Because of Paladin 6's damaged aircraft and the half-strength Blizzard Squadron, Werewolf Squadron was the last to land. They were ordered to taxi back to their assigned hangar and get some rest. The war was really on now. Ben was the second-last to get into the hangar, just ahead of Kirra. Ben saw a pilot hovering around in the hangar, but he wasn't sure who it was until he dismounted his Rafale M a couple of minutes later.

'What in the motherfucking did I miss?' Lieutenant Jason Park asked Ben when the latter was within earshot. Ben took off his helmet and approached Werewolf 6.

'Ah you know, a war, the usual.' Ben replied sarcastically. He noticed that Park had a cardboard tray of styrofoam coffee cups. 'That for us?'

'You bet your damn ass it is.' Park answered. Ben giddily took one of the cups. 'And yeah, I figured based on how tight security is around the base.'

'Park, aren't you meant to be at home?' Sebastian saw his last man, observing that Park didn't have a cast around one of his arms. 'And where the hell is your cast?'

'In the bin somewhere.' Park replied deadpan. At six-foot-three, Park was the tallest person in Werewolf Squadron and at 23 he was also the youngest. Short black hair, a square face and a scar that ran from the top of the left side of his temple to his chin made him look scary, but in reality Park was a joyful dude.

'Oh for fuck's sake.' Sebastian said, rolling his eyes, chuckling and grabbing a coffee from the lieutenant before passing by to get to the crew ready room to get out of his flight gear. Everybody else did the same, grabbing a coffee and greeting Park until it was just him and Ben left in the hangar with their aircraft and the ground crew.

'You're not going with them?' Park asked Ben why he wasn't going to get out of his flight gear.

'I'm on tonight's Alert 5 rotation.' Ben explained.

'Ah.' Park understood. He took the last cup of coffee off the tray and turned around. 'I'm going to get my kit.'

Ben nodded and took a seat to drink his coffee. Unless the Yuktobanians were planning a counter-attack on King's Point or any neighbouring bases, he wasn't expecting any more action for the rest of the night. Ten minutes later, Park appeared, now dressed in a g-suit with a vest and a helmet slung by his side.

'So,' Park took a seat next to Ben. 'Fill me in on the details.'

While they were having their talk, a significant distance away in the deeper reaches of Yuktobania sat Murmansk Air Force Base. One of the larger bases belonging to the YAF, Murmansk was the headquarters of Bomber Command where all their tactical and strategic bombers were coordinated from. Vulcans, Tu-160s and Tu-95s, there were several squadrons of them stationed there. Because of how far away it was from the Versuan border, Murmansk had been unaffected by the attacks. At 2300, or 11PM, Bomber Command received an order from the Red Hall. Tu-95s were to be armed with cruise missiles for a strike against the city of Saint Vickersburg in the Gaulle Special Economic Region. However, an additional order would be passed to bomber squadrons that was not a sanctioned action from the Red Hall. Tu-160s and Tu-95s were to be armed with bombs and cruise missiles for a mass strike on key points of interest within mainland Verusa.

All squadrons that were issued with these orders were equipped and ready to begin the operation by 0300.

Hours had passed since the attack on Archansk. Hooked on caffeine, Ben wasn't yet tired and Park seemed like he was switched on even if he was lying down on the couch reading some small novel he had brought with him. Nearing 0500, the sun would be coming up soon as Ben could see the faintest hint of blue in the sky. From a hangar somewhere further down the naval air station a few fighters from another carrier's air wing had taxied out and taken off to deal with something. Whatever it was wasn't Ben's or Park's problem.

'Oi Park.' Ben called out to Werewolf 6.

'Yeah?' Park replied.

'Did you hear about the-'

'INCOMING, INCOMING, INCOMING!' Ben's sentence got drowned out by the deafening sound of the base-wide incoming artillery alarm and the automated voice on top of it. Park threw away his book and dived onto the floor, putting his hands on top of his head and staying as close to the ground as he could. Ben did the same.

