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Three weeks later, 100 kilometres above sea level, aboard the great air station REM-13, named after the Second Prince Remlin Yonsor, created in the 13th year of King Raynior’s reign, military officers ran back and forth frantically with last minute preparations. On the hologram screens which capture live footage from the cameras below the cloud like air station, a row of Opalian fighter jets flew by and tiny specs of tanks rolled across the plains, towards a small town that was primed and prepped for an ambush.
Ace got into the cockpit of a Parisora ACE-24, it was model of plane named after him, created in the 24th year of his father’s reign, also known as his 18th birthday gift from King Raynior. Claude was already seated in the co-pilot seat, still stubbornly wearing his tattered black robes.
“They’ve taken the bait well,” Ace exclaimed excitedly. Three days prior, they had the supply line information leaked to the Opalian army following Claude’s meticulous planning, even down to the words the spy who did the deed had to say. To say Ace was in awe would be a severe understatement. “You really are incredible,” Ace commented.
“No,” Claude said, “I’m merely copying the work of another.”
“The badass female tactician?”
“Yes,” he replied, tapping his fingers impatiently on the armrest of his seat. “Now can you stop chatting and start the engines? They’re in range!”
Ace chuckled as he took off with Claude rolling his eyes in the copilot seat. The comms came on and he ran through the protocol roll call with the squad of fighter jets he was flying with. Then, he charged towards the jets and tanks just up ahead.
“Surely you know how to aim and shoot,” Claude muttered as he downed a bottle of vodka.
Ace frowned. “Where did you get that? And yes I know how use a fighter jet, I’m not stupid.”
“The bottle, I got from your room,” Claude said. “Just make sure you only hit the green ones and not the white ones.”
“Should you be drinking right now?”
“I can’t get drunk, it’s really a curse,” Claude answered, “so relax, you won’t die on my watch.” He was careful to not use words like heavy weight, his body did not process alcohol the same way as mortals. If anyone bothered analysing his wording, they would realise that, though very few would have the mind to.
“That gives me zero reassurance.”
Ace set up his fighter jet to lock onto a green Opalian fighter. “It’s automated,” he said as he fired. A blast of flames roared as the target fighter jet exploded upon impact of a missile. He quickly looped around for another target, this time for a tank on the ground.
The Parisora forces snatched a swift victory as the Opalian fighter jets and tanks were taken out in the matter of minutes. The whole ordeal could not have lasted any longer than ten minutes, much to Ace’s surprise and to Claude’s astonishment. Claude thought he could have done it in a tenth of that time. However, as Claude’s teacher always told him, great moments of pride and celebration are also great moments of weakness.
Ace clapped his hands together and cheered as the last fighter jet went down. “We did it!”
Claude groaned, “no we did not, nuclear missile heading your way, Your Highness!”
Ace looked down at the radar, it was just in range and moving at a remarkably fast speed. He shot out a scatter of chaffs, which were metallized glass fibre aimed to overcrowd or misdirect the tracking software of the oncoming missile, before manoeuvring the fighter out of the way just in time for the missile to strike a fake target of metallized glass fibre and explodes.
A second missile showed up on his radar, Ace bit his lips in distress, “shit! I’ve already used the chaffs!” He tried various evasive manoeuvres but given the technology behind the missiles, it was futile as it altered its path to ensure a hit. As the missile got closer, Ace panicked, his breathing quickened, heat rose through his body and his hands started to sweat and tremble. He did not know what to do so he just froze, staring helplessly at the radar. I don’t want to die, he thought, yet at least.
Claude sighed, as expected. He threw aside that bottle of vodka and began tapping away at keys on the control panel. Ace suddenly found that the fighter no longer responded to his steering.
“Relax, I hacked your fighter and overrode the controls,” Claude told him calmly and with certain confidence. His eyes was focused on the radar which zoomed in to an a hundred meter radius and showed the missile closing in. He was waiting for the right distance. When the green dot hit the ten meter mark, he put the throttle on full blast and nose dived.
The nuclear missile exploded as the ACE-24 zoomed out of its point blank impact radius, but a portion of its tail was blasted off with the back of the fighter in poor conditions. Claude pressed around for emergency pilot ejection, he was counting the time in his head. In those two seconds, they had lost nearly two kilometres in height. He assumed it would not be much of a problem.
