The Will Of A Demon

by Ghosthawk22

Thrown into the midst of a war, Ashley "Blaze" Paige and the men and women under her charge are given the task of bringing Osea to victory. But there are darker forces at play that would see the destruction of both Osea and Yuktobania. A soft rewrite and novelization of The Unsung War.

25. Chapter 25 - Front Line

5 October, 2010

The briefing admiral had certainly been right about the missile attacks that would precede the offensive. According to the radio, the destroyers providing air cover for the base had been busy knocking down wave after wave of cruise missiles roughly a hundred kilometres west. The Navy was putting in work.

Ash checked her watch. 0450. Ten minutes to launch hour. Forty minutes to H-hour. The cockpit was faintly illuminated by red light, the sun only a faint blue glow beyond the horizon. Despite the fact that it was dark as all hell, the flight line was buzzing with the idle growl of turbofan engines. The Mudhens of Wardog were individually carrying four Harpoons. Grimm only had two under his wings. All of them were designated for Yuktobanian warships.

The atmosphere in the hangar of the OFS Kestrel was tense. Prior to stepping off, Marcus had seen many of the pilots that were part of the air wing smoking. While he wasn't a smoker himself, he understood the sentiment. In half an hour they would be engaging in a battle with several hundred aircraft on each side. He expected heavy casualties.

Through the thick steel deck that separated the hangar from the flight deck, Marcus felt the rumbling of the carrier's waist catapults firing. Flight operations were commencing on the flight deck. Marcus slammed down his Super Hornet's canopy and waited for his launch window.

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WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E

WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E

WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E

WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C

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With more than a hundred aircraft at her flanks, Blaze and her squadron departed from the base and headed out west. Eagles, Mudhens, Vipers and Raptors all flew out to meet the Yuktobanian threat. They split into two attack groups with fifty kilometres separation. Blaze's assigned group flew south-west, with the second group flying north-west. A small group of Super Hornets from one of the carriers was in between them, providing air cover for the battlecruiser OFS Hammer as she and her escorting destroyers pushed straight on towards the Yuke formation.

Their targets were the anti-submarine and anti-air escort ships screening the eastern arc of the landing ships. Yuktobanian Navy air defence doctrine placed an emphasis on the concept of a singular ship providing a long-range bubble over a formation, with smaller ships possessing only point defence weapons. While this kind of doctrine had been valid in the sixties and seventies where the main aerial threat to a ship were aircraft armed with bombs and short-ranged missiles, it was of questionable effectiveness now that the majority of air-to-ship engagements took place over a hundred kilometres away with long ranged sea skimming anti-ship missiles, weapons that were typically difficult to engage at range owing to how they masked their signatures against the ocean surface. Naval warfare in theory be damned, they were about to see how it worked in practice.

"Coyote 1, Thunderhead, new group of bandits, 275 for 300 at Angels 15, inbound hot." There were several different AWACSs providing command and control for the defending force. Thunderhead was the one providing BRAA calls and attack instructions for the southern pincer.

"Coyote, tally bandits, vectoring to engage." Coyote Squadron turned towards the enemy group and closed in at high speed. Both pincers had a forward screen to deter interceptors. The northern pincer's screen was made up of a squadron of Marine F-35Bs. The southern pincer was made up of Air Force F-22s, the same squadron that Blaze and Wardog had worked alongside during the defence of Bassett Space Centre.

"Fencer Squadron, take point. All other squads, continue as fragged." Thunderhead instructed the Eagles to move ahead of the formation to form a second screen.

"Wilco." Fencer's F-15Cs climbed above the rest of the group and took point. Blaze looked up. She saw them overtaking the group overhead.

"Oh my." Samurai commented, distracting Blaze from the airshow above. "First targets on the datalink."

"Tally." Blaze referenced the datalink. She spotted the very first signs of the enemy fleet, a destroyer and three frigates forming the tip of the spear.

"Any of those you want dead in particular?" Samurai asked, her fingers hovering over the targeting selection computer.

"Let the seeker head figure that out." Blaze replied. "Wide radar search pattern."

"Ack that." Samurai set their Harpoon radars to scan a broad area ahead of the missile. Whatever they saw first, they'd lock onto.

"Coyote, splash five." Coyote Leader called in. His squadron had downed five of the eight Flankers originally on a course to intercept the attacking group. With the Raptors covering their flank and the Eagles covering their front, the attack group pressed on towards their firing point. Blaze referenced the datalink. They were on time with the northern arm of the pincer. Assuming neither group were influenced by a major disruption, they were five minutes away from having missiles away and on target.

"Popup group!" Thunderhead reported. "Bearing 190 for ten and closing fast!"

190 was to the south, which relative to Blaze was off her left shoulder. She tilted her head in that direction to look for the target. Thunderhead hadn't given an altitude with his callout, so Blaze wasn't sure where to look. No matter, Samurai spotted the popup group before Blaze could.

"Felons, three-o'clock low!" Samurai yelled out. Blaze looked down. A pack of Su-57s was rising up from the sea floor directly perpendicular to her shoulder. Instinctively, Blaze pulled the stick to the left to merge with the Felons.

"Wardog, break left!" She instructed her wingmen to do the same.

"Archer, fox 2, fox 2!" Grimm fired his AIM-9s the moment he got his nose on target. By the time Blaze had gotten one of the Felons in her HUD, she was the target of a missile.

"Missile in the air!" Samurai saw an R-73 with their name on it.

"Flares, flares, flares! Blaze, fox 2!" Blaze shouted as she launched a Sidewinder before breaking low and right, shitting out flares on the descent. She cut her afterburners to draw less attention from the IR guided missile. The missile drew in closer… and detonated on the flares, perilously close to their aircraft.

"Archer, splash two!" Archer had bagged a couple of the Yuktobanian fighters. Blaze was not so lucky. Her missile missed the mark. She heard Thunderhead say something about a second popup group, but Blaze was occupied with the Felon merging with her. She didn't dare turn nose-to-nose with the Felon while she was loaded. If she did that, she and Samurai were as good as dead.

"His nose is coming around- missile!" Samurai was tracking the Felon's movement when she called out that there was a missile chasing them. Blaze popped flares and traded her altitude for speed. Luckily that was enough to once again avoid an R-73. However, the Felon was now right on their tail and was posturing for a gun kill. Fortunately, one of Wardog's resident pilots was doing the same. Nagase came screaming in from above for a high-aspect gunshot. Her Mudhen's M61 Vulcan roared. Tracer and high explosive shells tore into the Felon's spine and engine area.

"Edge, splash one!" Nagase called the kill. Blaze muttered a grateful phrase that she wasn't sure if anybody heard, levelling out of the dive and looking around for more targets. There was one more Felon in their immediate vicinity, but it was being chased by both Grimm and a second F-16 from another squadron. The Felon attempted a Cobra manoeuvre to get behind the two Vipers, but the second Viper pilot nailed the Yuke fighter with a well-placed gun burst to the cockpit region.

"Trigger, splash one." The pilot of the second Viper, a woman, reported.

"Wardog, form up on me, right echelon." Blaze ordered her wingmen to join back on her. Above their flight, half of Fencer Squadron was withdrawing from the front of the group to intercept and destroy what turned out to be a second group of Felons in their rear. According to what Blaze could gather off the radio, a couple of Felons had been shot down but the surviving aircraft were tearing through the middle of the attack group. Things were not looking good.

"Kid, the guys behind us are getting their asses kicked." Chopper indicated as much.

"I know, continue on this bearing." Blaze wanted to help her buddies, but they were the tip of the spear. They had to carry on to conduct the attack. "Coyote, Wardog 1, anything on your cordon?"

"Flankers out the wazoo, but they're scared because they can't see us." Jack, the squadron leader of Coyote Squadron some fifty clicks north-north-west of Wardog, replied. "We'll keep them at bay for ya."

"Thanks." Blaze replied. They weren't far from the attack mark, but the majority of their attack group was at least a couple of minutes behind. Blaze grit her teeth and carried on. Confident that Samurai had set the correct targeting data for the Harpoons, Blaze cycled through so that the Harpoons were on her trigger. Deciding that there wouldn't be much effective difference between thirty Harpoons and two hundred Harpoons, Blaze got in touch with her counterpart leading the Viper squadron a dozen kilometres off to her right.

"Jolter 1, Wardog 1, I'm moving forward ahead of the rest of the strike force, attack heading 280." Blaze notified the Viper squadron leader of her intent.

"Ack that, Wardog. We'll flank north and attack from heading 330." Jolter 1 was on board with Blaze's plan. They flew the remaining distance to the attack maker, making sure to keep in line with their counterparts on the northern flank. Further away, Coyote Squadron downed a pair of Su-35s. Given the stealth characteristics of their F-22s, they could afford to get within a closer radius to the Yuktobanian convoy. The RWR started beeping. A Ural-class air defence cruiser was locking Blaze up with their fire control radar. Blaze wasn't quite within the effective firing range of their long-range SAMs, but if she carried on for another minute she would have expected a missile to be coming her way. No matter, Wardog and Jolter Squadrons arrived at their attack headings.

"Wide cone search, sea-skimming. Profile set." Samurai reported to her pilot.

"Confirmed." Blaze switched off the master safe and put her finger over the weapon release trigger. "Thunderhead, Wardog, ready to execute."

"Thunderhead, Jolter, ready to execute."

"Jolter, Wardog, this is Thunderhead, confirmed. Wait." Thunderhead was waiting for a confirmation from the AWACS supporting the northern attack group. "All squadrons, execute on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark!"

As soon as Blaze heard the word mark, she depressed the trigger four times. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.

"Good separation." Samurai observed that all four Harpoons had separated from their pylons. The turbojets of the anti-ship missiles fired up as they descended and started propelling towards their assigned flight paths. The Harpoons took a dive towards the ocean as they took up their sea skimming profile.

"Blaze, weapons away."

"Edge, Bruiser."

"Chopper, bruiser, bruiser."

"Archer, weps away."

"Break south-east." Blaze declared, not wanting to penetrate too deep into the enemy ADEZ lest a missile get thrown at her and her wingmen. They followed their original approach vector out into more friendly airspace. They passed over the survivors of the squadrons that got ambushed earlier by the Felons. By the looks of it, those Felons had splashed upwards of twenty aircraft before they themselves had been splashed by Osean fighters. A painful loss for the Oseans, but for the return investment of twelve Yuktobanian Felons lost in total, it more or less evened out. Wardog Squadron could have remained in the area to provide additional air cover, but their orders very specifically said to return to base to rearm once they had gotten their missiles away. Blaze wasn't about to break those rules, so she and Wardog Squadron followed their attack bearing all the way back to Sand Island.

