An hour after their interception of a satellite, Wardog Squadron returned in full to Sand Island. Doing a flyover of the base while on the way to line up for her landing approach, Ash didn't see any signs of extra damage that could have been inflicted in their absence. She wondered what Bartlett's reaction would be to find that all six people in the squadron had safely returned from a sortie. Ash navigated through the taxiway and to the hangars, where she was expecting Bartlett and Gammon to be waiting.
Neither of them were present. Instead, rather surprisingly, Captain Buchner was waiting for them, something that Ash found odd. Pops was always over at the Vampire Squadron side of the flight line whenever he was on alert duty. This did not go unnoticed to Ash specifically.
"What's Pops doing over here?" Kitagawa pointed out as Ash swivelled the Mudhen nicely into their assigned hangar.
"No idea." Ash admitted, beginning the shutdown procedure for their aircraft. As soon as that was done, Ash ditched her helmet, opened the canopy and slid down the ladder. "Gotta say, Pops, I wasn't expecting to see you down here of all the people."
"I bear bad news." Pops was surprisingly blunt today. "Where's Hamilton?"
Pops asking for Hamilton's location was enough to cause concern for Ash. She glanced over at Vampire Squadron's hangars. She didn't notice any major absence of F-16Cs.
"Corvus?" Hamilton had found his way over to Ash's hangar. Nagase, Chopper and Wolf had followed him.
"Well you're all here now." Pops sighed. "The search and rescue chopper went out to look for Gammon and Bartlett. They found their chutes, but there was no sign of them."
Ash felt her heart sink in her chest.
"Oh shit." Hamilton swore, a rarity for him. "Did they-"
"Their trackers disappeared. We assume the ship that was launching the drones earlier today took them captive." Pops informed Hamilton and Wardog of the bad news.
"Did anybody sortie to go after that spy ship?" Wolf asked from the back of the group. Ash went to a bench, sat down and let her hair loose. Kitagawa followed Ash very closely, sitting down next to her and throwing an arm around her in some comforting attempt.
"As far as I know, we lost track of the ship after it started heading back for Yuktobania." Pops filled Wolf in.
"Well… shit." Wolf only had one response he could think of.
"What's the chain of command looking like for us?" Ash asked from the bench. She sorted out her hair and tied it back into a ponytail.
"A lieutenant-colonel from McNealy Air Force Base is flying in tonight to take over Bartlett's position. Until he gets here, Blaze, you're still in command." Pops answered that question.
"Alright." Ash stood up and rejoined the conversation. "With that clusterfuck out of the way, does Perrault have anything in store for us?"
"As a matter of fact, he does." Pops said. "He wants two of you to fly out along the ship's last known bearing and report your findings back."
"I'll-" Ash spoke up.
"I'll go. Major Hamilton, sir, would you mind backseating for me?" Kitagawa spoke through Ash. Ash looked at her in utter surprise.
"Oi, that's my-" Ash objected.
"You and Nagase need to rest, ma'am. You two have hardly eaten anything for the past week." Kitagawa deflected Ash's objection. "Zoomer, Chopper, you two coming?"
Chopper shrugged. "Yes, ma'am."
Ash felt like she had been completely blindsided by her wizzo, but she was left powerless to object to it as Kitagawa, Hamilton, Chopper and Wolf mounted back up into their Mudhens. They spooled up. Ash, Nagase and Pops wisely got out of their way. Pops was chuckling as they left for the main administration building.
"What's got you amused, sir?" Nagase asked Pops as they walked through the back door into the building.
"Samurai's one of the lowest ranking officers out of all of you and she made it look like she had the confidence of a full bird." Pops explained what had him humoured.
"Ah." Nagase replied. Pops escorted the two Wardog members to their squadron room.
"I've got some administration to attend to, I trust you two will be fine on your own?" Pops stated.
"Always. See you around, Pops." Ash replied, and Pops left the two Wardog pilots be. Ash took her vest off and flopped over onto one of the lounges, not even bothering to take her g-suit off. Nagase at least stowed all of her equipment before coming back out and mimicking Ash by flopping face-first onto another lounge in the room. They were both physically and mentally exhausted. Ash was on the ass-end of nearly falling asleep when Nagase tapped Ash several times on the cheek.
"Mmm?" Ash looked up. Nagase was hovering a bowl of cereal in her face. "Oh, thanks."
"Don't mention it." Nagase leant back and slowly consumed her own food. Ash took a proper look at what Nagase had given her. CocoPops and a not-insignificant amount of milk. Ash hummed happily and ate.
WARDOG 1 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / SAMURAI, HUNTER / F-15E
"Radar picture is clear." Hamilton declared.
"Yeah copy that. We're following their last known bearing out." Chopper replied.
Wardog Flight was burning sunlight by the minute, but they had enough fuel to carry out a limited search pattern with AWACS Thunderhead in support for another hour. Chopper, the temporary flight lead by virtue of being a rank higher than Samurai, was following the last known bearing of the spy ship before ground-based radar back at Sand Island had lost track of it. Samurai was following a more traditional box-shaped search pattern out to the west and south-west. If Chopper spotted anything, Samurai would bounce straight towards his position.
"This feels pointless." Samurai said to her backseater, a correlation that felt weird given her usual role as the backseater.
"Hmm?" Hamilton made a noise.
"Even if we do find it, what are we meant to do, attack it?" Samurai voiced her concerns.
"I know, but orders are orders." Hamilton agreed with Samurai's concerns. "Just stick with it. In any case I think Bartlett and Gammon will be fine."
"You think so?" Samurai didn't sound so sure.
