Back at Farbanti, the battle was starting to let up. The Oseans were now starting to roll through what remained of the sophisticated defences laid down by the Eruseans. At the very front of the spearhead was the LRSSG hammering the remaining pockets of resistance to clear a path for the ground troops. Strider and Razgriz were focusing on the aircraft opposing a naval landing while Cyclops dealt with hostile ground forces.
'All aircraft, listen carefully. This is Long Caster. We have the upper hand, and the enemy headquarters is almost ours.' Long Caster said to the LRSSG while they kicked the ass of anyone who got in their way. 'Operation to eliminate all enemy satellites is also underway. All going according to plan.'
'I thought we were meant to undergo the ASAT mission?' Trigger asked. That had been part of their briefing.
'...Mostly going according to plan.' Long Caster corrected himself. 'The end of the war is in sight. Think of something you'd like to eat guys, 'cause I'm buying.'
Blaze did a sideways Cobra to get behind a Rafale M that had been chasing him and shot him down with a single well-placed Sidewinder. That was the last of the air targets in the area.
'Man, don't jinx us.' Wiseman replied to Long Caster's prior announcement. Blaze winced.
'Ah, you're right.' Long Caster paused for a moment after saying that. 'New bogies- no, five Su-30s inbound for the fleet!'
'It's Mister X.' Wiseman saw the five aircraft approaching the ships that were coming in to dock at the port. Blaze saw them as well. Four of them, Su-30M2s, were at a standoff distance while the leader flying an Su-30SM was coming in at super low-level while doing supersonic speeds. The SM pilot released two missiles at a cruiser - the OFS Freya. The latter's CIWS was firing at the Flanker in an attempt to hit it, but being an old gun its tracking software was bugged and so took two anti-ship missiles in the side over the engine bay. The ship shuddered from the impact. The Su-30SM climbed sharply and then fell back towards the Freya, firing another two missiles in the process. As the pilot leveled out, those two missiles entered through the cruiser's flight deck and entered the engine bay for a second time. Freya was rendered dead in the water by the four impacts. The Su-30SM pulled away from the cruiser and went into formation with his squad. That squad then flew into Farbanti's airspace.
'Jesus christ.' Blaze saw the Freya get pounded and crippled. 'Razgriz, move to engage the enemy squad.'
Razgriz came into their own formation and went off to fight the Erusean aces.
'The leader is beyond anything I've ever seen, but don't underestimate the others either.' Grimm mentioned to the LRSSG. He knew the best out of all of them, having faced them twice in the past.
'LRSSG, emergency order from mission command. Bring down Mister X.' Long Caster officially gave them the order to engage with the enemy. Blaze didn't hesitate. The instant he saw Mihaly separate from the formation, Blaze split off from his own squad to go give chase. Mihaly attempted to take a shot at a group of troop transports on the ground. Blaze fired a cannon burst at the Erusean ace to get him to break off. Mihaly managed to get one missile off at the cluster of infantry before turning in the opposite direction, chased by Blaze.
'When I last saw you over the ocean, I wondered if you were going to be around for the war. My assumption was correct.' Mihaly spoke directly to Blaze on a private channel.
'I'm not an old man just yet.' Blaze retorted, chasing Mihaly into the clouds. Blaze got a missile lock with a Sidewinder and fired, but the missile missed and then he lost Mihaly in the clouds. Blaze burst through the cloud layer and out into open air, but Mihaly was nowhere to be seen. Blaze looked around. There was no sign of him. Where in the fuck did you go, old man?
Fencer found that out the hard way. As he was trying to get Sol 5 to stay in a straight line by baiting him out so that Count could shoot him down, Mihaly appeared from above him and forced a missile right into the top of his aircraft. Fencer grunted with the shockwave and explosion. Shrapnel from the explosion entered both of his engines, destroying all methods of producing thrust that he had. Fencer reached for the ejection handle.
'This is Cyclops 3, I have to bail out.' Fencer reported to Long Caster before pulling that handle and getting blown out of the cockpit. As he went up, his Eagle exploded, hit by a missile from the aircraft chasing him. That attacking aircraft was then itself hit by one of Count's missiles, so the bait had worked. The black and orange Su-30 yawed to one side before getting hit by a second missile at which point the pilot wisely decided to eject.
Meanwhile, the third wingmen of Razgriz and Sol Squadrons were tangling with each other. Grimm versus Seymour. Flying supermaneuverable aircraft, the two were on par in skill with each other. One would be attacking, which would quickly change as the other pulled some sort of crazy maneuver that put them behind the attacker and made them the hunter. Grimm had one advantage over Seymour. He had a fair bit of combat experience.
