WARDOG 1 / HEARTBREAK ONE, GHOST / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
VAMPIRE 1 / CORVUS / F-16C
VAMPIRE 2 / ARCHER / F-16C
"Wardog Flight is airborne." The flight leader, Bartlett, announced as they left the tarmac of Sand Island's primary strip. Blaze was off to Bartlett's right, while Archer and Corvus were hot on their heels. "Reference your flight computers. We're flying a line between the ocean and our island."
"Tally." Blaze saw the path on one of her MFDs. A racetrack course out to the west of Sand Island, a hundred kilometres out from the island and extending fifty kilometres in the north-to-south axis.
"Flight, pull 240 for one hundred, five hundred knots." Bartlett directed. "Form wedge."
Blaze banked to match the given bearing before dropping back a little so that she was to Bartlett's starboard quarter. Corvus and Archer did the same on the opposite side of Bartlett so that when viewed from above it looked as if they were shaped like an arrowhead. For both kinds of fighter present, five hundred knots was a walk in the park to keep pace at. Blaze heard a hmmpth from the back.
"No Blockhead today?" Samurai enquired.
"Hawkeye's having mechanical troubles." Corvus answered over the radio. "We're doing it the old-fashioned way today. Waiting for calls from TOC."
"Fun." Ghost commented. "We've all got Link 16, right? Who says we volun-tell Blaze to go be a surrogate AWACS?"
"I'm down." Blaze replied. She was more than happy to be at the tip of the spear.
"As long as we don't have to listen to ground control all morning." Archer was happy with the suggestion.
"Not a bad idea. What of it, Heartbreak?" Corvus seemed onboard.
"Kid's call." Bartlett decreed. Without saying as much as a word, Blaze pulled out of the formation, pitched up and pressed the throttle forward to get ahead. Samurai flicked a switch and their radar was on. If anything was out there, they would see it. That came with the twist that if there was anything out there, they could also see them.
"We're live." Blaze called. She hit a couple of buttons on one of the MFDs in the pilot's seat so that she could see what the radar did. There was some civilian traffic in the general area, airliners travelling between the continents. Nothing stood out to her. Blaze set the radar scan radius on her side to a distance of a hundred kilometres and left it. Samurai could do the deeper analysis.
"Nani…" Samurai muttered something in her native tongue, followed by the clicking of buttons.
"Sam?" Blaze looked over her shoulder, curious as to what Samurai had found.
"Standby, I've got something at the very edge of the radar range." Samurai continued her analysis of whatever it was she was seeing. Blaze inched the throttle forward. She was curious as to what the unknown could have been.
"Anything?" Blaze asked.
"Surface contact, 250 for 140. Negative IFF or transponder signature." Samurai reported. She whistled. "Something big."
"Tally on the shared link." Archer could see what Wardog 2 was seeing. "Surely they haven't gotten a cruiser this far across the ocean already?"
"Hold that though-" Corvus was going to say when he was cut off by another voice on a separate radio net.
"Mayday mayday mayday Axiom 85-85-" A radio transmission came in garbled on the emergency air net. Blaze sprung upright in her seat.
"Axion 85-85, Sand Island control, did I hear a mayday call, over?" Somebody back on Sand Island had heard.
"Stand to, we could get called in for this." Bartlett gave a warning to the flight to be ready to respond to the mayday call.
"Sand Island, Axion 8585, correct, mayday mayday mayday, fire on board, I say again, fire on board. We are heading 090, requesting to divert to Sand Island." The officer commanding a civilian airliner was declaring an in-flight emergency.
"Tally. AXL8585, 210 for 60. Angels 10 and dropping. Fast." Samurai acquired the airliner on radar.
"Axion 8585, confirmed, turn heading 060." Sand Island control directed the ailing airliner towards the islands. "Axion 8585, what is your situation?"
"Fire on board has been extinguished. We have a breach of cabin pressure. We are descending to five hundred feet." The officer in charge of the aircraft reported.
"Received." Sand Island control acknowledged. There was a click on their flight net. "Control Room to Wardog Flight, we have an airliner in a state of emergency south-west of your location. We need you to get eyes on and provide direction if required, over."
