CHAPTER-THREE:STARRY SKIES

The plane engine could be heard from the cockpit. Its steady humming reverberated throughout the plane as the propellers tore through the air, with its wings cutting the cold and bitter winds in half. It was soothing in its own way, that steady and calm sound of the engine. Even against the vast black sky filled with nothingness, that familiar sound filled the pilot with a feeling relief. But relief alone cannot warm a man, yet loneliness could chill you to the bones. Even in the cockpit where the engine’s heat was supposed to warm him, the pilot could feel the cold of altitude and loneliness eating through his jacket and into his flesh. It wasn’t just the temperature, though. It was the entire atmosphere of the night: a sense of locked isolation; one man in one vast, yet empty, sky. The pilot was alone on this fateful, starless night, a steel bird of prey in the middle of hunting season.

It was all normal in those eyes that reflected and consumed by the vast darkness. The engine, the sky, and the biting cold, as well. The pilot was all too familiar with it at this point. Counting the medals pinned on his shirt, the pilot felt somewhat proud that this starless sky was nothing out of the ordinary. He did not know why he felt that way, but he did. It was a genuine feeling in his heart; a warm feeling that staved off the biting chills. He contemplated it for a moment before laughing bitterly and saying to himself that he shouldn’t be so proud about inflicting pain and death on others. But perhaps it was not pride that he felt, but comfort. Comfort that he was now with the familiar sky that reminded him of the times when he was truly “happy”.

“Those days were ‘good’...” he said aloud to himself as his voice trembled slightly. He counted sixteen medals in total; each one corresponding with a bomber he had shot down during his time in the interceptor with his crewmates.

He could feel tears welling up, and his eyes got blurry. And yet, for some reason, he could not bring himself to wipe those tears off. It was as if those tears reminded him of all the things he’d held so dear. Maybe it was his lover, always smiling and always optimistic. Or maybe, it was his crewmates who’d always share a piece of news from home so that they could all rejoice the good news and share the sorrows of bad news. Maybe it was something simpler than that. Perhaps it was his neighbour who’d always share some life stories with him over a cup of hot tea. Or perhaps it was the stray black cat of his neighbourhood that’d always brush herself against his leg whenever he gave her some food.

He could remember all those things and countless others, but there was only one thing that he held most dear, yet, he could not put his finger on it. As all the feelings in his heart blended together into something he could no longer understand, his chest tightened, and tears rolled down to his cheeks. The pilot forced out a wide, bitter smile.

“Stroci always said that to cry is to shame yourself. Get yourself together...” He reminded himself then wiped the tears off and clenched tightly to the yoke of the plane. “Not now...”

The man had been a pilot in training before the war. He had been so many things before war. He’d been a romantic, a lover, and an amateur writer, but all those things were stripped away from him. His lover died in a bombing raid; he was drafted to the air force as soon as he graduated from pilot school. Even his house burnt down, and with it, all his ties and bonds to his past. He had nothing to lose, and so he fought to die, but even death refused to grant him relief. Instead, he earned titles that he did not want and found friends in the direst of times. Against the curtain of the night, he could see their faces and hear their voices so vividly.

There was Brauning the gunner, with his tall nose and his clean-shaven face, and a hairstyle that’d looked utterly out-of-place. That bastard was a clever man who’d always obtain things seemingly out of nowhere a razor to shave, a comb to brush, a picture to remember, a piece of news from home... and a letter to those whom he left behind. His pockets had always been full of things. Sometimes, it’d be clips of ammo and grenades, and other times, it would be tubes of face paints and makeshift brushes. Brauning’d been a street performer before the war. A real talented one too from the looks of it. He could do magic tricks, balloon animals and, of course, face painting. He’d loved it so much that he’d cling on to the paints even after Brauning got drafted, and every time they were taken away, he’d always make some more appear. The commanders would look so surprised and furious the first few times, and then they’d join in the laughter. He even clung on to his paint until the bitter end, when blood painted his entire body a sanguine red. When they searched his corpse and ripped the uniform off him, paint spilt out on the floor. Blue paint, yellow paint, green paint all blended together into a nasty grey, but the red paint was nowhere to be seen, for one could not distinguish the red of his blood from the red of the paint.

