An exhausted Blaze found the closest seat to rest in a carrier ready room and plonked down heavily. Sweat was running down his face, Hubert's ready room was hot and unventilated. Being the last one to have landed again, Blaze and one other man were the only two in the room. He was black. Snow. The latter opened a fridge that had been installed recently and chucked an ice-cold can to Blaze. He pressed the thing against his neck to ward off the heat. 'Cheers.'

'No worries. I had a feeling you'd be out here somewhere, captain.' Snow opened his can and stood up, propped against the bulkhead across from Blaze.

'Lieutenant-Commander now, actually. Brass crossed me over to the Navy.'

'And last I checked you were a civilian mechanic. How'd that mess happen?'

'Long story, but basically I took up a Hornet and then managed to get over here. You?'

'Someone up top activated my reserves squadron and this rustbucket of a carrier. No fucking captains around, so I got placed on as the CAG.'

'Yeah, most of the good ones are probably at home. Speaking of which, am I stuck around here?' Blaze cracked open and took a gulp from his can.

'Vulture's getting rotated back to Osea. Pilots are being placed on the Kestrel. Hubert's out of position for a bit. Stick around for a while, we could use the experience.'

And so Blaze did stick around. He wasn't assigned to any particular squadron but was instead left to his own unofficial command as the only member of VFA-118. The Razgriz Fighter-Attack Squadron. Many of the Hubert's pilot compliment understood the reference and got to hear stories from the war's top ace. Origins, being the Wardog Squadron, being pretend-killed by the carrier's CAG, blowing the Arkbird and the SOLG out of the skies and then disappearing after the end of the Circum-Pacific War. Some were amusing and helped defuse the tension. All the better for operations that would come in the future.

May 30th, 2019, 1200 Hours

Operation Dual Wielder

Starting today, IUN peacekeeper forces will be launching a two-pronged strike into Erusea in a bid to work our way back towards the space elevator. The Air Force will be launching an air-superiority operation over Chopinburg for the strike. Meanwhile, our naval forces will attack strategic points in the capital of Farbanti from the Kestrel, Valkyrie and Hubert. Vulture was severely damaged last week and has been sent back to Osea for repairs. This strike will weaken the Erusean command structure and divert forces away from the space elevator for our eventual strike. Do not let us down.

Snow led a more specific briefing for the squadron commanders. Blaze was one of them.

'Spartan and Wolf Squads, you're on air defence and interception. Everyone else, hit our ground targets. Ideally we should be back before dinner.'

15 minutes later, for the first time in basically ever Blaze was the first to launch off the deck. Hubert's catapults were fully functioning despite corrosion that had happened over the past 20 years.

AIRCRAFT

Blaze/Razgriz 1 - Su-33M3 Enhanced Flanker-D

The flight to the capital was both short and uneventful. The Eruseans must have been on break because there was no hostile response to an attack run until after the battle had started. Blaze started his attack run against the harbour region at extremely low altitude and extremely high speed, equipped with GBUs. His first target was a moored Kongou-class air-defence destroyer. One GBU dropped from a weapon pylon as Blaze shot over the target and pulled up. The impact and detonation of a 2000lb bomb heading at Mach 1 was devastating, splitting the destroyer in half. Climbing, Blaze cut the engines and let gravity throw his Su-33 towards the ocean surface. Coming back towards docked warships, his next target became a helicopter carrier. Three more bombs penetrated the middle and aft deck of the carrier, causing external explosions. One GBU must have landed in a magazine space for a split-second later the entire ship jumped a few metres out of the water and collapsed fatally. Two ships down in the span of 10 seconds. The tally increased with anti-ship missiles coming from other Osean aircraft. Support vessels, frigates, destroyers, carriers, nothing was spared. Another six ships sank in their moorings. Many more were damaged. As the harbour went up in smoke, the attacks went further inland. Blaze led a group of Super Hornets and Lightnings to Farbanti's airport where a variety of Harriers, F-16s and Su-35s were about to launch to counter the assault. Not many survived to get off the ground as they were smashed by missiles and rockets. Fewer still managed to get any credible height and speed to evade before Osean F-14s swatted them from the skies. Blaze's next few kills were a pair of taxiing F-16s with the cannon. The ATC followed shortly, cut in half by a GBU.

20 kilometres away from the coast, Snow, his squad and a few squads of F-18s waited at stand-off distance. They were armed with cruise missiles.

'Alpha Leader to Nemesis. Shoot, shoot, shoot.' One of the attacking flight leaders gave the order for the F-18s to release and fire their weapons - AGM-154 JSOWs. Glider weapons, they gracefully slipped off and headed for targets in the capital.

'Weapons away.' Snow announced.

'SAM systems in the quarries!' Blaze dived down after a smoke contrail that had shot up into the skies. Its owner was a static SAM battery. Using his cannon the battery fell apart and exploded, warheads detonating in the missile heads. Across the entire region, smoke was starting to blanket the city. The 200 Osean aircraft were causing a lot of havoc.

'Task Force One, AWACS Ghost Hawk. Incoming Erusean fighters from the east. Intercept and destroy.'

