Having absolutely no idea what Wardog had been recalled to the naval air station at Saint Hewlett for, Blaze and her wingmen arrived at the designated hangar block to find weapon carts loaded with large round white missiles with a gold band towards the nose. Unusually for a missile, the only control surfaces they had were towards the very rear.
"Oh, this'll be good." Samurai voiced her thoughts. She sounded almost amused.
"You can say that again." Blaze agreed. They were directed to park within the hangar. Almost immediately the ground crews connected a fuel hose to start filling up the fuel tanks of the three Mudhens, while the ordnancemen replenished their air-to-air missile stocks and mounted the two odd-looking missiles. Blaze got a signal from the director people on the ground to begin the shut down procedure. Blaze did so. The engines spooled down. She opened the canopy, unstrapped and slid down a ladder to the deck.
"Lieutenant Paige!" An OMDF officer, a Commander, called for Blaze.
"That's me, sir." Blaze walked up to the beckoning senior officer.
"You and your men have thirty minutes to eat and shit before we're sending you out for another sortie." The officer explained.
"What are we sortieing for?" Blaze asked.
"Anti-satellite mission. I'd use the time while you can." The officer replied in the briefest of terms. Blaze nodded to acknowledge the next mission and the officer walked off to his next tasking. Blaze returned to find the others dismounting and waiting for some orders.
"Okay, we've got half an hour from now to rest. Get something to drink, take a leak, take a shit, whatever, make sure you're back here on time. Understood?" Blaze was straight to the point with her description.
"Easy done." Wolf answered for the rest of the squadron. One by one, everybody left to sort out their personal administration until it was just Blaze left in the hangar. Blaze climbed back into the cockpit and rested the back of her head against the seat. She took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to relax. It helped a little bit. At the very least, she was content with the fact that none of them had been shot down in the clusterfuck. But who knew how long that streak was going to last. War was an unpredictable thing.
"Hope I didn't keep you waiting." Samurai's voice very rapidly approached as she clambered up into her seat at the back of the aircraft.
"How considerate of you to want to keep me company." Blaze retorted, earning a chuckle from Samurai.
"Mmm." Samurai sounded like she was already strapping in. "An ASAT mission, hey? This should be fun."
"It'll be fun until some fucker bumps us in the middle of the ocean." Blaze replied. "Maybe. For all we know, the launch point could be well inland."
"More likely it's over the ocean." Samurai wagered a guess. "The Yuktobanian equivalent of our thermal observation satellites looking out for ship movements."
"Yeah, probably." Blaze had to agree with Samurai's assessment. The two sat in silence for ten minutes. Blaze was pondering the entire situation. If they weren't at war with Yuktobania with the events of the previous week, they sure as well were at war with Yuktobania now. Sinking a few ships and blowing up a major fleet base was not going to go unpunished without a declaration. It was at that moment that something occurred to Blaze.
"Hey Sam," Blaze asked. "If we get wacked and you end up in enemy hands, how do you think the Yuktobanian government is going to react to a Sotoan national fighting with Oseans?"
Samurai thought about it for a few seconds. "Well, I'm the weapon systems officer for an Osean aircraft, wearing an Osean uniform, wearing Osean patches, in an Osean squadron, following the orders of an Osean. There are plenty of people of Verusean and Sotoan descent who are Osean citizens. I don't think they're going to bat an eye."
"I…" Blaze had no counter to that. "Fair points."
"Besides, I'm sure you won't get us shot down. Right?" Samurai's tone of voice made Blaze giggle.
"You're good." Blaze replied.
"I am good, Ash, I am very good." Samurai retorted. Blaze could virtually hear the shit-eating grin on Samurai's face. The two waited for that half-hour timer to pass up. The crews of Wardog 2 and Wardog 3 returned in pairs. First it was Chopper and Zoomer. They sat up against their Strike Eagle and chatted. Soon after them, Nagase and Hamilton returned. Nagase climbed straight up into the cockpit, while Hamilton approached Blaze's aircraft.
"I take it we're undertaking an anti-satellite mission?" Hamilton gathered after eyeballing the ASM-135s mounted under their Mudhens.
"Yep. Still waiting out for details. Somebody'll be out in…" Blaze checked her watch. "Ten minutes."
"If you say so, lieutenant." Hamilton retreated back to the WSO seat of his and Nagase's aircraft. Right on cue ten minutes later, a pair of officers entered the hangar again.
"Lieutenant Paige?" One of them called out. Blaze didn't hear them at first. "Blaze?"
