"Major!" Bartlett heard a voice calling out for him. He didn't respond at first, too busy inflating the float ring around the collar of his vest. Gammon was slowly making his way to Bartlett. "Still alive, sir?"
"Unfortunately." Bartlett morbidly replied, cracking open a dye canister to contrast the water immediately around them from the rest of the ocean. "You alright, Gammon?"
"Always." Gammon stuck close to Bartlett. Gammon's gaze was stuck on the vessel approaching them. The armed vessel approaching them. "Ah shit."
"Don't tell me it's coming towards us." Bartlett refused to look in the direction of the catamaran vessel that was almost certainly moving towards their landing site.
"Fine, I won't tell you." Gammon joked light-heartedly. "Unrelated question, how would you feel about becoming a POW?"
Bartlett sighed and stole a glance at what Gammon was looking at. The intelligence gathering ship was beelining straight for their position.
"Oh, that's just typical!"
Ash, Chopper and Nagase had touched down back at Sand Island, but their time on the ground would be short-lived. Blaze led the two aircraft now under her direct command to the forward-deployed refuelling and rearming depot. The sound of three Strike Eagles was deafening, even if their turbines were at idle. Looking around, Ash spotted a pair of Vipers rolling from the hangars to the runway. Getting sent on a patrol she gathered given the universal payloads that they were carrying under their wings.
"Control, Blaze, where's the SITREP, over." Ash asked Sand Island command given that she had no idea what they were meant to be doing once they were back in the air.
"Blaze, wait, out." Control basically ignored her request for a situation report.
"Fuck me I guess." Ash muttered. She looked over her shoulders to see what they were being armed with. A whole lot of AMRAAMs, a few Sidewinders and, curiously, a pair of triple ejector racks fitted with GBU-12s. For most operations they usually only got five hundred pound bombs on single pylons.
"Wardog, Control, prepare for new tasking, over." Control finally got back to the squadron. Ash unclipped the pen from her kneeboard.
"Control, Wardog Leader, ready to receive tasking, over." Ash answered the radio.
"Tasking as follows. Once all aircraft are green, taxi to runway and egress out on a 070 bearing. The Saint Hewlett naval base is under attack. You are to assist forces in the area in escorting the ships in port out of the area. We're uncertain of the exact OPFOR composition but it's big. Real big." Control gave Wardog the quick rundown of the situation.
"We're good to go." Samurai said while Ash was receiving the briefing.
"Wardog 1 acknowledges, we are on our way to assist Saint Hewlett." Ash summarised what she had heard.
"This is Chopper, I'm all good to go!" Chopper called out his readiness status.
"Edge, green for weapons and fuel." Nagase was good to go.
"Let's go." Ash ordered. "Wardog Squadron, taking off from runway main."
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / EDGE, HUNTER / F-15E
Once they were in the air, it was a straight run straight to Saint Hewlett. A coastal city about a half-hour's flight north-east of Sand Island, the city of Saint Hewlett encompassed Naval Station Saint Hewlett, the largest OMDF base on the west coast and home to the Third Fleet, the overall command responsible for operations in the Ceres Ocean. It was also home to one of the Navy's inactive fleet reserve bases. All in all Saint Hewlett was a large base with a significant presence, so the fact that fighters had been called in all the way from Sand Island was cause for concern as to what they were walking into.
At the rear edge of the formation, Nagase was biting her lip hard. She was one of the three active Wardog pilots, but she was very conscious of the fact that Bartlett had taken a hit for her to be there. Her nerves were wracked.
"Hunter, can you monitor the radio for anything ahead of us?" Nagase made a request to her temporary WSO, Major Hamilton.
"Regional radio's quiet." Hamilton replied. "A lot of traffic on the guard net. Airliners getting caught in the middle of shootouts."
"Damn." Nagase squeezed the stick.
"Keep your mind clear, Edge. Nothing we can do for them right now."
"Thunderhead, bogey dope." Blaze asked for a readout of any and all contacts in the surrounding area.
"Nothing on my scope yet." AWACS Thunderhead didn't have eyes on anything within the range of his Hawkeye's circular radar dish, which probably meant that they were safe for now. Unsatisfied but unable to contest Thunderhead's findings, Blaze did her best to stay calm on the flight to Saint Hewlett.
