'Flooding in the reactor room!'

'This is the captain speaking. All hands, abandon ship.''

The aircraft carrier was listing heavily to one side with fires burning across the entire deck. Blast holes covered much of the starboard side. Dead in the water and sinking.

'Fleet's at EMCOM Alpha. Not getting any response from the carriers.' Several kilometres up in the air, the E-2 Hawkeye AWACS Ghost Hawk operator could not get any tracking data or response from any fleet vessel. Even the giant radar the aircraft had wasn't picking up anything aside from the Osean fighter wings. At a significantly lower altitude, the fighters were all spread out looking for their floating base. No sign of them. At the general forward ways of moving, Blaze pulled up for a brief moment to break through the cloud cover that had popped up and look over a wider distance. All he could see was cloud, darkening sky and ocean. Blaze almost went back down to a low altitude when a black tower caught his attention directly to the west. Is that? Pushing the engines, Blaze sped over to the tower. It wasn't a solid object. It was a plume of smoke. A plume of smoke caused by fires from a group of badly damaged naval warships. There were four ships. Two were old Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, the third appeared to be a Ticonderoga-class cruiser and the last, the most damaged vessel of the four, was an aircraft carrier. The hull was mangled beyond identification, at least for the Air Force captain.

'Ghost Hawk, Razgriz 1, one carrier is dead in the water!' Blaze was shocked, more by the fact that he couldn't see any sailors in the water.

'Come again Razgriz?'

'You heard me.'

'All hands, assemble on Blaze! Check that carrier!' Blaze circled around the burning ships for a couple of minutes until a proper naval squadron came for reinforcement. Eight F-14Ds. Hubert's Spartan Squadron.

'Spartan Squad on station. Blaze was right, we're down one carrier. Ship is sinking fast.' Spartan's commander was fairly old, a veteran of the Belkan War. 'I think it's the Valkyrie.' Another squad popped up. Razor. Luna came in low and slow, passing length-ways past the carrier.

'Superstructure's around midships. It's the Valk.' Luna sounded depressed upon realising. Although he didn't question it, Blaze figured that the marine must have served on the ship at some point.

'Wait. If this carrier and her escorts are sinking, where the hell are the others?' Blaze asked the logical question. Kestrel and Hubert were nowhere to be seen. No other escorts or resupply vessels. Just four broken and sinking ships. Soon after Blaze found Valkyrie, she slipped under the waves to Davy Jones' Locker. The group continued to head west for half an hour. Many of the other pilots were switched off. Blaze on the other hand was fully alert and now running all of his active sensors. Radar, IRST, the lot. This would help him later on. Ten minutes after they abandoned the carrier, a dull beeping noise in Blaze's headset alerted him to the IRST tracking something in the water. An LCD screen in grey showed what the IRST pod was looking at. A small metal cylinder bobbing around in the waves being kicked up by the high winds. This normally wouldn't have been a concern, since it could have been a buoy dislodged from one of the stricken warships. Blaze didn't think it was. Any static object thrown out here would have quickly cooled down to ambient temperatures which wouldn't trigger an IRST alert. The buoy, whatever it was, was glowing white hot on thermals. It was running something high-powered.

'Ghost Hawk, Razgriz. Tracking a small hot object in the water. Advise caution.'

'We see it. The hell is that?'

Blaze had an instinctive feeling to pull up. He did so sharply. In the trail position, Snow did the same albeit at a shallower angle. Panther, Razor, Nemesis and Spartan followed the lead of Snow. Blaze opened a direct link to Snow. 'Something's out of place.' Below them, a couple of objects splashed out of the water. These objects then shot upwards with the assistance of engine boosters. Missiles. The thermals detected them as soon as the engines ignited, alerting Blaze. I hate it when I'm right.

'Woah, rockets in the air!' Ghost Hawk had seen them. 'Evade, evade!' Blaze and the other squadrons kept climbing while aircraft at lower altitudes resorted to turning. The missiles weren't homing and shot straight up. Many aircraft stopped pushing their airframes upon realising this. As a result, not many were above 5000 feet.

The next thing to happen was a bright white flash.

The shockwave caused by the explosion of the flash reached high up enough to violently shake Blaze's Su-33. The other people above 5000 suffered the same. People below 5000 simply vanished, their fighters disintegrating after being turned into swiss cheese by many fragments of heated metal. In one fell swoop, more than 200 aircraft and their pilots were cut down without as much as a scream on the radio. Blaze banked to see what had happened. When he did look, the first thing he noticed was that on his HMD there were no IFF signatures for all the friendly aircraft.

