Episode Title:
#01.
Episode Description:
An East German TSF squadron, the 666th or "Schwarzesmarken", enter the fight against the BETA with their Comrade Captain, Irisdina Bernhard. Pilot Anett Hosenfield suffers a nervous breakdown and, in the chaos it creates, pilot Inghild Bronikowski is mortally wounded. Irisdina administers a coup de grace rather than leave Inghild to die on the battlefield. She castigates Second Lieutenant Theodor Eberbach for failing to help Annett, and assigns him to continue the mission while Inghild's body is recovered. Later in the battle, Theodor finds a fallen TSF whose unconscious pilot causes him to have a flashback to a failed defection to the West and the loss of his adoptive sister, Lise. The pilot turns out to be West German Second Lituenant Katia Waldheim, and when she awakes, she asks to defect to East Germany and join the 666th Squadron. Irisdina, in consultation with party commissar Gretel Jackelyn, allows it and puts Theodor in charge of Katia, hoping to correct his earlier failure to help Anett. Theodor warns Katia to not trust anyone, especially the Stasi, telling her that Irisdina sold out her own brother to the Stasi as a traitor to further her own military career.