Commander Snow had been in one of the gyms dotted around Naval Station Saint Hewlett when the air raid siren went off. Instinctively, Snow dropped the deadlift bar he had been holding and made a dead sprint for the hangars where the aircraft belonging to the Snowbirds had been stored. As Snow made it outside onto the concrete pathways that lined many areas of the base, he heard a boom in the distance. Snow wasn't the only person frantically trying to get to their stations. Dozens of other sailors, marines and officers were dropping whatever they had been doing and bolted.
"Swordsman!" A familiar voice called out to Snow. Lieutenant Junior Grade Franklin Brady found himself running alongside his squadron commander. Brady was another pilot in the Snowbirds, a short and stout man who drove the Echo Hornet.
"Let's go, Brady!" Swordsman and Brady made it through the clusterfuck of personnel just in time for a gigantic thud to resonate over the base. A short moment later, a shockwave ripped through the air. Swordsman froze for a moment to look in the direction of the sound. He could just barely see what had caused the ruckus through the open back wall of one of the hangars. There was a massive smoke trail climbing up into the sky. At the base of the smoke pillar was what had used to be a Ticonderoga-class cruiser.
"Oh fuck me." Brady remarked before continuing towards their hangars. "Swordsman, come on!"
Luckily for the two naval aviators, aviation ordnancemen had gotten straight to work and were going around fitting Hornets and Super Hornets with all of the Sidewinders, AMRAAMs and gun ammo that they had immediate access to. Swordsmans made a mad dash into the break room in their hangar. He damn near set a new world record for the fastest time a human had changed into their work uniforms. Not bothering to make sure all the straps around his vest were tightened down, Swordsman climbed up into his daily driver. The radios were going crazy with about as much disorganisation as would be expected from a real shooting war.
"I can't see anything, are they bombers?"
"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the Kleson, we're taking on water!"
"AEGIS Ashore radar just went offline! Do we have anyone on the radio over there?"
"All ships at port, disconnect from the fuel terminals, they're gonna set the fucking thing on fire!"
"Does anybody have eyes on the carriers?!"
"Is the datalink playing up? I've got no connection to the AWACS!"
Turning that particular radio off, Swordsman put his helmet on while lining up his takeoff lineup.
"ATC, Big Bird 102, my flight is taking off from runway three right." Swordsman informed the people in the air traffic control tower.
"Acknowledged 102, get up there and get some." The man on the radio in the ATC was calm given that everything was going to shit. Swordsman slammed the throttle all the way into afterburner and after a long period of gaining speed pulled back on the stick.
"Big Bird 102 and 111, airborne." Swordsman and Brady were in the air. As he cleared the skyline, Swordsman got an idea of the scale of the assault they were facing. There were multiple smoke stacks rising from blazing fires around the port facilities. At the piers, several ships had been hit and were being engulfed by flames. The Ticonderoga he had spotted earlier was split in two halves and had settled at the bottom of the harbour.
"Swordsman I've got bandits!" Brady called out. "Freestyles entering at Angels 1!"
"Tally." Swordsman saw them highlighted on his radar display. He cued AMRAAMs for four of the eight aircraft in the first wave. "I've got the ones on the left. Swordsman, fox 3!"
"Big Bird, fox 3, fox 3!"
The first shot against the enemy. As Swordsman scanned for more targets, his radar warning receiver started beeping at him. A MiG-35 was painting a target on his head. The beeping went to a constant high pitched tone. A missile launch.
"Swordsman, defending against missiles!" Swordsman pushed the stick down and lost what little altitude he had collected before so that he could mask his signature against that of the harbour and other port facilities. Swordsman was still getting the missile tracking alert on his RWR. Rather predictably, the R-77 with his name on it had lofted upwards and was now diving. Swordsman looked up and saw the missile trail. He grit his teeth, squeezed the stick, popped chaff and yanked the stick to one side in a last-ditch effort to evade it.
A minigun's worth of tracer shells intercepted the missile and tore through its casing and warhead, detonating the missile mid-flight. Swordsman looked around for the source of the tracers. A Phalanx close-in-weapons-system mounted on board a Ticonderoga-class cruiser had scanned, tracked and successfully engaged the missile. Swordsman quite possibly just had his ass saved by a surface ship. Unsure how to feel about this, Swordsman put his mind back to the task at hand, turning back in the direction of the enemy. He scanned for targets. There were plenty to choose from. He decided to engage another wave of Yak-141s approaching the harbour.
"Sounds like the base is under a major assault." Hamilton reported his findings based off radio traffic at their destination.