"Heard, we're moving to their location now." Bartlett made the call. "Change of plans. We're going to help that airliner out. We are out for 210. Hey kid, stay in the lead for now."
"Ack." Blaze acknowledged. She would have thrown the throttle all the way past mil power and into afterburner, but realistically there wasn't much she could do aside from guide the aircraft to the strip. Onwards they went. With the closure speed of the two parties, it didn't take long for the two parties to merge with each other. At the tip of the formation, Blaze was the first to spot the stricken airliner.
"Tally airliner, ten-o-clock low." Blaze said, coming around in a semi-circle to form up on the liner. It was an aircraft of the Boeing 777 variety, painted in white with the distinctive red and white AXI on the tail. What was most distinctive about the aircraft, however, was the glaring charing around a hole towards the rear of the aircraft. "Oh, fuck me. There must have been a bomb onboard the aircraft. I have eyes on a two-by-two metre hole towards the tail, port side."
"Come again?" Corvus seemed sceptical until he arrived on Blaze's left wing. "Oh my. Tower, Vampire 1, eyes on Axiom 8585. Looks like an internal detonation caused the fire."
"Vampire 1, say again your last?" Control didn't believe what they were hearing.
"I say again, internal detonation aboard the aircraft. It's still airborne." Corvus reported.
"Vampire 1, acknowledged, standby." There must have been some commotion back home. Blaze observed the aircraft up and down for any other signs of damage. Aside from fire damage within the vicinity of the breach, nothing else seemed out of place. Now the question was, was it a mechanical error leading to an explosion, or was it a deliberate placement of a bomb? The beeping of Blaze's radar warning receiver alerting her to the presence of a newly-lit radar distracted her from those thoughts. The pings read the blurb 35K. Bearing 270.
"Oh hai." Samurai mused. "Sukhoi 35Ks, direct west."
Blaze nodded. "Carrier fighters."
"Want to swing us that way? I can't get a distance on them." Samurai requested. Blaze compiled by pulling out of the formation and turning west to get their radar on point in that direction. The radar returns got them a distance. Four contacts, a hundred kilometres away and closing fast.
"You think they heard the call and want to assist?" Archer asked rather innocently.
"Yeah. Probably. Kid, keep an eye on them." Bartlett directed.
"Wilco." Blaze complied, maintaining her bearing and getting away from the rest of the squadron.
"They're in a hurry." Samurai commented. "Visual in two minutes, if that."
Blaze looked over the HUD for any sign of the incoming fighters. According to the radar they were now fifty kilometres away, within the ideal engagement range of the AIM-120 air-to-air missile. Green boxes were appearing on the HUD marking their position, but Blaze couldn't see them with the naked eye. Two more beeps from the RWR punctured the silence. The two Su-35Ks that had been at EMCON prior to that point had gone live. Blaze puckered up a little. In her mind, there was little chance of getting lit up. A little chance, not a zero chance.
"Tally two, high off the nose." Samurai had seen the first of the approaching fighters. Blaze looked up. She could barely see the tiny dots, but what really stood out were the contrails peeling back from their wingtips. Blaze pulled back the stick and climbed up to the Flankers. The four fighters were split into two elements, both splitting around as if to pincer the Oseans. Blaze went for the right pincer element. Approaching from underneath, Blaze spotted the distinctive three-tone blue splinter camouflage used by the Yuktobanian Navy's fleet air arm. But of course, if she wanted definite evidence, the YAF triangle was clearly visible on the underside of their wings.
"Yup, they're Yuke." Blaze confirmed for the rest of the flight.
"Who would have guessed? Mind giving them a bump for me?" Bartlett requested. Blaze would have complied with the request, but the leader of the opposing force beat both of them to it.
"Osean fighters in the vicinity of 8 degrees and 1 minute north, and 145 degrees, 24 minutes east, this is the Yuktobanian fighter group to your north-west, state your intentions." The voice of who Blaze assumed was their flight leader, a grizzled old man, punctured the radio. Blaze was surprised. The Yuktobanians were on their side of the pond, and they had the audacity to ask for their intentions.