Elsewhere in the area of operations, Swordsman was flying away from the Kestrel and into the battlezone along with thirty other Super Hornets and a handful of E/A-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft. The Growler looked almost identical to the Super Hornet since it was based on the latter. The easiest way to tell the difference was by looking at the pods it was carrying. The Super Hornet carried weapons almost all of the time, while the Growler carried oddly shaped jammer pods under its wings along with a couple of AMRAAM for self-defence.

Meanwhile, Swordsman, his squadron and the other squadrons forming the Kestrel's strike force were carrying enough AGM-84D Harpoons to blot out the sun. By the time Strike Force Kestrel was formed up and on its way to their attack point, the Air Force had gotten their weapons off at their targets. Hopefully they could sink or at least disable the vessels in the outer cordon, because if they didn't it was going to be a lot harder to focus solely on the Ural-class cruiser protecting the rest of the fleet.

"This is Scout 501." Lieutenant-Commander James Freakshow Hadley, the squadron leader of VAQ-139, chimed in. "A jamming profile against the Ural has been made. You now may approach at will."

Although they wouldn't be entering the cruiser's bubble for another fifteen minutes, it was reassuring to Swordsman that the Headhunters were staying on top of their role as the pests in the fleet. Everybody he had been on exercise with hated being on the receiving end of Growler jamming.

"Turn heading 240." Swordsman ordered. Although he technically wasn't the highest ranking officer in the air group as a mere Commander, he was the senior ranking officer in the strike force. His squadron followed suit, with the rest of the strike force falling in close behind the Snowbirds.

"Owl Hunter, Big Bird 111, bogey dope, over." Brady wanted to know where the enemy was.

"305, 310 at Angels 20, withdrawing west." Owl Hunter answered in his typical southern drawl. "The Marines have them on the run."

Owl Hunter was referring to the F-35Bs belonging to a Marine Corps squadron that was part of the northern pincer. If they had groups of Flankers on the defensive while they couldn't shoot back for a lack of a target, Swordsman figured that the Lightnings were proving to be quite effective. The flight in towards their attack point was uneventful. A forward group of Super Hornets and Growlers were beating off whatever the Lightnings didn't catch. Swordsman sneaked a look at the datalink MFD to the side of his cockpit. The Air Force attacking aircraft were withdrawn to Sand Island to rearm. The surface force centred on that old battlecruiser was rapidly closing the distance between them and the enemy. Swordsman smirked at the thought of a battlecruiser engaging in a gunfight with the much smaller frigates and destroyers.

"Ah, that's a problem." Freakshow piped up. "Owl Hunter, receiving electronic interference between 240 to 290."

"Tally." Swordsman spotted the problem. Whatever he had previously been able to see via radar was now obscured by a pure white wall of radar energy. Evidently the Yuktobanians had a carrier somewhere within their fleet because they were being opposed by a group of either Su-25UKPPs or Su-35KPs. Or both, which was a scary thought.

"Dagger Squadron is vectoring to intercept jammers. Scout, pull back. Orca, move up and join Big Bird." Owl Hunter reorganised the positions of the different squadrons in the formation. Swordsman's Snowbirds remained at the front, while the Super Hornets of VFA-1, the vaunted Killer Whales, joined them.

"Pullin' back." Freakshow and his squadron, the Headhunters of VAQ-141, withdrew from the tip of the spear to allow the Orcas to take their spot.

"Hey, does anyone else see those Flankers getting closer?" Brady noticed that the Su-35s previously held at bay by the Lightning screen were approaching now that the F-35Bs were no longer in their way.

"Orcas, Rednecks, vector to 305 to intercept bandits." Owl Hunter redirected two squadrons to intercept the incoming Flankers. Swordsman was mildly nervous. The Flanker group was large, composed of just over a dozen aircraft. He did have a handful of AMRAAMs, but if they got close his squadron would be in trouble.

"Big Birds, head on." Swordsman instructed his guys while keeping a keen eye on the situation. The two sides entered the effective engagement range of each other. Listening to the radio, both parties fired at roughly the same time. The Hornets went into the defensive, diving and notching against incoming long-ranged missiles. While the defensive screen mingled with the attackers, the anti-ship equipped attackers continued on towards their target. Although he couldn't see it because of the enemy jammers, the ship would still be somewhere in the direction of their current heading. Swordsman looked back at the datalink. Both sides were down a few aircraft each, and now they were in a furball of a merge, a fight that typically favoured the Flanker. As Sidewinders and R-73s flew, more aircraft from each side got knocked off until eventually the threat had been eliminated at the cost of more than a dozen Hornets and Super Hornets.

"Redneck 301. All enemy Flankers splashed. Orca Squadron's gone." The Redneck's squadron leader stated the outcome of the engagement. Swordsman slammed the side of his canopy in annoyance. On the bright side, the radar picture up ahead started to clear out. The Lightnings had started engaging the jammers. A brief glance at the map display indicated that they were approaching their attack point.

"Dagger, splash all Flanker-KPs." The leader of the Lightning Squadron reported.

"Time to target, one minute." Swordsman stated. Even with the loss of a full squadron, they would carry on with the attack. "Snowbirds, attack heading 260, ripple fire, narrow search cone. Fire on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark."

One by one, the Harpoon anti-ship missiles fitted on the surviving Hornets and Super Hornets fell from their pylons, igniting their engines and dropping to wave level before switching on their inertial navigation systems and guiding themselves in the general direction of the Yuktobanian cruiser. Once all four of his weapons were safely away, Swordsman banked to the south and away from the cruiser, not wanting to enter the range of its long-range missiles that would no doubt attempt to get a shot off at anything that came anywhere close to it.

"Big Bird 102, bruiser." Swordsman rattled off the brevity code for the launch of an anti-ship missile. The other squadrons called their shots in sequence, one after the other. Swordsman noticed that Freakshow and his Growler buddies were maintaining their course towards the cruiser. It took a few seconds for it to occur to Swordsman that the Growlers were carrying HARMs and wanted to get them on target around the same time as the Harpoons.

"Scout, rifle." Freakshow and his guys locked onto the cruiser's radar signal and fired off their HARMs. After that, they pulled back and remained on station to jam enemy radar signals. They and the Hornets of the Rednecks were the only two squadrons from the Kestrel that would be remaining on station while the rest of the carrier's air wing returned to rearm. Swordsman watched as a venerable wave of anti-ship missiles made their way closer to the enemy ship. He had no doubt that not all of the missiles would make it to their target, but he was certain that they would score a crippling number of hits.

"Harpoons are terminal." Owl Hunter was keeping an eye on the situation. "Ural has started engaging."

"Oooh yeah, there's the money shot." Freakshow commented. "S-400s engaging at twenty klicks. Fuck me, they can't hit shit!"

"Language." Owl Hunter reminded Freakshow that he was on an open mic. "Ural has engaged with Tor. Ural is engaging with… Ural is hit! Ural is taking hits!"

"Hell yeah." Swordsman muttered to himself.

"Ural is slowing down. Looks like engine damage." Owl Hunter reported what findings he could gather from what the radar dish over his head was telling him.

"Add sensor damage to that list." Freakshow chimed in. "Either her power or her radars are out. Owl Hunter, do you want us to maintain our jamming on the Ural?"

"Negative, Scout." Owl Hunter replied. "Head 010 and link up with Poseidon. Further orders to follow."

"Wilco." The Growlers split from the main body of their formation to join a squadron of Super Hornets moving to flank the Yuktobanian fleet from the north. Swordsman, his squadron and the rest of the Kestrel's carrier air wing retreated back to the Kestrel to rearm. The other two carrier air wings would carry out their strikes against the fleet, then it would be the Air Force's turn again.

Blaze had flown into a shitstorm as she approached Sand Island's main runway. Osean IFF was good, but Blaze still found it nerving to land on a runway that had SAM batteries actively firing missiles in the middle of her approach. Fortunately she and Wardog landed without incident. Judging by local radio chatter, the Yuktobanians had probably slipped a few submarines armed with cruise missiles past the ASW screen and were attempting to crater the runways for at least a couple of hours. Unfortunately for the Yukes, the base's ground-based air defence component had something to say about that.

The air raid siren stopped ringing as Blaze and company rolled up to the fuel, armament and repair station. The weapon crews did their thing, replacing the Sidewinders they had used in their confrontation with the Su-57 flight, and replacing the Harpoons they had used against the Yuke screening force with GBU-15 fire-and-forget bomb units. To Blaze, the GBU-15 was a peculiar choice of weapon. Based on the two thousand pound Mark 84 general bomb, unlike its cousin that was the GBU-24, the GBU-15 could be used in a standoff role since its targeting system was different. Where the GBU-24 relied on a laser for initial and terminal guidance, the GBU-15 instead used infrared guidance for autonomous flight. In practice this made the GBU-15 function like an AGM-65, just on a larger scale and without an engine for powered flight.

"Four GBU-15s, four 9Xs, four 120Cs." Samurai relayed their weapon status to her pilot.

"Got it." Blaze looked over at Grimm in his F-16C. "Archer, weps?"

"Two Sidewinder, four AMRAAM, two GBU-24 and a drop tank." Grimm gave it. Predictably his payload was different given that he was flying a much lighter aircraft.

"Ack." Blaze gathered that they were continuing in an anti-shipping role, either against small escort ships or the actual troop carrying ships themselves. They would know soon. As soon as Wardog Squadron had been rearmed, they were directed to the runway and back into the sky, joined by other Mudhens, Eagles and Vipers. A quick glance at the datalink showed that two large groups of OMDF fighters were moving into position towards the east and north axis of the fleet to conduct a strike, while OADF fighters in the south were intermittently shooting at and getting shot at by Yuktobanian fighters. The OFS Hammer and her escorts were a minute or two away from entering firing distance.

"South group, this is AWACS Thunderhead, listen up." Thunderhead's grating voice flowed through the radio. "Strike aircraft, you are to proceed from east to west to directly engage Yuktobanian landing ships and troop carriers under the cover of EW aircraft and fighters. Do not stop until you are Winchester. Once Winchester, exit the attack vector and return to Sand Island to rearm for a third sortie."