"Kick it up a notch, let's go." Blaze ordered. Collectively the three aircraft increased their speed.
"Picking up strong ECM interference to the north-west." Samurai had spotted something. "Bearing 325. It's close."
"Thunderhead, do you have a track on anything to our north-west?" Blaze enquired.
"A whole lot of radar interference. I can't get a definite lock on anything." Thunderhead could see a sweet load of fuckall. Blaze pulled her stick and turned in the direction of the source of the jamming, 325.
"Place your bets, Flankers or Frogfoots?" Blaze joked to Samurai as they followed the specified bearing.
"Hmm… my money's on Frogfoots." Samurai replied in a serious fashion. Blaze looked over her shoulder. Nagase and Chopper were still trailing her.
"We're looking for EW aircraft before we push in to support the base." Blaze explained her actions to her wingmen. Receiving no rebuffals from Hamilton, she assumed what she was doing was a sensible thing to be doing and pressed onwards. Blaze was scanning the skies for aircraft. The Su-25UKPP was infamous for being able to overpower even ground-based radars which left little hope of an AMRAAM being able to break through their jammer network, and the Su-35KP, the Yuktobanian equivalent of the E/A-18G Growler, was easily capable of keeping up with an Eagle in a dogfight. Eventually Blaze spotted three dots off the nose.
"Tally three." Nagase called them out before Blaze could. "Looks like Frogfoots."
"I've got the one in the middle." Blaze called dibs on the flight lead.
"I've got right." Chopper would get the Frogfoot on the right flank. The trio of Mudhens approached the Frogfoots at menacing speeds. The Su-25UKPP was a three-seater electronic warfare variant of the Su-35UTG carrier-based trainer. Blaze figured that one of the nine crew members in the flight would have spotted the very angry F-15Es approaching at high speed from their front, but much to her surprise, they didn't spot them until missiles were in the air.
"Blaze, fox 2." Blaze shot off a Sidewinder at her target.
"Chopper, fox 2." Chopper fired a missile at his target.
"Edge, fox 2!" Edge got a missile off.
At least one Frogfoot crew member had seen the approaching smoke trails, because one aircraft started popping flares and diving far too late. Boom, boom, boom. Splash three electronic warfare aircraft.
"Jammer flight's been dealt with." Blaze reported to Thunderhead. "Somebody probably noticed that. Bring it in east-north-east, lets help out the base."
"On your tail, kid." Chopper was right on Blaze's tail, Nagase not terribly far behind. Wardog Squadron was approaching Saint Hewlett at Angels Five, or five thousand feet. With the datalink back online, presumably because there was no longer aircraft actively trying to shut it down, Blaze could get a proper read on the situation. It was a mess. Waves of enemy aircraft were assaulting the port. Friendly aircraft in the area, totalling up to a mere few squadrons, were outnumbered by their opponents. Of more pressing concern, there were hardly a dozen signatures of friendly warships.
"Saint Hewlett Command, Saint Hewlett Command, this is Wardog Squadron, do you read, over?" Blaze attempted to get on the radio with whoever was in charge of the defense of the port.
"Wardog Squadron, this is base command, send." Surprisingly, Blaze's transmission had been heard.
"My flight's on station to support. Where do you need us?" Blaze enquired.
"Oh thank god… Wardog, stand watch over the harbour entrance, stem the flow of bombers trying to penetrate the CAP line." Saint Hewlett Control's instructions were clear.
"Wilco, out." Blaze understood.
"Here they come! Two Flankers, ten-o'clock low!" Hamilton spotted fighters beelining straight for them. Blaze popped her mask on.
"Wardog, engage!" Blaze turned towards the Flankers. She keyed an AMRAAM and fired. "Blaze, fox 3!"
"Edge, fox 3!"
"Smoke in the air, smoke in the air!" Samurai spotted a missile trail coming for them. Blaze yanked the stick hard right and dumped flares. The R-73 fired at them tracked on the flares and missed. The AIM-120 fired by the Oseans tracked on the Su-35K and hit. Splash one. Blaze noticed that the other Flanker had been turned into a fireball. With that furball out of the way, Wardog carried on back towards the port. A four-ship of Yak-141s were pushing the port. Blaze was about to lock all four up when the flight broke up to evade something. One by one, three of the four were turned into burnt wrecks. A Super Hornet dived in from above and splashed the last Freestyle with a gun run. Blaze decided to launch an AMRAAM at a MiG-35K trying to chase down an F/A-18D.