Blaze wasted no time. He went vertical to gain altitude and then leveled off to intercept the enemy. A group of Su-33s joined him as did some F-14s. The enemy interceptors popped up on radar, a couple dozen F-15Js and F-16Cs. Proper fighting aircraft. The opposing sides came head-on at each other. As the distance got into missile-firing range, Blaze popped a post-stall maneuver to rapidly lose airspeed. The Su-33s shot past the Eruseans, knocking a few of the latter out of the sky for one loss. Blaze's own Su-33 was in a good position as the enemy fighters passed by the other Oseans, letting him cut through several F-16s with missile and cannon fire, fire and smoke trailing from all of them. One of the F-15s tried to get on Blaze's six. The latter pulled a Cobra, passed over the Eagle and tore it into pieces with a well-placed missile before the pilot could evade. Diving to gain some extra speed, Blaze's ace for the mission came when another F-15, chasing down an F-14, came into Blaze's gunsight. 23mm shells quickly ended the service life of the F-15.

'Cheers for the assist.' The female pilot of the Tomcat thanked Blaze.

'Easy.' Blaze answered, swerving off looking for other air targets. He only saw five. Four were being chased. The fifth and last one, an F-16, was itself chasing a friendly Su-33. This one was different. Instead of the normal brown, tan and green camo used by most Erusean F-16s, this one was painted in a bright digital blue pattern. For a plane it was extravagant. Most likely an enemy ace. Blaze went after the F-16 in an attempt to break it off the back of the friendly fighter. Missile lock. He fired. As expected the enemy fighter broke off to evade the missile coming up his ass. Blaze also expected the enemy to evade and so readied another missile as the ace rolled to turn the other way. Fired. The ace rolled upside down and dived towards the floor popping chaff and flares all the way. Unlike most other Erusean pilots as of late, this one actually appeared to be somewhat competent. Blaze followed the dive, determined to stay on the back of the enemy. This wasn't too much of a challenge, because while the F-16 was a good dogfighter, it was outclassed compared to a canard-equipped, thrust-vectoring modern Flanker.

Elsewhere, cruise missiles from aircraft and warship slowly crept along the coast to Farbanti. Somewhere along the flight path of a cluster of Tomahawks, a destroyer sat at EMCOM Condition Alpha. An Erusean AEGIS vessel. Out of port when the attack started, Geofon, a Maya-class AEGIS air defence destroyer, detected the incoming missiles via data link from other active warships. The ship's XO was in the CIC at the time and saw the missiles. Order Disruption was given. Geofon activated all sensor systems and spoofing to throw the cruise missiles off target.

'Element Two, form up.' Element Two, or what was left of it, consisted of pilots who were transferred from the Vulture to the Kestrel. A measly seven pilots from Panther and Razor Squads. Lance led the overall formation. They formed up in a collection of F/A-18Es and F-35Cs. All were fitted for anti-surface operations with bombs. 'Drop, drop, drop.' Lance could feel his aircraft get lighter when the various bombs strapped to its belly fell and went for the ground. Looking to either side he saw his wingmen and other pilots do the same. They were targeting a large underground bunker embedded in the side of a mountain meant for air-defence coordination over key areas. Hopefully, Army special operations were designating otherwise these bombs were not going to do anything. Talon tracked the attack with her TGP. The wave of bombs penetrated the side of the mountain where the command centre should have been. Nothing happened for a moment. Then several explosions of dirt and stone started ripping out the top levels of the mountain. The bombs had found their target, which scratched off one of the major facilities the strike was meant to eliminate.

Blaze toyed with the F-16 ace for a minute before sending the aircraft spiraling into the ocean in a trail of flame and smoke. Leveling out and heading back inland, a flash in the corner of Blaze's vision caught his attention. He dismissed it as part of the JSOW attack. A second flash occurred in roughly the same area. That time Blaze actually looked to see where it had impacted. His blood ran cold.

'Whoever's targeting a civilian area, cease fire!' More explosions flashed in the residential region where Erusean civilians were living. Fireballs erupted from houses as they splintered and shattered. Blaze could only watch in muted horror as more and more houses exploded.

'Goddamn it,' Snow cursed. 'Mother, Nemesis 1, redirect your Tomahawks, you are hitting CIVILIAN areas!'

Some distance away at sea, in the Kestrel's CIC, Admiral Logan silently held his head in his hands. He cursed internally. We just butchered a whole lot of civvies.

'All aircraft, AWACS Ghost Hawk, new update from satellite observation. Numerous enemy interceptors approaching. They have the support of an Arsenal Bird.

'Vampire vampire vampire!' A radar console operator suddenly yelled in the CIC. 'Incoming anti-ship missiles bearing 190!'

'Strike group, Kestrel, continue with mission objectives.' Kestrel's captain ordered. Logan shot a cold look at the captain but said nothing. He was more worried about those incoming AShMs.

Haunter heard both ends of the radio and called out to Snow. 'Commander, the carrier needs our help.'

'I know. All elements, return to base. Our job's done here.'

Blaze looked around towards the horizon over land. Although there were no enemy fighters for the time being, he did not want to be there when an entire wing's worth of interceptors came to fuck them.