VRRRRR! VRRRRR! VRRRRR!
Ash woke up to the vibration of her watch's alarm on her cheek. Groaning in annoyance at having been woken up, Ash rolled onto her back and extended her arm up with the watch in her palm. 0500. Five in the fucking morning.
Ash groaned quietly. "Why the fuck are you set this early?" She said angrily, putting the watch on her nightstand and rolling over to try to get back to sleep. Unfortunately the damage had already been done, and after five minutes of rolling in every direction and moving into every possible sleeping position, Ash threw her covers off, went to recover her physical training uniform and hit the shower. Maybe it was because of that coffee, maybe it was because she had cumulatively gotten sixteen hours of sleep in the past day, but Ash felt much better and more awake than she had the previous night. She kept it brief in the shower: hair, armpits, nether regions and other areas that collected sweat were thoroughly washed, everything else was given a quick go-over. Ash was out of the shower in just under five minutes. She got changed into her PTs, quickly tied her hair up into a neat bun and before she knew it, she was out the door, being careful to make as little noise as possible on the way out as to not wake up the still-sleeping Kei.
Click. The door was shut. The sky was dark with a barely perceivable shade of dark blue. The sun wasn't up just yet, but given another hour, there would be light shining over Sand Island.
August 29, 2010
Sand Island Air Force Base
Off the west coast of Osea
One of the best perks of being in the Air Defence Forces for Ash was the presence of a gym that was open 24/7 on every base in continental Osea: even on Sand Island, an offshore base with a long since reduced presence, had one. Using her access card to get in, Ash found that the gym was mostly empty. Mostly. There were a handful of Air Force Security Force personnel at the occasional station, those men and women who undertook the night shifts on the base. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Wardog Squadron's two resident gym rats were in the gym this morning too.
"Zoomer and Motormouth Chopper in the gym at the same time. Colour me unsurprised." Ash said to the two bodybuilders as Wolf came off the bench press. His spotter, a massive spectacle of a man, tilted his head in surprise.
"Holy cow, it's Ash, at five in the morning! What kind of alternative timeline is this?" First Lieutenant Alvin Davenport was legitimately surprised to see Ash this early in the day. Topped by dark brown hair that was styled like some long-forgotten rock star from the seventies, Alvin wasn't particularly tall at only six-foot-one, but he was built like a brick shithouse with lots and lots of muscle mass.
Wolf pulled himself up by the bar. "Sleep well, Blaze?"
Ash shrugged. "Better than usual. I didn't want to wake up now, but I bumped my alarm."
"Hah, suck shit." Wolf retorted, earning a light slap across the top of his head from Ash. "Ow."
Grinning, Ash left the boys to their thing while hitting up a squat rack. Much to her chagrin, today was leg day and there were gains to be made. She loaded the bar with a median fifty kilos of weight as a warmup, got under the bar, loaded it onto her shoulders and dropped.
Far overhead, to the east, an observation satellite made its bi-daily trip over the mainland Verusan continent. Its sensors and cameras were pointed downwards at the ground, listening in and looking for any important information that could be gleaned without having boots on the ground. The grand majority of the time, nothing was picked up and the intelligence analysts back in Osea could kick their feet up for a day and relax.
Unfortunately for those less work-motivated analysts, this morning's scan would provide a lot of intelligence that had to be scanned, interpreted and reported on. The information gathered from that single pass?
The Red Halls, house of the Yuktobanian government, engulfed in smoke.
Alarms were rung, and men in fancy suits with long titles were woken up for an emergency briefing at the heart of the Osean Intelligence Agency. Oaktree Hills was a secluded town, which is why it was a perfect location for the OIA's headquarters facility.
"Gentlemen, be seated." A man in cargo pants and a blue dress shirt who looked like he was an intern was starting a briefing for a group of about a dozen men, all in suits or military uniforms. With the press of a button, a projector flicked to life and showed an image of the situation for which they had been called in for. "Two hours ago, the Red Hall was attacked. At this time, we don't know who by, or what their reasoning may have been. However, we do know two things for certain. Prime Minister Seryozha Nikanor has been hospitalised, and President Alanor Seydich has been killed."
Murmurs within the room.
"What ramifications can we expect to see from this?" An Osean Maritime Defence Force admiral enquired with a hoarse voice.