The cockpit opened as the pilot seats were ejected. Ace felt dizzy as the air pressure and oxygen levels around him changed drastically, he could feel his consciousness slipping away. Air was thin that high up and the pressure was low. He was suffering symptoms of oxygen deprivation.
Claude groaned once more, he had indeed forgotten that mortals had fragile bodies which could not endure the same things as his own. He felt around and activated the jet pack that was attached to back of the seat along with a folded parachute. He shot himself towards unconscious prince, grabbing the young man as they fell through the skies. With his free arm, he released his parachute. From the height of three kilometres above sea level, they slowly glided down to the ground with ACE-24 crashing into the earth some distance away. Around them, clean up crew and other military officers had descended from the air station.
As they landed on the snow covered glistening ground, Ace fell into Claude’s lap, still unconscious. Claude sighed, it was an annoying complication.
*
When Ace woke up, he was in his bedroom staring up at the blinding white wrap-around hanging abstract shaped light, which hung directly over his king sized bed with satin sheets. His head hurt like hell and he was still a little dizzy. His ears popped and he felt like he was deaf in one of them.
“We nosedived for two kilometres, then you fell three more, most of it in a parachute,” Claude’s voice came around from his left side. “Oxygen deficiency, oxygen toxicity, readjustment to air pressure are a mixture of issues that contribute to your current symptoms.”
Ace groaned as he tried to sit up. “Where were they shooting from?” He was asking about the nuclear powered missiles.
“An air station over fifty kilometres away,” Claude responded. “One of your pilots took a wild shot and hit them hard, they’ll be down for repairs for quite some time, I imagine.”
“So victory all the way round!”
“I would not call it that,” Claude muttered, “you got careless which was how you nearly died.”
Ace’s expression fell. “How did you do it? The nose dive and the hacking.” He remembered that Claude had hacked the system to override his control. He did it so quickly, it felt like that everything was out of Ace’s control in the matter of seconds.
“I was trained to save idiots like you,” Claude scoffed. “If you were more careful, perhaps you would not have been it such situation.”
Ace had a chill crawled up his spine as he recalled the incident in his mind, he nearly died. The thought of that settled in snuggly amongst fear and shock.
Claude sighed, downing a glass of red wine. “Now do you know what war truly means?”
Ace nodded, pulling his knees up to his chest, he did that a lot when he was young, it gave him comfort in the great empty palace where he had no one. “War meant that anyone could die at any moment.”
Claude pulled out a rather plain looking cigarette and lit it using a small gold lighter with a royal crest on one side that sat on Ace’s bedside table. He took a breath in and said: “You ought to know the consequences of your orders, when people die, it’s on your conscious.”
“You sound like you have been in such a position,” Ace glanced at him.
“I was,” Claude replied.
“Do you have any healthy habits?” Ace suddenly asked. “It’s just that I’ve noticed purposeful starvation, excessive drinking and now smoking.”
Claude chuckled and shook his head. “People like me can’t die, so our life choices are the exactly opposite of healthy, usually.”
“Surely all living beings die eventually,” Ace frowned. “Technology has yet to achieve immortality, though we are getting close to true artificial intelligence.”
“Never said I became this way because of technology,” Claude said. “I was born this way.”
“So, are you like magic? Else how can you not die when you literally down like three bottles of red wine in two minutes.”
“In a way, magic.”
Ace laughed. “you’re pulling my leg.”
Yet Claude merely smiled sadly, mortals had a tendency to reject that which is too absurd from their norms. “Let’s just say, I’m not exactly human.” He got up to leave. “Now that you are awake, I’ll be heading back to my cell.”
“Wait!” Ace reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Are still living there?”
Claude laughed, “Your Highness, did you forget I am still a prisoner of war?” Not that he was arrested for being an enemy, it seemed as if he was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ace bit his lips. “Surely you want something in return for saving me.”
“Turning the lights off in my cell would be a good place to start,” Claude told him. “Light hurts my eyes. Or you can put an armchair in there.”
Ace pondered for a moment. “Why don’t you stay here?”
Claude looked around bewildered. “In your living quarters? Do you even know who I am?”