"Bartlett's a tough bastard, he'll push through." Hamilton assured Samurai. Samurai shrugged and carried on with the search pattern. The fourth search box didn't yield any results, so Samurai moved onto the fifth. The fifth search box yielded no results too, so Samurai moved onto the sixth.
"Wardog, heads up. New contact bearing 290 from your position." Thunderhead alerted Wardog Flight to the presence of a bogey.
"Aw hell. Copy that. Samurai, we're coming to you." Chopper acknowledged.
"Rog, waiting here." Samurai broke off from her search pattern and started loitering around in a circle, waiting for Chopper to merge with her. "Thunderhead, how many are we looking at?"
"Three bogies- woah, they're going supersonic!" Thunderhead was thrown off by the speed at which the unknowns were cruising at.
"What are the chances they're ours?" Chopper suggested.
"Not likely." Hamilton replied.
"No response on IFF, they're the enemy! Wardog Squadron, engage bandits!" Thunderhead ordered. Things had suddenly gotten real. Samurai pushed into afterburning mode and started climbing to gain altitude on the bandits. The bandits, whatever they were, didn't change altitude or their bearing, a good indicator that they hadn't spotted the duo of Strike Eagles burning at high speed towards them. Samurai referenced the datalink screen. The bandits were close, within a hundred kilometres.
"Wait 'til we're within fifty, then light 'em up." Chopper instructed Samurai.
"Wilco." Samurai replied. Fifty was a bit closer than she would have appreciated to take a fight, but at that range it was very difficult to avoid missiles in the category of the AMRAAM. The reverse also applied for them, the R-77 being the Yuktobanian equivalent to the AMRAAM. In any case, the math was theoretically stacked in Wardog's favour since they had the height advantage. In practice, it was anybody's guess.
"They're within fifty klicks." Samurai pointed out.
"Stack them up and knock them down." Chopper said. "Chopper, fox 3, fox 3!"
Samurai turned on her radar, pitched down and locked up all three aircraft. "Wardog 2, fox 3."
One of the features of the Eagle's radar that had caused considerable distress for pilots going up against it when the F-15A had been provided with AMRAAMs in the mid eighties was its track-while-scanning capability. Referred to as TWS for short, this capability allowed the Eagle's radar to track missiles onto targets while emitting radar waves like it was scanning for targets. This had two effects. The first was that the opposition's RWRs wouldn't be ticked off until the missiles themselves had gone active. The second was the ability to fire missiles at multiple targets in one salvo.
The bandits went live with their radars, presumably having spotted the Mudhens painting them on their RWRs. Samurai referenced her own radar warning receiver. 57.
"Oh, fuck." Samurai muttered. Preemptively, she pulled away and popped chaff in preparation for receiving return fire from the Su-57 Felons they had just pissed off. At least one of the Felons was beaming Samurai up, and the chaff clouds bought her an extra few seconds before the Felon's radar was able to lock up Samurai's Mudhen. The RWR went crazy.
"Missile in the air!" Hamilton called out. Samurai put her mask on.
"Wardog 2, going defensive!" Samurai pulled back on the stick and sent the aircraft flying towards the stratosphere. In theory, gaining altitude on the enemy launch platform was a surefire way to avoid catching the golden bullet. In practice, with modern missiles at such short ranges, Samurai wasn't one hundred percent sure if that theory was bulletproof. Nevertheless, she carried on climbing until she reached fifty-eight thousand feet, barely below the officially rated height ceiling of the Strike Eagle.
"Here it comes!" Hamilton called to Samurai, an indicator to her that he saw the missile.
"Chaff and flares, chaff and flares!" Samurai yelled, kicking the rudder over and flipping the Mudhen into a straight dive down. What she was doing was incredibly risky, but if it worked she'd be able to get right on top of the Felons somewhere down below. Countermeasures were pouring out the rear end of the Mudhen in an attempt to spoof the R-77 pitbulled on them. At the last possible second, Samurai pulled out of the dive, pulling an insane number of gees in the process. The bait worked. Instead of tracking on the very fragile F-15E, the R-77 went for the countermeasures. Now in the clear, Samurai had her sights set on a Felon. Apparently, the only Felon that had survived the missile barrage. Aforementioned Felon was climbing up to meet Samurai. Samurai saw a challenge and switched to her cannon.
"Are you-" Hamilton began to ask.
"Yes." Samurai replied before he could finish.
"Oh jesus christ." Hamilton was mildly concerned.
Closing at a rate of almost four thousand kilometres per hour, there would only be a second and a half of time where the two would be within range to hit each other with cannon fire. Samurai fired a long burst from a distance and pulled out of the merge. The Felon got some rounds off, but the pilot of the Su-57 had left it far too late to evade Samurai's fire. The Su-57 caught virtually all of the rounds, tearing through the nose cone, canopy and air intakes. The Felon started spiralling out of control, falling towards the sea floor in an uncontrolled dive.
Samurai hadn't gotten out of the fight scot-free. As she drew back the throttle and pulled out of the Mach 2 dive, Samurai felt that the aircraft was less responsive in a left-hand turn. She looked over her shoulder. The left rear elevator was missing a chunk out of its outer surface. In addition to that, the control surface was stuck up.
"Oh. That's suboptimal." Samurai mused.
"You alright, Sam?" Chopper asked, forming up on Samurai's left wing.
"Caught a few. We're good. For now." Samurai replied.
"I hope you're still able to fight, Wardog." Thunderhead chimed in. "New group of bandits, bearing 210 for 300. There's a lot of them, at least a dozen."
"Aw, you've got to be kidding!" Chopper sounded irritated. He sighed. "Alright Sam, head on, let's get them."