Grimm had been in the mess hall at a table with a couple of the more junior Vampire Squadron members when the air raid siren started blaring. Grimm yoinked a piece of bread from his tray as he stood, making a mad dash out of the dining facility for the hangar. Passing an alleyway that ran adjacent to the main administration building where the squadron rooms were situated, Grimm almost literally ran into Ash and Nagase. It was only by a quick stomping motion that Grimm avoided barrelling the thin Nagase over.
"Jesus!" Grimm exclaimed. "Where are the others?"
"Already in the air!" Ash replied breathlessly as the trio rushed towards the hangars. A pair of Vampire F-16s, the pilots currently on the alert 5 rotation, were already pulling out onto the taxiway.
"INCOMING, INCOMING, INCOMING!" A speaker connected to the C-RAM battery defending the base was blaring. Judging by the sounds of high-calibre gatling guns firing up into the air, there were either bombs or missiles in very close proximity to the base. The sounds of gunfire cracking into the skies got progressively closer to the hangars. Grimm could hear the distinct whine of a turbojet engine as it drew in. Tracers flew over the-
BOOM!
A missile moving at supersonic speeds went careening into one of the hangars. The hardened concrete shelter took the brunt of the force, but the blast wave kicked Grimm off his feet and sent him flying back a couple of metres. He collided with the tarmac with a heavy thud!
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Grimm groaned. His ears were ringing from the explosion. Chunks of concrete were being strewn around the area. As Grimm's hearing returned, he heard screaming from a woman ahead of him. Grimm rolled onto his chest and kicked himself up to his feet. The screaming was coming from a dark-haired woman. Grimm's skin went pale. It was Goth. Hayley Shapiro.
"Captain!" Grimm yelled out, rushing to the captain of his flight. He figured out quickly why Hayley was screaming in pain. A chunk of concrete about the size of his fist had punched through Hayley's right leg at the knee. Her lower leg was held together by a strand of flesh and uniform. "Oh god."
"Fuuuuhuhuck!" Hayley was bleeding profusely from the wound where her leg had been. Grimm dragged Hayley out of the open and into cover under a nearby aircraft shelter. What little flesh that had been holding her lower leg to the rest of her body came loose, and the severed appendage was left in the middle of the taxiway, a blood trail being formed as Grimm dragged the captain to cover. Placing her up against a wall, Grimm took off his blouse shirt and fashioned it as a tourniquet around the stump that remained. Hayley damn near bit her tongue off, but as much as it hurt, stemming the blood flow would ultimately save her life.
"Captain, stay here, there'll be a medic with you shortly! I have to get up there!" Grimm did his best to reassure Hayley. "Hey! Get a medic over here!"
On the other side of the flight line, Ash and Nagase had been within the safety of the aircraft shelter that housed Nagase's F-15E when the missile hit, and thus had been unaffected by the explosion or the resulting blast wave and shrapnel. Ash had wisely taken the pilot's seat, with Nagase acting as her surrogate WSO.
"We've only got six missiles!" Nagase pointed out their precarious weapons state.
"Do with what we've got!" Ash yelled back. "Canopy!"
"Clear!" Nagase made sure her arms were within the confines of the cockpit as the canopy sealed around them. Ash rolled the Mudhen out of the shelter. She noticed that Grimm was only just ready to move as the Wardog duo passed his hangar.
"Tower, sitrep!" Corvus could be heard demanding for a situation report on the radio.
"We're being buzzed by stealth fighters, and a bomber group's posturing to strike the base from the north-east! All hands, sortie and intercept!" Sand Island Control broke the news. Ash was pushing on the throttle that she damn near tailgated Corvus on the junction to the runway. Directly off their left side, what appeared to be an Su-57 Felon driven by a pilot with a serious pair of balls was diving in against the taxiing fighters. One of the Centurion C-RAM systems that formed the air defence battery attached to the base was not having any of that bullshit, however, its twenty-mike gatling gun turning in the Felon's direction and forcing it away before it could get a gun run in or drop any bombs.
"What are the Patriots doing?" Nagase asked. If the enemy could get fighters in right above the base, what was the point of having them there?
"Sukhoi 57s." Ash replied. "The radars wouldn't have seen them until they were too close."
"Even still." Nagase sounded pessimistic. They pulled out onto the runway.
