"This is Esparia's Central COM, all the aircrafts must return to base immediately. I repeat, this Esparia's CENTRAL COMMAND, all airc.." This urgent announcement resonated three times across all the radios of Esparian pilots right after the twentieth fighter jet was shot down.

While this might seem like it had taken a very long time for the central command of Esparia to come to a decision and order the retreat as their fighter jets were being plucked from the skies and turned into bricks, the reality was quite the opposite. The time it had taken Eden's air force to shoot down a total of twenty of their fighter jets had barely lasted for a span of two minutes before the Esparian central command realized what was going on and ordered a mass retreat.

This meticulous synchronization and the timing of the attack also played a very crucial role because although Angel One-Three had reached his designated squadron earlier than others, he just remained patient under them and monitored their communication for fun as he waited for the arrival of other Angels at their designated squadrons before they could start the orchestrated massacre, they knew very well that the moment the number of casualties was realized, it would trigger the order of a mass retreat, after which they would have to chase them, which was quite wasteful when they could have their enemies in a bundle.

As for the remaining twenty-five Esparian fighter jets, they wasted no time in initiating a mass retreat, worried of being shot down at once if they returned in a group if all of the pilots were ordered to solo it, hoping that they are not the unlucky ones to meet those monsters which at the moment was considered a completely assured ejection, as it looked like the enemies were messing with them or toying with them by just shooting down the fighters, leaving the pilots alive as a witness for their brilliant piloting.

The jubilant Edenian pilots, who were racking in to gain more kill numbers of their enemies wasted no time as they started to chase after them, claiming a few more scores in the sky.

This relentless cat-and-mouse chase continued until they reached the airspace borders of the two countries. With that, all the headgears of the Angel squadron returned back from the red color it had to the original green marking the end of the hunt, followed by Athena's voice which echoed by their ears, saying.

[Archangels, return to patrolling following the highlighted flight path]

Addressing them with their new moniker of "Archangels" signified that they were finally being upgraded from Angels to a higher position of Archangels after they had shot down an average of six aircrafts each, a distinction of them becoming ACE on their very first air-to-air face-off against an enemy aircraft.

This marked them becoming the members of the ACE Pilots club which had very few people within the twenty-first century, but they weren't just any random aces but the fabled members of the "Ace In A Day" club, a rarity which no one other than them could join it in the twenty-first century other than them. Because to join it, one needed to shoot five aircraft within a single day, the four Archangels had just joined such a rank at once and that too in a span of just two minutes, a record that was likely to never be broken, unless broken by the very same pilots.

Following the command, the Archangels didn't waste even a second to shoot down the ones in front of them as they pulled their joysticks up, making a ninety-degree vertical drift which didn't last for a long time as their hands still maintained their grip on the joysticks, causing the aircraft to do another ninety-degree turn but this time it turned them upside down which was immediately solved by the pilots as they rolled their aircrafts, returning them to a normal level before they started their afterburners once again, making their way to return to their designated patrol flight paths.

This inaugural encounter between the Edens and Esparians which ended with a decisive victory for the Edenians, established a one-sided dominion in the skies.

....

"What the fuck just happened?" Emanuel's voice boomed with anger as he stood in front of the Air Force General.

All the things he had imagined, winning their first air-to-air face-off which he could use for raising his approval ratings and raising the morale of their soldiers to win the war where his gain would rise in magnitudes, had crumbled into a disastrous loss.

Now they had lost more than twenty aircraft which they had acquired after negotiating a bad deal- a debt which they would have to pay back to the Morgans once they had won the war. Yet, at the moment, that victory seemed to be slipping away from his hand at the speed of light. His once confident face now had paled, even paler than a powdered baby's face, showing the weight of his dismay.

He just couldn't believe that they had lost the usefulness of their aircrafts in a matter of a few minutes, even after having greatly outnumbered Eden's air force by more than nine to one.

"I still don't have a comprehensive answer as to how but from what little information we have received from the ejecting pilots before they were rescued and lost their radios, it appears that they were taken down by monstrously skilled pilots," reported the Air Force Commander who was sweating from his forehead, knowing very well that he would be be taking most of the fall if he were to fail to find someone to ditch the blame onto.

"But, I think there is also a possibility that they did it knowingly, maybe Eden had bought the pilots even before they started working for us. With a little amount of money, they were able to sabotage our air force which could be the only explainable reason as to why the Edenian pilots didn't go for the kills even when they shot down the aircrafts. And given that we can't see how they were shot down, they can attribute all of it to them being lucky, but luck can't be happening to all of them, with the same result of all of them surviving," he added, giving a very solid reason as to what might have happened which allowed the Edenian pilots to shoot down more than twenty of their aircrafts in just a matter of two minutes, this was something he managed to come up within the little time he had before reporting it to the President.

"Hmm.. that theory makes more sense. Because if that is true, then all of it could be explained with them ejecting in sequences with Eden pilots just shooting the planes that had already been abandoned by their pilots. Or there can be another explanation, they weren't shot down at all but just made those sounds before heading to Eden and giving them free aircrafts which WE HAD PURCHASED AT EXORBITANT PRICES!" Emanuel grumbled in frustration as he hit the table by the time he reached the last words of his assumption of the given idea.

"Indeed, Mr President, I think so too. Such an act would only require them to pay a fraction of the price of the fighters we had paid to buy and yet they would be profiting substantially. Normally such things are not anticipated to occur by other nations since they nurture their own pilots, resulting in them fostering a sense of assurance that the pilots won't be betraying their country. However, our pilots who were shot down on this mission were all guns for hire, which means that they can be easily bought with money, making them susceptible to turning against us if they are given enough convincing," Air Force General, Dickson added, doubling down with the President's additional ideas, which gained more credibility the longer he spoke of it, this was something that could happen if they trusted their multimillion-dollar aircrafts to the pilots who were given to them by the Morgans to operate the fighters for the country they had no connection at all.

"Inform the Morgans about this. Should this be found true, tell them that they will be held accountable for the bill of the aircrafts we had lost. They should reimburse us for the loss and the humiliation they inflicted upon us due to the negligent due diligence they did while hiring the pilots," Emanuel said to his assistant who would be doing the talk to the Morgans spokesperson in Esparia. Lamentably, he wasn't deemed important enough to warrant being given access to direct communication to the upper echelons of the Morgans, resulting in this inefficient spokespersons to spokesperson communications.

Emanuel's frustration was obvious, his desire for accounting this incident on someone and getting compensation for rectifying this blunder so that he could regain control over this unfolding chain of events.