Ace shrugged. “You’re Claude Van Dysher and you are my military adviser. Anyways, the lights in the cells gets turned off by the block and Nyal will surely yell at me if I put an armchair in a cell.”
“So your solution is for me to live here?” Claude had an expression of disbelief on his face. Yet his comrades called him the one with spontaneous bad ideas that made absolutely no sense, here was someone that was clearly worse.
“You can better advise me on military matters if I don’t need to visit the holding cells every ten minutes,” Ace argued back, he thought his logic was quite flawless. “It’s not like you sleep, I’ve seen the surveillance, you sit on the floor and stare at the ground the whole time. You can do that here too.” He did wonder how Claude “recharged”, humans did so by sleeping and eating, computers did so by being plugged in to a charging station, but Claude was neither. He was just strange and mysterious.
Claude chuckled. “Whatever,” he shook off Ace’s grip and sat down on the luxuriously expensive looking couch opposite the bed. “Congratulations, your father just awarded you more land to lord over,” he muttered, not bothering to mention that Ace would likely have to argue with Nyal to get this situation “approved” eventually. “You also have a meeting with the high ranking officials in half an hour and you should consider your next move.”
“Give me a break,” Ace groaned, “I just had a near death experience.”
“You’re a prince, Acelin Yonsor,” Claude said bluntly. “Princes don’t get breaks.”
Ace threw one of the many pillows that were on his bed at Claude in protest. “Well, can’t you go instead?”
“I’m not you,” Claude pointed out. “I’m also not even Parisoran for that matter.”
“I don’t care, let me sleep.”
Claude sighed as he smothered his cigarette. He got up from the couch and walked over to the bed, then he flung the sheets on the floor. Ace shivered as he felt the warmth of the sheets give way to the temperature of the room, which was warmly air conditioned, but it was not as warm as under the covers.
“Claude!”
The wavy brown haired young man threw his uniform at him and turned around to give him space to change. “Hurry up, it takes five minutes to walk to said meeting room.”
“Stop nagging, please,” Ace groaned, “can you get style my hair?”
Claude frowned. “Do I look like a stylist?”
“No. Yes. Maybe? I don’t know.”
“Who usually does your hair?”
“My personal assistant, Valencianya, Val for short.”
“Get them to do it.”
“She’s not here,” Ace pointed out the obvious.
“Get her then.”
“She fell down the stairs and twisted her ankle a couple of days ago after hearing I was going to be piloting,” Ace explained. “She is currently recovering in med bay.”
Claude turned and stared at him just as he buttoned up his shirt. “No wonder your hair was so questionably interesting yesterday.”
“So style my hair, you did sort of cause her injury.”
“How?”
“Butterfly effect?”
Just as Claude was going to argue further, the emergency warning alarms went off blaring throughout Glisten Fort. The two young men sprinted through the corridors and into the meeting room, where the officers looked solemn and depressed.
The hologram at the centre of the table showed a radar with a radius of near fifty kilometres. At the edge there were red dots of varying sizes which represented unidentified mobile pieces of metal, which was to say, enemy troops. It was information sent down through their satellite, which sat directly above Glisten Fort. It was a surprise that Opalian had not destroyed it already as Parisora had to their communications satellite.
“We should not have stolen their resources,” Major Ambrose Holler muttered in disapproval.
His cousin nodded in agreement, “Your Highness, Opalian has been angered, they march to invade Glisten Fort.”
Ace glanced at her, “I can see that Wren, thank you very much.”
“A hundred tanks, several hundred fighter jets, ten-twenty air stations for support and back up, thousands of drones, not to mention the tens of thousands of mecha suits,” Nyal summed up their situation. It was grim.
“We warned you of this, Your Highness,” the ruddy faced head of mechanical warfare Major Graysen Vidon said. “Opalian are prideful and confident people, they will want something to cover up the embarrassing defeat they suffered.”
“When is it in your interest to consider whether or not Opalian lost face?” Claude cuts in shortly. He finds it ridiculous that this was a war and yet the highest ranking military officers were more concerned about the retaliation from their enemies. Of course there were retaliation, this was a war. Claude scoffed at their inability to see the true nature of war, but then again, mortals have always been known to be wilfully ignorant and blind to what they do not wish to see.