"Directly attacking the transports?" Chopper said. "Dicey. I like it."

"Who's doing the jamming, the Ravens? I hope their equipment is up to date." Nagase didn't fancy the prospect of getting blown out of the air because of outdated support.

"Trust in the fleet to do their job." Blaze did her best to sound encouraging. "Wardog, head out west. We're taking up the front."

"On you, kid. Let's do this."

Thunderhead had left out all mentions of the Yuke ships at the front of the invasion fleet's direction of movement that had survived the initial barrage. They weren't the targets of the second wave of Air Force strike aircraft. Eliminating the forward destroyers and frigates was up to the vintage battlecruiser OFS Hammer.

While the Hammer was based on a hull that had been built in the early forties, it would be an insult to call her vintage. The second ship of the Alaska-class of battlecruisers built for the OMDF, the Hammer had undergone a borderline reconstruction in 2006, ripping out her old internals and replacing them with arrangements that were more up to modern shipbuilding standards, including a set of gas turbines that could accelerate the forty-five thousand ton battlecruiser to speeds in excess of thirty knots. More importantly, her entire armament and sensors package had been replaced. In place of old navigation radars, the Hammer was now equipped with the AEGIS combat system, and while she had lost her aft-most gun turret and all of her five-inch guns, the Hammer was now fitted with a VLS suite and two autoloaded triple gun turrets each capable of propelling a twelve-inch shell a hundred kilometres away with the use of rocket-boosted projectiles, once every five seconds.

All in all, an impressive ship to boot, and under the command of Commander Aaron Corsair, she was about to see her first glimpse of combat since the ship's construction. To command a battlecruiser in the modern fleet was considered the best position an officer could get in the surface warfare branch, and as the youngest ever officer to command a capital at thirty-five, Corsair was going to make sure he was in harm's way.

"Helm, make your speed three-three knots." Corsair ordered the helmsman.

"Thirty-three knots, aye sir." The helmsman complied with the order. While not particularly impressive physically, Corsair had wit and a sharp mind, the two things that had earned him his command. Previously the commanding officer of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Corsair had taken over as the Hammer's captain two months prior. Right now, he was monitoring the sensor console at his chair towards the front of the bridge. His group, consisting of his ship,a Ticonderoga and two Burkes, were approaching the front of the Yuke fleet. The three ships currently burning in a line were of no concern to him. What he wanted to kill were a pair of Udaloy II-class destroyers that had attempted to engage them. The two sides had exchanged missiles, but neither scored any hits.

"Bridge, TAO, now within main battery range." The ship's tactical actions officer informed the captain.

"Noted, weapons tight." Corsair ordered.

"Weapons tight, aye sir." The TAO complied. Corsair admitted that his ship's guns could probably hit a destroyer sized target from eighty kilometres. However, the Hammer only had a limited supply of rocket-assisted projectiles onboard. Corsair wanted to close the distance to forty kilometres, the effective range of regular twelve-inch shells and outside the range of Yuktobanian one-hundred millimetre guns. Corsair picked up what looked like a microphone.

"Hood Actual, Hammer Actual." Corsair spoke to the commanding officer of the Ticonderoga forming part of his strike group. "Fall back and form up on my right forequarter."

"Hammer Actual, Hood Actual, wilco." The Hood's captain answered. Corsair spotted on his display that the Hood was moving from its position at the head of the group to move closer to the Hammer. The battlecruiser would be doing most of the heavy lifting.

"Vampire, vampire, vampire." Somebody down in the CIC reported. "Incoming birds, bearing 265, range 90, designated as track 0455 through 0458!"

A ship in the Yuktobanian fleet had fired a salvo of anti-ship missiles at the Hammer, quite possibly the worst ship to target out of the four vessels. OFS Hood, still in front of the battlecruiser and her escorting destroyers, engaged the incoming missiles with her own battery of surface to air missiles, namely the SM-2MR that was standard across most OMDF warships.

"Hood is engaging."

Corsair could see smoke trails in the distance rising from the cruiser as it engaged the incoming missiles. SM-2MRs versus missiles that the Hammer's radar registered as P-270 Moskits, fired by a Yuktobanian Sovremenny-class destroyer. With the missiles of both sides moving at supersonic speeds, the distance between the two was closed rapidly. Boom. The Hood had successfully intercepted all four missiles. By this point, the ship was within effective firing range of the ships Corsair wanted to target.

"Gunnery, Captain, engage the two destroyers to our bow, track 0428 and track 0430." Corsair ordered the ship's gunnery control centre, where the targeting solutions were made and where the two main gun turrets were controlled from. Down in that room, just aft of the CIC, a targeting solution was being made for the two guns, A and B Turrets.

"Elevation thirteen point seven, bearing 349."

"Charge 4, high explosive, loaded."

"Targeting track 0430, confirm."

"Confirmed, track 0430."

"Weapons free, batteries released."

The massive five thousand ton triple gun turrets swivelled from their neutral positions to match the bearing and elevation given by the Hammer's rangefinder and gun control radar. The two turrets were set on different targets, but one could see they were accurately tracking their targets by looking at the level of the gun tubes as the ship was rocked around by the sea.

"Gunnery, commence fire."

There was a teeth-rattling BOOM as all six guns fired. Six rounds travelling at well over the speed of sound travelled towards their targets, almost certainly appearing on Yuktobanian radars as they reached the apotheosis of their ballistic arcs. Five seconds later, the Hammer fired a second salvo. Then a third. Then a fourth, putting twenty four shells in the air for a total of twelve shells per target, enough to saturate their close-in weapon systems. Granted, the shells had a much larger radar cross section than a contemporary anti-ship missile, but they were a hell of a lot faster and they only needed one hit to cripple a destroyer.

The first ship started engaging the shells with its Tor SAMs. That system got about half of the shells before they entered the Tor's minimum engagement range, where AK-630 guns took over. Thirty-millimetre rounds filled the skies, taking out a further four shells, but the last two rounds in the salvo made it through the Udaloy's defence and struck her. The first shell struck the ship on the lower half of the superstructure, being forced through the hardened face by the shell's weight before detonating within with a devastating bang, taking out both the bridge and CIC in a single blow. The second shell impacted further aft of the ship, punching through the hull and exploding within the engine compartment, killing everyone inside that area. The destroyer was left crippled and dead in the water, with no centralised control and no propulsion.

The second ship didn't get away any easier. The engagement process was the same as with the first ship: the shells were engaged by Tor missiles, the shells that made it through that were picked up by CIWS. This time, only one shell got through, but its placement was crippling, punching clean through the space in between the Udaloy's bow guns and the forward Tor missile pack, detonating the magazines of both weapons and shearing off thirty metres worth of bow, effectively disabling the ship.

"Captain, TAO, destroyers have been hit and are halting in place." The TAO informed Corsair.

"Rapid continued fire on both targets." Corsair ordered. "Sink those fuckers."

"Aye, sir."

The Hammer's main battery continued to fire upon the two destroyers. Both of them were now defenceless, and one was no longer mobile. It didn't take long for sustained twelve inch gunfire to smash both ships to pieces. The first vessel got its superstructure raked with shells, utterly obliterating the destroyer's top side and killing everyone that wasn't a couple of decks below. The second destroyer copped rounds to its broadside as it tried turning away from the oncoming battlecruiser. As a result, a dozen holes each about four metres in diameter were opened up along its waterline on the starboard side. Flooding rapidly overcame the destroyer. In five minutes, she had rolled onto her side. A minute after that, the Udaloy slipped beneath the waves.

"Track 0430 is sinking. Track 0428 has been lost from ECM and is stationary."

"Gunnery, cease fire, make solutions for track 0433 for engagement in ten mikes." Corsair ordered his guns pointed forwards.

Back in the AO and approaching from the east, Blaze and company were heading dead west to carry out their attack orders: sinking or at the very least forcing the Yuktobanian transports to turn back. Once again Wardog Squadron formed the tip of the spear of the attack group, with a reduced squadron of F-22s providing an air-to-air screen against any aircraft that wanted to take a shot at them.

"Okay, I think I remember how to use these…" Samurai was talking to herself in the back end of the cockpit.

"The 15s?" Blaze asked.

"Yeah. We didn't have these on the EJs." Samurai stated. Sotoa was famous for using a lot of native weapons and sensors for their aircraft, but Blaze gathered that the SASDF didn't have an equivalent to the GBU-15.

"As long as you can point it in the right direction, I'm happy." Blaze stated as the pilot of the aircraft.

"Yeah, yeah…" Samurai muttered. They were coming up on the target. Blaze spotted plenty of ships and aircraft that had their radar lit to keep an eye on any approaching aircraft. Flying alongside the strike group was a squadron of EF-111 Ravens, an electronic warfare variant of the F-111 strike bomber that served a similar role to the Navy's E/A-18G, jamming those radar emissions so that nobody could get a radar lock on the Oseans.

"Falcon Squadron, egressing 030 to engage incoming Flankers." The leader of the Raptor squadron reported. The strike group was suddenly without a forward screen. Fencer Squadron's Eagles took over from Falcon Squadron, moving up to fill the gap.

"Those Flankers are awfully close." Nagase observed. They were a hundred and fifty kilometres out, barely outside of R-77 engagement range.

"We're good, we're good." Blaze reassured the second-youngest member of her squadron.

"Fencer Squadron, Thunderhead, BRAA, 345 for 240 at Angels 10, hot. Sixteen bandits, most likely Flankers." Thunderhead informed Fencer of a swarm of incoming enemy fighters.

"Tally. Uhh… we're gonna need some backup for this one." Fencer's squadron leader spotted the approaching horde with only twelve F-15Cs under his command.

"Wardog is moving forward to assist." Blaze declared. "C'mon girls."

Wardog entering the mix made the numbers even, but with the weapons carriage her squadron was bearing, Blaze didn't want to merge with even one Su-35, let alone sixteen of them. Fencer and Wardog Squadrons headed out west-south-west to engage the Flankers, leaving the rest of the strike force to carry on with their assigned objectives. A pair of Ravens came with them to provide EW support. With those Ravens at their backs, the Oseans were the first to fire at ninety kilometres out.

"Blaze, fox 3."

"Archer, fox 3, fox 3!"

"Edge, fox 3."

"Chopper, fox 3!"

