"Who do you think is covering up the battles?" Genette asked Bartlett a question as the ex-pilot and current pilot sat on camping chairs in one of the hangars facing the sunrise. An old C-1 Greyhound was located behind them, its wings folded.

September 26, 2010

Sand Island Air Force Base

Bartlett thought about his answer. "Listen. The only thing across that ocean is Murska Air Force Base. That's Yuktobanian territory."

"But… haven't we been allies with the Yukes since the war fifteen years ago?" Genette seemed perplexed.

"Yeah. That's why we got people - uh, I hope that's why we got people working their asses off trying to figure out what the hell's going on over there." Bartlett was just as perplexed as Genette was seemingly. "People with fancy uniforms and long titles probably have hotlines ringing off the hook in their offices."

"The government probably doesn't want the public to get riled up about it." Genette harboured a guess as to why there was a blackout policy being enforced on the island.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter anyway, soldiers like us are too stupid to think for ourselves, so we just gotta keep our mouths shut when they tell us to." Bartlett glanced over at Genette. "I feel kinda bad for you, actually."

"Hah. It's alright. I get to be with you guys." Genette was unfazed by the whole situation.

"He's probably hating this more than anybody." A voice rang out from behind the pair. Bartlett shook his head. Genette looked back. Captain Buchner approached, a case of beer and a chair of his own in hand.

"Hmm?" Genette didn't take Buchner's meaning.

"Jack here used to have a lady friend in Yuktobania." Buchner explained the joke. Bartlett lightly chuckled as the F-16 pilot took a seat in between the pair. He put down the beer case.

"Ah… that's just an old war wound now." Bartlett brushed it off, but judging by the reddening of his cheeks, Genette figured it was more than that. Bartlett looked at the beer case. "Tropical? Where'd you get that from?"

"Hamilton's stash. Figured he wouldn't mind." Buchner popped the caps off three bottles with a pocket knife and handed two of them to his comrades.

"Thanks." Genette took a sip and placed the bottle in his chair's glass holder.

"You're a legend, do you know that, Pops?" Bartlett complimented Buchner. The Wardog squad leader hadn't had a beer in some months.

"Don't thank me, I'm just the postman in this case." Buchner slowly sipped away at his drink. The three pilots kicked up their feet and watched the sun rise over Sand Island.

In Wardog's squadron room, Ash's eyes started flickering open. The dark brown haired woman stretched and yawned. She looked around. The sun was rising, something that confused Ash. When she had nodded off, the sun had already been up. Ash looked at her watch. 6:21. 26/09. She had slept through the entirety of the day before. Ash looked around. She was the only person in the room. Ash went to the small pantry counter and checked the coffee machine. There was half a jug already filled up and it was still hot. Somebody had passed through recently. Not letting that deter her, Ash poured herself a cup, practically inhaled that down and poured herself a second cup. She turned on the TV at the front of the room and set it to whatever had been pre-recorded before the media blackout.

"How To Train Your Dragon. Cool." Ash put down the TV remote and went to make sure that all of her equipment was squared away. G-suit good to go, vest properly stocked and in functioning order, she was currently wearing her boots, and her helmet was in the aircraft. Ash went back out, flopped on the lounge and watched the movie. At around 0700, Gammon entered.

"Morning, Blaze." The titan of a man greeted Ash when he spotted her.

"Hey Ghost." Ash returned the greeting. Gammon went into the locker room to grab his equipment.

"Do you have the roster by any chance?" Ash asked when Gammon went to leave, dressed in his vest and g-suit.

"Uh… it should be on the laptops." Gammon replied. "If not, you can grab one from the photocopier. I gotta go."

"Have fun." Ash saw Gammon leave and once again she was on her own. Ash watched How To Train Your Dragon for another ten minutes before she got bored and decided to look at the Alert 5 roster. She didn't have to go far, Wardog's roster was literally set as the background. Ash's next Alert 5 shift wasn't until 1000. With that information engrained in her head, Ash sat back down and saw the movie through to its completion. When the movie finished, Ash flicked through to the next prerecorded show on the TV. Top Gear. Cars weren't her thing, but the humour possessed by the show's trio of presenters was enough to keep her hooked.