"The Yuktobanians have enforced a total news blackout across the region. No information regarding this is passing to any news network, either foreign or domestic. We have people calling our agents in Cinigrad right now to see if they know anything we don't, but until new information passes in, my team can't draw a definite conclusion to this event." The briefer gave what little information he had on hand. "We deem that it is probable that the Yuktobanian Armed Forces will be on high alert soon if not now."
"Who's the acting head of state?" An Osean Marine Corps general asked.
"That would be the First Deputy Prime Minister. Yuri Lavrov." An OIA official answered for the Marine. "Until Nikanor recovers, he's the acting Prime Minister. The presidency is conducted by internal election, so we won't know for at least a day."
The doors to the briefing room swung open and in came a pair of analysts dressed similarly to the man currently giving the briefing. One of them had a dossier under his arm.
"Apologies for interrupting, but we have a developing situation." The older-looking man of the two apologised, striding towards the briefing officer and passing him the dossier. The latter gave him a glance before opening the dossier. In it were photos with descriptions attached to them. Timestamps, a location and the asset that took the images.
"Are you sure?" The briefing officer asked quietly.
"Confirmed by NAVSAT, SOSUS and at least three Lighthouse assets. They're putting out to sea." The senior analyst stated.
"Fuck me." The briefing officer muttered, nodding to the senior analyst before moving over to the projector and inserting the new slides. "These pictures were taken by the NAVSAT network ten minutes ago."
The pictures depicted numerous warships of the Yuktobanian Navy slipping their moorings and putting out to sea from their ports. Bastok, Okchabursk, Prizak, Salavat. Major naval bases on the east coast. Most of the images were of frigates and destroyers of the Krivak and Udaloy classes, but of more concern to the men in the room was the presence of capital ships in the formations. Moskva and Ural-class cruisers, a couple of the massive Kirov-class battlecruisers, even the aircraft carrier Admiral Tsanev, flagship of the Yuktobanian Pacific Fleet.
"Urals, Kirovs and Storms. This represents the bulk of their capital fleet." The briefing officer annotated. "In addition, SOSUS arrays have detected activity consistent with known lanes of movement for the Yuktobanian submarine fleet. They're after something."
The room was silent for a moment as everybody absorbed the information and looked at the slides of Yuktobanian surface ships moving out into the Pacific and Ceres Oceans. A move like this without prior announcement was an unprecedented action.
"What about the Scinfaxi and Hrimfaxi?" The admiral asked. "Do we know their locations?"
"The Hrimfaxi is in port at Rexigrad, has been for the past week. The Scinfaxi, we don't know. The last report we got regarding her location placed her within two hundred kilometres of Sand Island moving north." The senior analyst who had provided the dossier explained.
"Jesus christ."
Sweat running from her brow, Ash was struggling. Thirty kilos of weight didn't sound like a lot, but when it came to calf raises to failure, every repetition hurt. She could feel the skin stretching around her calf muscles. They were on fire.
Thirty… thirty-one… thirty-two- AH!
Ash had reached the point of muscle failure. She slammed the bar down and with her lower legs feeling like they were about to split open backed away slowly from the machine. Ash sorely limped over to the bench where her bottle of water was located and slumped down, stretching out her legs. She was incredibly sore and fatigued, but at least she had finished her program. Ash loaded up on water to replace the fluids she had sweated out over the period of an hour and a half. The entire 700ml bottle was emptied straight down Ash's throat.
"Finished up?" The voice of Chopper rang out from behind Ash. Ash swung her still-aching legs over the bench to face her wingman.
"Yuh." Ash said, finishing off those last few drops of water.
"Feeling good?" Chopper asked in a positive tone.
Ash gave a thumbs up. "I hate leg day."
"Hah, doesn't everyone. You know roll call's at seven." Chopper reminded Ash of the upcoming roll call. Ash checked her watch. It was 0630.
"I've got time." Ash stood up. She had time to shower, change and get to the crew room, she didn't have time to doodle around. "See you there?"
