations."
What seriously started to worry Albert was the absence of his other half. At least, he considered Marina Pfeifer as such. He first met her two years ago, back then she was working at a restaurant. Albert became a frequent visitor of the said establishment, eventually developing an attraction to the waitress. Financial problems led the restaurant to close down and dismiss the staff, but Marina and Albert remained in contact. Albert on the other hand, never proposed anything more serious than mere friendship, despite the fact that he hopelessly fell for the waitress.
One of the reasons for Albert never taking a step further was that Marina had a tendency of disappearing for undefined amounts of time. She left her house for days, weeks and only maintained contact with Albert via indirect tools of communication, never telling what kept her busy. Albert made the mistake of asking only once.
This time.
Since his shifts became prolonged, Albert saw Marina even less frequently. Last time he was at her house during his leave, the topic came up. Marina became enraged and left the house as it is, leaving Albert within. The man waited hours long, but she never came back. Weeks went past and Albert became terribly worried.
He sighed as he thought of the past events, the good memories of his loved one and the time they spent together. The cold nights on Hamburg, the glamorous Stuttgart sunrises, they even saw the construction of Augsburg during one of the longer holidays Albert was allowed to take.
He cursed himself for not taking action sooner. He was going to admit everything he felt for her and finally propose a serious relationship, perhaps even marriage, but it might have been too late.
"Wake up, Unger!" the NCO yelled through the comms, "We have bogies on sensors!"
Albert did get lost in his thoughts, failing to notice that his scanners lit up red. The contacts were out of range and moving rapidly.
"Unger, Strumpf, break formation and pursue."
Following a "jawohl", both pilots disengaged their autopilots and assumed manual control of their vessels, maintaining their approach towards the contacts in cruise. About four-five engine trains were visible, one of them being a larger ship, a transport or maybe even a gunboat.
"Unidentified vessels, this is the Rheinland Military. Cut your engines at once and prepare to be scanned."
No response followed.
"All fighters, arm cruise disruptors."
Albert clicked an auxiliary trigger and a missile slipped into the launcher tube. A red button reading "Feuer" began lighting. As they flew closer, the ships became more and more easy to identify. Clearly, one of them was a transport, accompanied by a wing of militant fighters of a sort.
"This is your final warning, vessels. Cut your engines at once or we will open fire."
"That you sure will anyway, we will not be yielding to you," replied a harsh, smoke-tainted Rheinlander voice over the comms, "All fighters, break off and shoot them down!"
The transport flew past as its escort broke off to engage. The vessels were chiefly of the ship types employed by Rheinland revolutionaries. They fired cruise disruptors to prevent the Military from intercepting their target, which successfully forced the soldiers to loose their cruise speed.
"Verdammt! Destroy these Bolshevik scumbags, Piloten!" ordered the NCO in the usual, commanding manner.
The wing lit up their weapons, firefight erupted.
"Fur Rheinland!" cried the revolutionaries as they threw themselves against the soldiers possessing superior training and armaments.
Both of the above paid off as the Hornvipers dug themselves into the hull of the poorly equipped and outdated heavy fighters.
The first few shots to his fighter's raised Albert's attention span. He quickly grabbed his control stick and thrusted to evade the incoming projectiles. A pair of rebels took a lock on his six, emptying their loadout at his Wraith. The red-green beams delivered enough pain for the fighter's shield to drop, causing Albert to lose his concentration. He felt as if his limbs were losing blood as fast as his shields are being lowered. He started shaking, sweating and muttering something in despair.
However, he misjudged the situation. Two of the poorly equipped fighters were instantly shot down by Albert's wingmen, blowing the flying coffins and the pilots within to pieces. He killed his engines, did an 180 degree turn and shot back at his pursuers with full energy being placed to the guns and frontal shields.
He hit one of the fighters, causing a fire on the hostile's wing component. The other one broke off and evaded the tachyon burst, attempting to flank Albert's vessel. The soldier turned his engines back, thrusted forward and launched another wave of tachyon shots at the target he previously hit. This time, it resulted in the rebel's destruction.
"Ziel zerstoert!" he yelled with joy.
The other revolutionary was now behind him again, trying to hit the Wraith with a pair of long-range missiles. Albert launched countermeasures and tried turning back, upon failure to do so he simply dropped a mine, which nullified his pursuer's shield.
"The cargo is safe! Retreat!" came the message from one of the rebel fighters.
The three ships left charged up their cruise engines, sitting ducks to the cannons of the Rheinwehr ships, who eagerly used the opportunity to blow up their enemies, resulting in one of the hostile vessels to be instantly destroyed in a reactor meltdown. His death covered the escape of his companions.