"Blaze, fox 3." Missile out. A touch under twenty seconds later, splash one.
"Hey kid, I see a bomber group, can I go take them out?" Chopper asked to detach from the group.
"Take Nagase with you. I'm gonna help the guys in port." Blaze allowed him and Nagase to split.
"Affirmative, splitting." Nagase followed Chopper as he went to go chase down some Yak-141s. Blaze continued towards the harbour. She locked onto a pair of Yak-141s ahead of her, but again a Navy flyboy in a Super Hornet got the kill before she could get missiles away.
"Jink, jink!" Samurai suddenly blurted out. Blaze pulled hard left. Cannon shells narrowly missed their body and wings. A MiG-35K had tried to pounce on them, and unfortunately the Fulcrum pilot was going way too fast, overshooting and putting Blaze in the offensive position. The opposing pilot made some distance and attempted to circle around for another shot, but Blaze pulled lead against the Fulcrum, lined the gunsight up with the enemy aircraft and fired a short burst of twenty mike. The high explosive incendiary tracer rounds whistled through the air and hit in a cluster from the nose to behind the cockpit of the Fulcrum, shredding apart the pilot. Splash one.
"Shit, good shot." Samurai complimented Blaze on her shot.
"Thanks for calling the jink." Blaze returned the compliment. "Fuck it, where's their air cover?"
Samurai looked at her screens in the back. "Flankers to our west, Fulcrums to our east."
"Going for the ones over the port." Blaze muttered, turning in for the harbour. She acquired two Fulcrums and actually got missiles off before somebody else hit them. Blaze's missiles tracked. She splashed one Fulcrum with a direct hit, but the second AMRAAM missed. Fortunately, someone else bagged the survivor. Chopper and Nagase were returning to Blaze. "Got them?"
"Nagase is now officially an ace!" Zoomer replied in earnest.
"Hey, nice going. Now let's get the rest of these fuckers." Blaze was hungry for more. She got more in the form of a four-ship flight of Freestyles. She put a lock on all four aircraft and fired off a salvo, four AMRAAMs rippling through the sky. The four V/STOL fighter-bombers tried to evade to no avail. Four fireballs, four splashed aircraft.
"Three shots left, Blaze." Samurai informed her pilot of their precarious munitions situation. Blaze glanced at her pylon information screen. Two AMRAAMs, one Sidewinder. Samurai was right.
"Guns it is." Blaze dismissed the possibility that they could run out of missiles to sling. Off the nose, more Yak-141s approached. There was a venerable horde of the fucking things. Blaze tracked and locked two of them, relying on her wingmen to engage the other four aircraft of that flight. "Blaze, fox 3, fox 3!"
"Chopper, fox 3!"
"Edge, fox 3, fox 3, fox 3!"
The air was thick with smoke trails and angry metal pipes doing several times the speed of sound. Despite evasive manoeuvres and the excessive dumping of chaff, all six Freestyles were splashed. On the other hand, there were plenty of targets to go around and now Blaze was out of AMRAAMs.
"Ah fuck. Chopper, Edge, you've gotta take point, I'm winchester on 120s." Blaze indicated as much to her wingmen.
"Roooger that, taking lead." Chopper volunteered to be the pilot at the tip of the spear. Blaze pulled back to let him assume the position. "Chopper, fox 3!"
"Edge, fox 3, fox 3!"
"Control, Wardog 1, are we able to land for resupply?" Blaze asked the no-doubt busy command centre. It took a few seconds for a reply to come back.
"Wardog 1, negative, the airspace is too hot! Maintain your position." Saint Hewlett Command denied Blaze's request to land so she could rearm. Blaze bit her lip, keyed the last missile he had to her stick and dived down. She felt her butt leave the seat as she pulled negative gees.
"What's your plan here?" Samurai asked, not sure why they were detaching from Chopper and Nagase.
"Engaging the enemy." Blaze replied. She threw the throttle forward and charged towards the first enemy she spotted. A Flanker on the tail of a friendly Super Hornet. Blaze uncaged the Sidewinder's IR seeker. When the distinct growling tone became constant, she fired. "Blaze, fox 2."