The door opened.

"Still with us, Ash?" Kitagawa asked as she entered. Ash flopped over the back of the lounge so that Kitagawa was upside down from her perspective.

"Did I miss anything?" Ash enquired about any new events that had occurred while she had been asleep.

"Wireless comms are back up. Radio blackout's still in effect. We're now hosting a flight's worth of C-5s." Kitagawa listed off the gist of what had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

"Galaxies?" Ash sat upright. "Who'd they bring in?"

"A complete Patriot battery and a couple of C-RAM trucks." Kitagawa replied. She poured herself a cup of water and sat down next to Ash.

"That's all?" Ash was surprised there hadn't been more going on, especially with yesterday's massive missile attack.

"Well, I suppose Vampire made contact with a Yuke Tu-95, but nothing came of that." Kitagawa relented and told Ash about one of the less interesting events.

"Fair." Ash leant back against the lounge and watched the TV. Kitagawa scootched closer to her. Ash didn't complain. They sat together and watched the show for a couple of hours before they were due to take over the alert shift. When that time came, Ash muted the TV and went to get changed into her kit. G-suit, vest, gloves, all good. Kitagawa wasn't far behind with her own kit. Ash walked down to the hangars, where Gammon and Bartlett were waiting to be relieved.

"Blaze and Samurai on duty, sir." Blaze reported once the major was within earshot.

"Welcome back to the land of the living. Alert duty's all yours." Bartlett handed off Wardog's contribution of the alert roster to the Osean airhead and the Sotoan exchange wizzo.

"Thanks." Ash punched her card in and rushed up into the cockpit of her Mudhen. Making sure that the aircraft was connected to the ground power, Ash pulled out the book she had stowed in the little compartment below her seat and picked up from where she had left off a couple of nights ago. While being shoved in a tiny metal tube under the ocean for months at a time wasn't her idea of a good time, The Hunt For Red October was an entertaining thriller detailing submarine warfare. Ash had been about halfway through the paperback when she had left it off, and six hours later, as the sun started to dim, she was within twenty or thirty pages of finishing.

MEEP. MEEP. MEEP. MEEP. MEEP.

"Fuck." Ash secured the book under the ejection seat, chucked on her helmet and began the startup process. Kitagawa practically jumped into her seat in the back.

"Hey, at least it's not a missile attack." Kitagawa tried to be reassuring.

"At least." Ash replied. As soon as the engines had sufficiently spooled up and the chocks had been taken out from the wheels, Ash pulled the Mudhen out of the hangar and towards the runway.

"Blaze, radio check." Ash didn't know who she was getting paired with for today.

"Hex, reading you loud and clear." Hex, one of Vampire's pilots, was Ash's wingman for today.

"Ack. Control, Blaze, SITREP?" Ash wanted to know what they were about to get themselves into.

"Blaze, Control, two unknown aircraft are approaching the base at very high altitude. Bearing 250, angels 40 for three hundred. Intercept and destroy if necessary." Control gave the intercept duo the rundown.

"Acknowledged." Ash had written the information down. "Blaze, taking off, runway main."

WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E

VAMPIRE 1 / HEX / F-16C

"Hex, taking off, main runway." Hex was following Blaze closely.

Forty thousand feet was a very long way off the ground, but it was still below the officially claimed flight ceiling for the Mudhen and the Viper. As she left the vicinity of Sand Island, Ash banked so that she was facing down the bearing that control had given them, lit the afterburners and pitched up at a sharp angle. In no time at all, Blaze levelled out at Angels 40 and proceeded at mil power towards the bogies.

"Tally two." Samurai called. "Right on the money."

"Got an ID?" Blaze asked.

"Wait one…" Samurai waited for the information provided by the radar to update. "It's something big and slow. Shit, they're moving at a snail's pace compared to us."

"Yeah right." Blaze carried on to get closer to the bogies. They weren't emitting any kind of radar signals, at least not that the radar warning receiver was picking up. They definitely weren't civilian aircraft that had gotten lost, but at the speed they were going, Blaze didn't think they were fighter aircraft. There was a possibility that the unknown pair of aircraft could be bombers.