'Missile detonation!' Ghost Hawk reported. 'Oh fuck.' The operator swore quietly but loud enough to be heard by the survivors.

'Where the fuck?' Blaze's voice was faint. His breathing became shaky and suddenly he was back in the cockpit of an F/A-18C nine years prior.

A blue laser shot down from orbit into the ocean. The Arkbird using its new laser module to intercept burst missiles that had been deployed by the super-sub Scinfaxi during Operation Vanguard. Around him were his old flight buddies, Edge, Chopper and Archer, plus a large number of rookie pilots.

'Oh no! They're launching more missiles! Number 3, number 4, number 5…' An anti-submarine aircraft was tracking the Scinfaxi as it moved. The first couple of salvos intercepted, she was now resorting to volley fire to get past the interception system.

'There's too many!' Grimm exclaimed. Many of the rookies started panicking.

'C'mon, Arkbird! Use your lasers! The nuggets are gonna get killed!' Nagase was pleading, clearly in a desperate situation. Blaze knew that the Arkbird wouldn't be able to intercept all of them.

'Up, get above 5000 feet!' He shouted, zipping upwards to reach that altitude himself.

'Climb, kids! Go, go, go!' Chopper was right behind him.

'Come on, nuggets! Climb! Move it!' So was Edge. A lot of commotion came from the rookie pilots. Two, three missiles shot out from the water. One was immediately blasted away quickly followed by a second.

'They're coming! They're still coming!' From Chopper.

AWACS Thunderhead was counting down the time to next detonation. '10 seconds to impact. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, impact… now!' In that same old flash of white, most of the rookies were caught by the shrapnel. There were no screams, not that the Wardog pilots heard. Fragments of destroyed Osean aircraft fell to the ocean surface, dead pilots and all.

And suddenly Blaze found himself in the real world again, spiralling towards the ocean surface with voices blaring through his headset.

'Blaze, pull up! Blaze!' Snow and Talon in particular were shouting it. Blaze snapped back up to level flight at 100 metres above the water. He had to physically hold his stomach to avoid vomiting in his facemask. After taking a few seconds afterwards to make sure that he wouldn't vomit, Blaze checked his radio.

'Ghost Hawk, Razgriz 1, how many?'

'Too many. I can only see 12 aircraft.'' Ghost Hawk's voice was barely a whisper.

'Do the Eruseans have a fucking Scinfaxi?!' Razor pilot Dagger noticed based off the strike pattern of the missile. Blaze thought the same thing. A hot buoy in the water. Sudden missile strike from out of nowhere. More than likely there was a submarine armed with burst missiles under them. On que with the thought, Ghost Hawk piped up.

'Second incoming projectile!' Blaze dived towards the ocean surface with IRST active, looking for the buoy from before. Once he found it, Blaze armed his cannon and went after it in bursts. The first two missed. On the third the buoy was shredded apart when the HE shells hit it. Once Blaze knew that the buoy was gone and not providing tracking data, he rapidly shot up and punched the engines to max afterburner. His altitude rose rapidly. He made it past 5000 feet with a couple of seconds to spare before the second burst missile detonated in a flash of white. This time there were no losses.

'Killed the tracker, but we need to move before they start firing higher. Head south.' Blaze met the remaining 12 aircraft. With Ghost Hawk at high altitude, the entire formation shifted from west to south. The closest land formation to them were the Twinkle Islands, south of Farbanti. Although the airfield there had been abandoned since the Continental War in 2005, it was more than likely still capable of being landed on. If they could get there. Having been flying for several hours with no resupply, most of the aircraft were running low on fuel. At max conserve, getting to the islands would take an hour. If they got into a dogfight, there would be no chance of making it to land before going into the drink. Blaze and Snow led the formation from the front at a significant distance from the others. If someone came to engage, they would be the bulwark to save their flight mates.

'Razgriz 1, Nemesis 1, numerous unidentified aircraft approaching from the east!' Ghost Hawk noted. Blaze banked to the east and checked his radar. Indeed there were quite a few aircraft quickly ingressing towards them.

'Everyone, keep going. I'll intercept them.' Blaze went to afterburners to intercept. Snow banked and followed.

