After Chopper, Nagase and Grimm had returned from their sortie, the rest of the 28th of September was uneventful. With Wardog being four aircraft strong, the squadron was taking up the alert roster in twelve hour shifts, two crews each.
The 29th wasn't much busier. While the roster had been changing, Genette came around and asked to take a photo of the pilots and wizzos. They got three shots. One each for the separate pilot and WSO groups, and one with all seven of them in the frame. They were chaotic to say the least. In the combined photo, Kitagawa and Nagase were being hoisted up by Wolf and Chopper respectively. In the WSO photo, Chopper was being balanced like a log by Wolf, while Kitagawa and Pops were both laughing at them. In the pilot's photo, Chopper had Grimm by the neck, his other arm conveniently obscuring Ash's face. Nagase was looking at the two in amusement.
Sitting on that bench behind her hangar, Kitagawa, Ash, Nagase and Pops were looking at the last photo.
"Look at this way, your personal security will be fine." Pops glazed over the fact that Chopper was faceblocking Ash.
"That is true, that is true." Ash did concede that Pops had a point.
"On the other hand, I feel bad for Grimm." Nagase drew attention to the fact that Grimm was effectively getting strangled in that position in the photo.
"Half a foot shorter and a hell of a lot thinner? Recipe for a bad time." Kitagawa agreed with Nagase's sentiments.
30 September, 2010
Ash had been informed that they would be taking part in a sortie on the 30th the night before, and to have Wardog Squadron report to the briefing room by ten in the morning. She wasn't aware of the scale of operation they were assisting in until the briefing was underway.
"Listen up!" Perrault was beginning the briefing. "The biggest mistake Yuktobania has made in their blitz attacks is that they failed to sink any of our aircraft carriers."
That fact came at a surprise to many in the squad. It had been an assumption of Yuktobanian doctrine for decades that any major offensive against Osea would have included the all-out targeting of its Pacific and Ceres Ocean stationed aircraft carriers.
"We're withdrawing our intact carriers to the Bennion Sea, where we'll use them as a base to build our counterstrike force. You've been called to duty for a very important mission, people." Perrault finished his bit, letting Chaeny take over from him.
"Today, at 1500 hours, four carriers from the Third Fleet will be rendezvousing at the Axle Deeps." Chaeny took over. The projector was showing a circled point, approximately a hundred kilometres west of Cape Alexandria: the body of land that led into the Bannion Sea. "These carriers are the Vulture, the Buzzard, the Crow and the Kestrel, the latter two of which escaped Saint Hewlett thanks to your assistance."
Ash recognised the names. She remembered seeing the OFS Crow and OFS Kestrel during the Saint Hewlett mission.
"Your mission is to coordinate with the Kestrel and the Crow and to provide top cover for the carriers as they meet. Should you make contact, defend the carriers at all cost." Chaeny came to a conclusion. "Severe weather conditions may affect your sensor coverage. Keep that in mind out there."
The prelude to leaving Sand Island and actually leaving Sand Island were uneventful. They were loaded with a full air-to-air loadout. Ten AMRAAMs, four Sidewinders and a drop tank with six hundred gallons worth of fuel to increase the time they could remain on station without hitting up a tanker aircraft.
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E
WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C
Wardog flew out north-west to meet with the carriers. Rather precariously, the Kestrel and the Crow were returning from operations close to Yuktobania. If Blaze had been a commander of Yuktobanian forces and she saw the carriers retreating, she would be sending wave after wave of every MiG-31K, Tu-22M3 and Tu-160 she could get her hands on.
Two-thirds of the way to their meetup point with the first two carriers, Samurai decided to engage her pilot in conversation.
"Hey Ash." Samurai started.
"Mmm?" Blaze trilled.
"What had you so red-faced the other day?" Samurai asked. Blaze frowned. She had been red-faced a few times in the past few days for various reasons.
"You're gonna have to be more specific than that." Blaze indicated as much.
"Tuesday afternoon, when we got back from blowing up an island." Samurai narrowed it down for her. Blaze thought about what she had been doing around then. She suddenly blushed when she remembered.