"Radar return's too small to be a Bear." Samurai observed. Blaze figured they weren't Blackjacks either.

"Tu-22s?" Blaze suggested.

"I don't think so, they're flying at a Backfire's stall speed." Samurai replied.

"Oh hang on." Blaze spotted something at their level. "Tally two, twelve-o'clock on the nose."

"Seen." Hex spotted what Blaze had seen.

"Yeah tally." Samurai spotted it as well. Two small dark lines on the horizon that were getting closer. These were their bogies. Blaze keyed her radio transmit button.

"Unidentified aircraft in the vicinity immediately west of Sand Island, this is the Osean Air Force fighter directly off your nose. Change your course thirty degrees north or we will be forced to take more aggressive action." Blaze transmitted a notice to the unknown aircraft. She banked to the right and made a 180-degree turn to merge with them.

"Don't bother with the radio Blaze, they're drones. Eagleeyes." Hex informed Blaze. Blaze raised an eyebrow. The Eagleeye - officially designated the MiG-133 Eagleeye - was a Yuktobanian long-range reconnaissance drone, roughly equivalent to the Osean RQ-4 Global Hawk. While they were smaller than the RQ-4, they had roughly the same endurance.

"Control, Blaze, tally two bogies, they're Yuke recon drones. Eagleeyes." Blaze reported this finding to the base control centre.

"Roger that, two MiG-133s. Weapons safe at this time. Direct them away." Control's orders were clear.

"Ack." Blaze acknowledged, pulling away and circling away so that she could get wing to wing with the first drone. Judging by the roundels, it was definitely a Yuktobanian operated example. Blaze pulled ahead of the drone and dumped some flares to get the operator's attention. That didn't work. Blaze then crossed across the drone's direction of travel. That didn't get the operator's attention.

"Are Eagleeyes remote-controlled or autonomous?" Blaze asked, unsure.

"Modes for both." Samurai replied, observing the drone's movements. "This far out though, they're probably following a programmed flight path."

"Hey, second bogey is separating." Hex pointed out. Blaze looked past the drone she had crossed the nose of. The second drone was turning south-east.

"You got him, Hex?" Blaze asked.

"Always, bro." Hex followed the second drone to see where it was heading.

"Control, Blaze, one of the drones is turning south-east, heading 120 relative." Blaze informed control.

"Roger that. Attempt to get the other drone to change its bearing." Control instructed.

"About that…" Blaze crossed the nose of her drone one more time. No response. "The drones are following an autonomous flight path. They're not responding to us."

"Wait one." Control went off-comms for a minute. Blaze continued to follow the drone as it slowly approached Sand Island. It wasn't budging a bit. Blaze had a Sidewinder selected on her trigger but waited for an order to fire. At the pace that things seemed to be progressing, she'd get approval to shoot the drone down in short order.

Sure enough, she was right.

"Blaze, Control, you have permission to splash the bogey. Weapons free." Control ordered.

"Acknowledged." Blaze dropped the throttle and pulled the stick back to gather some distance. She uncaged the Sidewinder's seeker warhead. It beamed straight in for the drone.

"Blaze, Fox 2." Blaze launched off a Sidewinder. It tracked the Eagleeye, rapidly closed the distance and detonated, shredding the drone's wings and body apart.

"Splash one." Blaze reported the kill. "Hex?"

"Still here." Hex was following the second bogey. "Second bogey is continuing to move south-east."

"Intercept, follow the second bogey until it leaves our ADIZ, then return to base."

"Ack." Blaze understood her orders.

"Wilco." Hex understood his orders. Blaze played a game of catchup and merged back with Hex. They watched as the second drone left Sand Island's airspace and towards the Osean mainland, where it would be another squadron's problem. Blaze wanted to hit it with a missile now to spare someone else the trouble, but the rules of engagement dictated that she couldn't.

"Bogey has left our airspace." Hex reported.

"Blaze, Hex, return to base." Control ordered.

"Wilco, turning in." Blaze turned back towards Sand Island. One more to the kill list, she thought to herself. The sun was up in force over the ocean, there were no clouds to be seen for hundreds of miles around. Blaze sighed. Today would be nice for a beach visit, it it weren't for the fucking alert-

Beep-beep. A new RWR contact, dead south relative to them. Blaze glanced at the RWR screen. SAN9.