"Oh shit." Blaze muttered to herself, clambering out of the cockpit. "That's me, sir."
The officers ushered her over to a nearby table where one of them laid out a map detailing an area centred around Saint Hewlett five hundred kilometres north-to-south and five hundred kilometres east-to-west. There were markers written down on the map. An arrow that pointed to inland Osea east of Saint Hewlett, and then a red circle about two hundred kilometres east of Saint Hewlett with the phrase LAUNCH BOX written underneath it.
"If I'm reading this correctly sir, you want my squadron to sortie to that grid reference and conduct a launch against a target from that box?" Blaze extrapolated the data that she had been given.
"Correct." The senior of the two officers, a Commander in a pilot's uniform, said. "We want you to engage the target and verify its dive into the atmosphere. The target is a Yuktobanian low-orbit observation satellite."
"Understood." Blaze understood the task assigned to her. "After mission completion, are we to return here, or can we return to our assigned base?"
"Return to Sand Island." The commander answered.
"Got it. If that's all sir, we're ready to step off." Blaze said.
"Very well. Good hunting." The Commander let Blaze off. Blaze took the map with her and returned to her aircraft. She put her helmet on and made sure the radio was live. "Check, check."
"Loud and clear." Nagase.
"I hear you." Chopper.
"We're taking off from here and egressing 090, Angels 30 at cruising speed." Blaze gave directional instructions. She passed the map over her shoulder to Samurai. "Can you upload that to them?"
"Wilco." Samurai punched in buttons.
"You'll get a map reference in a second. We're heading to a target box and lighting up a spy satellite. Once we verify the satellite has entered the atmosphere, we're going home. Any questions?" Blaze gave her squadron specific instructions. The silence over the radio indicated that nobody had any questions. "Awesome, let's go."
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / EDGE, HUNTER / F-15E
The majority of the western Osean mainland was grassy plains, rivers and forests as far as the eye could see. Appropriately, the western region of the country was where the majority of Osea's domestic food product was produced. Wheat farms, corn farms, poultry farms, vineyards, slaughterhouses, there were thousands of them in the west. Suddenly it made sense why the brass at Saint Hewlett had wanted them to observe the fall of any debris. It could start a fire, or worse, contaminate farms and rivers in the area.
Two hundred kilometres wasn't far for an aircraft that had an average cruising speed of between six to seven hundred kilometres at forty thousand feet. Within twenty minutes of stepping off from Saint Hewlett, Wardog Squadron was at the designated firing area.
"Alright." Blaze braced herself for what she was about to do. "Beginning pop-up manoeuvre."
Blaze pushed the throttle forward and yanked the stick back to pitch the aircraft at a sixty-degree angle in a climb. She felt the gees in the turn.
"Target confirmed." Samurai saw what they were meant to be shooting at on the radar. "Locked."
"Blaze, fox 3, fox 3!" Blaze called, firing the ASM-135s. They dropped off their assigned pylons, drifted in air for a moment and then shot off, propelled by a solid rocket motor.
"Good track." Samurai confirmed. Blaze pulled out of the turn and found herself sitting at Angels 50, only a few thousand feet below the Mudhen's officially claimed height ceiling. Blaze kept her eye up and waited for a fireball or something to that effect to appear in the dark blue sky above them.
"It'd be nice if we had Thunderhead or somebody else to call the hit." Blaze mused.
"Keep dreaming." Samurai replied bluntly. She, too, was looking up for something to confirm a hit. "It'd be even nicer if they updated those things to report back to the aircraft."
"Keep dreaming." Blaze sent Samurai's earlier retort back at her. Samurai looked at Blaze, moderately surprised, before looking back up. "I don't see shit. Edge, Chopper, can you see any explosions above us?"
"Nada, nothing." Chopper.
"Not yet." Nagase.
"Did they miss?" Blaze wondered.
"Satellites are pretty high up, maybe they still need to travel the distance." Samurai suggested.
"True." Blaze conceded. "Oh wait, there it is! Splash one satellite!"
Sure enough, barely dark enough to contrast against the sky, there was a glint of an explosion. What would be more visible to any observers on the ground would be the reflection of a million different fragments catching the sunlight up in low orbit. Blaze noticed faint trails appearing in the sky for a few moments and then disappearing. Larger fragments of the satellite were falling into the atmosphere and burning up upon hitting the dense air at high speed.
"Looks like you got it, kid." Chopper pointed out the presence of the brief glimpses of fragments falling into the ocean.
"I'd call that a mission success." Blaze cracked her neck. "Let's get the fuck outta here and let's go home."