“It’s not,” Nyal answered, “but the oncoming invasion is. They will be here in an hour.”
“Glisten Fort does not have enough fire power to crush the entire blue banner,” Major Ambrose Holler said. “I told you that we did not have enough fire power to properly launch an attack, Your Highness, but you brushed that aside and attacked the watch posts anyways.”
Claude yawned, looking rather bored. Ace kicked him under the table giving him a glare of “you started this so now fix it”. Claude sighed, “I have a way out that will ensure no deaths if it succeeds, but it will be a risky gamble.”
“What is it?” Ace asked.
“The empty city strategy,” Claude said.
Nyal frowned. “Which is?”
“Make the fort appear as deserted as possible,” Claude answered. “Then Ace here will merely stand on the balcony over looking the main gate where he will be the most visible, looking mysterious and ghost like.”
“No,” Nyal said. “That’s too dangerous, he’ll be out there alone! What’s the point of giving him up to the enemy like that? They’ll kill him.”
“That’s the point, aside from killing him, it’s an intimidation strategy and in an hour, that is the only plan that will have a slim chance of success given your current predicament.”
“Let’s do it then, we’re running out of time,” Ace decided. “Start moving the wounded soldiers first, the crypt under the fort should be big enough and it won’t be apparent at first glance.”
“That is until they use thermal detectors,” Colonel Dashielle Crowfork, the head of the engineering department said. She had ginger hair tied back in a bun and wore a white bandanna to stop hair from falling into her face, which she consistently forgets to remove for meetings.
“The crypt was built hundreds of years ago, it should be lit by flame,” Claude points out. “Keep it lit, and it’ll confuse the thermal detectors enough that hopefully they’ll think we plan on blowing up the fort the moment they enter or that there is an active volcano on the verge of explosion, either works.”
“Ok, get moving, we have less than hour,” Ace announced getting up from his seat signalling that it was the end of the meeting despite many protests emerging from his advisers.
Soldiers in pristine white uniforms scrambled and ran around getting the wounded into the crypt under the fort, which was initially built as burial grounds for the Lordyne house, who had since moved the majority of their wealth and power into the centre of Parisora and had more or less donated Glisten Fort to military endeavours. Most of the effort was towards moving those who were in critical condition and was hence placed in moveable fibre glass caskets that were lined with life saving technology. Those had to stay online and moved from the medical bay down the crypts, meaning they need to be connected to a battery for the entirety of the journey. The difficulty lies in the fact that there were not enough portable batteries to move all the caskets at the same time so they had to make multiple journeys with help from some last minute engineering from Colonel Dashielle Crowfork and her team. To say it was a mad scramble would be an understatement.
*
One hour later, Ace stood on the balcony that over looked the main gates into the fort. The chilling winter wind cut sharply across his cheeks, he shivered as his fingers slowly got frost bites. He pulled his fur cape tighter around him to stay warm.
He peeked over his shoulders and saw Claude who had walked him up. “Can you stay?” he asked, his voice quivering a little.
Claude stared out at the sheet of heavy white snow which covered everything from the earth to the trees as far as the eye could see. “You’re scared.”
“Of course I am,” Ace said. “It’s deception with a high risk and a low success rate. Why would they be intimidated by me standing here alone in a deserted fort anyways?”
“Because of pride,” Claude said. “They cannot bear the thought of having their pride hurt once more. What if the fort was empty to lure them into a trap? What if they get exploded the minute their troops invade? It’ll be an embarrassing defeat, the useless Third Prince wipes out the entire blue banner Opalian army with a single trap.”
Ace swallowed, his hands twisted itself in cold and in anxiety. “Can you stay?” he repeated.
“Of course, I would need to be here for this to work,” Claude said. From his black robes, he pulled out a piccolo, “I apologise in advance for the sounds you are about to hear, but do try act mysterious, intelligent and intimidating.”
“Why a piccolo?”
“It’s small and it’s loud,” Claude answered, piccolos were notorious for being obnoxiously ear-piercingly loud. “They’re here.”