'You need backup. Nemesis 1 intercepting.' The pair shot off. There were ten contacts in total. Radar signatures indicated that they were all of different airframes. That fact alone bothered Blaze to some degree. No normal fighter squad. Behind them the rest of the Osean fighters didn't follow and went south as ordered. It was dark, gloomy and raining. Perfect setup for a dogfight.

Snow started the engagement by leading with a long range shot with an AMRAAM. 50 kilometres. The RWRs of both Blaze and Snow started blaring followed by a missile warning. Both banked and popped flares and chaff to evade. The ploy was successful but now the enemy fighters were within visual range. The enemy formation consisted of mostly advanced and rare fighters - F-22, Su-57, Su-47, an X-02 and most notably an ADF-01 FALKEN. Blaze saw the nose of the FALKEN open and went evasive before a blue laser shot out from it and towards the Razgriz pilots. The enemy pilot tried to score a hit with his laser but at distance did not manage to strike before the charge ran out. As the distance between both parties decreased, enemy chatter came over the radio.

'Laser attack ineffective. Switching to missiles.'

'The Su-33 is mine. Everyone else take the F-14.' One lady, presumably the leader, transmitted an order.

'Marcus!'

'I heard, evading!' Snow threw himself at the nine aircraft after him. Before Blaze heard his missile alert go off, he saw a flash caused by one of Snow's missiles hitting the Su-47. He popped chaff and rolled to evade. From the thundercloud in front of him popped out an Su-37 Terminator, shooting out a red laser. Shouting to himself in surprise, Blaze barely managed to evade the beam by pulling a Cobra above it and the Su-37 passed underneath him. Now the fighters had to pitch and bank to get back at each other. Judging by the flight style of the enemy pilot, she indeed had a good hand at combat maneuvering. Time to put you to the test. The pair came head-on at each other in a straight line. Blaze saw the TLS unit mounted underneath the Terminator start to power up and it was at that moment that he rolled so his cockpit was facing the ocean and his cannon at the bottom of the enemy. He fired a precise burst. It landed, ripping into the TLS unit and starting a fire that rapidly turned into an explosion as the power core was compromised. The enemy pilot quickly ejected the TLS when it took damage so the aircraft wasn't destroyed. Blaze rolled upright and fired a longer burst from the cannon intending to bring her down. The pilot pitched up but not before taking a few rounds to the belly. Blaze now owned the initiative and relentlessly chased the Su-37 down as the pilot desperately tried to evade the shots. Some ripped off a vertical stabiliser. One engine broke down as a shell went through it and out the front air intake. The final nail in the coffin for the doomed Su-37 pilot was when Blaze loosed off a Sidewinder which split the aircraft in half. Before the entire aircraft exploded the pilot ejected. With his personal attacker gone, Blaze went off to go help Snow fight off the other nine aircraft. When he made it, he found out that that number had gone down to seven, the FALKEN and the F-22 gone.

'Need some help here!' Snow was being attacked from virtually every direction by both missiles and cannons. The fact that he hadn't taken any damage was remarkable.

'On it.' Blaze took up position behind the two fighters on the tail of Snow. He lined up a Sidewinder and fired at one and then the other in quick succession. The first, a YF-23 managed to evade by flaring and flying upwards but the second, the X-02, failed to move fast enough and took a missile up the tailpipe. The aircraft shuddered and noticeably slowed down but didn't explode afterwards or go down. 'Guys in the back are down.' Blaze said when he had to bank and turn to avoid the frontal fighters from slamming into him. That left six effective aces after them.

'Thanks. Feel good to be back in the seat commander?!' Snow sounded like he was having a fun time.

'Fuck yeah!' Blaze felt energetic in the heat of the moment, chasing after a pair of them at the same time. The Su-57 and the YF-23. In a series of tight loops and turns, the Su-57 cobraed as if to get behind Blaze, but Blaze merely did his own Cobra and blasted the Su-57 while it couldn't maneuver with Sidewinders. Blaze gained his forward airspeed again and chased the YF-23 down. He had a shot lined up with the cannon. Which was exactly when a missile alert popped up from directly behind him. Blaze used the last of his flares stock to spoof. This partially worked as it threw the missile off course. However, it still had a proximity fuze and detonated a solid few metres away from the Su-33, propelling shrapnel into the right side of the aircraft. Blaze grit his teeth with the shuddering of the aircraft and the damage alerts blaring. He sprayed the YF-23 with an unhealthy amount of cannon shells before breaking off and switching off one of his damaged engines. Snow wasn't much better, himself occupied with two others, a Typhoon and an Su-35. While both aircraft were able to turn better than the F-14, the latter had the advantage in speed and Snow made full use of this by going to afterburners, shooting to a distance where he could fire his AMRAAMs and then turning back towards the enemy. Snow managed to claim the lives of both this way. After those two went down, the enemy aces were down to two aircraft which made the engagement a 1 on 1. However, both Oseans were close to out of both munitions and fuel, and Blaze's aircraft was missing half of her thrust and a decent amount of maneuverability.