"See you there." Chopper replied. Ash smiled and went off to shower and change. The sun was low on the horizon, but it was up as evidenced by the warmth Ash felt on her skin from the rays of light poking over the facilities on base. It was a short walk back to her dorm. A short turning of the keys and she was in. Kei must have woken up at six and gone out, because she was no longer in the room. Regardless, Ash threw her sweat-soaked gym clothes and briefs in the laundry and hit the shower for the second time that morning. The same routine and five minutes later she was out. Dressing into her work uniform, the typical green one-piece flight suit, Ash chose to tie her hair into a ponytail instead of a bun.
Personal logistics out of the way, Ash left the dorms again and passed through the residential blocks, through the long-abandoned security checkpoint and into a modern-style office building. The inside of the building was packed with enlisted personnel and officers all looking to report to their units for roll call. Luckily for Ash, the trip to Wardog Squadron's designated room was a short one from that side of the building. Down a hallway, up a flight of stairs and she was there. Inside was more than half of Wardog's strength, seven crews: seven pilots, seven weapon system officers. Of that, the majority of the faces she was unsurprised to see even half an hour early. Three of the squadron's four senior officers, Captain Ryan Baker, Captain Ramsey Svenson and Captain Lucas Lamster, were present. Kei and Kitagawa, the two with the most professional bearing, were there. Wolf and Chopper, the two chatterboxes of the squadron, were in the corner of the room talking. Really, the most conspicuous absences were Gammon and the squadron leader, Bartlett.
Ash took a seat with Kei and Kitagawa.
"Well, well, well." Kitagawa welcomed Ash with a shit-eating grin. "I heard you crashed hard."
Ash shrugged. "Oh boy, you don't know the half of it. I was right proper fucked."
"She didn't wake up until eight last night." Kei added. "Speaking of which, where were you this morning? I woke up and you were gone."
"The gym. Set the wrong time on my watch and I couldn't get back to sleep." Ash explained in short terms, earning a nod from Kei.
"If it makes you feel any better, you didn't miss anything." Kitagawa reassured Ash.
"Or so I heard."
Right on cue, Major Bartlett entered the room.
"Okay, listen up!" Bartlett declared and suddenly silence filled the room. Everybody swung around to face him. "The situation has… escalated, putting it mildly."
Bartlett grabbed the remote for the TV that was hung on the wall at the back of the room, turned it on and switched to the closest news channel. There was no audio coming from the TV, but the subtitles were clear enough.
CINIGRAD UNDER ATTACK
THE RED HALLS WERE ASSAULTED BY AN UNKNOWN PARTY. MUCH OF YUKTOBANIA'S HIGHER LEVELS OF LEADERSHIP WERE HOSPITALISED
WE WILL PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE
Murmurs from across the room. Bartlett let the squadron absorb the information before speaking.
"To make matters worse, whoever's in charge of things right now, they've ordered a surge into the Ceres Ocean. More than fifty ships have been let loose and they're moving in our direction." Bartlett added. "We don't know what their intentions are, and until we know, we're being raised to Alert 15."
More murmurs. Kitagawa leaned into Ash's ear. "Good thing you went to the gym early."
Ash did her best to hold in a snicker.
Kei on the other hand had questions. "Is anybody going to Alert 5?"
"I was getting to that." Bartlett replied. "At the moment, nobody's going to Alert 5, but there are two stipulations that go with that statement. The first is that we'll have fighters in the air on CAP on a rotating roster until this situation dies down. The second, is to remain on standby just in case an Alert 5 gets called."
"Typical." Ash muttered to herself. Kitagawa scoffed.
"Myself and Lieutenant Paige volunteer as tribute." Kitagawa volunteered herself and Ash for a CAP rotation. Ash glanced at Kitagawa but said nothing of it.
"'Course you do. That's fine. I'll be taking up the first rotation with you." Bartlett decreed. "Grab your kit and get out to the line. I'll be with you in twenty."
"Yes, sir." Ash stood up and went to the lockers to gear up.
"The rest of you, I'd suggest getting your stuff ready. Svenson, Baker, Lammy, bring it in. We need to-" Bartlett had been briefing the rest of the room, but his voice was cut off as Ash and Kitagawa entered the lockers.
"Cinigrad was attacked…" Ash mused. "Last I checked, Yuktobania didn't have much of an insurgency problem."
"Mmm." Kitagawa agreed. "Wonder why."
"Religion, disagreement with some policy, wanting to take power, who knows." Ash conceded that she had no idea. She slipped on her g-suit, and then her survival vest.