"Oh. Uhh…" Blaze tried to think of a lie, but her initial hesitation told Samurai all she needed to know.
"It's easier to do when nobody's around, to be fair." Samurai was completely sympathetic.
"Quite." Blaze remained mostly silent on the topic. Samurai didn't probe for further details, and the cockpit was quiet for the rest of the journey to the carrier group's location. Once they got close, Ash looked at her kneeboard for the callsign of the carrier's ADIZ commander. Appropriately, an AWACS.
"AWACS Owl Hunter, this is Wardog Squadron, approaching your area of control from the south, over." Blaze attempted to make contact with the AWACS in the area.
"Smells like air force over your way!" The COMMO onboard the E-2C patrolling the area joked. "Wardog, this is AWACS Owl Hunter, reading you loud and clear. I've got a place for you on my west perimeter. Turn 260 for 200 at Angels 20."
"Wilco, moving." Blaze moved the stick and started moving towards the point where Owl Hunter wanted them. On the way to their loitering area, Blaze spotted the two carriers on the ocean surface far below. Even though they each individually weighed in at over a hundred thousand tons and came in at three hundred metres long, the Kestrel and the Crow looked tiny from twenty thousand feet up in the air. Once they were on station, Blaze checked in with the AWACS.
"Owl Hunter, Wardog 1, bogey dope." Blaze asked for the direction of the closest group of bandits.
"Wardog 1, Owl Hunter, picture is clear." Owl Hunter responded. The overhead radar of the Hawkeye wasn't detecting any threats within its radar scan range. Promising for now, but Blaze had little doubt that the Yuktobanians would sortie a strike against the carrier at some point in the next couple of hours.
Blaze felt slightly out of place. She was a Mudhen pilot, surrounded by two Mudhens and a Viper, assisting in the escort and defence of a pair of aircraft carriers amongst a gigantic group of Growlers, Hornets and Super Hornets. At the very least, Wardog Squadron wasn't the only Air Force squadron in the area. F-15C Eagles from a squadron on the mainland were contributing to the carrier's defence.
"Jeez." Grimm almost sounded bored. "Do you think the Yuktobanians know the carriers are pulling back?"
"Don't jinx it." Zoomer beckoned. "I'd like to not pull nine gees for at least one mission."
"Dare I say Archer has a point." Blaze put in her two cents. "Something should have come by now."
And yet as the hours went by, not a single blip appeared on radar or RWR. The carriers were approaching the Axle Deeps, a body of water that led down into a massive underwater cavern some seven kilometres deep. The other two carriers forming the other half of the battle group, the OFS Buzzard and the OFS Vulture, were already at the rendezvous and were patrolling around the area waiting for the Kestrel and the Crow. Blaze presumed there was radio communications going on between the ships that they couldn't hear from the air, because the Buzzard and the Vulture broke their circle pattern to form a line as the entire group prepared to move on from the Axle Deeps to the Bannion Sea.
The weather down below was steadily getting worse. There had been a thick cloud blanket over virtually the entire Osean seaboard, and as the clouds steadily turned a dark grey, rain and hail rolled in. The clouds and rain on their own weren't much cause for concern since the majority of radar systems operated at a frequency that could bypass it entirely, but giant chunks of hail were throwing off the radar picture. Even so, as Blaze brought the aircraft in a slow banking turn north, Samurai indicated audible interest at something.
"What's up?" Blaze asked.
"I had a return on something for a second." Samurai said. "Can you turn us west for a sec?"
Blaze complied and turned to the left. She gave Samurai a few seconds to analyse the data.
"Hmmpth." Samurai muttered. "Must have been a hail chunk. Never mind."
"This fucking weather." Blaze mused. "On the upside, there's no way they're not having issues too."
"Owl Hunter, ALCON!" Owl Hunter was suddenly yelling on the radio. "Ballistic missile tracks inbound from the west and north-west!"
"The fuck-" Blaze exclaimed.
