Chapter Four

Debrief

Charles Martel Air Base

6:30 PM

It was nearly nightfall when the wheels of Commander Claude's Rafale touched down on the runway and the rest of Guillotine Squadron quickly followed. Prior to landing, they were told to meet with General Benoit and the Mirage pilots in front of the HQ building.

One minute later, he rolled his plane back into the hangar where powered down and opened the canopy to disembark. Upon hitting the ground, he was once again greeted by salutes from the maintenance team and a welcome back by the chief mechanic for his plane.

"Thank you, Chief," Claude replied then left the hangar to go meet up with the others.

Two minutes later, Claude and his squadron members joined the others in front of the HQ building. Judging by the amount of Mirage pilots present, the egress part of the mission didn't go too well for them.

Jackal Squadron only had six pilots present, Cheetah squadron was able to return with the same amount of pilots they went out with but Impala Squadron was down to four, and Chiron Squadron…was reduced to two.

So out of the thirty-two Mirages committed to Operation Jean Bart, only twenty made it back. But now was not the time to dwell on the losses, the general was about to begin the debrief.

"Well done pilots. You successfully sunk the Kestrel Two and drove the remainder of its strike group which was only two destroyers away from our coastline. High Command extends their thanks and citizens of Farbanti are going to sleep quite well tonight now that the threat Osean air attacks has been neutralized."

General Benoit knew the reprieve wouldn't last forever. The Oseans would take another shot at Farbanti when they were ready and when they did, the Erusean military would have little to no chance of stopping them.

"As for the losses suffered during this mission. I've already sent a request to the High Command for More mirages and pilots to bring our squadrons back to full strength."

"High Command owes us big time, sir," Captain Anthony said in a bitter tone.

"I understand how you feel, Captain Anthony," Benoit replied then went on to wrap up this meeting. "Tonight I encourage all of you to take the time to celebrate this great victory. Dismissed."

Some of the pilots went off to set up a victory party, But Commander Claude decided to retire to his quarters for the night after putting away his flight gear. Unbeknownst to Claude and the other pilots, General Benoit left out the loss of two of their navy's Barracuda class submarines that were supposed to join in the attack on the Kestrel Two, but got intercepted and sunk by Osean submarines before they got anywhere near the enemy CSG. His reason for omitting that loss from the debrief was not wanting to sour the victory with too much bad news.

As he lay on his bed, he couldn't help but wonder about one thing.

How was Osea going to respond to this? He knew they were going to find a way to hit back hard over the loss of their carrier and half of its escorts. But how would they do it and when?

On the other side of the world in Oured, Osea's top war planners at the Heptagon were already in the process of picking targets for the retaliation and drawing up a list of assets to carry it out.

Fin.

AN. The sequel to this story will be called Payback.