'Blaze, what's your ammo count? I'm Winchester.'Snow quite literally had nothing left.

'40 rounds in the cannon and one AMRAAM. Not much better.' Blaze fired the last AMRAAM at a rapidly approaching F-16E Block 60. It missed when the F-16 evaded but it went straight into Blaze's cannon path. He used the remainder of his magazine to critically damage the F-16 and force it out of the fight. That still left an Su-35S which they weren't able to combat.

'Evade!' Blaze shouted and turned to avoid a missile fired at him. His Su-33 veered off the course he wanted to dangerously, nearly losing control and spiralling. Blaze managed to wrestle control back but by that stage the Su-35 was right behind him. A miss at that range would be near-impossible. Blaze reached for the ejection handle as the RWR started blaring, but never heard the proper missile alert for the Su-35 had twisted and turned away popping flares to avoid something. Blaze needed time to pick up airspeed again and didn't look at what the Flanker-S was trying to evade. Chasing the Su-35 down, Snow saw a flash near the aircraft from a distance. The aircraft leveled out with smoke trailing followed by the pilot ejecting a short moment before it was hit by a second missile and exploded.

'Woah. Four new aircraft approaching from the south-east. They're transmitting neutral IFF.' Snow, facing in that direction, found out where the missiles came from. Blaze joined up with Snow, smoking trailing from his damaged Su-33.

'Su-37, F-15C, an F-22 and a tanker?' Blaze was confused. A supply shipment? 'Unidentified aircraft, this is the Razgriz Squadron of the Osean Maritime Defence Force, state your ID and intentions.'

'Do I really need to go through with this shit Alex?' The response was quick and Blaze instantly recognised the voice. He relaxed for the first time in the past few hours.

'For peace of mind. My wingman might not know you.' There was a sigh from the other end.

'Razgriz Squadron, this is Mobius 1 of the Independent State Allied Forces. I am being trailed by Galm 1-'

'Hey kid.' Cipher. Blaze smiled.

'-and Yellow 13, also escorted by the tanker aircraft Sky Eye.' Blaze knew of Yellow 13, but unlike Cipher or Mobius had not met him.

'Mobius 1 from the Continental War?' Snow asked the legend.

'The one and the same.' Mobius answered. 'I understand you people are low on fuel, so form up for IFR and we'll take you to a safezone.'

'Copy. Falling in.' Blaze was happy for the offer. His fuel was nearly empty and he was sure that Snow's Tomcat was in the same condition. The friendly pilots came to them with a KC-130 trailing. The Flanker and the Tomcat pilots took position to either side and were supplied with a refuelling probe that they connected to and topped up from.

'At cruising speed we should get there in about half an hour, so get comfortable.' Cipher took the lead position while Mobius 1 and Yellow 13 trailed in a protective formation.

'Cipher?' Blaze asked five minutes into the flight.

'Hmm?'

'Did you pick up 12 other Osean aircraft by any chance?'

'Negative. They overshot and went straight into a group of surface vessels. Christ knows what happened to them.'

That could have meant two things. Either they found the Kestrel and Hubert, or that had been a Erusean surface formation and all the survivors had been blown out of the air by their air defence. Blaze gulped and hoped it was the first scenario. 'Also, are we going to the Twinkle Islands?'

'Yep.'

The formation of aces and support reached the island chain 20 minutes later. For an airfield that had supposedly been out of action for 14 years, the facility they were landing at was in good condition and had a fair bit of supporting infrastructure. Blaze's landing was more of a crash than anything else but he managed to stick it and pilot the aircraft as directed to a hangar where mechanics were waiting. Snow trailed into the same pit. As Blaze turned off the engine, APU, took off his helmet and opened the canopy, a crew chief called out to him.

'Welcome to ISAF GHQ!'