"Blaze, emergency takeoff, go, go, go!" The officers in the ATC were urging Ash to get off the runway and into the air to defend the base. Blaze slammed the throttle so hard she nearly derailed the handle. The Mudhen quickly gained enough speed to generate enough lift to get into the air. She looked around for that Su-57.
"FELON, SIX-O'CLOCK!" Nagase bellowed louder than Ash had ever heard her yell. She cursed. She had fuck-all for airspeed and almost no maneuverability. Ash started pre-flaring, preparing for a missile to be sent up their tailpipe, but that wasn't going to save her from a gun run which the Felon seemed to be moving into position for. Ash looked over her shoulder and banked as hard right as the Mudhen could manage. A missile fired from behind the Felon knocked it right out of the air. The entire aircraft exploded spectacularly.
"Archer, splash one!" Grimm called out on the radio. Ash made sure the Felon was most definitely out of the fight before scanning for Grimm. She didn't see him at first, before realising that he was only just taking to the skies now.
"Grimm, did you just-"
"Focus on the mission, ma'am." Grimm shot down Ash's question. She was bewildered. Grimm was quite possibly the first pilot to score an air-to-air kill, from the ground. Shaking off her initial shock, Ash turned north-east and lit up the Mudhen's radar. She was looking for targets.
"Woah, Blaze!" Corvus was the next to save Ash's arse, firing a Sidewinder at, hitting and destroying a second Felon that had been lining up to take a shot at them. "Corvus, splash one. C'mon, keep your eyes out."
"Wilco. Thanks." Ash shook her head. She just wasn't in the game today. A brief observation of the airspace immediately over and surrounding Sand Island yielded no results. Ash was then able to focus her attention on the strike group ingressing towards Sand Island from the north-east.
"Where's Chopper and Samurai on this?" Nagase asked.
"Intercepting a second attack group to the south-east." Control answered. "You're it from Wardog for now."
"Lovely." Ash muttered. "Tally, ten, fifteen, twenty… fucking hell, they're out for blood today."
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, EDGE / F-15E
VAMPIRE 1 / CORVUS / F-16C
VAMPIRE 2 / HEX / F-16C
VAMPIRE 3 / KRONUS / F-16C
VAMPIRE 4 / DAREDEVIL / F-16C
VAMPIRE 5 / MISTY / F-16C
VAMPIRE 6 / DEVON / F-16C
VAMPIRE 7 / BRUISER / F-16C
VAMPIRE 8 / FUJIBAR / F-16C
VAMPIRE 9 / ARCHER / F-16C
"Take out the bombers. Don't let them touch the runway!" Control ordered.
"Wilco." Blaze acknowledged. From the information she could gather from the radar and the datalink, Blaze figured out that there was a bomber group being protected by a forward group of approximately twenty Su-27s. The Su-27 Flankers were inferior to the upgraded Su-35s in terms of avionics and manoeuvrability, but they carried the same R-73s and R-77s, which made them a threat. Fortunately, they had crossed into the range of Sand Island's land-based MIM-104 Patriot batteries. At least a couple of launchers attached to those batteries had already started engaging the Flankers.
"Red Flight and Wardog, stick with me, we'll hook east-north-east on the fighters. Gold Flight, push straight north and outflank their bombers." Corvus ordered as the overall highest-ranking officer amongst the defenders of Sand Island. Blaze stuck close to Corvus's wing. The majority of the Su-27s were backing off in the face of being fired upon by SAMs, but a few were daring enough to push the squadron of F-16s. Blaze popped up above her temporary wingmen and locked up one of those Su-27s.
"Blaze, fox 3!" Blaze called out as she loosed off an AMRAAM. The missile successfully tracked on the Flanker. Blaze sank back down to fit in with the Vipers. Four of the Vipers were breaking off north to get around the fighter screen. Blaze and the remaining five Vipers were moving east-north-east to envelop the Flankers. The Yuktobanian fighter screen was retreating away from the Osean Vipers. Blaze knew the two reasons behind this. The Flankers were evading both ground and air fire, and they were attempting to draw the Oseans out of the protective net that the MIM-104s on Sand Island provided. They didn't have much choice in the latter case if they wanted to intercept the approaching bombers before they got their payloads away against the base.
"Splash one." Nagase reported. Blaze's randomly fired missile had actually hit something.
"I'll be fucked." Blaze was surprised by this. She had to be mindful of her speed. At full burner the Eagle was easily capable of outrunning the smaller and lighter Vipers.