"Tally rocket, eight-o'clock high!" Grimm had spotted something to the squad's left. He started pulling out of formation as Blaze scanned the skies in that direction looking for whatever Grimm had seen. She spotted something: a bright yellow glow leaving behind a massive trail. It was moving fast, a hell of a lot faster than any aircraft she had seen. Grimm was right, it was a missile. The missile started to pitch down and really started zooming.
"Archer, fox 3!" Grimm loosed off an AMRAAM at it. There was no way, the incoming missile was moving way too fast for the AMRAAM to manoeuvre towards it.
"Owl Hunter, Wardog, tally IRBMs beginning their attack phase from the west!" Blaze called out the fact that they had seen the ballistics.
"Owl Hunter, Hunter 102, tally ballistic projectiles bearing 330 from bullseye!" The voice of a Navy Super Hornet pilot rang up.
"Archer, splash one!" Grimm reported. Blaze looked around.
"Splash one, what?" Blaze asked, confused as all shit. There was no way he had just shot down a ballistic missile with an AMRAAM. A cloud of fragments flew at supersonic speeds towards the ocean. Gods be damned, he had done it.
"Splash one ballistic missile, captain." Grimm indicated as much.
"Colour me surprised." Blaze switched back into game mode. "Owl Hunter, Wardog, we're moving west at burner to intercept the launch platforms. Wardog, on me!"
Grimm's shot against the incoming ballistic missiles was a one in a million chance of working while the missiles were in their terminal attack phase. Even if they couldn't target the launch platforms directly, they had a much better chance of killing the missiles while they were in their approach phase away from the carriers. It was up to the ships escorting the carriers to target the missiles that had already breached the CAP barrier. One of those ships was the OFS Excalibur.
As the ship coordinating the overall air defence cordon around the Kestrel, there was a large number of radio communications, datalink sharing and sensor emissions coming from and to the cruiser.
"Tracks 114 to 123 classified as Kinzhals!"
"Intercept window closing in twenty seconds!"
Lieutenant-Commander Ray's response was immediate. "ERAM release on all targets! Get birds out before the window closes!"
"Killing tracks 114 through 123 with birds."
"Forward and aft batteries released. Weapons away!"
"Bridge, TAO, advise the carriers to take evasive action!"
Topside forward and aft of the superstructure, the cells of the two Mark 41 vertical launch systems onboard the Excalibur opened and fired off their payloads, RIM-174 ERAM very long range surface-to-air missiles. An improvement over the previous generation RIM-66 Standard 2, the SM-6 (as the RIM-174s were otherwise known as) were longer ranged and more accurate than the SM-2. A cruiser like the Excalibur could carry one hundred and twenty eight of them, one per VLS cell. While not all of the Excalibur's payload were SM-6s, a good portion of it was, and it was using thirty of them in a single salvo to engage the incoming ballistics. The visibility immediately surrounding the cruiser dropped to zero as the air filled with white smoke.
"Here we go." Samurai called. "Missiles off the nose, one hundred, hot."
Blaze locked up a pair of contacts on her radar, two Kinzhal anti-ship missiles in their approach phase moving at supersonic speed. "Blaze, fox 3!"
"Chopper, fox 3!"
Blaze and Chopper targeted the Kinzhals before they went hypersonic. Four AMRAAMs targeted two missiles. The closure rate was an easy Mach 5 between the anti-ship missiles and the intercepting air-to-air missiles. The AMRAAMs dropped off the radar. So did the Kinzhals.
"Wardog, splash two ASMs." Blaze reported.
"Two more, same bearing, same aspect." Samurai spotted two more Kinzhals on the radar.
"Edge, fox 3."
"Archer, fox 3!"
The second pair of missiles were targeted by Nagase and Grimm. Four AMRAAMs in the air, resulting in two dead Kinzhals.
"Splash two." Samurai called out the splashes for her wingmen.
"Any more of them?" Blaze asked her WSO.
Samurai waited a few seconds before answering that question. "Neg, that's all from this bearing."
"Alright, carry on, find those fucking bombers." Blaze wanted to push on to intercept and destroy the Kinzhal launch platforms.