The AIM-9X lunged forward and detonated directly in the tailpipe of the Flanker, tearing apart its rear half. A split second later the pilot ejected. Blaze narrowly avoided slamming her wing straight through the pilot's midsection. Next on her kill list was a second Flanker who presumably was chasing after Osean fighters providing air cover. The Flanker let off an R-73 at Blaze.
"Sam, flares!" Blaze called as she performed a barrel roll. Samurai dispensed flares that formed a circle behind the aircraft. The R-73 went for the flares and detonated behind the Mudhen. The two aircraft merged with each other. On paper, the Su-35 had better manoeuvrability in the one-circle fight and rate fight compared to the F-15E. However, that discounted the fact that Blaze's Strike Eagle was scarcely loaded versus the Flanker with a full fuel tank and every pylon loaded with missiles, as well as Blaze successfully pulling off an early turn into the merge so that her nose was on target before the Flanker was even halfway through its turn. Blaze raked the Flanker's spine thoroughly with cannon shells, almost entirely cutting the aircraft in half. Splash one.
"Blaze, Winchester missiles!" Blaze was now completely out of air-to-air missiles. She pondered for a moment if it was possible to kill a fighter aircraft with a bomb, but decided it was a bad idea. Cannons it was.
"Flanker coming in on our tail!" Samurai told her pilot. "Missile, missile, missile!"
"Flares!" Blaze pulled the throttle lever all the way back to idle and traded altitude for speed. Samurai hit the flare dispenser button to shit out flare canisters behind them. The enemy missile detonated on the flares harmlessly. Blaze pushed the throttle all the way forward to afterburners and turned the battle into a rate fight, nose to tail.
"Keep dumping flares, keep dumping flares!" Blaze instructed her WSO. Samurai set the countermeasure setting to pop flares every couple of seconds to make it harder for the Flanker to gain a weapons lock.
"He's breaking off!" Samurai reported. Blaze looked over her shoulder. The Flanker had pulled out of the fight, presumably to defend against an incoming missile. The Flanker was hit by something and practically evaporated.
"Jesus. The fuck was that?" Blaze commented. Whatever had hit the Flanker, it wasn't an AMRAAM, the size of the explosion was far too big.
"All friendly aircraft in the port vicinity, this is the cruiser OFS Excalibur." The voice of a young but determined officer came on the radio. "We are unloading on every track within our range, please stay clear of our ship so you don't get fragged. Does anybody read this transmission?"
"Excalibur, this is Snowbird Squadron, acknowledged, we'll steer clear of your line of fire." A deep-voiced Super Hornet pilot answered the guided missile cruisers call.
"Wardog Squadron acknowledges, Excalibur." Blaze answered the call.
"Mace Squadron reads you loud and clear, we'll steer clear of ya!" Another Navy squadron leader answered.
The combat information centre onboard the Excalibur - CIC for short - was buzzing with activity.
"Killing tracks 221 to 245 with birds-"
"Vampire, vampire, vampire, killing with CIWS-"
"TAO, gun room reports we only have sixty rounds for the forward five-inch."
"Let's hope that's enough." Lieutenant-Commander Daniel Ray optimistically replied. The tactical actions officer - TAO - of the ship, Ray was effectively the man who fought the ship, directing actions taken in the CIC. Behind the captain and executive officer, he was the third-highest ranking officer on the Excalibur.
"Splash tracks 221, 223, 224, 225, 228-"
"Missiles approaching on the bow, killing with the five-inch!"
"Too close, all hands, brace for shock!" Ray advised the crew of the cruiser to prepare themselves for an impact. The Mark 45 one-twenty-seven mike deck gun was firing proximity fused shells every three seconds at anti-ship missiles locked on the Excalibur. The missiles popped up and dived down on the ship. Shell casings from the Mark 45 clattered onto the deck. One of the shells triggered on a missile and splashed it, but the second missile was closing in fast. There was only time for one last shot. A five-inch shell flew up and detonated, just barely hitting the missile before it reached the deck of the Excalibur. A cloud of smoke, fumes and fragments engulfed the bow of the cruiser. The ship shook from the pressure wave caused by the nearby explosion.
"Damage report!" Ray asked once the violent rocking had stopped.
"VLS, radar and main gun are still live!" An enlisted firecontrolman reported back.
"Alright, let's keep at it!"