"This is as close as we're getting before a merge." Hex, a member of Vampire, said.
"Yeah. All aircraft, weapons free." Corvus ordered. The radio was filled with pilots calling their shots for the next few seconds. Blaze kept her hand off the trigger. She only had five missiles and she wanted to save at least a couple of those for the bombers. By this point, the Osean fighters were at the very edge of the effective range of the Patriots. The Flankers were separating into three groups. Two large groups of eight each and a smaller three ship reserve group. The attack groups turned back into the Oseans and started locking up aircraft. Blaze's RWR went crazy with pings.
"Missiles in the air!" Nagase called out once they started taking fire.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious!" Blaze sarcastically replied, pushing into the line of fire. Nagase watched as they started getting ahead of Vampire Squadron.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Nagase asked, moderately concerned.
"What's the worst that could happen?" Blaze retorted.
"Catching a missile, catching gun-" Nagase began to reply in a serious manner.
"That was a rhetorical question, Kei!" Blaze rebuffed Nagase. "Have chaff ready to go on my mark."
Nagase placed her thumb over the countermeasure ejection button. "Ready."
"Here we go!" Blaze rolled over so that the cockpit was facing the ocean and pulled back on the stick. They went into a rapid dive. Blaze felt the blood running to her head as she applied a negative gee force. Blaze rolled the aircraft the right way up on the descent down. She levelled out at one thousand feet and flew straight for a few seconds before hooking hard to the right.
"Chaff, now, now, now!" Blaze called as she executed the turn. Nagase pressed the button under her thumb and chaff dispensers were shit out of the rear of the Mudhen. Blaze pulled the throttle back and slowed down. Blaze's gambit was on tricking the missile into thinking the Mudhen was a chaff cloud. A risky gamble, but as evidenced by a missile zipping into the chaff clouds behind her, the gambit worked. Blaze rolled the aircraft over once again and dived towards the ocean surface.
"Radar off." Blaze ordered. A confused Nagase complied with the order. Blaze damn near slammed the Mudhen into the ocean surface with how low she pushed the aircraft against the ground. Such a feat was known as terrain masking. Blaze looked at the altimeter. 1.
"We're not a Raptor, Blaze." Nagase pointed out the obvious.
"Maybe not, but this might work with any luck." Blaze replied. What she was doing wouldn't work against the high-power, high-resolution radar of an Su-35, but it could work in theory against Su-27s equipped with a radar out of the eighties.
"What are you targeting?" Nagased asked.
"The bombers." Blaze replied. They were slipping underneath the fighter screen that was tangled in a fight with Vampire Squadron. The dark grey paint job of the Mudhen would help screen them from visual detection against the backdrop of the ocean late into the day. Blaze had some distance to cover. According to the datalink, the bombers were a touch under two hundred kilometres away.
"Sand Island Tower, this is Lieutenant-Colonel Ford." An old patronising voice popped up on the radio. "Approaching the base."
"Here comes the major's replacement." Nagase whispered.
"This is Sand Island Control, do not approach the base, we are under air attack! I say again, we are under air attack!" Somebody from the control centre on the island answered the Wardog squadron leader replacement.
"I trust you can protect the runway until I arrive?" Ford asked. Blaze thought that Ford sounded like a dickhead of a senior-grade officer.
"We should be good, but I wouldn't be too hasty to approach." Corvus advised Ford whilst obviously in the middle of a harrowing turn. He received no reply from the Lieutenant-Colonel. Blaze was within a hundred kilometres of her intended targets. Theoretically she could have popped up and engaged them at this distance with AMRAAMs, but she only had three left while there appeared to be at least ten bombers. Blaze continued to close the distance.
"We don't have enough ammo to shoot down all of those Bears." Nagase correlated the number of targets with their weapons status.
"We might be able to force the Bears to withdraw." Blaze's plan wasn't to shoot down all of the bombers. Only most of them. She glanced at the datalink. Vampire Squadron had merged with the Flankers.
If there was anything the Viper could do, it was turning. The lightweight fighter was lethal in a rate fight, something that Vampire Squadron had to leverage to their advantage since they were outnumbered almost two to one. Seven Vipers versus twelve Flankers. Archer was in a rate fight with two of them on his tail. He had managed to get the attackers to waste their R-73s on him, forcing them to try and get gun kills while Archer still had a singular Sidewinder at his disposal. He brought the nose of his Viper around into the path of a Flanker chasing down a buddy.