Having EW aircraft at their backs felt like cheating. Blaze, her crew and the other squadron could engage the Yuke fighters and put them on the defensive while they couldn't even target the Oseans with radar-guided weapons owing to intense radar interference. She didn't feel too bad about it in any case. Something Blaze had learnt at Officer Candidate School was that if you were fighting fair, you were doing something wrong.

Scores of AMRAAMs flew forward. Blaze briefly got a radar lock warning as the Flankers entered within forty kilometres of the Eagles and Mudhens, but that radar lock disappeared when the Flanker that had been targeting her got bitchslapped by an AIM-120 alongside more than half of the horde of Flankers. There were still a group of five left that were close to merging with them. The wise thing to do would have been to retreat back to the strike group. What Blaze actually did was kick her engines into afterburning mode and lurched forward towards the enemy at high speed. Grimm followed her without hesitation. Chopper and Nagase were more hesitant to do so.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, captain?" Nagase questioned Blaze's method of engagement.

"Archer, fox 3."

"Blaze, fox 2." Blaze lopped a Sidewinder at a Flanker at distance. It was a long shot, especially for a Sidewinder, but she had four of the damn things, she could afford to use a couple now to take out a bandit. Samurai spotted a smoke trail at their level approaching.

"Missile, twelve-o'clock on the nose!" Samurai called out the missile to her pilot.

"Oh shit, evading!" Blaze dumped flares and dived. With four two thousand pound bombs under her aircraft's body, the Mudhen handled about as well as a truck on ice, but it managed to pull through without tearing itself apart. Blaze looked off to her left for a second. She no longer saw a smoke trail.

"Sam, where's that missile?!" Blaze asked her wizzo. Samurai scanned the skies for it.

"No eyes. I think it ran out of juice." Samurai didn't see it. Blaze let loose a sigh of relief and levelled out. She let the Eagles deal with the remaining Flankers.

"Wardog, form on me, return to the strike group." Blaze ordered. Her wingmen formed up on their squad lead. Wardog Squadron managed to return to their previous position in the formation before the strike group split up to their final attack bearings. Rather appropriately given their reputation, Wardog Squadron would be striking straight up the middle of the enemy fleet. Chopper and Grimm took the lead in a double column, with Blaze and Nagase following in a single file line. Grimm needed somebody to laser designate targets for him. At the minute it was Zoomer filling in for that task.

"Wardog Squadron, entering from attack point brawler, east to west, egressing south-east. Four aircraft, bombs. Wardog 2, in."

"Wardog 4, in."

"Wardog 1, in."

"Wardog 3, in."

Wardog Squadron was now in the diciest part of the operation thus far, breaching the Yuke's air defence line and heading straight towards the troop transports. Even with jamming support from Navy Growlers and Air Force Ravens, Blaze was very conscious of the fact that the enemy would likely still get missiles off at them as the four Mudhens passed over the enemy ships.

"Target identified." Zoomer rattled off what he saw. "Ropucha-class landing ship. Laser code 2210."

"Code 2210, locked." Grimm had the correct laser code set for his GBU-24s.

"Archer, you're cleared hot, free to engage." Zoomer stated. Blaze watched as Grimm pitched down a few degrees and released the two laser-guided bombs under his wings. Grimm then rejoined the flight.

"Archer, pickle!"

"Good track. Bombs falling… hit one, hit two! Ship is on fire!" Zoomer tracked the two GBUs as they fell towards their target. Blaze looked over the edge of the cockpit. She saw the forward section of the Ropucha had been set ablaze, most likely because of the fuel and ammunition stowage of the vehicles stored below the ship's deck.

"Next target, Ropucha." Chopper spotted the next target, a landing ship of the same class.

"Wardog 2, pickle, pickle!" Zoomer called the release of two GBU-15s as the wizzo of Chopper's aircraft.

"15s are on target. Woah! Big boom!" Samurai watched the bombs fall via the LITENING targeting pod slung underneath the cockpit. Blaze looked over the edge of the cockpit again. She saw another ship catastrophically on fire. That ship must have been an ammo carrier for the rest of the Yuktobanian invasion force, it was properly cooking off.

"Third target, Zircon-class."

"Wardog 2, pickle!" Wolf called as a second set of bombs were released from his aircraft upon the next target. Whereas the Ropucha-class were landing ships in the literal sense of the word, the Zircon-class were similar in function to the Osean Harper Ferry-class of landing support ships. They carried troops and cargo, which it would deliver via conventional landing craft or hovercraft. The Zircons were also better-protected, bearing a pair of AK-630 CIWS systems. Rather bizarrely, it didn't use either of those weapons to defend itself, instead taking a pair of GBU-15s straight through the bow. This time the ship didn't turn into a giant fireball, but the dual impacts certainly rocked the vessel.

With Chopper out of air-to-ground weapons, it was now Blaze's turn to dish out the pain. Strictly speaking, the next ship in the giant file was a Sovremenny-class destroyer, but surface combatants weren't her targets. Blaze ignored the destroyer as she and her wingmen flew overhead. This was an oversight on Blaze's part. Friendly EW aircraft were jamming the destroyer's radar from a frontal arc, but not from the rear, which was the aspect Wardog were now at relative to the ship.

"What the-" Nagase blurted. "Edge, defending!"

"Huh?" Blaze looked rearwards. She spotted Nagase popping chaff and pulling out of formation. She was defending against a missile, a Gadfly SAM fired by the Sovremenny. Blaze turned a hundred and eighty degrees back the way they came and flew towards the destroyer. "Edge, defend west!"

"Defending west!" Nagase climbed, put her ass to the missile and flew west to gain distance on the Gadfly. Blaze on the other hand was diving in to attack the destroyer.

"Sam, hit that fucker with a pair!" Blaze yelled.

"Yep!" Samurai yelled back. "Wardog 1, pickle two!"

Samurai got a pair of bombs away on the destroyer. As the two GBU-15s dropped from their pylons, the destroyer slewed their rear-facing fire control radar on them and launched a second SAM.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

"Missile dead below!" Samurai called it out as if her pilot couldn't hear the radar warning receiver blaring.

"Blaze, defending east!" Blaze declared, pulling back on the stick to climb, moving east relative to the destroyer to get back into the sphere of jamming being provided by friendly EW aircraft. "Lurker, Wardog 1, missile on my six!"

"Tally." An EF-111 pilot heard. "Jamming, break right!"

Blaze did what the Raven pilot asked, levelling out and banking to her right. The RWR stopped blaring. The Gadfly had lost its target. Blaze flew south at high speed to get out of the missile's seeker cone. Having lost its target owing to concentrated radar jamming and being unable to reacquire, the Gadfly self-destructed mid-flight.

"Did we hit that DDG?" Blaze asked about the status of the destroyer they had lobbed bombs at.

"Wait." Samurai said, slewing the targeting pod in that direction to reacquire the Sovremenny. "At least once. She's smoking."

"Alright. Wardog, coming back to meet with you." Blaze said. She wasn't certain if the destroyer was out for the count, but given that she hadn't heard anything from her wingmen, she figured it was at least unable to target anything to its rear. Blaze had to cover a good bit of distance to link back up with Wardog. In the meantime, she listened in as Nagase took Blaze's spot in the strike package.

"Edge, targeting a Zircon. Pickle, pickle!" Nagase's first target was another Zircon-class landing support ship. Blaze waited for Nagase to report BDA. "Good hits! Ship is slowing!"

"Good shit." Blaze muttered. It occurred to her in the back of her mind that there were hundreds, if not thousands of sailors and soldiers on those ships, but the connotations of that took a back seat for now.

"Second target, Alligator. Pickle two!" Nagase got bombs off against an Alligator-class tank landing ship.

"Aren't those things third-rate ships nowadays?" Samurai asked. The Alligator-class LSTs dated back to the early sixties. They were supposed to have been replaced by a newer class of LST in the early 2000s.

"Guess they needed the extra ships." Blaze harboured a completely uninformed guess.

"Hit, hit! Alligator is burning!" Nagase reported. "Edge, winchester bombs!"

"Lemme take point." Blaze said as she finally caught up with her squad, taking the lead from her wingmen. Samurai handled the weapons and sensors while Blaze flew on towards their next target. They could reasonably take out one more ship with what they had.

"Eyes on a Zircon. Tracking…" Samurai worked her magic. "Wardog 1, pickle."

"Blaze, winchester, air to ground munitions."

The pair of GBU-15s spiralled towards their target. Unlike the previous ships of its class before it, this Zircon actually engaged the bombs in self defence. Its forward-mounted AK-630 CIWS fired with a mighty roar, taking out one bomb but barely failing to hit the second one before it slammed into the superstructure of the ship, penetrating through several decks before detonating.

"One hit." Samurai indicated as much.

"Wardog, Thunderhead, Flanker group pushing you from the west. Advise you retreat east." Thunderhead notified Blaze of a four ship of Flankers moving towards them at high speed.

"Ack, Wardog is breaking east." Blaze replied. She, Chopper and Nagase turned trail and ran. They could max out at above Mach 2 now that they weren't carrying a ton worth of bombs, but Grimm was unable to move that fast in his single-engined Viper.

"Uhhh, those Flankers are running me down!" Grimm said with a sense of mild worry. Blaze turned her head. Grimm was falling behind. Blaze turned around and keyed the AMRAAMs at her wingtips to her trigger.

"Archer, dive." Blaze instructed.

"Divin'." Grimm replied. Blaze waited until he was a thousand feet below her altitude block before locking onto the lead two Flankers and firing.

"Blaze, fox 3, fox 3." Blaze called out as she fired. Her shots weren't intended to actually hit their targets, although that would have been a bonus. Blaze was trying to get the Flankers to stay at distance so Grimm could catch up without being mauled by them. That method seemed to be working. The Flankers started defending to avoid getting hit by missiles, which forced them off their pursuit, which gave Grimm enough time to catch up with the squad so they could bug the hell out. Once Grimm was back within the ranks, Blaze fell back into formation. Right in time for a pair of F-22s escorted by F-15Cs to pass overhead.

"Get outta here Wardog, we'll deal with these guys." A woman who was presumably the senior-most officer of that group of aircraft ordered.

"Yes ma'am, hauling ass." Blaze replied curtly. She pulled back on the throttle and slowed down a little now that they weren't at sudden risk of attack. "Thunderhead, Wardog is RTB to rearm."

"Copy that, proceed." Thunderhead replied.