Blaze was chasing a pair of Yak-141s that had made it past the CAP line. They were both manoeuvring like hell to avoid getting hit by Blaze's cannon rounds. She couldn't hit both at once, so Blaze had elected to chase the Freestyle that was making a dash for the two carriers in the port. The Freestyle flew over the bridge leading into the harbour. Blaze went underneath the same bridge and as she came out from underneath pulled up and fired off a burst at the underside of the VTOL aircraft. Those shells must have hit a fuel line because the Freestyle started trailing fire and flames before careening off into the surface of water.
"Blaze, splash one!" Blaze called out, moving onto the second Freestyle. This aircraft had gained considerable distance over Blaze, enough distance that Blaze was seriously concerned that she wouldn't be able to catch up before the Freestyle released its payload. Nevertheless, Blaze pushed for every kilonewton of thrust she could get out of her Mudhen's engines and pushed on. She fired a long burst at considerable distance trying to hit the Freestyle, to no avail, and then the worst happened.
CLICK! The cannon trigger went solid and couldn't be depressed. Blaze was out of cannon ammo.
"Fuck! Blaze, Winchester air-to-air!"
Fortunately, CIWS fire from a nearby cruiser brought the Freestyle down. Unfortunately, the Freestyle had already gotten its payload off against its target, a fuel-laden resupply ship. Blaze watched in horror as a bomb drop of eight FAB-500 dumb bombs landed lengthways up the tanker. The explosion was spectacular. The blaze that followed the detonations was horrifying.
"Holy shit…"
"This is AWACS Thunderhead, remaining enemy aircraft are withdrawing." Thunderhead reported the withdrawal of surviving Yuktobanian aircraft.
"Thunderhead, this is the Excalibur, concur. Looks like they're pulling back to regroup." The crew of the Excalibur were seeing the same thing from their AEGIS network and SPY radar system.
"All squadrons, this is Command. Land and rearm while the eye of the storm passes. They'll be back."
Blaze wasn't skipping out on a chance to rearm while the base wasn't actively under attack. She, Chopper and Nagase touched down at one of the smaller runways at Saint Hewlett's resident naval air station. Their response to the raid had been effective once enough people were awake and airborne, but the damage caused before that was extensive. There were plenty of fires being fought all over the base. Part of the taxiway had been torn up by bombs, and Blaze noticed a couple of hardened aircraft shelters that had been caved in, most likely the result of cruise missile impacts. Feeling ill, once the canopy was up, Blaze had rushed out of the cockpit and dashed straight towards the nearest patch of grass, where she threw up the contents of that morning's breakfast onto the green. Samurai came up behind her and patted Blaze's back, helping to move whatever was stuck in there.
"Thanks." Blaze muttered before a coughing fit.
"Kei, can you watch her for a sec?" Samurai called out to Nagase.
"Yeah." Nagase came running over to Blaze's side while Samurai withdrew to get Blaze something to drink.
"Well, that was a clusterfuck." Hamilton commented on the situation. "At least we're all still alive."
"You can say that again." Blaze replied before letting up a chesty cough. Samurai brought her a bottle of water that she kept stowed in the cockpit. She practically forced Blaze to swallow the contents of the bottle. "Okay okay I'm good now."
"Now what?" Nagase asked innocently.
"We rearm and then get back up, I would suspect." Blaze spouted forward her theory. "Don't ask what we'll be doing once we're back up. Take the chance to drink, take a piss, so and so."
As it turned out, there would be little time for any of those things. A high-ranking OMDF officer, a captain, came rushing around the hangars.
"Hey, are you guys Wardog Squadron?" The captain asked at a mile a minute.
"Yes sir." Blaze answered for her squadron.
"Whoever your squadron leader is, come with me, there's a briefing starting in a couple of minutes." The captain explained, although it sounded a lot like an order.
"Yes, sir." Blaze stood up and spun towards the others. "Stay here, I'll be back in a bit with details."
Blaze followed the captain to a nearby shelter where other senior officers and commanders had been gathered. The majority of the men and women surrounding her were OMDF, but Blaze spotted a couple of Osean Ground Defense Force officers amongst the crowd. Blaze felt out of place. While she was a mere First Lieutenant, the officers surrounding her were a mix of Lieutenant-Commanders, Commanders and Captains.
"Listen up, people!" The captain who had gathered all the officers started speaking to the crowd. "With the threat of aircraft and cruise missile attack, Saint Hewlett is currently not a safe place for the carriers or their escorts. We are moving the carriers out of port, through the enemy blockade and north to a different port." The captain got the basics out quickly. "Every pilot at this base is to be airborne by 1255. The fleet will be departing at 1300. That is all. Get the fuck outta here and get your squadrons ready to move."
