The chill of November was in the air when the fleet limped into a nordennavic port in the south west of the polar country, there was no guarantee that they would assist but it was the remnants only hope for the kingdom to take pity and assist the ailing fleet. Sebastian stood on the deck of the Karolean, bundled up in his leather flight jacket and a wool cap drawn down tightly over his ears, alongside Veronica who was similarly bundled up. Snow began to lightly fall over the deck of the ship, crews rushed to put tarps over the long slots the steam catapults travelled along to not get packed with snow.
"Its been a-a-a l-long time sssince we've had a w-w-winter this c-c-cold…" The lieutenant chattered out "C-captain… why are we out h-here?" She looked over at Sebastian who was staring blankly ahead at the fog covered city, his cheeks and nose were bright red where the rest of his face was drained of color in the cold, snow settled in the whiskers of his newly forming mustache. He simply nodded in reply "I just wanted to see the city, that's all" The man pulled his hands out of his pockets and patted his face a bit with his gloved hands, then shoving them back in his pockets he turned around and opened up the door to the tower "come on, let's get back inside" He called out to Veronica who needed no further encouragement, the door closed with a loud thud and they were safe from the numbing cold as the ships heating systems were working over time to heat all the crew compartments and reactor room.
"What kind of torture was that?!" The woman exclaimed incredulously, furiously rubbing her hands together that might set a fire if she rubbed any faster. He couldn't help but smile "It was an endurance test Lieutenant. You passed!" The tension was so thick it could be cut with a knife as Veronica glared venomously "Take one of the others out for an endurance test next time then, Cap"
"Oh it wouldn't be the same, you know that Veronica" He put an arm over her shoulders and walked her down a set of stairs "None of the other pilots have your same kind of spirit, or looks." He said matter of factly, nodding to a sailor that stopped in the hallway off to the side to salute Sebastian. The young woman had her arms crossed with an annoyed scowl across her face, she had begun to notice a change in attitude that Sebastian had towards her in the past fews days before the fleet reached nordennavic. The change was unprecedented but the man had shown little consistency in his emotions or actions. "I don't know what you are playing at captain but you're losing the game"
The arm loosened and then slinked its way off her shoulder and back to the side of its owner "Cold…" he muttered.
"Hopefully colder than it was outside cap" she gave a piercing jab to his side that sent the captain reeling against the wall of the ship in agony. Veronica left the man yowling in pain to take care of paperwork Sebastian had shifted onto her, while he recovered and limped to a meeting, with a hurt stomach and damaged pride. He joined in with the shuffle of the other squadron leaders into the naval equivalent of the briefing shack, in the middle of the dark room was a thick piece of plexi-glass with quadrant squares mapped out on it, at the top middle of the 'screen' several blue triangles blinked around the virtualized land mass that was Nordennavic. Grabbing one of the rolling office chairs scattered around the room he dropped into it with a huff, the first squadron leader rolled his way over to him. "Hey bud, how's it goin?" the man put his hand out to shake, he had spiked blonde hair and from the way he smiled it seemed like he was chewing gum as well. Taking the fellow officers hand firmly he shook it "Pretty good, I've just been wishing for some time to do some training with the new pilots"
The man enthusiastically nodded in agreement "Yeah man, I totally agree. I've got a bunch of rookies in my squadron and they need to get some more flight time under their belt y'know?" He couldn't stop going back and forth in the wheeled chair "Heard some rumors that the Kingdom was gonna let us do some drills in their airspace, but rumors are rumors right huh?"
Sebastian cracked a smile and agreed with a simple "mhm", it would be great to fly over nordennavic to train but mentally sebastian was preparing to have to train over rough stormy seas if it came down to it, no matter what he had to get the new pilots properly assessed in the sky. He was pondering on this and writing down a couple of drill ideas when the Flight Command Officer joined them. "Good morning to you gentlemen, at ease" The man said before anyone could jump up and salute him "I'm sure you're all quite pleased we've made it to port yes?" The three men answered back to the commanding officer with a simple "yes sir", they weren't in port just yet, the AsterGotland was in for repairs but the Karolean was in fifth place to dock as the damaged cruisers took priority.