"Blaze, those were Kinzhals." Corvus piped up. "They're well within the Yuke's air defence cordon."
"Pops has a point." Chopper agreed with Corvus. "And they could be Felons, that's not a fight we're winning."
"Yeah, shit, you're right." Blaze relented. "Turn back."
Wardog Squadron one-eightied and headed back for the carriers. A brisk flight and five minutes later they were back at their designated position. The clouds were rolling in over the fleet, obscuring vision from twenty thousand feet in the air. Blaze looked down. She couldn't see fuck all.
"Fucking christ." Blaze muttered. Although she couldn't see anything visually, the datalink was telling her that all four carriers were still afloat. However, the carrier in the very rear of the formation, OFS Crow, was moving at a snail's pace compared to the Kestrel, Buzzard and Vulture. A destroyer was pulling up alongside it. Blaze didn't have time to fly over and observe the situation, because Owl Hunter piped up again.
"Wardog and Fencer, Owl Hunter, popup group of missiles 240 from bullseye, vector to intercept!" Owl Hunter ordered.
"Wha-" Blaze cut herself short. "Wardog 1."
"Fencer 1." One of the other OADF squadrons, the F-15C equipped Fencer Squadron, acknowledged the order and turned towards the new group of missiles. Wardog followed swiftly. Whereas the previous attacks had come from the west and north-west, this new group of missiles was coming from the south-west. Blaze picked up the missiles on her radar at about eighty kilometres. These had a smaller radar return than the Kinzhals, but they were approaching at a much slower speed. Kalibr anti-ship missiles.
"Fencer Squadron, engaging." Fencer 1 reported. The nine Eagles under his command launched a volley into the approaching cruise missiles.
"Wardog, weapons free." Blaze ordered, locking upon and firing into the cluster of Kalibrs.
"Edge, fox 3."
"Chopper, fox 3!"
"Archer, fox 3, fox 3."
There were some thirty targets to intercept. Blaze watched as the AMRAAMs merged with the Kalibrs. Dozens of flashes of smoke filled the skies, and the majority of the Kalibrs were downed, but some stragglers made it through the venerable wave of AMRAAMs. The cruise missiles slipped underneath Wardog and Fencer Squadrons. Blaze reversed her direction of travel and locked up some of the surviving missiles.
"Blaze, fox 3, fox 3!" Blaze fired two AMRAAMs.
"Knocker, fox 3!" A Fencer pilot had reengaged the Kalibrs.
"Jinx, fox 3, fox 3." Another Fencer pilot continued the intercept.
"Archer, fox 3." Archer joined in on the fun.
The second wave of AMRAAMs was the nail in the coffin for the Kalibrs, splashing all that remained of the group of thirty.
"Owl Hunter, Fencer 1, all targets splashed." Fencer's squadron leader reported the results of the engagement.
"Fencer and Wardog, Owl Hunter, return to your designated positions." Owl Hunter ordered. Blaze took Wardog Squadron with her and returned to their assigned station to the west of the carrier group. On the way back, Blaze laid eyes on the now dangerously out of position OFS Crow, where her fears were confirmed. Smoke was rising from a gigantic hole that had been punched through the rear section of the carrier's flight deck. The faint glow of a fire was visible from an open hangar bay door.
"Ah shit." Blaze murmured.
"Oh my god." Nagase was in disbelief.
"Knuckle up and carry on." Blaze distracted her wingmen from the carrier below and got them to focus on the mission at hand. "Owl Hunter, Wardog 1, bogey dope."
"Wardog 1, Owl Hunter, BRAA, 090 for 70 at Angels 1, hot. Maintain your position, let the other squadrons deal with it." Owl Hunter gave Blaze the position and aspect of the closest enemy target, but then told her to hold her position.
"Wilco, out." Blaze was slightly frustrated, but at the same time she understood why. The Navy flyboys could deal with the new threat to the east of the carriers. They were taking contact from almost every direction.