Blaze left the briefing without any fanfare, returning to her squadron. She checked her watch. It was currently 1245. They had ten minutes.
"What's the deal?" Zoomer asked once Blaze was within earshot.
"The carriers and their escorts are being moved away from here to somewhere else. We're flying escort for them until they break through the blockade line. Mount up, we'll be launching in ten minutes." Blaze gave her squadron the rundown. She felt anxious as all hell, but it wasn't showing in her voice or her mannerisms. Blaze's confidence was growing.
"You heard the lady. Mount up." Hamilton reinforced Blaze's orders. Blaze, Samurai, Chopper, Zoomer, Nagase and Hamilton returned to their aircraft. The ordnancemen and hose runners were almost done rearming and refuelling the Mudhens. In addition to the triple racks of GBU-12s they had been carrying before, each member of Wardog was now carrying two AGM-84 Harpoons for more traditional methods of anti-shipping. This came at the loss of a pair of AIM-120s.
As she looked over her shoulder at her wing pylons, Blaze noticed two pairs of Hornets, the F/A-18C, taking off before the time specified by the captain from before. They were loaded to the teeth with what looked like Harpoons. Blaze decided not to question it and waited for the time to hit 1245 on the dot.
The moment the clock hit 1245, the radio crackled to life.
"All forces, Saint Hewlett Command. Execute. Execute. Execute."
Suddenly the whole base roared to life. Wardog's Strike Eagles, Navy Super Hornets, Hornets, even a couple of the newly-introduced F-35B Lightning IIs belonging to a Marine Corps squadron were rolling. It took a couple of minutes because of the congestion, but every aircraft on the base was airborne before the carriers had passed the bridge. Even from above, the Hubert-class aircraft carriers were massive.
"Wardog Squadron, airborne." Blaze reported.
"Hey look. The carriers are entering the ocean." Chopper pointed out below. "C'mon, whoever's out there, help us get those buckets of bolts out of here."
"Attention, everyone. This is the captain of the aircraft carrier Kestrel." The voice of an old grizzled man rang over the radio. "My congratulations to every ship that managed to escape. As the senior officer, I will now form a provisional battle group. The enemy has built a blockade with their fleet in front of us. We must break through this blockade to safer waters. Fair winds and following seas."
"Well shit, he's a good motivational speaker." Samurai muttered sarcastically. Blaze snickered.
"Let's get it done." Blaze had her mind set on the mission. "I've got eyes on approaching aircraft. Blaze, fox 3, fox 3!"
Blaze was the first person in the second phase of the battle to take a shot. Her AMRAAMs lofted up high above the fleet and moved forward, scanning for targets.
"Tracking frigates and missile boats taking position on the flanks of the bay." Samurai reported. "They're setting up a trap."
"Then we beat them to it." Blaze decided. "Wardog, push south to engage the flanking force."
"Wilco." Nagase.
"Coming." Chopper
Three Mudhens against large surface combatants like cruisers generally never went well, but fighting ships that didn't have extensive anti-air systems like Krivak-class frigates, three Mudhens could do some pretty extensive damage. Blaze observed that the southern arm of the blockade was formed of four ships, a frigate and three smaller missile boats. Setting her radar to scan for surface targets, Blaze set her missiles to target the frigate.
"Target the frigate first." Blaze ordered her wingmen. "On my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark."
Six Harpoons from between the three aircraft dropped before their turbojets kicked in and propelled them towards the Krivak I leading the missile boat group. A basic anti-ship missile by today's standards, the Harpoon was of seventies vintage, but they were cheap to manufacture and employ. Blaze brought the squadron due east towards land while waiting for the missiles to reach their target.
"Target is defending…" Samurai was watching the carnage via targeting pod. "Splash one… splash two… hit! One, two, three, four hits! She's on fire!"
"Wardog, turn back in, get those fucking missile carriers!" Blaze ordered once more, turning back in at breakneck speeds to go after the small defenseless missile boats. "Lase up the middle ship."
"On it." Samurai replied. A green diamond appeared on Blaze's HUD. That green diamond was overlaid onto the missile boat she was currently after. "Live."