At a point in their dogfight where Seymour was about to get out of the defending position by committing to a Cobra, Grimm pulled to the side and whipped the nose around so that as Seymour passed him, Grimm was flying backwards while facing the Su-30. Cutting his engines so that he could maintain some forward-moving velocity, Grimm managed to catch a glimpse of Seymour's surprise and horror before firing a cannon burst into the unarmoured front of Seymour's plane. The shells tore through the nose, engine intakes and canopy of the Su-30M2, crippling it. As the broken aircraft shot by Grimm, he looked in his top-mounted mirrors and saw that the pilot of the aircraft had ejected. Two down, three to go. Grimm looked for Mister X. He was flying around unattended to, wreaking havoc on allied fighter squadrons.
'What are they doing? They don't have nearly enough weapons between all of them to stop this invasion.' Lanza questioned. He did have a point. The Su-30s could only take out a few squadrons of aircraft at best.
'No, but if we leave them be they're gonna cause one hell of a dent.' Blaze pointed out while looking around for Mihaly. He saw that Wiseman and Trigger were on him. Deciding that they had the situation under control, Blaze went after one of the other Sol Squadron pilots.
Wiseman and Trigger didn't exactly have the situation under control. For a few minutes they attempted to chase down the Erusean ace over the city. The latter was able to keep out of the LRSSG's grasp in a straight chase and even managed to drop a couple of bombs on the OMDF AEGIS destroyer Scuttlefish, badly damaging the ship. Trigger grunted in annoyance.
'Trigger. If we keep this up, someone's not going home. I'm going to get in front of him and try to bait him out. Once I line him up, you come up behind and take him.' Wiseman suggested a plan to Trigger.
'Wiseman, if you stay in one place-' Trigger protested.
'Let's hope it doesn't come to that.' Wiseman ended the conversation before Trigger could finish what he was saying. They were both aware of the risks involved. Mihaly turned around looking for another target. Wiseman turned so that he could put himself in the way of Mihaly and bait him out. The play worked. When Wiseman turned away to get away from the area, Mihaly stuck to him like glue.
'Bait worked. Time to take him for a ride!' Wiseman said to Trigger, who took the trail position behind the two and followed. The chase took them across the city. Wiseman did a whole bunch of weaves over the submerged skyscrapers, attempting to keep Mihaly going in a straight line while also keeping on his toes so that the Su-30SM pilot didn't blast him out of the skies. Trigger attempted to get a lock on Mihaly's aircraft. No joy. He was moving around too much for a reliable lock.
'Wiseman, keep him in a line. He's moving around too much.' Trigger mentioned this to Wiseman. The latter compiled by periodically flying in a straight line. Doing this, Trigger managed to gain a single cannon shell hit on Mihaly's aircraft. That shell took the tip of one of the tailplanes off. Mihaly noticed and went into his erratic flight pattern again.
Blaze launched an attack at the second wingman of Sol Squadron, Wit. Wit saw Blaze coming to him at a side angle and turned towards him, fired a missile, and then dived towards the ground before Blaze could fire one of his own missiles at him. Blaze evaded by following Wit into the dive. Wit continued the dive to the mountains below, dragging Blaze away from the combat zone. Before slamming into the ground, Wit pulled up and took the chase into the wide mountain valleys at high speed. Blaze levelled out before hitting the ground and followed Wit as he travelled north-east. There were many plateaus around the area, and Wit used them to his advantage to escape missile locks. Groaning in annoyance, Blaze increased his speed to dangerous levels inside the valley to catch up. When he rounded a corner around one plateau, Wit wasn't there. Blaze didn't have to guess where he had gone, pulling up and flying over the top of the plateau. Sure enough, Wit had done a circle around the land feature and had intended to get on Blaze's six.
'Gotcha.' Blaze said to himself, firing a Sidewinder downwards at him. The missile caught Wit near the back of his aircraft, ripping off the back end of the left-hand wing, destroying an engine and ripping off one of the rear tailplanes. As he had been in a turn when the missile hit him, the sudden loss of lift threw the aircraft into an unstable spin. Wit ejected just before his aircraft fell out of the sky and exploded on contact with the ground. Blaze turned back towards Farbanti, looking to get back into the fight. Three down, two to go.