'INCOMING, INCOMING, INCOMING!' The same automated voice repeated its message. Nearby the hangars Ben could hear the sound of a large minigun firing into the skies above the base. The minigun was backed up by the roaring of a SAM battery launching missiles. The Goalkeeper counter-rocket and artillery battery – CRAM for short – must have seen the incoming projectiles on its radar and intercepted it. Further away in the distance there were explosions. A successful intercept.

'We gotta scramble!' Ben shouted to Park, standing up and running for his fighter. Park followed suit. The two entered their Rafales, already armed, fuelled and ready for an intercept. Going through the startup procedure as fast as was humanly possible, Ben pre-emptively booted the aircraft's radio.

'Tower, Werewolf 4, what's the situation?' Ben asked as the Rafale's fire-control computer and radars activated. Shortly after that he hit the engine ignition and the aircraft's twin turbofans spooled up.

'Werewolf 4, bombers out far to the east trying to hit the base with cruise missiles.' Despite the situation the base's air traffic controller was calm. A good start. 'Radar indicates the presence of Bears incoming at low altitude for a potential bombing raid.'

'Understood, Werewolf 4 and Werewolf 6 are scrambling to intercept.' Ben reported his intention. His engines were live, so Ben lowered the canopy and started rolling as soon as the ground crew below him removed the chocks from in front of his wheels. Park was rolling right behind him. 'Taxiing to the closest runway.'

'Acknowledged. Get up there and defend our base!'

'Yeah what do you think I'm doing,' Ben muttered to himself. He came onto the closest runway, normally used for landing operations. 'Fuck it this'll do, Park, let's go.'

'Viper, rollin'.' Park acknowledged. Ben was the senior of the two and took the responsibility as flight leader. Within thirty seconds both were in the air with their afterburners lit and their engines roaring. As he was banking to the east, Ben saw a flash on the ground. King's Point Naval Base had three separate SAM systems defending her. The one he saw firing was the MIM-104 Patriot, a medium-range radar-guided system. The other two were Iron Dome, a CRAM-style system meant for protection against rockets and mortars, and THAADS, an extreme-long range SAM system designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles but also in theory capable of satellite engagement.

AIRCRAFT:

Werewolf 4/Vampire: Rafale M F.4
Werewolf 6/Viper: Rafale M F.4

Ben went through a list to see who the AWACS on their rotation was. Sure enough it was Lightning Keep, the nocturnal son of a bitch.

'Lightning Keep, give me a bogey dope, what are we dealing with?' Ben asked. He knew there were bombers out there, but he didn't know if they had escorts and how many there were.

'Standby Werewolf, we're having issues with our radar panel.' Lightning Keep said.

'Oh fuck me.' Ben exclaimed, annoyed. That was an issue. 'How long until it's up?'

'Rebooting and running diagnostics. I'd give it two minutes.'

'Oh, fuck me!' Ben was definitely annoyed.

'What's the go, Vamps?' Viper asked for advice. Ben cracked his neck.

'No radar support and the closest allied squadron is at least five minutes away. We're doing this the old-fashioned way, light up your radar, get ready to shoot.' Ben was straight to the point. They were going to conduct an intercept with their onboard radars. Their first target would be the Tu-95s approaching the base with what he presumed were iron bombs. The base's air defence systems could intercept the cruise missiles, not bombs. Switching master safe off, Ben gained a lock on the first couple of Bears on radar.

'Light up these turboprops.' Ben instructed Park. Surprisingly, Park beat him to it and had launched a Meteor at the closest aircraft on command. Not wanting to seem like a slowpoke, Ben cycled to his own Meteors and fired. Three AAMs headed towards the ancient Tu-95s as they approached the bay leading up to the base. Because of their age and their comparatively poor level of maintenance, the Bears never saw the missiles coming and were all swatted out of the air in an instance with their crews burning with their bomb loads. Three targets down, many more to go.