"Blaze, pickle." A single GBU-12 departed from its ejector rack and tracked on the point that the laser was aiming at. Blaze turned due west to allow Samurai to maintain the lock on the boat. The bomb homed in on the boat's bow and penetrated. Boom. Part of the deck of the ship blew out and then collapsed into a newly formed cavity. The missile boat immediately slowed to a crawl, crippled.
"Good effect on target." Samurai called the hit.
"Pickle, pickle!" Chopper had bombs out.
"Edge, bombs out!" So did Nagase. Blaze watched the collection of small missile boats. Both were hit. One disappeared in a cloud of smoke. When the smoke cleared, all that could be seen were fragments of what used to be a ship.
"Holy fucking shit." Blaze muttered in disbelief. It took a couple of seconds for Blaze to avert her eyes from the boat and put her mind back on the mission. "Alright. What else do they have in store for us?"
Meep-meep-meep-meep-BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!
"Missile on the nose, low!" Samurai called out the bearing and altitude of the missile.
"Defending!" Blaze flattened out her profile relative to the missile and moved perpendicular to its direction of travel. Chaff canisters were dispensed. Rather bizarrely, the missile lost its track and stopped pinging the RWR. Regardless, Blaze continued on her course for a minute just to make sure the missile hadn't gone silent. Figuring that she was safe after that time was up, Blaze turned back into the enemy. The Burkes and Ticos defending the carriers had already started firing upon the Yuktobanian blockade line. At the distances involved, the ubiquitous RIM-66 Standard and the shorter-ranged RIM-162 Sea Sparrow were slaughtering the Su-35Ks, MiG-35Ks and Su-25UMs attempting to launch an attack on the fleet.
"I think we have our work cut out for us." Chopper commented on the Navy giving the attackers an ass-whooping.
"Weapons tight." Blaze ordered. "Let the Navy do the heavy lifting."
"Are we waiting on something?" Nagase asked.
"All forces, the main blockade line is on the retreat, we ask that friendly aircraft pursue and destroy as many ships as possible." The commanding officer of the Kestrel made an announcement. Before anybody had as much as made an attack order, Blaze had sent her Mudhen into the supersonic speed regime and was burning straight towards a Sovremenny-class destroyer. The surface warfare focused warship's air defences were busy engaging anti-ship missiles launched by Osean warships and aircraft, making it easy for Blaze, Chopper and Nagase to get in close to engage the destroyer with their bombs.
"Are we lasing this?" Samurai asked.
"Nope!" Blaze pushed the stick forward and dived on the ship. She aimed her bombs with the CCIP indicator on the HUD and dropped. Blaze pulled a touch under eight gees pulling away from the ship. "Bombs away!"
"Bombs away!" Chopper got his payload out.
"Pickle, pickle, pickle!" Nagase got her GBU-12s away.
Thirteen bombs impacted in a line from the stern to the bow of the Sovremenny. They all detonated in quick succession one after the other. The destroyer was turned into a twisted conglomeration of steel, water and fire.
"Scratch one destroyer." Blaze called out. "Winchester air-to-ground."
"I guess we're waiting for the others to do their thing now?" Nagase asked.
"Yep. Weapons tight, hang over the carriers." Blaze replied. Wardog Squadron waited for the Hornets forming the fleet air wing to pick off the ships that were either straggling behind or weren't retreating. One by one, those ships stopped moving and eventually disappeared from radar sweeps once the top ends of their superstructures had slipped beneath the ocean.
"This is the Kestrel." The Kestrel's commanding officer was on the radio again. "Our fleet has successfully broken out into safer waters. My thanks to the brave warriors of the sea and the air."
"I'll be fucked, they made it out." Blaze circled the carriers. The Kestrel, her sister ship and the escorting destroyers and cruisers had made it out of the kill zone safely. Blaze let loose a sigh of relief.
"One, two, three. One, two, three planes. Count them up, kid, we're all home safe." Chopper sounded relieved that all three aircraft of their squadron had survived the fight. Blaze turned south, beckoning her wingmen to follow her.
"I wonder what Major Bartlett's going to think of this." Samurai pondered.
"Cross that bridge when we get there." Blaze replied. "Saint Hewlett Command, this is Wardog Squadron, our job's done, we are RTB."
"Negative Wardog, return to the air station." Somebody in the Saint Hewlett air traffic control and command centre inexplictly denied Wardog's return to base request.
"A…firmative?" Blaze hesitantly replied, turning for the naval air station. "What's the holdup?"
"You'll be briefed once you're on the ground."