While Blaze had chased down Wit, Mythic was being chased down by Sol 4, Hermann. The Sol Squadron pilots were good, but Mythic managed to stay out of the tracking cones of their ASRAAM missiles. That said, she wasn't able to break the engagement. For that, she needed help from her squad's resident F-14 pilot. Snow came in from the side and fired a volley of missiles and cannon shells at Hermann. Hermann had to break sharply to just barely evade those missiles. While the Voslagian pilot was busy avoiding Snow and his AMRAAMs, Mythic turned around, got onto Hermann's rear and fired a Sidewinder. He avoided the first one. Mythic fired another. He didn't avoid the second one. The missile went up one of his Su-30M2's engine nozzles and exploded, taking out both engines and the two vertical stablizers in one fell swoop. His aircraft critically damaged, Hermann was forced to eject, leaving Mihaly as the only member of Sol Squadron still flying.
The LRSSG were close to completing their mission. Talon's squad was also close to completing theirs. Her squad of F-35s were climbing rapidly, trying to reach their assigned target firing zone. Talon looked to either side of her. Panthers 2, 3 and 4 were all there. Talon checked her altitude. 65,000 feet. Panther Squad was now at their firing zone.
'Mission command, Panther 1, we are at firing altitude.' Talon reported to the mission commander. She waited for a confirmation order. After a few seconds of silence there was a reply.
'Copy that. All squads, mission command. Execute. Execute. Execute.'
Across the entire Usean front, multitudes of Osean Air Defence and Maritime Defence fighter squadrons fired barrages of ASAT missiles into low earth orbit. If one were looking at a BLUFOR tracker, they would see that over most of the continent there were fighters. Those fighters were targeting satellites controlled by the Erusean armed forces.
Talon launched all four of the ASATs she was carrying in one salvo. The rest of her squad fired theirs off at the same time. Sixteen AGM-135 ASATs flew up into low earth orbit.
On the Pilgrim I, Captain Kei Nagase actually saw some of the ASATs rising up into orbit. Sitting in the mission control centre of the spacecraft with Warrant Officer Hubert and a couple of the other surviving technical personnel, she saw on a radar display that there were hundreds of objects entering orbit. Luckily, none of them were targeting her ship this time.
'What the fuck?' She swore for the first time in quite some time.
Raven had seen some of the ASAT-launching fighters take up position above his ship. He didn't know what they were doing, and he wouldn't know until one of the Lekk's crew showed him a picture from the radar's histogram later on.
Trigger and Wiseman meanwhile were still after Mihaly. The trio were doing circles over the submerged area, Wiseman trying to get Mihaly to stay still for Trigger to shoot him down. So far little progress had been made. Mihaly was a seasoned veteran and flew very erratically which made it hard for Trigger to get a shot off and make it connect. He had only landed three cannon shells in total, none of which had done any functional damage. Trigger was confident he could handle the situation, but he looked around at times for Blaze, without question the best pilot in the LRSSG. Trigger remembered seeing him chase down a Sol member outside of the combat zone boundaries, so he wouldn't be back for a while.
'He hasn't fired yet. Waiting for the perfect shot? Trigger, don't let him take it!' Wiseman commented while sounding strained, having pulled a high-g turn while speaking. He levelled out and so did Mihaly. Trigger took the opportunity and fired a missile into Mihaly's exposed rear. Mihaly cut his engines, rolled and pointed the nose up so that he took the missile at the side. His aircraft shook, but wasn't destroyed. Mihaly continued his normal method of flight shortly after, his Su-30 seemingly unaffected by tanking a direct missile shot. Trigger was bewildered. Wiseman took the fight up, and Mihaly followed, as did Trigger.
'You're a good entertainer, but the show's over with this next shot.' Mihaly spoke on their radio channel. He fired two missiles at the climbing Wiseman.
'Wiseman, incoming!' Count called out to his squad leader. Wiseman levelled out, his cockpit facing the ground far below.
'I'll keep him on me. Just a bit long-' Wiseman said just before the missiles hit him. One of the missiles, an ASRAAM, entered through his canopy and exploded, killing Wiseman before he had a chance to feel anything. His F-15C disintegrated. There was no way in hell he had survived that.
'Wiseman!' Collectively, everyone from Strider and Cyclops yelled.
'Shit!' Long Caster saw Wiseman's signal disappear. 'Cyclops 1 is down.'
'Wiseman, eject!' Count urged his squad leader, not having seen what had happened to his plane.