"Well that's fantastic, I have it on good authority that you are all itching for some flight time yeah?" The squadron leader who had briefly talked to Sebastian before the meeting started sounded out with a resounding "Yeah!" to which the rest of the room roared in laughter. "Well that's great! We have been granted authorization from the Nordennavic Ministry of Defense to hold several training operations in central Nordennavic!" He pulled a clicker from his dress pants pocket and clicked it a few times and the display shifted a couple times and it now showed the entirety of Nordennavic. "The Royal Air Force usually conducts its drills in this region" The display shifted once more and from the lines displayed, it seemed to be a fairly mountainous region "Airspace seven-niner, you will approach from the south and seek out and destroy several targets set up by the Royal Air Force on the mountains. And be aware you will likely be intercepted by 'hostile' aircraft" The commander made sure to use air quotes when he said hostile "We have an estimate of about eight aircraft that are prepared to scramble if you are detected. You will now also have the support of an E2D Hawkeye for AWACs support, which should be taking off right about… now" and right on cue they could hear the firing of the steam catapult and the launch of the E2D. "Captain Sebastian, Hämnd squadron will be attempting this operation first. Go prepare your squadron. You two are dismissed until they return" The commander ordered, and so Sebastian jumped up from his seat, notebook with notes about the weather, wind speed and direction all in hand, and ran for the berth where his pilots were lazing about.
The bulkhead of the berth swung open hard and Sebastian followed in "Scramble! Scramble!" He shouted, banging on the bunks as he passed through down to the end of the room where the bulk of the flight gear was stored. The pilots leaped from their bunks in bewilderment then ran down to the lockers grabbing their own equipment. Wells or 'Swordfish' was one of the first ones down and came up to Sebastian "Hey sir, what's going on? Are we under attack or something?"
"No, no nothing to worry about like that. We're going on a training sortie, but I figured that was a good way to wake you all up" Sebastian patted Wells on the shoulder a couple times with a smile "Head for the hangar, get your aircraft prepped, we will all join you soon." The captain stayed back and made sure everyone had all of their equipment and that it was all properly worn, the slowest out of the entire squadron was Paula or 'Republic' that had an issue with the oxygen hose getting tangled up with the straps of her survival vest.
Deep down Sebastian felt thrilled to once more see a large number of aircraft running again, and he would be the one in charge of them. Of course being the squadron leader, he and his wingwoman, Veronica were raised up to the deck first. A thin layer of frost formed over the runway forcing them to proceed painfully slowly to the catapults that the crews were waiting until the very last minute to uncover. In the cockpit Jäkel had never been more thankful for cotton long johns and the environmental control systems inside the aircraft that kept it a toasty seventy-two degrees inside to combat the near sub-zero temperatures just outside the thin cockpit glass. Bundled up crewmen scattered away from the front of the aircraft as he slowly raised the throttle, the catapult cradle firmly holding the front gear in place. Blood pumped through his veins as he made the final preparations, bracing firmly against the control panel as the 'Shooter' made the final hand motion, a sweeping point ahead. Inside a little cupola set into the deck of the aircraft carrier, another crewman activated the catapult, launching the aircraft forward at a blistering speed, followed by Duchess' aircraft coming off of the second catapult. After the first two got into the air, the rest of the squadron joined them hastily. Just as a catapult would reset from a launch there was a new aircraft ready and waiting to be sent up.
The squadron formed into a long chevron, with the four that Jäkel trusted the most at the tip of the formation, and now joined by their sociable new AWACs companion. "Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?" The radar operator tapped at the microphone he was speaking through causing freak interference all across the squadron that they all loudly protested "Oh woops! Sorry about that! This is AWACs Cliffhanger" Faintly in the background they could hear the sound of some show playing and frequent audible reactions of the Early Warning Control Operator.
"Hey Cliffhanger, what's that you've got in the background?" Newman or 'Icarus' prodded at their new companion, he really didn't want to deal with an annoyance of an AWACs controller. It sounded like a laptop was quickly slammed shut in the background and the man faked clearing some flem from his throat. "What's what?!" The man clearly sounded embarrassed "Oh that was nothing, just something the co pilot was showing me, that's all. Nothing to worry about!"
"Riiight, sounded like some kind of TV show, you aren't watching TV while working are you?"
"How could you accuse me like that, well I'd never do anything like that…" The man got away from the microphone and quickly told the copilot to stash his DVDs "I'm here for you Hämnd squadron, right now my scopes all clear five by five." The flight into the training operation zone was uneventful but still somewhat treacherous, having to evade several hotspots of turbulent winter weather.