"Archer, fox 2!"
"Misty, fox 2!"
Archer's AIM-9X detonated around the cockpit region of the Su-27 he had fired the missile at, killing the pilot of that particular aircraft.
"Splash one, you're clear Mist!" Archer called out to his squadmate.
"Splash one." Misty, Vampire 5, called out. "Coming to clear your-"
Misty's radio was cut off. Archer looked around. He saw the smoking wreck of an F-16. Misty.
"Shit! Misty's down!" Archer exclaimed, bringing the fight downwards with a Flanker still on his tail. He was within the speed band that the Viper started turning faster than the Flanker. The pilot of the Flanker saw this, didn't like where things were going and reversed the turn. Big mistake. Grimm put his nose where the Flanker was going and put a burst of twenty-mike shells roughly where he thought the Flanker would be by the time the shells crossed the distance between the two aircraft. His prediction was spot on. The high explosive filler in the shell ripped off the wing of the Flanker. The Flanker went into a death spiral as the pilot ejected from the aircraft.
"Splash two!" Archer called the kill, looking for another target. He found one, a Flanker chasing after Hex. "Hex, break left."
"Breaking left!" Hex banked hard to one side. Grimm was lining up his gun sight with the Flanker when a missile slapped his target right out of the air. Corvus flew through the smoke left behind.
"Splash two." Corvus calmly called out in the moment. The loss of two Flankers was balanced out by the loss of another Viper. Archer spotted Fujibar's Viper in a dive of death towards the floor, his canopy cracked open and coated in what Archer could only assume was blood. Archer spotted a smoke trail curving towards him. He dropped the afterburner back, popped flares and dived. The missile fired at him fortunately went for the flares instead of his tailpipe. A Flanker was going for a high-aspect gun pass. Archer jinked the shot by pulling hard to one side. The shots missed. As the Flanker dived past Archer, he pushed his Viper into the dive and pursued the Flanker. The Flanker turned. Archer pulled lead on the Flanker and fired one short burst. His aim was spot on today, catching the Flanker right in the cockpit region and tearing the pilot to shreds.
"Tally Bears, two-o'clock high." Nagase spotted the bomber formation as they stuck to the ocean surface. Blaze looked up. The bomber group consisted of Tu-95 Bears, propeller-powered strategic missile carriers that dated back to the early fifties in their design. Blaze passed underneath the Bears and put a couple of kilometres worth of separation between the two parties before she pitched the nose up. They climbed.
"Can I turn on the radar now?" Nagase asked.
"Go for it." Blaze let her. The F-15E was now emitting radar waves. Any aircraft in their immediate radius would have spotted them. Blaze switched the radar to its TWS mode and locked up three targets corresponding to the number of AMRAAMs she had left on her pylons.
"Wardog 1, fox 3, fox 3!" Blaze called out as she let the missiles loose on their targets. At point-blank range there was no chance in hell the Bears would have been able to avoid the AMRAAMs. Boom, boom and boom. Splash three.
"Splash three." Blaze said as much. She switched to her Sidewinders and individually locked targets for each missile. "Blaze, fox 2, fox 2."
In theory the Bears could have thrown off Sidewinders at this range, but the lack of any deployment of flares indicated to her that they either didn't have flares equipped or they didn't know the missiles were in the air. In either case, boom, boom, splash five. The five surviving Bears dispersed to get away from the threat, for all the good it did them. Blaze pulled towards the smaller group of two and went to her guns. As one of the Bears was in the middle of banking away from the threat, she straddled it with cannon fire from wingtip to wingtip. All four turboprop engines went up in flames as their housings were perforated by twenty-mil shells packed with high explosive. The Bear started tipping towards the ocean floor with no thrust to keep it up in the air.
"Splash six Bears." Blaze called out.
"Splash seven Bears." Blaze called out again, catching Archer's attention for a moment in the middle of a sustained nine-gee turn. By the sounds of it, he figured that the lone Wardog pilot had gotten past the fighter screen and was wreaking havoc amongst the bomber group. The Flanker right on his ass left him no extra time to ponder the matter. Archer had already flared off one missile and he wasn't sure if this Flanker had another R-73 ready. Despite the fact that he was running dangerously low on countermeasures, Archer decided to test his hypothesis by pulling back on the throttle, deploying the Viper's airbrake and commencing a roll manoeuvre. He kept a firm eye on the Flanker the whole time. No missiles came out from the Flanker's pylons, a sign that the enemy had no Fox 2s. However, he had plenty of cannon ammo. With some subtle manipulation of the rudder, Archer avoided catching a bullet and forced the Flanker to overshoot. Archer steadied out his Viper and got a quick shot off at the Flanker before the pilot started turning. He got a couple of shots on target, causing the Flanker to spit out smoke from a breach in its skin, but the Flanker was still flying.