"Hey Ash." Samurai caught Blaze's attention. "Check the pod feed. Are those LCACs?"

Blaze switched one of her multi-function displays to show what the LITENING pod was looking at. It was in thermal view, so the object clarity wasn't brilliant, but Blaze could quite clearly see the outline of a hovercraft making its merry little way across the ocean. This confused her. Sand Island was at least a couple hundred kilometres away, the skies were so far in Osean control, and there were all kinds of Osean Navy surface combatants in between them and Sand Island.

"Thunderhead, Wardog 1, I have eyes on Yuktobanian landing craft making their way towards Sand Island, 275, 230 from bullseye." Blaze reported the sighting to the AWACS.

"Roger that, Wardog. Leave it to the squids to deal with." Thunderhead advised the Mudhen crew to ignore the landing craft and to let the Navy deal with the issue.

"Wilco, out." Blaze sighed. "Keep an eye on them until they're out of sight."

"Easy." Samurai replied.

The flight deck of the Kestrel was in utter chaos as an entire carrier air wing returned to rearm and refuel. Swordsman and the Snowbirds had been one of the first squadrons to touch down on the carrier, and they had almost immediately been rearmed, refuelled, put onto the catapults and then launched back into the skies. Less than five minutes after they had landed, Swordsman and Brady were the first two to get back in the fight. The duo, followed by the rest of the Snowbirds, were ordered into a holding pattern until the rest of the carrier air wing was back in the air.

"Big Bird, Templars, listen up." Owl Hunter chimed up. "Your new task is to engage and destroy Yuktobanian fighters and interceptors. Move out now bearing 250."

"Wilco." Swordsman answered for the Snowbirds.

"Wilco." The squad leader of VFA-219, the Crusaders, answered for his guys.

Swordsman heard something about the Scouts and the Rednecks being tasked with engaging the fleet with anti-ship missiles. They weren't coming with his group, so he didn't really pay attention to their tasking, instead focusing on his. They were to pick a fight with Yuke aircraft. Once back in the area of operations, the two squadrons split to pursue different targets. The Templars went after straggling Su-35s. Swordsman went for a curiously positioned group of Yak-141s.

"Swordsman, fox 3!"

"Big Bird 111, fox 3, fox 3!"

"Big Bird 103, fox 3."

"Big Bird 106, fox 3!"

The Snowbirds volley fired AMRAAMs at the enemy Freestyles. In return, the Freestyles lobbed R-77s back. Swordsman went defensive against at least one missile targeted at him. The Osean Super Hornets had the height advantage against the Yuke Freestyles, so the battle went about as well as would have been expected. The opening volley knocked out seven of the ten Yak-141s for the loss of two Super Hornets.

"Bird 113, ejecting!"

There was no radio response from the second downed Rhino. Swordsman winced with both losses, but he pressed the attack against the surviving 141s once he was sure the missile targeted at him had missed its mark.

"Big Bird 102, fox 3! Fox 3!" Swordsman got off a pair of missiles, intent on finishing off the last few 141s.

"Big Bird 111, fox 3, fox 3!" Brady fired one more missile than was necessary, also looking to knock out the last few Freestyles. The Yuke VTOL aircraft were totally in the defensive, unable to get a shot off against the attackers. In spite of that, one Yak-141 survived the second volley by hiding against the ocean floor. One more missile fired by Swordsman put an end to that particular pilot's defiance.

"Splash all bandits." Swordsman said, looking around to make sure his boys had gotten all of them. The first ten had indeed been splashed. Their presence in the battlefield had Swordsman perplexed. He hadn't spotted any light carriers forming the Yuktobanian fleet either now or in the briefing, and it didn't seem likely that the Yukes would be operating them from landing ships like their Zircons or Ropuchas.

"Anybody see Freestyles floating around?" Swordsman asked his wingmen.

"Six of them to our north-west." One of his guys answered.

"Head to 'em." Swordsman ordered. The Snowbirds flew north-west for some distance, creeping up on their new target, a smaller group of six Yak-141s that were heading east, towards Sand Island. They didn't seem to notice the Super Hornets moving to intercept them. Noticing their apparent ignorance, Swordsman closed the distance to within the lethal firing range of an AMRAAM.

"Snowbirds, shoot, shoot." Swordsman instructed. A volley came with his shoot command. The Freestyles were slow to react, caught off guard. Although most of the Yak-141 pilots probably would have been hit regardless, the time it took for them to engage in defensive manoeuvres sealed their coffins for good.

Splash six. Swordsman looked around for more targets to engage. He found targets in the form of Su-35Ks and Su-35KPs some three hundred kilometres to his south-south-west.

"New sonar contact, bearing 223, designated Sierra 1." An officer in the Hammer's CIC reported. Corsair's blood froze. A submarine was the one thing that could take out his ship from under his feet with a single blow.

"CIC, captain, do we have any friendly submarines in the area?" Corsair asked. If it was an enemy submarine they had a problem.

"Negative, sir." The sonar chief replied. Corsair cursed.

"Launch transients, bearing 223!"

Ah fuck, Corsair thought as his blood turned to ice.

"Helm, hard over starboard, all ahead flank!" Corsair ordered.

"Hard over starboard, all ahead flank, aye sir!"

Corsair picked up the microphone handpiece and selected another channel. "Engineering, bridge, activate Prairie Masker and give me as much RPM to the turbines as is humanly possible."

"Aye sir." The chief engineer replied from deep inside the bowels of the ship. Corsair put down the mic and stood up.

"XO, you have the bridge." Corsair said to the ship's executive officer, Commander Thomas Danfield.

"I have the bridge." Danfield answered. Corsair speed walked from the front of the bridge to the rear, going down a couple of sets of stairs before arriving in the chilly interior of the CIC.

"Captain in combat!" An enlistedman called out announcing the captain's presence. Corsair put on a headset at the centre of the CIC.

"Snapshot, port side tubes from 220 to 230!" Corsair ordered a broad launch of torpedoes down the detected bearing of the enemy submarine. "Active search!"

"Snapshot, 220, 225 and 230 against Sierra 1!" Somebody read back Corsair's order. "Batteries released. Three fish away!"

Towards the rear end of the Hammer, a triple tube torpedo launcher carrying three Mark 54 torpedoes swivelled in the direction of contact and using compressed air charges launched the torpedoes into the water, each kicking up a mighty splash. Propelled by pumpjets, the trio of torpedoes separated to follow their given bearings before going active with their sonars and swimming out at full speed.

"Torpedoes are searching."

"Bridge, captain, make your bearing 075."

"075, aye."

The Hammer churned up an impressive wake as the battlecruiser completed its turn by ending up heading east-north-east, vaguely in the direction of the carriers. Exhaust billowed out from the double funnel arrangement aft of the bridge. Behind the ship, under the waterline, a sound-emitting buoy was being dragged along by a thick steel cable keeping it connected to the ship.

"Torpedoes in the water, torpedoes in the water, bearing 231! I count two!" A sonar operator called out, reporting that the torpedoes that had been fired at them had gone active and were now tracking the battlecruiser at full speed.

"Estimated time to impact?" Corsair asked, remaining calm in spite of the situation.

"Eighty seconds, sir." The TAO answered. Corsair pondered for a few seconds.

"Load ATAD, port side." Corsair ordered.

"ATAD port side, loaded."

"Bridge, captain, on my mark, turn hard over to port." Corsair said to the men and women manning the bridge and helm. "Weaps, once we turn to port, fire ATAD to intercept incoming torpedoes."

"Calculating solution."

The Hammer sliced through the waves at her maximum speed, kicking up all manner of waves as the Yuke torpedoes inched in closer and closer.

"Sixty seconds to impact." The TAO rattled off.

"Standby." Corsair was waiting for the right moment. The tension could almost be smelt within the air-conditioned confines of the CIC.

"Fifty seconds to impact."

"Standby."

"Captain, if we don't launch now, we won't have enough time to get a second salvo off if the first salvo misses." The TAO urged.

Corsair nodded. "Your objection is noted, Lieutenant." Corsair understood the TAO's worries, but he had confidence and a plan.

"Forty seconds to impact."

"Bridge, captain, hard over to port now!" Corsair sprung to action. The moment he issued the order, he felt the Hammer start tilting in one direction as the rudders pushed the battlecruiser in a left sweeping turn.

"Batteries released. ATAD away!"

The port side torpedo launcher discharged another three projectiles. However, instead of firing Mark 54 torpedoes which had a warhead meant for destroying enemy submarines, the projectiles fired were Mark 59 Anti Torpedo Active Defence - ATAD - rockets. A recent addition to the OMDF's surface fleet, they were designed as a torpedo equivalent to SAMs, designed to intercept torpedoes before they hit their target. The ATADs splashed into the water before igniting their rocket boosters and shooting away at damn near a hundred knots, homing on the incoming torpedoes.

"Bridge, captain, hard over to starboard!" Corsair almost felt himself yell. The Hammer tilted in the opposite direction as the fifty thousand ton warship turned. "Weaps, snapshot, starboard tubes down bearing 225 to 235!"

"Snapshot, 225, 230, 235 against Sierra 1!"

"Batteries released."

"Weapons away!"

An identical set of torpedo tubes on the starboard side of the Hammer fired out a trio of Mark 54s looking for the submarine that had them dialled in.

"ATAD successfully intercepted all active torpedoes!" The TAO reported. Corsair exhaled a sigh of relief. There were cheers from the front of the CIC all the way down to the gunnery control centre.

"Bridge, captain, make your course 075 at twenty knots." Corsair ordered, mentally drained. That encounter had been too close for comfort. "And somebody get on the horn to Bluehound, they're gonna want that sub."

"Wardog, Thunderhead, head on bearing 260. The enemy is attempting to regroup far west. Pick them off and knock them down."

"Roger that." Blaze understood the mission at hand, but the weapons she had been assigned for such a task didn't rhyme with the right execution. Four Sidewinders, all good. Four AMRAAMs, somewhat lackluster but she could make do with them. Two GBU-24s, however, were where the cogs were turning in Blaze's head. Smaller GBU-12s she would have understood, but the GBU-24s would be an active hindrance in an air-to-air fight.

"Can somebody explain to me why we're going into a dogfight with bombs?" Chopper echoed Blaze's sentiments.

"Some field-grade officer got the numbers mixed up, surely." Grimm mentioned his thoughts. The Viper pilot was the only member of Wardog whose loadout was strictly air-to-air.

