The arrival of the Belkans seemed to be quite a welcome event for most of the pilots, though distrust seemed to emananate from the Emmerian pilot as he spoke, after one of the Yuktobanians and the older Usean. Erika and Charles both felt a slight weight come off their shoulders as the leader of the Belkan flight spoke, but Charles couldn't help but feel a strange familiarity in Zondervan's voice. They must have met before, somewhere, but Charles decided to not distract the other Belkan from his duties as it seemed he had some more important questions to answer.
"...Romeo, is it? Alright. Wolf, once you two are done up there, escort our friend to the nearest base, alright?" Zondervan said and the rough voiced Captain of Wolf gave a short roger, as he set his aircraft into a descent to meet up with Scott.
"Don't worry. We'll get you down safe, yeah? Boss, we'll catch up with ya later. 'Course, it won't take long for us to get to y'all, ha!" Barely a minute had passed before the Foxhounds were at the damaged plane's altitude. The two large fighters took their places near the Corsair and began to escort it to the nearby Capital Air Command base. Erika clicked her tongue.
"It's a bad day to be a Corsair pilot, huh?" Charles raised an eyebrow, but he realized what she meant when he saw the OMDF pilot's loaned F-16 and remembered the earlier events of that day.
"Mm." Charles acknowledged her comment without a word. He was exhausted.
"Thanks for the save, Major. We owe you one." The Yuke pilot spoke up and Anemi's pilots could feel the gratefulness emanating from her tone, but the Emmerian's comment sounded significantly less friendly.
"This is Mold. Does anyone know what happened to Rim-Light so that Zondervan seems to be in charge?" Since it was on the squadron frequency and thus unheard by the Belkans, Charles decided to give his opinion.
"No idea. Probably bugged out. But think of it this way; they destroyed a nuclear bomber, cleaned up the remaining enemies and covered us out of here. A bit too much trouble to go into just to betray us later, no?" Erika scoffed, but refrained from speaking her comment over the radio, instead leaning slightly and joked at the pilot.
"Is that some Belkan bias I smell, sir?" She had a playful tone, despite the situation, which greatly surprised Charles. He refrained from responding to it.
At this moment, Zondervan, who hadn't heard any of the conversation spoke up. "Peace Sparrow, you there? We need to get going. Follow us up and keep with us. We should be there in about five hours, if we keep around Mach 1. Can you all keep up at that speed?" He had a sly, calm tone, like that of most Belkans and Charles still couldn't shake the idea that he knew the man.
About five hours later, the pilots and their Belkan escorts found themselves in a northern part of the Ceres Ocean, a few dozen kilometers west of the Osean city of Fairwether. They had all refueled with little problems, from an Osean Air Defense Force KC-10, hopefully silencing Mold's worries for the time being. Most of the journey had once again been in silence, with only a few short conversations every now and again breaking the monotony of the sounds of the aircraft. Charles felt stiff in his seat and his WSO seemed to have fallen asleep. Finally, he broke the silence. "If I may ask, where are we going? A new base, of course, but where? I don't see anything on the map, radar, anything."
This time, the female leader of Wichianmat Squadron responded to him. "I read your file on the way here, 'Border-Boy'. Being a GRDF pilot, you of all people should know." Charles was about to argue when he noticed a formation of islands breaking the orange tinted gradiant of the sea. Surrounding it were large towers coming out of the waves and he could see lines of blinking lights linking each one. On the main island, he could barely see a rather large airfield near a beach, with many rusted and broken ships ranging from tankers to fishing boats lying abandoned on the damp sand. To the south of the airfield, a few wind turbines dotted the hills. The most notable however, was the fleet of old, dead aircraft that lied to the north of the airfield. Charles murmured in recogniton of the obscure General Resource Defense Force base.
"Solo Island..."