"Dammit." Archer muttered, initiating the attacking position in the resulting rate fight. The Flanker appeared to be wobbling. Archer's shots had jammed the Flanker's starboard wing control surfaces in place. The Flanker tried to abandon the fight by lighting burners and running, sealing the aircraft's fate. Archer waited until the Flanker was out of the AMRAAM's minimum firing range before locking the Flanker up and firing one missile.
"Archer, fox 3!" Archer called out. The Flanker dropped chaff canisters, and bizarrely that saved it. Archer frowned and fired another missile. "Archer, fox 3!"
"Archer, break break break!" Corvus's voice urgently popped up. Archer didn't hesitate, choosing to bank hard right and low. Preemptively he dumped flares to ward off a missile that never came. Corvus was pursuing a Flanker on Archer's tail. Corvus put rounds right up the combustion chamber of the Flanker's twin turbofans. "Corvus, splash one."
"Woah, thanks for the save." Archer thanked his flight lead.
"Don't mention it." Corvus replied. "Hey, it looks like they're on the retreat."
Archer looked around. What he saw first was the conspicuous absence of a half-dozen Vipers. It was just him and Corvus left. Blaze was pulling back towards Vampire Squadron's position.
"Bears are pulling back, too." Blaze rang up on the radio.
"Any station on this net, this is Wardog 1, radio check?" Chopper's crackled voice followed a moment after Blaze's.
"Chopper, this is Corvus, reading you loud and clear." Corvus welcomed Chopper into the fray. "Can you get over here a little faster please? The situation's dire."
"Coming. Define dire." Chopper replied. Archer noticed that his blip on the datalink was moving a little faster than it was previously.
"We are seven aircraft down, dire." Corvus clarified.
"...Ah" was all Chopper had to reply with.
Vampire Squadron's luck had finally run dry. Of the twelve aircraft that formed the squadron prior to the declaration of war earlier that morning, only four remained. Of the twelve pilots that formed the squadron, only five remained, and one of those five had been mortally injured in the attack. Major Hamilton, Captain Buchner, a first lieutenant and Second Lieutenant Grimm were the only operational pilots in the squadron. Captain Shapiro was in the intensive care ward with a missing leg and severe blood loss.
The remaining nine pilots and weapon systems officers stationed at Sand Island were huddled around in a circle.
"Seven pilots out of twenty-four. This whole situation is going from bad to worse." Hamilton was speaking.
"Hey, shouldn't that new squad leader guy be here by now?" Chopper pointed out the absence of the man who was meant to replace Bartlett.
"He's probably getting briefed by Perrault now." Pops mentioned. He yawned loudly. "Allen, if there's nothing else you want to bring up, we should let the younglings rest."
Hamilton nodded. "Lieutenant Paige, stay with us for a moment. The rest of you are dismissed. Sleep while you've got the time."
The small crowd peeled away from the hangars until it was just Hamilton, Pops and Ash left in the same spot. Ash was tapping her thighs with her hands nervously.
"You needed me, sir?" Ash asked. She had no idea what she was in for.
"We wanted to give you praise for your performance today." Pops said the long and the short of what Hamilton was about to say. Hamilton pointed to Pops.
"You've got a gift as a leader, lieutenant. The performance you've given today is what I'd expect of a senior-grade officer. Regardless of what happens in the future, keep doing what you're doing. You're doing good." Hamilton, as the second highest ranking officer on the base, complimented Ash. Ash smiled shyly.
"I'm just doing my job, but… thank you, sir." Ash replied curtly.
"That's all. Get some rest. You're going to need it."
"Yes, sir." Ash stood up and headed for the squad room. She sensed the mood was rather dim as she walked in, so Ash didn't bother trying to knock up a conversation with anyone. She stripped down to her uniform, had a quick shower, and decompressed on a lounge in the main body of the room. Before she knew it, she was asleep.