"Quite." Kitagawa was doing the same. "Ready?"
"On you, hot stuff." Ash flirted. Kitagawa grinned, grabbed her helmet and stepped out through the door with Ash in tow. Bartlett, Svenson, Baker and Lamster were gathered around a table writing up a roster, presumably for who would be going up in the air at what time. Kitagawa took them out of the squadron room, down the stairs, through a suspiciously dark hallway and out into an open space of asphalt near the flight line. The hardened aircraft shelters closest to the building, on the opposite side of the flight line, housed Wardog's fleet of Strike Eagles.
"Is that a wild Samurai I spot?" A voice rang out from the hangars. Gammon was sitting in the cockpit of his and Bartlett's F-15E.
"Major tell you to mount up and be ready?" Ash asked the tall as fuck wizzo.
"Bartlett and Hamilton both." Gammon pointed to the opposite side of the flight line, which housed a dozen aircraft of the ubiquitous F-16C Fighting Falcon - or Viper, as they were more commonly called - type. "Vampire's also on point."
Vampire Squadron, the 151st Tactical Fighter Squadron, was the sister squadron to Wardog Squadron under the Fifth Fighter Wing. Led by Major Allen Hamilton, the base adjutant, to contrast against the Strike Eagle-equipped Wardog they were equipped with the Viper. The pilot of one F-16, a young ginger man, saw Gammon pointing and waved to the Wardog crew. Ash smiled and waved back.
"Two Wardog, two Vampires?" Kitagawa asked.
"Guess so." Gammon answered. "Waiting on Major Bartlett, then we'll be green to go."
"Fun." Ash commented, climbing up the ladder and into the cockpit of her Strike Eagle.
"Hey, wait up!" Kitagawa exclaimed, rushing after Ash and mounting up into the back seat. Ordinarily by this point Ash would have put her helmet on, but figuring that she had another ten minutes until they would be ready to step off, she left it in her lap for now. Ash started up the aircraft's electrical system while it was still plugged into a ground power source and configured the radios.
"Vampire Flight, Blaze, radio check." Ash made a radio check to see if anybody else was listening. She saw one of Vampire's pilots look up above their canopy and then sink back into the cockpit.
"Archer, reading you loud and clear." The voice of the young ginger from before rang through clearly.
"Pops, Lima Charlie." Another Vampire pilot replied, this pilot an older sounding guy.
"I'm no Vampire, but Ghost reads ya loud and clear." Gammon was also on the radio.
"All callsigns, lima charlie." Ash decided to put her helmet on. "Hey Pops, how are we running this? One squadron, two flights, what?"
"I'd say two flights. We'll be tailing you closely, Blaze." Pops answered as the senior of the two Vampire pilots.
"Roger that." Ash broke out a pen and wrote a crude table on her kneepad.
WARDOG 1 / HEARTBREAK ONE / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / BLAZE / F-15E
VAMPIRE 1 / CORVUS / F-16C
VAMPIRE 2 / ARCHER / F-16C
"Sam, what's our weapons status?" Ash called out to Kitagawa while writing.
Silence for a moment. "Four AMRAAM, two Sidewinder, two Harpoon, two GBU-12."
Six A2A, two anti-ship, two bombs… "All possibilities, eh? I dig it."
"Personally I'm hoping we don't encounter seven aircraft." Samurai joked. Ash snickered.
"Not in a million years." Ash closed the cap on her pen and shoved it in the sleeve it came from. "Wardog 2, ready to depart…"
"Temper, Ash, temper…" Samurai muttered. Based on the clicking of buttons Ash could hear from the front of the aircraft, she must have been adjusting the multi-function displays to suit the mission at hand.
The combined group waited for Major Bartlett to finish his briefing with the other Wardog officers. Five minutes passed. Ash did up her straps to keep her secured in the seat and leant back as far as she could to relax. Ten minutes passed. Still no sign of Heartbreak One. Fifteen minutes passed… and there he was, black hair, stubble and all.
"Look at that, he showed up." Gammon called out on the radio. Ash looked up from the instruments. Bartlett had closed the distance and was climbing up into the lead Eagle.
"Sorry about the wait. All elements, this is Heartbreak One, we are go for mission start."