"Let's not shittalk the half-birds on the radio." Blaze suggested. She looked at the datalink. "The fighters are pulling back, but the ships aren't?"

"Most of the warships in the front are damaged. Propulsion, navigation, command, rush of shit to the brain, anybody's guess. Try not to correct them." Thunderhead added.

"Navy's clearing house." Samurai pointed out. Blaze looked around. Any isolated groups of Yuktobanian aircraft that hadn't pulled back were being hunted down and slaughtered by roaming patrols of Super Hornets, Lightnings and Raptors. Blaze hissed thinking about the number of material Yuktobania would lose for no gain as a result of this operation.

"Heads up, duo of bandits high above, twelve-o'clock." Zoomer called out.

"Tally." Blaze saw them on the radar. MiG-29Ks, an aging naval aircraft compared to the more common Su-35Ks. Their presence intrigued Blaze. "Let's get after it then. Climb."

The trio of F-15Es plus their escorting F-16C climbed from fifteen thousand feet to thirty thousand feet where the Fulcrums were hanging out. They were moving west at very slow speeds for a pair of fighters. Not even a minute later, they were within firing range.

"Blaze, fox 3." Blaze took the first shot.

"Archer, fox 3." Grimm took the second. Their missiles shot forward. The MiG-29Ks noticed that they were being engaged and engaged in defensive manoeuvres. The first Fulcrum caught a missile and was turned into a million pieces of shrapnel, but the second avoided the missile fired at it. The Fulcrum was moving fast enough to outpace, escaping AMRAAM range. However, some moments later the Fulcrum started gradually losing speed and slowly dropped down from thirty thousand feet, almost like a glider.

"Oh, that poor bastard." Samurai pieced together the Fulcrum's situation. "He ran out of fuel."

"Sucks to suck." Blaze mused, earning a chuckle from her WSO.

"Flankers are picking up speed." Corvus reported, noticing that the Su-35Ks were moving at close to their top speed. Blaze pushed her throttle forward just that little bit more.

"Pick it up, Wardog." Blaze said, feeling that extra bit of force pressing her back into her seat. Even with their afterburners lit, the Mudhen pilots were being mildly outpaced by Grimm in his Viper, and massively outpaced by the retreating Flankers. The GBU-24s were slowing them down.

"Can we fuck off these 24s?" Samurai asked, looking behind them at their wing pylons.

"No." Blaze replied. "Keep them just in case."

By this point the majority of the Air Force's attacking group were ahead of Wardog, not burdened by the weight of dual two thousand pound bombs.

"Wardog, Thunderhead, new tasking." Thunderhead interrupted the squad as they moved forward. "Vector to bearing 080 to link up with Bluehound 3 and Bluehound 4. Protect them from enemy fighters."

"Copy. Wardog, head out 080." Blaze redirected the squad and dropped from Mach speeds to cruising speed to conserve their fuel as they headed out east. If Blaze recalled the signalling section of the briefing correctly, Bluehound was a P-3 Orion squadron, submarine hunters. As they approached the four-engined turboprops, Blaze checked in with them.

"Bluehound 3, Wardog 1, approaching from your west."

"Seen. Welcome to the party." Bluehound 3, the element leader, replied. "Our airspeed is 350 knots. Can you maintain a barrier to our west? We're flying out to check out reports of submarine activity near the front."

Blaze whistled. "We'll try to not fall out of the sky for ya."

"Preach. We won't take long."

The three F-15Es, singular F-16C and two P-3Cs proceeded straight west to the AO. Blaze was constantly checking the datalink to check on the air-to-air fight. The Yukes were still on the backfoot, retreating west at Mach 2. To Blaze, their retreat was starting to look less like a regrouping and more like a complete withdrawal. If they were actually trying to regroup, they were leaving the majority of their fleet completely undefended against attack from Osean aircraft.

"Bluehound 4, beginning sonobuoy deployment."

"Bluehound 3, commencing sonobuoy deployment."

Wardog had front seat tickets to watch the Orions conduct their anti-submarine warfare mission. Blaze pondered what kind of submarines were under the water. She imagined that a variety of Akula, Kilo and Oscar-class submarines were operating in the area hunting for OMDF ships.

They patrolled in a racetrack fashion forty kilometres west of the Orions while they did their thing. Blaze listened to the radio to see what the rest of the force was up to. Comms were conspicuously quiet. One of the few transmissions caught her attention.

"Thunderhead, Ballista 1, tally one bogey moving at high speed bearing 093." An Eagle squad leader reported.

"Seen. Designate bandit- wait." Thunderhead paused. Blaze's ears perked up. "ALCON, ALCON, ALCON!"

"The fuck?" Samurai muttered from the rear, springing into action. Blaze firmly gripped the stick, ready for whatever the All Concerned call was about.

"Ballistic track detected 090 relative to strike group south! Range fifteen!" Thunderhead reported the rough details. Blaze's blood ran cold. There were two things the ballistic could have been, and either one of them was bad news bear.

"Where the hell did it come from?!" Chopper asked, exasperated.

"West of the attack group. Has to be a submarine." Nagase guessed. Unless the Yuktobanian Navy had started putting ballistic weapons on their surface warships, Blaze had to agree.

"More importantly, where the fuck is it going?" Zoomer asked a more relevant question.

"Thunderhead, Wardog 1, what's the ballistic's trajectory?" Blaze asked.

"It's heading… oh no. Strike Group South, take evasion and climb! CLIMB!"

Thunderhead's call was far too late.

Even from a distance, Blaze saw a white flash light up the morning sky. If her blood had been chilled before, it was ice now. She glanced at the datalink and then the radar. Massive chunks of shrapnel acted as chaff, whiting out the radar display and blocking signal from the aircraft that had been caught in the middle of the blast.

"Uh-oh." Nagase muttered quietly. Blaze bit her lip something fierce and put pressure on the stick. She was tense.

"Thunderhead, do you read, over?" Blaze had no idea if Thunderhead was still up after that explosion.

No reply.

"Thunderhead, Wardog 1, please respond, over." Blaze's voice sounded that little bit more desperate than before.

"Still here, Wardog." Thunderhead's voice was shaky. "Jesus christ. The form… they-"

"Sir, get a fucking hold of yourself." Blaze's words were stern. "I need your radar control now more than ever."

"Yeah, right." Thunderhead took a deep breath. "Wardog, proceed bearing 245 to assist surviving friendly aircraft. Flankers are turning to reengage."

"Goddamnit!" Chopper exclaimed. "It was bait!"

"Steady. Let's move."

The trip was a prolonged one, not helped by their collection of GBU-24s. Blaze had Grimm move ahead of the flight as a scout of sorts. Once the radar picture had cleared up, the gravity of the situation became clear. More than half of the Air Force's strike group had been caught in and destroyed by the blast. Whoever was left was disorganised and displaced.

"Second ballistic missile detected, same bearing as before! Climbing rapidly!" Thunderhead reported the presence of a second missile.

"They're not gonna make it." Samurai observed, referencing the surviving OADF fighters.

"What the shit?" Thunderhead muttered something. "Getting a command override from somewhere… datalink to ASAT targeting system?"

"ASAT? The fuck is an anti-satelite system meant to do for us out here?" Grimm extrapolated the acronym's meaning.

"Now it's counting down." Thunderhead continued. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…"

Chopper groaned in disbelief. "The guys in the front aren't going to make it!"

"Five, four, three, two, one…" Thunderhead's annoying voice grated on.

Something lit up the sky once more. This flash was not a blinding flash of white, however. What appeared to be a tower of blue light shot down from the heavens, landing on something beyond the horizon.

"The hell was that?!" Blaze exclaimed.

"Ballistic missile splashed!" Thunderhead called out. Blaze's heart fluttered.

"Was that the Arkbird?!" Nagase sounded almost in disbelief. Blaze hardly believed it. The Bird of Peace, as the media often referred to it as, was operating right above their heads.

"Missile vaporised in mid-air by a laser fired from orbit. We have the Arkbird! We've got the Arkbird! All forces, move to engage enemy fighter aircraft!" Thunderhead ordered that all OADF forces move to engage the Flankers, who were now turning around and coming towards the Oseans at full speed.

"AWACS Thunderhead, this is AWACS Owl Hunter." A familiar voice from an operation a week prior came over the radio. "Our guys are moving to assist your guys."

Things were suddenly moving very quickly. The OADF survivors in the front were reorganising and pulling back while awaiting OMDF reinforcement. The main body of the force allowed Wardog to finally link up with them. Of the force that had originally comprised over a hundred aircraft, only forty remained, mostly Vipers and Eagles. Most of the Mudhens had been taken out, and there weren't any Raptors to be seen. There was no time to worry about numbers, the Yukes were coming in force.

"I count seventy bandits!" Grimm called out what he saw. Blaze grit her teeth and readied herself for a clusterfuck.

"Spread out and head on." Blaze ordered. She glanced back to her WSO. "Be ready on those countermeasures."

Samurai had her thumb over the countermeasures release button. "On you."

Blaze inhaled, mentally preparing herself for the battle ahead. The enemy Flankers were two hundred kilometres ahead of them and closing fast. The Super Hornets of the Navy were two hundred kilometres to their north-east quarter. This was going to be bloody.

"Wardog, weapons free."

The two sides drew in closer. The moment the two sides entered missile range of each other, the RWR went crazy with radar lock warnings. Blaze switched her radar to track targets while scanning for others, locking up four Flankers at random. She was going to volley fire the four AMRAAMs she was loaded with. Her thumb was over the trigger. Once Blaze crossed the one hundred kilometre mark, she fired.

"Blaze, fox 3, fox 3!" Blaze yelled as she launched missiles. Immediately she pushed the stick forward and slammed the throttle as far forward as it would go. She dived, commencing evasion action.

"Edge, fox 3!"

"Archer, fox 3!"

"Chopper, fox 3, fox 3!"

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

One of the many Flankers had targeted Blaze with an R-77. Blaze banked right and started notching against the radar-guided missile. She levelled out to provide as little a profile against the missile as possible.

"Could really use a fucking Growler about now." Blaze mumbled.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

"Second missile!" Samurai said. Somebody had launched a second R-77 at them. Blaze grit her teeth and continued on her current course. With any luck notching against the first missile at range would cause it to miss its mark. Fortunately, that was what happened. Blaze turned back in towards the enemy, aware that there was a second missile out for blood. She gained some distance and then notched left. This seemed to work. Seemed to.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

"Pitbulled!" Samurai shouted.

