Tyranny of Steel
chapter-1049-30041322

Despite Itami's best attempts to squash the so called 'hauntings' of Borneo, they continued to pop up here and there during the dead of night. By now, morale was at an all-time low for the Imperial Japanese Army as they continued to push forward into the meat grinder in an attempt to take the Island by storm.

Currently, a squadron of Me 264 strategic bombers and their fighter escorts were flying through the night sky over Borneo. Though instead of bombs, these planes carried propaganda leaflets which were written in the Japanese script. Their mission was simple: dump the pamphlets over the northern half of the island before returning to Singapore.

As tensions rose in Borneo, the German Empire became more and more active in non-combatant roles. As such, many of the Reich's greatest talents were flooding into the region, preparing themselves for the day the fighting truly started.

Among these men was Hans' former flight instructor, who was now a colonel of his own air wing. Colonel Ernst Meier was peering through the corner of his eye at his radar, as he noticed a small blip appear, which was followed my several more in the seconds that followed. He snarled in disgust before getting on his comms and alerting the rest of the unit.

Just our luck, we've got company boys! Do you think these fuckers have radar?"

Another voice appeared on the end with a slight chortle before responding to the question.

"If they did, they would be pounding us with AA right now. I think it's just a small patrol. Remember our orders. Do not attack unless we have been fired upon. I'm sure we can all agree that we don't want to be the fools who caused this war to begin!"

After that, the voices went silent over the comms as the Japanese planes entered the same airspace. No matter how Colonel Meier looked on the radar, it appeared that the Japanese planes were inbound, and when the enemy noticed their airspace, they would surely attack. With a heavy sigh, Ernst gave a command to the bombers in the wing.

"Bombs away boys. Better drop those flyers before the enemy mistakes them for explosives!"

A voice responded on the other end of the comms, with a short and simple acknowledgement of the orders.

"Roger that!"

In the next second, the bottom hatches opened and thousands of paper leaflets dropped from the night sky above Borneo onto the Japanese positions below. Naturally, they got picked up by the wind and were carried for some time. It was completely unknown how many of these flyers made it to the proper region.

However, after dropping the leaflets, the Japanese pilots took notice of the German Air Wing and began to immediately intercept them. When Colonel Meier saw this, he immediately broke off from the bombers and gave them an urgent command.

"You guys head back to Singapore. We'll make sure these yellow bastards don't intercept you! Go!"

The last thing they needed was for the Japanese Anti-Aircraft guns on the ground below to open fire on their bombers. With this in mind, the Ta-152 fighter-intercepters began to take to the skies, their altitude rapidly increasing as they laid out the bait for the wooden Ki-106 fighters to follow.

The Japanese Pilots did exactly as Ernst thought they would, and desperately tried to keep up with the German fighters who were both too fast for Ki-106s to keep up with. This caused the Japanese pilots to become extremely frustrated with one of them losing control of his emotions before opening fire on the Germans.

The Germans had no way of knowing whether the Japanese had been ordered to shoot them down, or had acted out of frustration. Either way, now that shots had been fired, this little game had quickly turned into a deadly dogfight. Ernst, who was very high in the sky, quickly maneuvered his plane around so that it was facing the Ki-106s who were quite a bit away from him, and put the pedal to the metal.

Descending rapidly from the sky, Colonel Meier fell upon the first three Ki-106s to enter his sight with guns blazing. The combined might of a single 30mm auto-cannon, and two twenty 20mm auto-cannons sprayed the nose of the first enemy plane, blasting it into bits within in the air. The moment the high explosive rounds touched the wooden fuselage, the Ki-106 practically fell apart in the sky. Needless to say, the pilot was killed instantly.

Yet Ernst did not stop them, and quickly aimed down his optical sight onto another plane which flew side by side with the one he just shot down. With a burst of fire from his auto cannons, so too did this Ki-106 detonate in the air.

However, before Ernst could take out the third plane in front of him, a burst of fire rained down from above, where another German pilot had taken a shot directly through the Ki-160s cabin, killing the pilot instantly, and shredding the enemy fighter apart.

Ernst felt a bid irritated, having his third kill stolen from him. However, he continued to fly through the enemy fire, who missed their shots before being quickly gunned down by the overwhelming number of Ta-152s which were in the air.

In less than five minutes, all twenty-four of the Japanese planes were shot out of the sky, without a single German casualty. Once they were sure that there was nobody left to oppose them in the air, Colonel Ernst gave command to the rest of the fighters to head home.

"Alright boys, let's get out of here before the AA realizes we are still up here. I just hope that we didn't just kick-start the war!'

With that said, the German fighters pressed their gas pedals and flew as fast as they could back to Singapore without looking back to where they had just wiped out an entire Japanese fighter squadron.

Word quickly arrived on the Japanese mainland about the loss of an entire fighter squadron. In fact, Itami was awoken from her sleep, and personally alerted by one of her Generals. The albino beauty rose from her bed and rubbed her eyes in her groggy state, barely hearing what the man had heard.

All she knew was that one of her generals was within her personal quarters, without permission, standing over her with a stern appearance. Itami immediately assumed perhaps a coup was taking place, and thus reached under her pillow and pulled out a pistol, which she pointed at the man's head with a murderous glint in her blood-red eyes.

"You have exactly three seconds to explain why you are here in my room before I put a bullet in your brain!"

The General raised his hands in his defense and quickly informed the woman of what had happened in the given time frame.

"The Germans have attacked!"

Itami thought that perhaps she was till half asleep, and gazed at the General as if he were a moron. She quickly demanded he repeat what he said.

"I'm sorry what? For a second, I thought I just heard you say that the Germans have attacked us!"

The General remained silent as he eyed the pistol still pointed directly at his forehead. He simply nodded, confirming that was what he had said. In doing so, Itami tossed the gun aside and jumped out of her bed, before pulling a coat over her nightgown.

"Summon my Generals and inform me just what has occurred while we head to the war room!"

What was about to take place were two separate meetings on both sides of the world which would determine whether or not war would commence as a result of this aerial engagement.