"Swordsman, fox 3!" Marcus Snow's Snowbird Squadron were the people holding the carrier group's eastern flank. Prior to the operation, Swordsman had questioned why a squadron from the Kestrel was holding up the direction of travel where the Vulture was taking point, but those concerns immediately got put aside when he got vectored in to engage a group of Yak-141s that had appeared within a hundred kilometres of the fleet. His missile travelled at breakneck speed towards the oncoming Yak-141s. The Yuktobanian aircraft had the same gameplan, locking up the Buzzard with their KH-35 Switchblade anti-ship missiles before locking up the approaching Super Hornets with their R-77s.
"Big Bird 111, defending." Brady dumbed chaff and flares and pulled evasive manoeuvres against an approaching missile.
"Big Bird 105, fox 3, defending!" A lady in Swordsman's squadron fired an AMRAAM before pulling away from the engagement to evade. Swordsman pulled up and pushed his Super Hornet all the way to afterburner in a climb away from the R-77 with his name on it. Pulling the stick back, Swordsman pulled beyond the seven-point-five gee limit normally placed on loaded Rhinos to preserve their airframe lifespan. Shorting the lifespan of his Rhino by a few dozen hours saved Swordsman's life, barely remaining out of the range of the R-77's proximity detonator.
"Bird 107 ejecting!" The voice of one of Swordsman's wingman rang true before his radio was cut short. Not everyone in Snowbird Squadron had been as lucky as Swordsman. Swordsman pulled back into the fight against the Yak-141s that had survived the barrage of AMRAAMs. He merged with one of them, avoiding a nose-on burst of gunfire from the 141. Swordsman chose the nose-to-nose - one circle - fight, the type of fight that favoured the Hornet. Damn near slamming the stick into his abdomen, Swordsman was pulling eight gees trying to bring the Yak-141 into his nose. The Yak-141 was coming around onto target faster owing to some careful nozzle management from the pilot, but Swordsman played a card that the Yak-141 didn't have: off-boresight targeting. Swordsman cued a Sidewinder to his helmet-mounted display and launched it at the Yak-141. Before the latter had a chance to get his nose on target, the Sidewinder slammed into him.
"Splash one!" Swordsman called out. His squadron had taken out the stragglers, but the Yak-141s had gotten off their strike package. Swordsman thought about chasing after the missiles, but he didn't want to risk being targeted by the Buzzard's self-defence weapons.
"Helm, hard over port!"
"Hard over port, aye sir!"
The Buzzard turned off its original course and to the left to get the forward and aft point-defence stations on target. Ships of the Hubert-class had a surprisingly tight turn circle for their size and before long the starboard side weapon stations had a clear line of sight against the missiles. The first weapons to fire were the eight-cell box launchers fitted with the RIM-162 Sea Sparrow. They engaged the Switchblades as they crossed the thirty-kilometre mark. A problem with the Sea Sparrow was that the earlier versions - the type fitted to the Buzzard - had a limited number of targets they could engage owing to their semi-active radar guidance. This presented a problem with a spread of twenty missiles bearing in on the carrier. The Buzzard could only knock out half of that salvo before they entered the Sea Sparrow's minimum engagement range. At that point, it was up to the two Phalanx close-in weapon systems to engage the remainder.
"Missile intercept window closed!"
"Vampire, vampire, vampire, killing with CIWS."
The two CIWSs opened fire. Against subsonic and some supersonic missiles, the Phalanx was a very capable system. Twenty-mike cannon shells lit up the sky. Impacted Switchblades careened into the ocean in bursts of flame, but there were too many for the Phalanx to handle in a ten second window.
"Intercept window closed, brace for impact!"
Boom. The Buzzard took one, two, three hits on the waterline. All three missiles penetrated the hull. The rough seas pushed water in through the resulting holes in the side of the ship.
"This is the Buzzard. Missile impacts off our starboard bow. We are still mission capable." A comms officer from the OFS Buzzard stated. Blaze winced. Two of the four carriers had been hit. On the upside, the airspace looked clear for now.
"Hey, does anybody know where those Freestyles came from?" A pilot from one of the carrier squadrons enquired.