"Chaff!" Blaze shouted back, trading altitude for speed. Her Mudhen was handling like a truck with the GBU-24s under her wings. Blaze heard the whistling of a pointy metal object passing by at speed. The RWR broke lock.

"Went for chaff." Samurai let out a deep breath. Blaze recommitted to her attack, climbing to get back some of the altitude she had just lost. It was a constant thought at the back of her mind that she should have jettisoned those GBUs, but Blaze didn't commit to the thought.

Above the fledgling Mudhen flying squad leader, Grimm was pulling hard gees trying not to catch a missile. He had already avoided two, and there was a third that had gone terminal on his Viper. Grimm punched the countermeasure release button and pulled some last minute evasive manoeuvres. It worked for him. At the exact moment that he had broken the missile's lock, an F-16C ahead of Grimm turned into a fiery coffin. Grimm winced at the loss of a friendly, but took solace in the fact that Yuktobanian numbers were dropping off even faster than the Oseans were. Without so much as taking a breather, Grimm locked up another Flanker and fired an AMRAAM.

"Archer, fox 3!" Grimm called as the missile left its pylon and went after its target. In response, a Flanker fired an Adder back at him. He started notching against it.

"Archer!" A female voice called his name. "Face the missile! I'll merge with you!"

"Eh- Ah." Grimm's brief confusion turned to understanding when he saw a twin seat Viper, an F-16D, form up on his wing. Grimm banked to face the missile head on. The F-16D pilot stuck close to his side. What they were doing was a common tactic for Viper pilots. They would stick together to appear as a singular radar contact. It was almost like playing chicken with a live weapon. The R-77 entered its terminal phase and locked onto the 'F-16'. Grimm had to guess when the right moment would be to break.

"Punch chaff and break left!" The F-16D pilot instructed, gauging the correct moment before Grimm could.

"Breaking left!" Grimm yanked the stick to the side, dumping chaff canisters as the two Vipers parted. Confused by the sudden appearance of two extra tracks, the missile went for the chaff cloud and detonated, leaving both Vipers unharmed. Grimm pulled out of the turn and faced the enemy with his last remaining AMRAAM.

"Archer, fox 3!"

"Trigger, fox 3!" The F-16D pilot fired a missile to knock off one more Yuke aircraft.

Oddly for the Mudhen crew, Blaze was amongst the first of the Osean pilots to merge with the Yuktobanian pilots as the third and final volley of long ranged missiles was fired. She had four shots. Blaze didn't rate her chances of surviving a merge with an Su-35K in a gunfight. Blaze chose her first target, a distracted Flanker pilot too busy launching his final R-77s at the Osean fighters that were yet to merge with the Yukes. A Sidewinder ready under her thumb, Blaze waited for the growling tone to gain a lock.

"Blaze, fox 2." Blaze fired the missile. The Flanker pilot never saw it coming. "Splash one!"

"Bandit front!" Samurai tracked the movement of an Su-35 who had noticed their presence. Blaze nosed onto the Flanker.

"Fox 2!" Out went another Sidewinder. "Flares, flares, flares!"

"Out- missile, missile!" As Samurai popped flares from the rear of the aircraft, the Flanker got off an R-73. Blaze brought the fat fuck of a Mudhen into a barrel roll, creating a circle of flares behind them. The R-73 flew underneath them, tracking on the countermeasures. The Flanker pilot had gotten unlucky with what they had locked onto. Blaze hadn't.

"Splash two!" Blaze declared, looking around. A Flanker and a Viper were in a nose-to-tail fight with each other, a fight that didn't seem to favour any one side. Blaze pushed the odds in the Viper's favour by firing at the Su-35, knocking it out of the air. "Blaze, splash three!" One missile left.

"Just about winchester." Samurai noticed their pressing lack of ammo.

"I can see that." Blaze shot back a sarcastic reply while scanning for a fourth target. The fourth target found them. Samurai was looking around and happened to look up when she spotted something above them.

"Jink left!" Samurai shouted impossibly loud. Muscle memory made her undertake the action stupidly fast. The quick response quite possibly just saved the aircraft's life. Tracer rounds from a twenty-three mike autocannon filled the space where Wardog 1 had just been. Following the tracers a fraction of a second later, an Su-35K screamed past. Blaze grunted as she pulled the stick down to follow the enemy aircraft. The growling tone of a Sidewinder filled her headset. The Flanker pilot was pre-flaring, ready for a missile to be coming down upon him.

"Blaze, fox 2!" Blaze called out as she let off her fourth and final Sidewinder. The missile flew down and missed, detonating on the flares instead of the Flanker.

"Motherfucker. Switching to guns!" Blaze flicked a switch on her stick. She now had the Mudhen's M61 Vulcan at her fingertips. Blaze went in for a high aspect gunshot before the Flanker pulled outside the circle where Blaze could readily point the F-15E. A short burst was fired. She missed. Blaze could have sworn she and the pilot of the Flanker locked eyes for a moment as the two passed by each other. Wardog 1 slipped underneath and ahead of the Flanker. They were now in the defensive.

"Flaring." Samurai pre-flared, certain that the Flanker had a heater ready. Blaze started turning, initiating a nose-to-tail fight. With the weight of their payload, this was a fight that heavily favoured the Flanker. Blaze lit the afterburners and tried using raw power to keep the Flanker's nose off their tail.

"Lemme know when you see a missile!" Blaze told her WSO.

"Nothing yet!" Samurai called back. Blaze looked over her shoulder. If the Flanker was carrying R-73s, it could have fired them by now. Blaze certainly would have in this situation.

"Is he out?" Blaze asked.

"Can't tell!" Samurai called back. Both crew members were under significant gee strain.

"Stallion, Thunderhead, ballistic missiles detected!" Thunderhead reported to a callsign that Blaze hadn't heard of in the briefing. She didn't worry about whoever Stallion was, she focused her attention on the Flanker gunning for her.

"He's pulling lead!" Samurai called out. Blaze rolled over in the other direction and reversed the turn circle. It was a risky move, and her luck ran dry. As Blaze pulled into the turn in the other direction, the Mudhen shook violently. An alarm started beeping. Blaze grit her teeth as her heart rate went from moderately elated to practically beating out of her chest.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Blaze exclaimed. "Wardog 1 is hit!"

"Lost the pod feed!" Samurai was making a damage assessment. "Fuel leak, port side!"

"Trigger, fox 2!" A feminine voice reported a Sidewinder shot. Blaze was wildly attempting to avoid catching any more rounds. Tracers popped off overhead. As she dived, Blaze noticed a beam of light shooting down from the sky maybe a half dozen kilometres ahead. Ignoring that for a moment, Blaze looked over her shoulder. She spotted a cloud of smoke, a burning aircraft and a parachute. Flying through that mess was a singular F-16. Peculiarly, an F-16D, the twin seat version normally relegated to training purposes.

"Hey captain!" Grimm's voice broke the brief silence. The man of impeccable timing showed up on Blaze's wing. "Egress east, get outta here!"

"I'm winchester anyway." Blaze mumbled. "Chopper, still with us?"

"One sec!" Chopper replied with a strained voice. He was in a turnfight with another Flanker. "Yeah I'm here!"

"Take over command, I've got damage." Blaze instructed the next highest-ranking officer in her flight to take the reigns as squadron leader.

"Wilco." Chopper replied. With her section of airspace clear for the moment, Blaze moved out east. She looked at the fuel gauge. They had definitely lost some fuel through whatever tank had been penetrated, but there was still enough to get them back to Sand Island.

"Archer." Blaze asked Grimm. "I can't see shit. How bad am I?"

Grimm pulled in to assess the damage. "Your pod's toast. Port-side CFT's leaking fuel. Everything else looks fine."

"Dodged a bullet." Samurai commented.

"Fucking literally." Blaze exhaled. "We're outbound bearing 090 at 500 knots."

"See you when we get back!" Grimm saw his squadron leader off before peeling away from her and returning to the clusterfuck that was the merge. While Blaze flew away from the fight, she noticed one of the Orions from earlier turning towards the fight at considerable speed for a prop aircraft.

"Bluehound 3, Wardog 1, are you sure it's a good idea to be going this way in that?" Blaze rang in to make sure the pilot of the ASW aircraft hadn't completely lost his mind.

"No risk, no reward!" The Orion crew commander remarked. "We're looking for whatever's launching those ballistics."

"Fair enough, carry on." Blaze left Bluehound to their own devices.

While the OADF's part of the strike group over the course of the operation had taken a beating, they had punched above their weight long enough for the OMDF's side of the force to arrive and take the load off the Air Force. Hornets and Super Hornets merged with the surviving Flankers, picking off anything that wasn't in close proximity to friendly aircraft. While the Osean Navy's fleet air arm proceeded to punch the Yuktobanian Navy VVS in the face, Bluehound 3 slipped in underneath the clusterfuck. From a bay towards the rear end of the P-3C came out sonobuoys: small cylindrical hydrophones that transmitted sound data from under the waves to the host aircraft.

The Orion dropped them in sequence along a search line. Inside the insulated cabin of the aircraft, the two acoustic sensor operators were analysing the data being transmitted from the sonobuoys to their screens. The ocean was an impossibly big place, and submarines could hide in any part of it, but there were only so many places a submarine could be within their search box. It didn't take long to find the needle in the haystack.

"Hey." One of the sensor operators caught the attention of the aircraft's tactical coordinator, the TACCO. "Getting mechanical noise on passive."

The TACCO tapped into what the junior operator was listening to. He heard a constant thrumming noise. He took a glance at a 2D display of the location of their sonobuoys and referenced the number of the sonobuoy that had detected audible noise.

"Pilot, TACCO, bring us around east." The TACCO instructed. While not the most senior officer onboard the aircraft, as the aircraft's combat coordinator he had the ultimate authority to get the pilots to move certain ways. The Orion turned around and came down parallel to its previous heading. More passive sonobuoys were released into the water. They got a rough area where the sonar contact could be.

"Four props." One of the acoustic operators looked over at the TACCO. "That's gotta be the Scinfaxi."

The TACCO nodded. "Thunderhead, Bluehound 3. Submarine detected by sonobuoy. Sound profile is a match with the Scinfaxi."