And then there was his co-pilot and radar look-out, Stroci. Contrary to Brauning, the man was bald and had the thickest and most unkempt beard the pilot had ever seen. He was also quite chubby relative to all the military men. People would sometimes call him “Piggy”, and he’d always laugh. Stroci had the weirdest and loudest laughter of the whole division. It always sounded like he was choking or dying, but pure joy was always in his eyes when he laughed. Or so you’d say if you weren’t there.

The moment he heard the gunner glass behind him break, he unbuckled and jumped out of his seat faster than a cat and rushed to the back of the heavy interceptor. Mere moments later, the pilot heard a sound so unsettling that it sent chills up his spine, and so loud that it could be heard even over the plane engines. That was the first and last time the pilot heard Stroci scream. After the scream, the sound of mumbling could be heard for a few seconds, but the sound of an enemy machine gun behind him drowned out the mumbling. Then, in turn, the sound of his interceptor’s gunner machine gun drowned that out. The gun was indeed his interceptor’s, but it was so strange; it sounded dead and furious. A short burst followed by another burst, and... nothing. The pilot called out but heard no response. He could hear nothing but the engine of his own plane for seconds that felt like an eternity. Then, he heard it again: the mumbling and a faint sound of something being dragged on the floor. He peered behind him to see Stroci holding Brauning in his arms; his entire uniform red with blood. Stroci was mumbling faintly. He sat there in the small space between the cockpit and the gunner post, cradling Brauning in his arms. Stroci gazed up at the pilot, and it was like a knife to his heart. A gaze of disbelief through dry eyes. And he laughed, a bitter choking laugh that sounded like always...

The pilot sighed. His eyes still wet; he took out his map and looked at it. The dim light coming off his flight instruments struggled to illuminate the path which led him down to the darkest of places, his target, mark crimson red.

His mission was to bomb a village suspected of harbouring enemy soldiers, to completely root out all enemy presence in this area to prepare for a massive offensive, or at least that was what the brass had told him. It was strange. The bomb load he was carrying was not enough to destroy machines of war, but it just enough to destroy lives. That thought cut him deep. It seared and stabbed into his heart like a red-hot knife, carving out his soul and burning it. He was no longer the hero of the air force. He was no longer the one who protected the lives of the innocents who was caught up in the war. He was the murderer, the one who inflicted the pain and sorrow to those whom he did not even know. He was the person who would carve out a grim expression from those left alive and a stiff expression on those left to die. The thought pained him more than words could describe. He did not want to kill these “traitors”. Maybe the death of his crew had made him weak. Or maybe, he knew that the brass had lied.

The brass hated him; they always had. Or more precisely, they were afraid of him. He never openly protested against them, but they knew. From burnt papers to whispers at the dead of night, they knew all about him. They knew that he hated the war; they knew that he hated the government, and they knew that in his books, he expressed disloyalty against them. And that was enough. They drafted him so he could die a “natural” death but, either through pure luck or determination, he lived and became a hero. So... they had to kill him discreetly, or otherwise. They’d failed once, but they would not fail again.

As his engine continued to hum the steady melody of war, the empty sky suddenly lit up before him. Spotlights scouring the sky, as the steady sound of his plane engine was replaced with the frantic sound of air sirens booming below him. His eyes shot from one corner to the other to get a general view of his surroundings as he was trained. Then his eyes jumped to his map, then to his instruments, then to his pocket watch. Confused, he knocked at the plane’s compass twice, and its needle went from North to South then back again. While he was still in a panic trying to figure out what had happened, a familiar sound grabbed his attention, and he looked towards its direction.

A blazing star was born from a cold, dead shell of an anti-aircraft gun, just some distance from him. Then, just a mere split second later, the sky was filled with stars of red and orange, and he could hear shrapnel from the shells peppering the wings of his plane. He instinctively yanked on the yoke and pitched the plane upwards to throw off the artillery, but it was too late. He’d been flying too slowly and too low for it to work. A spotlight was lighting the belly of his plane up and consuming the whole plane in blinding light. And as he looked upward, a shell detonated right in front of him. He could feel his chest tighten up as his heart pounded as if it’d leap out. Shrapnel shattered his windshield as he slammed on the emergency ejection button and flew out of the plane. Not even a bird of prey could escape the hunters.

The sky was dark and starless that night. Far off behind the front lines, families of both sides gathered together around the fire, exchanging stories of the year that will soon become yesteryear. Then, as the clock stroke midnight, you could hear the bells tolling for a man who’d never lived at all.

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