'I'm sorry, Count. His plane exploded.' Jaeger had seen what happened and sadly informed Count of this. Trigger was left in shock for a few seconds. He was both angry and depressed. Not only had Mihaly managed to bag Wiseman, he had managed to do it because Trigger had failed to stop him. Trigger returned to his senses, and his sense of failure was quickly replaced by boiling anger within. Mihaly turned around, his next target set on Trigger. Trigger didn't let him take the first shot, firing a Sidewinder in anger at Mihaly as he descended towards the F-22 pilot. Mihaly had to evade it. Trigger fired another one. It missed completely. Mihaly passed by Trigger into the city. Trigger used the supermanuevabilty of his F-22 to pull a quick turn to face the ground. He held down on the cannon button and a stream of high explosive tracer shells came down towards Mihaly. The majority of them missed before the internal ammo drum went dry, but a few shells connected. Trigger fired two AMRAAMs. He was going to run himself out of ammo at this rate, but he had Mihaly on the run and on his toes.
'Stay strong, we're not done here!' Count said angrily. He was pissed just as much as Trigger was.
'Cyclops 2, you've got the lead.' Jaeger pressed Count to take control of his squad, even if it only consisted of Count and Huxian at the time.
'Shit, I can't. Trigger should take the lead!' Count retorted. He didn't have the same charisma as Wiseman, Trigger or Blaze.
'Do it.' Jaeger urged.
'Count, Huxian, merge with Razgriz and form a barrier around Mister X. Don't let him out.' Snow, Swordsman, took control of Cyclops for now.
'Doin'.' Huxian acknowledged, flying over to Razgriz Squad's formation and sticking with them. It took Count a few seconds for the order to register, but he came over in the end.
Trigger meanwhile was still giving Mihaly hell. He fired one of his last missiles, a Sidewinder, at Mihaly. It connected with him, and unlike the first missile he had landed a hit with, this one did some damage. Shrapnel from the warhead exploding punched through one of Mihaly's engines, damaging it. At that moment, he would have been vulnerable to another missile. But seeing as Trigger was now completely out of weapons, he was safe. At least for a hot minute. Trigger came up behind Mihaly and pushed his engine throttle all the way forward. He was going to ram Mihaly out of the air.
He was about to collide with the back of Mihaly's aircraft when the satellite network went offline, which disabled the linked sensor network. This sudden massive loss of sensor information overloaded the processors in Trigger's avionics suite which as a result temporarily crashed his radar and HUD.
This reset also brought Trigger back to his senses. Trigger pulled away from Mihaly before the two collided mid-air. Trigger climbed upwards, which was when he saw a series of flashes in the skies. They weren't explosions. They looked like⦠meteors?
Blaze was a couple of dozen kilometres away from the outskirts of Farbanti when he saw something reentering Earth's atmosphere. A couple of minutes before that, Blaze's sensor package had locked out its cooperative mode and went into local, which meant that he was only seeing or hearing whatever his radar and radio systems could detect. Blaze guessed that the upper command had failed to calculate that the ASAT strike would affect Osean systems as well.
Friendly fire time, Blaze thought to himself as he entered Farbanti's boundaries. His aircraft's IFF system registered the aircraft that were ahead of him as LRSSG or otherwise friendly.
'This is your local Blaze, anyone else's CEC system non-functional?' Blaze asked when he got back into radio range.
'Broken.' Trigger answered him solemnly, depressed.
'You sound-' Blaze began to say, but quickly realised why. Wiseman was nowhere to be seen. 'Ah, shit.' He cursed.
'Listen up. We've just lost our real-time connection with command. Actually, there's no contact with anyone outside of our LOS.' Long Caster reported the bad news. He also had good news. 'Farbanti is now under Osean control. The operation was a success. That said, we've got no follow up orders. I'll direct you to the closest friendly airfield. Leave this airspace immediately.'
Following their directive, the surviving ten LRSSG aircraft left the Farbanti AO and went south-east towards one of the refuelling stations. Everyone in the squad was silent. They were down two pilots, and their commanding officer was dead. As he led the LRSSG back, Blaze felt hollow inside. Another good man was gone.
Half an hour later, they arrived at Forward Air Base McKenna, a former Erusean airbase now in Osean hands. Strider landed first, followed by Cyclops, finally followed by Razgriz. They wouldn't be staying there for long, only standing by for an hour to refuel and catch a short break. When everyone was out of their aircraft, Blaze briefly assembled everyone by the hangars. Once everyone was listening, he said what he had to say.
'Farbanti's been taken. But our CO is dead and we've got no direct line to command. Until we get back, as senior ranking officer I'm taking command. Any objections?' Blaze asked. There were none. 'Alright. Take a piss, get something to eat, we'll be leaving and going back to Cape Rainy in one hour.'