"Hmm. Hey Pops, sounds like your crowd." Bartlett sounded like he was poking fun at Vampire 1.
"Das können Sie noch einmal sagen." Corvus said something in a foreign tongue in retortion. "Want me to handle this?"
"Your call." Bartlett left that action up to Corvus's discretion.
"Last callsign, Vampire 1, our intentions are to escort this airliner in a state of emergency to our base." Corvus gave the radio reply.
"I didn't know Pops spoke Belkan." Samurai observed.
"Yeah, neither did I." Blaze was also unaware of this information.
"Vampire 1, the hell you are. We have orders to redirect this aircraft back to Yuktobanian airspace on suspicion of harbouring a known terrorist." The Yuktobanian squadron leader argued. Blaze raised an eyebrow. Things were getting interesting.
"Assuming that's a true statement, where do you expect them to land? They won't have the fuel capacity to make a round trip across the Ceres, especially not in their current condition." In the face of potentially stirring the pot, Corvus remained calm.
"I won't repeat myself, Vampire. Fuck off to your pissant island, this is our affair." The Yuke squadron leader wasn't having any of it.
"I'm not letting you put four hundred lives at risk. They're coming with us." Corvus remained calm. Blaze was silently amazed at the argument going on. Never had she seen or heard of a conversation going like this, especially in recent years. Bartlett was chuckling.
"How I missed these days." He was amused by the exchange. There was silence from the Flankers.
"Hey Ash…" Samurai was looking behind them. "...they're merging on our six."
"They're wha-" BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Blaze's blood froze.
"Wardog 2, engaged defensive!"
Blaze threw the stick forward and dived towards the ocean floor. She didn't have a lot of altitude to play with, only 1500 feet below her and a quick death. She rolled the Mudhen the other way and pulled a hard turn to level out.
"Bogey's still on our six!" Samurai was closely tracking the movement of the Flanker on their tail. "Fuck, smoke in the air, SMOKE IN THE AIR!"
Blaze hit the chaff and flare dispenser and banked hard right. She heard an explosion behind her and the airframe shook from the blast wave. The Yuktobanians were shooting real munitions at them. There was commotion over the radio, none of which she was paying attention to. Blaze spotted another Flanker ahead and above them in the HUD. If they could shoot at her, she was going to shoot back. Blaze cued an AIM-9X on her trigger, lined up the Flanker above her until she got the distinctive high-pitched growl of a lock and fired.
"Wardog 2, Fox 2!" Blaze called out a missile in the air as she recommitted to the defensive fight to keep out of the boresight of the Flanker still on her tail. Blaze saw a flash of fire from out of her peripheral vision, although she wasn't sure if she had actually hit her target.
"Splash one, splash one!" Samurai called.
"Now to get this fucker off!" Blaze was manoeuvring like mad trying to get the Flanker off her tail. In from the side came an F-16C, M61 Vulcan spitting out fire. Archer was picking a fight with the Yuktobanians. His shots missed, but his efforts forced the chasing Flanker to break away from Blaze in her F-15E.
"Sam, ditch our air-to-ground!" Blaze directed to her WSO, referring to the Harpoons and GBUs they were slinging around. The pylons holding those weapons fell free with the press of the button and suddenly the Mudhen had more manoeuvrability to play with. Freed, Blaze brought the nose around trying to get shots on the Flanker that had been previously engaging them. Unfortunately for her, one kill was all she was going to get for that engagement.
"Blaze, Archer, break off, break off, break off!" Bartlett had a sense of urgency in his voice, for the first time since Blaze had been assigned to his command. "Cease fire!"
"Wardog 2, wilco." Blaze chose to follow the order and flicked the master safe switch back on, pulling away from the general vicinity where the shots were fired. The Yuktobanian fighters were falling back in retreat. Archer was following on Blaze's left wing. Blaze looked around for signs of the rest of her flight. Corvus, Archer, Bartlett and the airliner were all still in the air. She popped her mask, leant her head against the headrest and exhaled loudly.
"Fuck" was all Blaze had to say.