"AFTER THEEEEM!" screamed Albert's wing leader.
The soldiers threw themselves after the rebels, each engaging their cruise drives.
"Hamburg control, this is patrol wing Gelb 9. We are under attack by rebel forces and need assistance at once. We caught something of value that they are protecting."
"Verstanden, Gelb 9. We're launching wings Lila 1 and Lila 2 to intercept the ship's vector."
"We will attempt to catch up with the vessel, the escort has been neutralized, should be easy prey."
"Understood, Hamburg control out."
The wounded marauders fled towards an asteroid field, with the Military trio after them. They were well out of disruptor range and chances were that they already knew the soldiers were trying to use them to locate the transport. Yet, they maintained a straight vector.
"Keep on their six, Piloten!" hissed the wing's leader while keeping his aim on the rebel fighter and his finger on the trigger of an armed paralyzer missile.
Albert tried preserving his focus, to no avail. He was very well exhausted due to the last engagement, still sweating, still shaking. They soon reached the perimeter of the asteroid field, not losing the will to catch the revolutionaries. The heavy rocks were causing a lot of trouble, the Wraith's proximity sensors kept flashing constantly.
"What the---" came the burst statement from the vessel of Strumpf.
Albert immediately realized what sparked his wingman to present such an ill-formulated sentence. The two contacts on the scanner suddenly changed two a dozen. An entire battle fleet of militant fighters materialized from the cover of the asteroids.
"Ambush!" he whispered.
The rebels were all around the patrol ships, not only did they have numerical superiority, but they were also familiar with guerrilla tactics, fights being fought in asteroid fields, as opposed to the militarymen.
"Fascist scum!" began one of the rebels with the usual cliche, "We wish not to employ your own methods against you and destroy you when you don't stand a chance. Therefore, you will have one chance to surrender and be taken into custody."
"You yet fail to realize," another one began, "that you are ordered around by people who do not possess control over their own consciousness!"
Now Albert's wing leader, the moody NCO phrased a reply:
"Quit your blabber, Bolshevik trash. Reserve your fairy tales for some underpaid shipyard worker."
Albert could only think of Marina. He wanted to see her before he thought he would be departing to see another dimension. He closed his eyes to compensate the thought of impending doom.
Then, suddenly the entire rebel wing fired up their cruise engines and departed the scenario without a word.
"What... what was that?" the similarly shocked Strumpf inquired.
"F---follow them! Go, go!"
As they began chasing the constellation of militant fighters, a communique answered the question of Strumpf.
"Lila 1-1 here, we found their transport. It had a pair of Switchblades protecting it, we lost Lila 1-4 to them, otherwise the area is clear."
"Lila 1-1, this is Gelb 6-1. There is an entire contingent of rebel fighters headed your way. Counted about 14 ships, prepare to defend."
"FOUR-TEEN?"
"Confirmed. We're on our way, but we might need more backup to handle that much of them communist pests."
"We'll eeer... try to hold the fort until you arrive."
"Verstanden, we're on our way to your coordinates, Gelb 6-1 out."
Under two minutes, Albert's wing reached the given coordinates. The battle was already heated, fighters from both sides kept perishing like flies. Lives and lives lost to the demonic grinding machine of war.
"Gelb 6 here, we're going in!"
A battle cry was heard and some buttons clicked, the wing joined the destruction.
In the fires of war, no one but the ship's crew itself noticed that the transport, being the key element of the whole operation was hit by a mine. A cargo pod blew open, emptying its content into space.
Anyone who might have observed what exactly the rebels protected so fiercely would have noticed that eccentric-looking, rock-shaped objects were spilled from the vessel's bay. These were alien artifacts, tokens of resistance presented by the Rheinland revolutionaries. Little did anyone know or care, at that point. Everyone was busy caring about preserving his... or her own life.
Albert himself, was chasing a sole fighter, Sabre-class, but equipped with lacking armaments. The fight drifted kilometers away from the original one, both sides taking excessive damage, but Albert coming over his opponent. He managed to score some worthy hits, finally disabling the engine of the opposing very heavy fighter.
An inaudible, distorted voice commenced the peace talks.
"Wait! Don't shoot! I surrender!"
The speaker's audio devices were damaged in the fight. The transmission being given out was hardly literate.
"You defeated me! Take me into custody, but do it quickly! I don't want to die in a ship wreck!"
Albert kept thinking that even though his opponent's ship was burning up, the person retained a cool manner. He thought responding in an equal tone would be beneficial.
"You are under arrest, traitor. You have the right to..." he couldn't finish his statement, being interrupted by a smaller heart attack.
"Albert?" the opposing pilot asked, while sounding as surprised as soldier himself.