"New surface contact, south of my location." Blaze reported, turning towards the source of energy to get the Mudhen's radar on it.

"Small surface ship." Samurai got to work attempting to identify the vessel carrying a radar that would typically be paired with an SA-N-9 Tor surface-to-air missile complex. "Identified, catamaran intelligence gathering ship."

The ship's search radar disappeared from the RWR, however, they still had the ship lit up with their radar in surface-search mode.

"Aw, looks like he doesn't want to play." Blaze was almost disappointed that the intelligence ship hadn't given her a reason to sling a couple of Harpoons at it. "Moving in to visually identify."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Samurai asked hesitantly.

"Probably not." Blaze admitted, although she didn't sound concerned. She exchanged altitude for speed by diving and suddenly they were approaching the ship at a touch above Mach 1.5. Blaze spotted the ship moving slowly east. Feeling cheeky, she reduced her altitude to a mere one thousand feet and flew directly over the vessel flying faster than the speed of sound.

"Oh yeah, that's a Yaska." Samurai commented, in reference to the class of ship that the catamaran belonged to.

"Better not piss them off too much, then." Blaze pulled a wide turn to keep her distance from the Yaska and put herself on a bearing back to base. "Control, Blaze, we are RTB."

"Blaze, Control, acknowledged. Get back here. Out."

In his nineteen years working in the Osean political system, Vincent Harling couldn't recall the last time that his country and Yuktobania had been this close to a full-blown war. And yet the evidence was irrefutable. All hell had broken loose on the Yuke side of the pond after the airstrike on Murska Air Force Base. Surface action groups centred on cruisers and battlecruisers were slowly being pushed towards Osea. Carrier battle groups and amphibious assault squadrons all over the Ceres and Pacific naval stations had been spotted by multiple sources being loaded with weapons, fuel, aircraft, vehicles and personnel. Aircraft and vehicles from storage facilities were being activated. The Armed Forces of the Yuktobanian Republic were mobilising.

"Incursions by reconnaissance aircraft, drones and ships are being reported at every major base on the coast. Sand Island, Saint Hewlett, McNealy…" An OMDF vice admiral had been speaking to the board of high-ranking military personnel and political officials currently sitting around a conference table.

"Intercept flights have conducted three shootdowns of aircraft penetrating their ADIZ this morning alone." An OADF general added.

"A pair of Burkes were bumped by carrier fighters returning to port. The Third and Fifth Fleets are on high alert." Another admiral added to the discussion.

Harling put his hand up to gather the attention of everyone in the room. The room went silent.

"As I understand it, it is the conclusion of this board that the Union of Yuktobanian Republics is preparing for war against Osea. Is that correct?" Harling wanted to set the deal straight.

"Yes, sir." Fleet Admiral Samuel Esdeath, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest ranking officer in the Osean Federation, answered for the collection of flag officers and officials.

"Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what are your recommendations for our response to this threat?" Harling was asking for recommendations for actions from men who knew more about military theory than Harling ever would.

"Sir, it is my recommendation that we meet Yuktobanian forces before they can strike by escalating to DEFCON 2." General Sean Grace of the Osean Air Defense Force recommended.

"I concur with General Grace." Fleet Admiral Esdeath agreed with General Grace.

"I believe that we should raise all units under western Osean Command to alert status and activate Air Force and Navy reserves, sir." General Matthew Garcia of the Osean Federation Marine Corps stated his recommendation.

"Sir, I concur with General Grace." General Kim Brumbar of the Osean Ground Defense Force stated her recommendation.

"In addition to General Grace's recommendation sir, I suggest that we take more aggressive action against incursions on our territory." Admiral Tim Jones of the Osean Maritime Defense Force put forward his recommendation.

"I concur with General Grace and Admiral Jones, sir." General Katrina Muller, a Marine and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded.

"Very well. Everyone in this room that agrees with these motions, say aye." Harling put it up to a vote.

"Aye." The vote was totally unanimous.

"So be it. Raise us to DEFCON 2. Send out activation notices for the Air Force and Navy reserves. Meeting adjourned."