"Hold comms." Owl Hunter ordered. Blaze tensed up, waiting for either a new bogey dope or an airspace clear declaration. She got neither. "Ballistic track, 090 from bullseye, hot!"
"Another one?" Samurai exclaimed. "Christ, what's out there now?"
"Steady." Blaze instructed. Samurai made a sound indicating restlessness.
"Missile entering terminal phase. Buzzard, Vulture, commence evasive manoeuvres!" Owl Hunter issued a warning to the two carriers at the tip of the spear. From her position, Blaze couldn't see the Buzzard or the Vulture, but what she did see a split second later was a blinding white flash. Even with a tinted visor, Blaze had to avert her eyes and raise her forearm to her face to keep herself from going blind. It was blinding.
"What in the sweet-" Chopper exclaimed. "Was that a fucking nuke?!"
"Comms!" Blaze ordered. Despite the blinding flash of white, her sensors hadn't been completely jammed out by an electromagnetic pulse, which was an indication that whatever had just been fired was not a nuclear weapon.
"Owl Hunter, I've got eyes on the Buzzard, she's going down!" Swordsman called in from the front of the formation. Blaze's jaw dropped. The Buzzard was sinking?
"Big Bird 102, say again your last?!" Owl Hunter was in disbelief.
"The Buzzard is sinking, I say again, the Buzzard is sinking!" Swordsman repeated what he had just said.
"Second ballistic track detected! All forces, climb or take evasive action! Break east, break east!" Owl Hunter ordered.
Blaze was fairly sure she and Wardog Squadron were outside the blast radius of whatever the hell had just taken out an entire aircraft carrier, but she didn't feel like testing that theory.
"Wardog, climb to Angels 40! Climb, climb, climb!" Blaze ordered with a sense of real urgency, yanking on the stick and climbing from twenty thousand feet to forty thousand feet. The three Mudhens could climb high and fast easily even with a considerable weapons load. The single-engined Viper was not as capable.
"I'll be there in, ah, thirty years." Grimm didn't sound fazed by the situation in spite of the severity of it all. As morbid as it was, Blaze chuckled at Grimm's little joke. She levelled out at a touch over forty thousand feet. She saw a flash of white in the mirrors mounted around the ring of the canopy. The second ballistic missile had detonated.
"Yankee 101, burning in, I'm bailing out!"
"Oh my god. The Vulture's entire topside is on fire!"
Blaze bit her lip. A third carrier had been hit.
The Kestrel was throwing up a massive foam trail in its wake as it made a one-eighty degree turn away from the burning Vulture and the sinking Buzzard. Moving at well over thirty knots, the Kestrel was at real risk of throwing out a propeller shaft, but that danger paled in comparison to catching whatever had taken out two of the four carriers.
"Helm, neutral rudder, all ahead flank!" Captain Nicolas Andersen, the commanding officer of the Kestrel, gave a direct rudder order to the helmsman.
"Neutral rudder, all ahead flank, aye sir." The helmsman repeated Andersen's order to make sure he understood it. Andersen returned to his console and picked up a phone line.
"TAO, Captain, cut Nixie decoy, make them think we've come to a halt." Andersen passed on action orders to the combat information centre.
"Captain!" An officer manning a set of binoculars caught Andersen's attention. "The Excalibur's turning west!"
Andersen looked on in a mixed set of amazement and horror as he watched the Ticonderoga-class cruiser pass a couple of hundred metres away from the Kestrel, moving in the opposite direction.
"What is he doing?"
Ray didn't understand the rationale behind the CO's orders to charge the enemy either, but if he was going to join in a bandwagon straight to hell, he sure as hell wasn't going down without a fight.
"New contact, bearing 087, designated Sierra 1!" An officer manning the sonar console called to Ray. The Excalibur was banging on active sonar, the only way it was going to detect any submarines while cutting through the water at thirty knots.
"Range?!" Ray demanded for a target range.
"Twenty-seven klicks, sir!" The sonar officer gave a range to target.
"Good enough!" Ray declared. "Engage track Sierra 1 with ASROC!"