Ace looked out, small black dots were appearing in the skies and over the land, some taking down aged trees as they rampaged through. As they got closer, the green colour of the Opalian army became more apparent. Eventually, they all came to a halt a few hundred meters away, surrounding the Glisten Fort on all sides. Ace gulped, now it was time to decide his fate, he could live, or he could die. His fate, then in turn, decided the fate of his soldiers who were all cooped up below the fort in the crypt. It would be an equally humiliating loss if the plan failed.
A screeching pierce of a high note shrieked from the piccolo that Claude held up to his lips. Not that he played badly or that it was a badly made instrument, piccolos were naturally obnoxiously loud and out of context, really served shock and discomfort.
*
In an Opalian air station, the Major General stared intensely at the hologram screens which showed a camera zoomed in on the top of the balcony. “The Third Prince,” he scoffed, “the boy made a fool out of me, it shall not happen again!”
“Sir, something’s not right!” One of the intelligence officers on the computers turned around and exclaimed with nerves slowly trickling into their voice. “The thermal detectors are not picking up anything in the fort, the only heat signature comes from the prince.”
The Major General signalled for them to pull up the thermal cameras, he looked back and forth between that and the normal camera. “But there’s a young man standing right behind him!”
“He does not appear to have a heat signature, sir,” the intelligence officer replied. An enemy military officer without a heat signature was setting off alarms, lots of alarms, in the minds of the Opalian soldiers. It meant that the enemy could potentially have hidden forces inside the fort waiting to ambush the unsuspecting invaders. After all, nonliving things do not have heat signatures, yet they can still produce terrifying forces of destruction.
On the more zoomed out thermal camera, it could be seen that a large pool of heatwaves were underneath the fort.
“We’re awaiting orders, sir,” another intelligence officer turned and said. “Everyone’s on standby.”
The Major General contemplated his options, just as he was about to give an order, a high pitch tone rose from the direction of the young prince. The Major General turned his attention back to the screen, the young man in black tattered robes who stood behind the Prince now had a piccolo held to his lips. He was playing it.
The note shifted one higher.
It was captivating, almost as if the world had stop turning. The Major General frowned, he questioned all the reasons there could be for young man with seemingly no heat signatures to stand atop a seemingly empty fort. He could not find a reason. There was no logical reason except that they were walking into an ambush.
The piccolo’s song rose, it was a saddening tune with an eerie undertone, almost haunting in some ways. The young man’s eyes flashed blood red as he stared straight at the camera. In front of him, the prince stood tall, not paying any heed to the person behind him, as if it was his intention all along.
“Retreat,” the Major General ordered after careful consideration. Something in him prompted him to think that retreat was the best option. He could not fathom another way around this situation.
“But sir,” a high ranking intelligence officer protested, “surely we could take the risk! If the fort is indeed empty then it would a swift victory!”
“No,” the Major General snapped at them, “I will not risk having the entire blue banner wiped out today. Retreat!”
“Sir, did you consider that it could just be empty?”
“I said NO!” The Major General was now red in the face with anger, “that young prince will not play me for a fool! He surely has an ambush set up. The heat signatures below the fort is a trap, I am certain of it!”
*
Ace felt a lifetime had passed as he listened to the beautiful yet eerie and haunting song of the piccolo, trying his best to keep a solemn and stern face. Under his cape, he was shivering, both of the cold and of fear. Eventually, he saw the fighter jets stop circling and began flying back the way they came. Then the tanks and mecha suit units started backing up too. He let out the breath he was unknowingly holding onto in relief.
By the time the piccolo sang its last note, there was not a single Opalian unit in sight.
“We did!” Ace exclaimed jumped around and hugged Claude in joy.
“War is very much a psychological battle as it is a physical one,” Claude muttered, hiding away the piccolo in the layers of his robes. Music, used correctly, can be more threatening in a psychological manner than a hundred thousand armed soldiers.
“Wait, how did my men not find that piccolo when they searched you before?” Ace took a step back and demanded to know.
Claude raised an eyebrow. “Can’t you just be satisfied with the results and stop asking questions?”
“No! Asking questions is how society progresses,” Ace insisted.
Claude sighed. “And its how I die. Go on, tell everyone else the good news!”
Ace beamed as he sprinted down to the musty crypt, barely noticing the awful smell and the lack of decent lighting. He felt like he was flying.
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