'Two more groups at 0-7-0 and 1-0-0.' Park pointed out. In reply, Ben targeted the pair of Bears approaching from the north-east and fired a pair of long-range AAMs. Park focused on the similarly-sized group to the south-east. The Versuan pilots came roaring out of the bay and out over Queen Tohsaka Bridge. At one point the biggest bridge in the world at over a kilometre in length and 230 metres tall, it connected King's Point and the city-sized island it stood on to the rest of the country and the continent. Her twin red support structures were very iconic. Today its defense was up to the two Werewolf Squadron pilots. The missiles that the two had fired connected with their targets, blowing up an additional four Bears. Ben banked to the left and did a 360-degree motion to see what else was out there with his radar. No Bears that he could immediately see, but there were Tu-160 Blackjacks out there as well as their carriage. They were a far way out, but not far enough. Ben turned to face the closest Blackjack standing off at fifty kilometres, locked and fired another Meteor.

'Radar is back online!' Lightning Keep reported.

'Gimme a bogey dope.' Ben wanted to know what was out there while the Meteor travelled out to strike a Blackjack. The latter was a high-speed cruise missile carrier capable of pushing Mach 2, but the Meteor was able to hit Mach 4 in a straight run and had a range exceeding two hundred kilometres. The Blackjack never stood a chance and it was blown out of the skies in a single hit. However it had gotten its Kh-55s off and while Ben and Park could intercept them with their AAMs, Ben didn't have the baggage to get all of them and would have rather spent those missiles on other bombers.

'Vampire, three hostile groups. Number one is on your current bearing, four Blackjacks for 160 miles at Angels 2. Number two is 0-3-0 your bearing for 130 miles, four Bears, two Blackjacks varying between Angels 1 and Angels 5. Number three is at 0-6-0 for 40 miles, three hundred feet, five Bears.' Lightning Keep reported the locations of the visible enemy clusters. Based off that, Ben's first targets were the Tu-95s closest to them trying to come in from low altitude. He fired five Meteors in the span of a few seconds, one for every Bear. Air-to-air missiles filled the skies, at the cost of the majority of Ben's missile capacity. He was down to two Meteors and two MICA short-range missiles.

'Viper, pick up the slack, I'm almost winchester.' Ben told Park to engage the other groups so that Ben could conserve his loadout. In compliance, Park lit up the mixed Blackjack-Bear group and let off six Meteors intended for those bombers. A sensor that detected outbound munitions indicated that all of Ben's Meteors had taken down their targets. Five extra Bears were down. Fucking hell that was a good shot, Ben thought to himself.

'On the winchester comment, I'm down to three and two.' Park was running out of missiles as well, with three Meteors and two MICAs left on his pylons.

'Alright, use your long-ranges for that last group.' Ben instructed, turning to face the four Tu-160s sitting a hundred and sixty miles away and closing.

'Ack.' Park came up alongside Ben and matched the latter's bearing. Ben locked the group at long range and fired his last two long-range AAMs. Park did the same and again the sky was filled with the glow of ramjets propelling missiles towards their targets. At that distance the missiles would take a couple of minutes to reach their targets, so Ben changed bearing to follow the bay back over King's Point.

'Lightning Keep, Vampire and Viper are winchester for long-range air-to-air.' Ben reported to the AWACS.

'Understood, remain airborne in vicinity of the city until the rest of your squadron is up to cover.' Lightning Keep gave his directive.

'Gotcha, Werewolf will orbit at Angels 2. C'mon Viper.' Ben and Park started climbing. A minute later they were two k's off the deck orbiting in the airspace between Queen Tohsaka Bridge and their base. With four missiles between the two of them, Ben was hoping there wasn't a significant fighter presence nearby because alone they wouldn't be able to fight them on an even level. That train of thought got Ben thinking, where the hell were was the fighter escort for the bombers? So far for the Yukes, trying to get the bombers close even at standoff range with cruise missiles had proven to be a suicide mission and one that wasn't going to get easier as more Versuan squadrons got into the air to intercept.

