Armin curled his hands around the trigger, leather gloves squeaking and crackling against the handles. He lifted a thumb, leaned forward until he nose nearly touched the windshield of the jet. He slammed his thumb down against the trigger. Missiles sang through the air, cutting apart the clearness of the blue sky with their horrid trails of grey smoke, rushing off away from him. And toward him.

�Schei�!�

Eject. Eject. Where was eject? The-

Too late.

Enemy missiles sank home. The ship rocked backward, slamming Armin against his seat. Red-orange-yellow-white crashed against the windshield in a blaze of fiery colors. Vertigo set in, driving Armin's stomach to his throat. He was crashing.

Schei�. Schei�. Schei�. He was dead.

There was smoke everywhere. Thick, heavy billows that flooded his mouth and lungs and crept down his throat, throttling him. Not fast enough. He'd hit the ground long before the smoke finished its job.

Armin wrenched his hands off the controls, eyes cracked wide, searching through the smoke for a switch that might help him. Something. Anything. But he couldn't see. He was bloody blind with all the smoke, the heat, the fire. Deaf from the whooshing sound of air streaming past the tattered remains of his war bird.

Eject.

The button glared up at him, white and black and beautiful.

Armin lifted a shaking hand and thrust it forward, slamming his palm down.

What was left of the windshield jerked open and suddenly Armin was sailing through the air. He didn't have time to pull open the parachute. The seat jerked upward, hung momentarily as gravity's fingers grappled with it, and crashed the last few feet to the ground. Armin let out a cry as pain shot up his legs, eyes squeezed shut and cheek pressed into the dirt. His hands flew to the safety belt, snapping it open, and he pushed the seat off his back, dragging himself forward on hands and knees, his legs quaking and stinging with pain. Must have broken something.

BANG!

His bird dropped behind him and suddenly the whole desert was lit up with a blaze. Armin dropped to the ground, hands flying to his head, heart pounding wildly in his chest.

Smoldering debris dropped down all around him, sending up tendrils of black smoke. Something crashed before his head, a smoldering piece of metal with an insignia.

Not a German one.

Well, at least he'd gotten that bloody allied bastard too.

His bird stopped spewing bits of herself all over the scrub land and quieted down to nothing more than a crackle of flame and pop as the leather and circuiting was melted by the heat. Armin pushed himself to his hands and knees, hissing audibly as a shock of pain was sent up his left leg. He didn't want to look at it. Christ almighty, he was not going to look at it.

He sat back, stretching his legs out in front of him, and yanked his goggles off his head, tucking them into his pocket.

His eyes swiveled downward.

Armin's left leg was crooked at an awkward angle, right along the knee. Not broken, but dislocated. And Armin hadn't the first clue how to go about fixing that. Damn.

Not that it mattered.

The smoke billowed upward now, leaving the expanse of shrubs and empty, dead, yellow prairies stretched out in front of his eyes, as far as he could see. There was no one else for miles. Nothing else except him and his bird...and that allied jet, not too far off.

Armin balled his gloved hands into fists and dropped his head against them, letting out a curdling scream of frustration.

He was dead.