"Third ballistic missile detected!" Owl Hunter reported.
"Like hell." Ray muttered.
"Killing Sierra 1 with ASROC."
"Aft battery released. Weapons away!"
"Engage track 177 with ERAM!" Ray ordered. Track 177 was the third ballistic missile that Owl Hunter had mentioned a moment before.
"Sir, that's the-" A lieutenant junior grade protested.
"I'm aware of the risk lieutenant, do it!" Ray shot down the LTJG's protest.
"Killing track 177 with birds!"
The Excalibur had two different types of weapons in the air. The first was the RIM-174 ERAM that had previously been used to engage the hypersonic Kinzhals. Two of those were fired from the forward VLS pack and were targeted at the ballistic missile approaching at high speed from the east. The second type were a duo of RUM-139 VL-ASROC missiles. Short for Anti-Submarine ROCket, the ASROC was basically a rocket with a Mark 54 torpedo strapped to the top of it. It was used as an intermediate ranged anti-submarine weapon between ship-launched Mark 54s and the torpedoes carried by the two MH-60R Seahawks embarked on the cruiser.
"ASROCs are live." The sonar officer reported.
"Ballistic impact in five seconds!"
"Brace for shock!" Ray ordered, fully anticipating that the ballistic missile could blow up on impact. He kept his head away from his station and waited for the blast wave.
"Killed track 177!" Somebody called out.
Ray breathed a sigh of relief. "Bridge, TAO, splash one ballistic missile."
"Third ballistic missile has been splashed before detonation!" Owl Hunter reported. Blaze fistbumped the air. "Standby… the airspace is clear."
Blaze popped her mask off and let out a giant sigh of relief. She sank back in her seat, depleted and mentally exhausted.
"All remaining squadrons, check in." Owl Hunter made a call for those still in the air.
"This is Swordsman… present with three of my number. I've got eyes on Wardog and Fencer Squadron." A familiar voice from Saint Hewlett called in.
"Wardog Squadron, all accounted for." Blaze checked in for herself and her three wingmen. The radio was busy with the voices of the remaining squad leaders checking in with the AWACS. There were not many of them left. Of the one hundred or so aircraft that had been airborne at the time that the first shot had been fired, only twenty were still in the air.
"That is fucking depressing." Owl Hunter wasn't hesitant to state his feelings of how few aircraft were left in the air.
"You can say that twice." A Super Hornet pilot chimed in. "Eyes on the Vulture. She's burning down. The Buzzard is gone."
"This is the captain of the OFS Crow. We're heading south at reduced speed." The Crow was still floating, but whatever had hit her had done a number to her propulsion system.
"Grimm, what's your fuel stat?" Blaze asked about Grimm's fuel status. The F-16 pilot had to be thirsting for JP5.
"I don't think I can make it back to Sand Island on my tank." Grimm reported.
"Don't worry about that." Owl Hunter chimed in. "Fencer Squadron, regroup and head south-west for Sand Island."
"Isn't that our job?" Chopper said.
"New orders." Owl Hunter retorted. "Wardog, vector to 030 for a tanker."
"Owl Hunter, enquiry, why are we going north for tanker support?" Blaze asked. Given that their base was far to the south-west, logically they should have been moving south to meet up with a USAF KC-135.
"It's your lucky day, Wardog. Orders from Osean Command. Make haste to Heierlark Air Force Base, stopping over at Akerson and Deagan Air Force Bases to refuel." Owl Hunter gave the reasoning as to why Wardog was going north-east instead of south-west.
"Huh?" Blaze said to herself. "Wardog, acknowledged, outbound 030."
"Heierlark?" Samurai enquired. "Isn't that the advanced flight school?"
"Yes." Blaze led Wardog out to the north-east, over the mainland to meet up with a tanker aircraft.
"Unless they want us to drop Pops off at an instructor squadron, what the fuck are we going there for?" Zoomer was as equally perplexed as everyone else.
"Oi." Corvus took minor offence to the insinuation.
"Find out when we're at Akerson, I guess?" Blaze presumed. "Wardog, head on."