'Lightning Keep, Vampire, are there any fighters out there you can see?' Ben asked the AWACS as his local source of information.

'If they're out there, they're keeping quiet. No joy on radar or ESM.' Lightning Keep reported. Ben frowned. It had been the same case over Archansk, the task force had slammed a naval base and there had been no fighter response.

'Typical doctrine for bomber escort would include some kind of escort to deter hostile interceptors, no?' Ben asked Lightning Keep.

'Typically…' Lightning Keep paused for a moment. 'It's definitely something we've seen the Yukes do in exercises. Stay on alert, something's not right here.'

Ben and Park remained in the air on a steady orbit for ten minutes, having shot down all of the closest targets. By the five minute mark, an Air Force Rafale C squadron and the same Navy squadron that had taken off before the attack had arrived on station to provide air cover. By the ten minute mark, Sebastian and Kirra were both airborne to join Ben and Park.

'Vamps, Viper, check your six.' Sebastian called out to the two, climbing to their altitude and taking the flight lead position.

'Welcome to the fight.' Ben welcomed the two in, backing off to the right of Sebastian. Park and Kirra remained in the rear end of their box formation.

'Anything interesting happen?' Kirra asked.

'Bombers, missiles, nothing else.' Park summarised. Ben agreed. The adrenaline when the missile strike happened was enough to get them into the air. Now that the bombers had been deterred and were presumably now holding off because of the fighter presence, Ben had calmed down and was now complacent, bored even.

'No fighters?' Sebastian asked.

'Sir we've already had a discussion regarding that fact with Lightning Keep, I'd rather not repeat it.' Park stated, something that he was notorious for doing, not sharing stories and conversations more than once.

'Touche. Lightning Keep, Werewolf 1, I've got two guys still getting airborne but do you have any taskings for us once they're here?' Sebastian asked for a mission or tasking of some kind. He didn't get a reply at first, which caused Ben to look at his tactical display. Lightning Keep in his E-2D Hawkeye was still there.

'Sorry, was relaying communications. Nothing for now Lips, maintain your squadron's orbit at its current position.' Lightning Keep finally replied after a long silence. Sebastian sighed over Werewolf's intra-flight radio.

'Roger, holding orbit.' The commander replied and signed off that net. 'You heard him folks.' As the sky slowly gained the colour of orange as the sun rose over the horizon, Melody and Pounder joined them. Werewolf Squadron was at full operational capacity for the first time in wartime.

'Werewolf 2 and Werewolf 3 are on station, Lip.' Melody called it in.

'Took ya long enough.' Sebastian joked with his immediate subordinate. Melody the lieutenant-commander scoffed.

'Guess I'll go fuck myself then.' Melody joked in reply. This banter made Ben chuckle. The highlight of his day so far. They remained in their holding pattern for another ten minutes when new orders came down the pipeline.

'Werewolf Squadron, new orders from base command. Head north-west at 3-4-0, in-flight refuelling and further tasking will be available once you're at the border.' Lightning Keep relayed new tasking. Ben rose his eyebrows.

'At the border? How fuckin' far does command want us to go?' Pounder asked.

'And does that include a rearm somewhere along the way? Me and Viper are almost winchester for air-to-air.' Ben brought up the fact that he and Park only had two MICAs per aircraft, which again was not enough for any sort of prolonged engagement.

'Again, further tasking will be provided when you hit the border. Just head out at that bearing for now.' Lightning Keep repeated himself.

'Werewolf is moving out at 3-4-0. Climb to Angels 3 lads and up your speed to 450 knots.' Sebastian ordered so that the AWACS could hear him. He then switched to the intra-flight channel. 'This could be interesting.'

For Ben, interesting was putting it lightly. At their bearing and instructions, that meant they would be travelling across most of Verusa and receiving in-flight refuelling near the tri-axis that was the Verusan border between the nation of Suffren and Yuktobania.