"Hämnd squadron has entered airspace seven-niner bravo" Cliffhanger noted, once more being able to hear the faint sounds of something playing in the background. The aircraft were largely loaded down with ground munitions but they had left a couple of the aircraft loaded with training air-to-air missiles for the more than possible interception force they would face.
With a great roar Duke put his mirage into a steep dive, pressing the button on the throttle control switching to the cluster munitions that laden his aircraft. The bomb pipper appeared in the Heads Up Display and put the small inner dot right on top of the armored vehicle target, and let loose one of the cluster bombs. Battling the delta wing airframe as he pulled up he felt the plane rattle and violently shake, steep dive attacks were not meant for aircraft like the mirage.
"You guys try Yvettes pudding on the ship?" The gruff pilot named Icarus questioned the flight as he picked out an easy target, a concrete bunker nestled amongst a grove of trees.
"Yeah I had it during the crackerbarrel the other night, it was a bit thick for my tastes" Republic responded, Icarus went into a shallow dive towards his target his finger hovering over the trigger until he was approximately in convergence range and then unleashed a hail of twenty millimeter gatling cannon fire into the decrepit pillbox, explosives packed inside sent the rubble flying three hundred feet in the air. The Super Hornet roared over its target and ascended with an expert roll that positioned him in the perfect spot over a mock convoy of soft topped vehicles.
"Shack on the target!.. Oh man jessica messed up" Cliffhanger declared, Icarus came in low and slow and depressed the trigger firing all four of the gunpods on his pylons and the main nose mounted twenty millimeter cannons that ripped through the abandoned vehicles like a hot knife through butter "Icarus low on ammo! Returning to the carrier!" The Super Hornet exited the airspace and returned to the Karolean. With one less aircraft Sebastian surveyed the mock operation from a high altitude and observed the the successful and impressive bombings of emplaced targets going up in a fiery ball of debris. As well as Icarus's prowess with the gunpods that he had chosen to have equipped on a whim. He couldn't spend the whole operation observing though, on his radar a flight of ten aircraft were coming in from the west of the airspace.
"Ten bogies inbound from the west, bearing three-zero-seven get after them!" The AWACS called from several thousand kilometers above Sebastian.
"Concur" Sebastian called to confirm he had the target "Dutchess, on me"
"Copy" His wingmate replied, forming up in a flight of two heading right towards the Nordennavic 'Aggressor' squadron. The converging aircraft split giving enough space for Sebastian and Veronica's plane to pass narrowly through the formation, it was as much of a merge as they were going to get going two versus ten, having been on the right of the merge Jäkel rolled his aircraft to the right, pull back on the stick gently creating a wide arcing turn around on his opponents who had scattered like flies. Above him he could see contrails beginning to form on a small aircraft so Sebastian pulled up and began to climb to meet the fighter in the contrails region. The ever helpful helmet mounted sight marked the target with a small green box, and while he was selected on gun, though he had no ammunition, the computer began calculating and displaying a lead modified as to where he should put the pipper for the gun to get effective shots on target.
Once in the contrails he cut the afterburner to preserve fuel and watched his target for a moment, the nordennavic pilot had seen him climb up to meet him and began jinking in several directions but Jäkel held his trigger finger, he wanted a sure shot, wether that be a guns shot that was done by keeping the pipper on target for four seconds or 'launching' a training sidewinder at a target. The aggressor squadron pilot wouldn't let Jäkel idly sit on his tail, in a sudden maneuver activated the airbreak and pulled back on the stick, executing a flawless cobra maneuver the aircraft reached nearly vertical and let Sebastian fly right by before dropping the nose and switching roles in the dogfight.
Jäkel had seen Estovakian pilots try to pull a cobra maneuver during the retreat, and only once had it been used against him but they hadn't been executed near as perfectly, desperately he began copying what the Aggressor squadron plane had been doing moments before, jinking in many directions, rolling and turning to throw off any kind of weapons solution the plane might have been able to get on him "CRAAAAP!" Sebastian growled as he pulled back on the stick and began climbing once more, but at such an altitude the aircraft began to shake and rattle all around him… and then cutting through the annoying warning voice and the rattle of the aircraft the signature of a tone being held on him for long enough to constitute a kill.
A defeated sebestian pushed the stick forward and waited for the plane to level out and begin descending "Hämnd-1 eliminated" Their AWACs informed the rest of the squadron… then moments later "Hämnd-2 eliminated, Aggressor squadron won" The radar jockey stated matter of factly.