Ocean breeze rocked the small missile boat, it and its fleet had been on a course to pass through the Khased strait but orders from high command had told them to begin forming a blockade along the southern mouth of the strait. Sailors had been hearing the distant roar of jet engines for several hours and were beginning to get nervous. The Rosta fleet was far from impressive, the largest ship in the fleet was a slava class cruiser, named Admiral Goyorvich, that was outfitted with sixteen anti ship missiles, forty long range surface to air missiles and an additional sixty-four short range missiles, if they were engaged by an enemy naval or aerial force, the Admiral Goyorovich was the fleets linchpin.
Two thousand kilometers away, Alk squadron had finished getting into their flight formation with Sebestian at the very rear of the grouping as he was the newest pilot in the squadron. From the ground the triangular formation of the Gripen fighters looked like a solid green triangle streaking across the sky, in the cockpit of one of the fighters Lieutenant Tina tapped on her radar display as the clarity of screen fuzzed and blurred, mashing buttons the frame of the display that were meant to refocus and clear up on the radar display she observed no change in the display.
"This is Alk-4, my radar is malfunctioning. I can't get a clear picture here!" With a throw of the stick to the right she fell out of the formation flight and stopped just below the group. "Alk-4 get back in formation right now!" The kaptans voice boomed over the radio "We are five minutes from the rendezvous with Orn squadron!" Hesitantly the lieutenant brought her aircraft back up to altitude with the others and slowly slotted herself back into position "copy that Alk-1." The malfunctioning radar unnerved her greatly but she didn't want to anger the kaptan any further.
Everybody else saw the blips on their radar before the squadron was in visual range, they were squawking a friendly IFF tag so it could only mean one thing. The lead plane, a high tech and heavily customized Typhoon, boomed overhead the squadron and the rest of Orn in their customized F/A 18s and Gripens followed suit, making a wide berth and forming up on the starboard side of the gripens.
"Kaptan Locard of Alk squadron, This is Major Yanovich of Orn squadron. Mind if we join you on this fine summer day?" Yanovich was an older man and seemingly on the cusp of retiring but no one could tell him to throw away his career after so long. "A-firm Major, Patrolling gastra and twenty kilometers into the strait." With the addition of the Orn squadron they were now a force a little under a dozen strong and eager for some excitement on this already long patrol.
Carried on the winds the wing of aircraft drifted along the coast line, spotting no ships and no unidentified aircraft, the radio was abuzz with chatter between pilots, grilling Orn for stories of their exploits when they participated in the continental Osean-Yuktobanian war, and the Major for tales of the fabled Belkan "Round Table" airspace B7R. Below a lone spy ship sailed along the same path as the fighters, obscured by an experimental radar protective coating and camouflage pattern to fool human observation, listened in on the conversation between flights. Noting the presence of Orn squadron and counting what they believed to be four more aircraft in Alk squadron. The spy ship relayed this information to the blockades in the north and south that had quietly been set up, soon the carrier Helios would be joining the operation. Sventska was positioned right to the west of the emmerian island territory of Khased, and in the perfect position to strike back against the estovakians in the event they join the war. Estovakia wanted to make sure they would not have to face this potential future, Sventska was not a nation with a particularly decorated military but every war they had fought in they fought ruthlessly and inflicted very heavy losses on the enemy.
The wing of aircraft reached their final way point along the coast line, now beginning to shift out to sea. "All aircraft, bank right and descend to angels five" Kapten Locard barked over the radio, fighters following in suit they began to bank right while descending from ten thousand feet. Ocean water rippled as jet wash slowly fell over the surface, a chorus of callsigns and "feet wet" followed as they reformed over the ocean. At this altitude the naval camouflage was much less effective and the flight was heading right for the estovakian spy ship. Lieutenant Kim, callsign Dancer spotted a glimpse of the ship as she scanned the sea below and around them. Noting the ship she looked to the large radar panel that was her main workstation, there was no blip on the radar which meant that the ship either did not have a radar or it was turned off. Either option seemed very suspicious in dancers mind, she relayed her spot to Locard, guiding him the best she could visually while she worked manually with her radar, sloughing around to spike the target and force a reaction.
Banking right they were now heading directly into the ship. On the estovakian ship alarms blared across the boat as lookouts spotted the flight. Technicians powered down equipment while all the helmsmen were working as fast as possible to turn the ship starboard and run back towards the southern blockade. Dancer began ruthlessly spiking the spy ship with radar pings, all of which were ignored by the spy ship and it wasn't squawking a friendly nor hostile IFF.
"Alk-3, Alk-4 fly in low and get a good look at that ship would you?" Locard ordered the two pilots down to the ship while the rest of the flight loitered at a higher altitude. "Copy that '' Pushing the stick downwards and falling out of formation he was joined on his left side by puck.
"You take the port, I'll take the starboard" coming down alongside the ship, Sebastian got a good look at the impressive new camouflage system the estovakians were using, the blues matched perfectly with those of the ocean. The only thing that stood out and was probably not something they could do about was the bulbous radome that easily identified any spy ship, and this didn't look like any spy ship he had seen in their own use. They stuck with the ship for forty kilometers, repeatedly trying to contact the ship but to no avail, it was moving south and hopefully out of sventskan waters so the pair broke off eventually and returned to their flight. "Status of the ship?"
"Unidentified ship is heading southbound and out of our waters" responded puck, glancing over to Sebastian in his aircraft "target did not answer multiple hails on the radio from myself and Alk-4". Bringing the patrol to an end, Orn squadron finally broke off and headed back north to their air base, Alk squadron loitered in the air over Onstrin air base. Sebastian and Pocca were the last ones left in the air when alarms and warnings started blaring in sebastians aircraft. Eyes flying around the cockpit he surmised that he was being spiked by an enemy aircraft. "I'm spiked! I'm spiked!" pulling back hard on the stick the gripen reached a thirty degree angle of attack, engaging afterburner and climbing to a higher altitude trying to break the lock but it wasn't working. Momentarily glancing down at the radar panel he could see a faint signature to his seven o' clock "come on guys! Get this guy off me!" he shouted once more rolling to the right and making a wide turn around using pedal to control the angle of the plane
"Alk-3 copies" Puck finally acknowledged the distress his wingman was experiencing and abandoned his take off approach, retracting the landing gear and similarly punching the afterburner ascending to altitude to face the unknown hostile. Spiking the bogey it squawked back as hostile, the first combat the sventskan air force would encounter in the emmerian-estovakian war had just begun.
Puck flicked off the master safety and released the seeker on one of his sidewinder missiles, a torturous tone blared in the cockpit as the seeker began trying to track for potential targets. Coming up right behind the hostile aircraft he could only make out that it was a two engine fighter with tall vertical stabilizers. The tone in the cockpit changed as the missile had found the thermal signature of the bandits engines, right as he got a lock the enemy took a hard fast left turn quickly puck had to readjust his strategy following and sitting right behind the bandit he depressed the trigger "Fox two! Fox two!'' The missile came loose from the hard point and stayed in mid air for a moment before the ramjet engine powered on leaving a plume of smoke in its path. The determined missile followed the carening path of the bandit, winding along behind before exploding mere inches behind the fighter. "No joy!" With a year's training guiding his hand he began lining up for a second shot, rolling to the left and bringing his nose wide and in front of the flight path of the hostile "Fox two!" letting the second missile fly. The second projectile caught the aircraft in the center of its airframe, causing the bandit to burst into several large pieces that fell down to the forest floor.
"Thanks for that…" Sebastian breathed heavily, relinquished of the bandit on his tail the two gently brought their planes in for a landing. "This is only the beginning puck, I feel it"