"Roger Bluehound. Track and interdict." Thunderhead instructed. The Orion continued to drop sonobuoys around where they thought the missile carrying submarine of mass destruction was located. The second acoustic sensor operator pushed in his headset, listening for something.

"Ballast noise." The acoustic operator said, listening for further noise. He grit his teeth. "Rumbling. Sir, they're firing a missile."

"Thunderhead, Bluehound 3, sonobuoys indicate imminent missile launch." The aircraft's TACCO informed the AWACS overhead.

"Roger, Bluehound." Thunderhead switched channels. "Stallion, Thunderhead, ballistic missile launch detected. We'll transmit its location via datalink as soon as we have eyes on."

Another member of the Orion's aircrew, an enlisted sailor scanning the ocean with a TV camera mounted under the aircraft, piped up. "There's the missile."

"Out of our hands now." The TACCO commented as the missile hit its boost phase and shot up into the sky. The atmosphere in the cabin was tense. If the Arkbird missed its shot, they were as good as dead in their giant prop-powered plane. Nevertheless, Bluehound orbited the area around their detected submarine while they waited for the Arkbird to do its thing. Not an awfully far distance away, a blue laser slammed into the ocean surface.

"Ballistic has been splashed!" Thunderhead called out a second later.

"They're launching a second missile-" The acoustic operator froze. "Oh shit. Number three. Number four! Number five!"

"Pilot, point us at that sub!" The TACCO called up to the cockpit. "Thunderhead, Bluehound 3, salvo missile fire detected!"

"Uh oh." Thunderhead mumbled. "Stallion, Thunderhead, multiple ballistics incoming!"

"Make ready two Mark 54s, shallow search, active sonar." The TACCO ordered. Without hesitation, the aircraft's weapons operator punched in the search pattern for two of their loaded Mark 54 torpedoes.

"Weapons ready." The weapon operator made the Mark 54s ready for deployment.

"Drop, drop, drop!"

The internal weapons bay towards the forward section of the Orion opened, and out came two torpedoes. Parachutes slowed them down as they entered the slipstream to stop them from disintegrating on impact with the ocean surface. The torpedo duo gently landed, discarded their parachutes, spun up their propellers and started pinging with their onboard sonars, searching for a target.

"Torpedoes are active." The acoustic sensor operators concurred.

"Get us outta here, head east!" The TACCO instructed. Outside of the aircraft, no less than four missiles made a violent exit from the water and leapt into the sky, one after the other. The moment that the radar on Thunderhead's E-2 Hawkeye detected the missiles and transmitted that data to the Arkbird, lasers rained down from the heavens. One missile was incinerated. Another turned into a fireball.

"There's too many of them! All aircraft, climb to above fifteen thousand feet and wait out!" Thunderhead issued an order to all aircraft in the area of operations, but for the majority of fighters, the order was issued far too late. The Arkbird shot down the third missile just before it reached the height of its ballistic arc. There was an effort made to hit the fourth, but by the time the laser entered the atmosphere, the missile had already detonated.

Nagase had been in a dogfight with an Su-35 when the warning came in to get above Angels 15. This was a problem, since she was at Angels 9 and descending. They were in a tight enough circle that Nagase could see the pilot of the opposing aircraft. The Flanker was… pulling away and climbing? Presumably the Yuktobanian battle scene commander had given the same order for all Yuke aircraft to get above fifteen thousand feet. Not wanting to get slapped out of the air, Nagase pulled as far back as she could on the stick and climbed. The Osean Mudhen and the Yuktobanian Flanker climbed as fast as they could, back-to-back. They barely made it before a white flash damn near blinded the Mudhen pilot. Nagase squeezed her eyes shut and raised her arm to her eyes to keep out the blinding white light. The pressure wave that emitted upwards from the source of the explosion damn near shook apart the aircraft.

"Mmmph." Nagase grunted as she was buffeted around in every direction. Once the blinding light had dissipated, Nagase levelled out. She found herself in an awkward situation. The Flanker she had been fighting not even a minute ago was flying at fingertip formation right next to her. The two pilots glared at each other for a moment. The Flanker pilot appeared to be a woman, about Nagase's size. After ten seconds of no action, the Flanker pilot gave Nagase a two finger salute before peeling off and retreating east. Nagase turned west, back towards the fight.

"You're not going after him?" Pops asked as Nagase's WSO.

"No, I'm not." Nagase reaffirmed her decision and flew towards what remained of the clusterfuck. The numbers on both sides had been considerably thinned. Osean fighters outnumbered the Yuktobanian fighters, but the Oseans had taken considerably more casualties in the blast.

"Nagase, Grimm, you two still kicking?" Chopper rang in. He had survived the blast.

"Edge, affirmative." Nagase answered.

"Still here, Chopper." Grimm replied. The three remaining Wardog aircraft were still airborne.

"Alright. Form up on me. We're taking the fight to them." Chopper ordered. He passed by Nagase and took the lead position. Nagase made room for Grimm to join their formation. They had four missiles between them. Enough to take out a flight.

"Explosions in the water! She's hit, the Scinfaxi's been hit!"

"Sonobuoys are running out of charge."

"Main ballast noise. Sir, the Scinfaxi's surfacing."

The TACCO got on the horn to the AWACS. "Thunderhead, Bluehound 3, main ballast noise detected. The Scinfaxi is surfacing."

Right below the area where a burst missile had detonated, a black shadow appeared under the surface of the water. That black shadow grew until suddenly over a hundred thousand tons of water were violently pushed out of the way. A truly gigantic black metal cylinder took the shadow's place. The Scinfaxi had appeared.

"Hoooooly shit." Grimm spoke.

"That's gotta be at least three hundred metres long." Zoomer was the next person to speak.

"Thunderhead, Big Bird 102, eyes on the Scinfaxi." A Navy pilot reported it to the appropriate AWACS.

"Roger, Big Bird. All forces, Thunderhead, is there anyone left in the AO with air-to-surface munitions?"

"Big Birds, nada."

"Templars, negative."

"Scythe, all winchester, A2G."

"Rednecks, winchester."

"Dagger, negative."

It seemed that all of the aircraft in the air had either disposed of their air-to-ground weapons or had been shot down with them. Chopper cracked his neck.

"Wardog, winchester-"

"Hold that thought, Chopper." Blaze interrupted Chopper's transmission. "Thunderhead, Wardog Actual, affirmative, two GBU-24s. Inbound."

"This is a bad idea." Samurai gave her thoughts on running back into the fight with a damaged aircraft.

"It's a very bad idea." Blaze absolutely agreed. "But these bombs aren't gonna use themselves."

"Fuck me sideways." Samurai muttered, shaking her head.

"Wardog 1, Big Bird 102." The voice of a naval aviator rang through the radio. "I see you. Your attack path is clear. I'll try to keep the enemy off your back. Good luck."

Blaze had no laser guidance, her port-side conformal fuel tank was leaking and she was fighting a slight tilt to port. Nevertheless, Bluehound had made an opening and come hell or high water Blaze was going to exploit that opening.

"Ack." Blaze cracked her neck and placed her hand firmly on the stick. She circled around to approach the Scinfaxi from the rear. "Approaching from attack vector 270. Wardog 1, in."

Blaze slammed the throttle all the way forward. They were kicking water up from the ocean surface with how low they were.

"Blaze, you are cleared hot." Thunderhead cleared her to conduct the strike. Blaze grit her teeth and zoomed. The Mudhen straightened out as they gained speed and burned through their excess fuel supply. Blaze flipped a couple of switches and suddenly the CCIP prediction marker for a Mark 84 appeared in her HUD. With no laser guidance, Blaze was going to freeball it. Samurai watched the sensor display.

"Ten klicks." Samurai advised. Blaze checked her speed indicator. 700 knots. Just barely above Mach 1. Blaze maintained her heading.

"Which way is she moving?" Blaze asked.

Samurai checked the radar reading. "270. Dead west."

"Alright." Blaze disengaged the master safe function and keyed the bombs to her trigger. "Master safe off."

Five kilometres out and closing fast, Blaze could see the Scinfaxi on the horizon. She also saw a large smoke trail shoot up from the gigantic missile sub.

"Oh shit." Blaze muttered. "Missiles in the air!"

"We should break and reengage." Samurai suggested.

"No." Blaze growled. "I'm getting this fucker now."

"Uhh-" Samurai objected.

"Brace." Blaze gave a half-second warning before yanking back on the stick, pulling enough gees that for a moment Samurai was worried that her pilot had just exceeded the gee limit of the bombs they were carrying. The Mudhen shot up and gained a thousand feet in altitude in only a few seconds. Blaze rolled over, dived and rolled the right way up to get her nose on target. The Scinfaxi was making all haste west, throwing up one hell of a wake as it did so. From above came a blue laser that sliced an opening into the pressure hull towards the rear end of the Scinfaxi. Blaze decided on her target. The hole left by that laser impact was where she was going to lob her bombs.

"Missile splashed!" Thunderhead called out.

Blaze set the bomb predictor sight on that opening, and then put the nose forward to account for the Scinfaxi's movement. Blaze squeezed the stick and pressed the trigger.

"Blaze, pickle, pickle!" Blaze shouted as she pulled away from the Scinfaxi, turning much faster now that she wasn't carrying four thousand pounds worth of bomb. Without laser guidance, the GBU-24s followed their ballistic arc towards the target. Smoke was billowing out of the penetration caused by the laser hit. Moments later, a second laser shot sliced across the front of the Scinfaxi. A fraction of a second after that, the bombs hit, flying clean through the opening in the hull, penetrating through several decks and exploding catastrophically within the boat.

"Direct hit!" Samurai yelled out. "Direct hits!"

Blaze slammed the canopy with the side of her fist and celebration. "Fucker. Thunderhead, Blaze, I am winchester and bingo. RTB."

Those GBU-24s hadn't just exploded deep within the bowels of the Scinfaxi. One of them had penetrated so far that it had punched a hole in the pressure hull and through the keel. The Scinfaxi started taking on water at an alarming rate. Combined with the Arkbird poking holes through the forward sections of the submarine, the Scinfaxi started to founder. She was done for.

With the remainder of the Yuktobanian aircraft in the area either dead or withdrawing, Wardog watched as what might have well been the pride of the Yuktobanian Eastern Fleet slipped under the waves for the final time.

"In final reckoning, the beast is slain." Nagase muttered as she, Pops, Chopper, Zoomer and Grimm watched nature claim the Scinfaxi.

"Shit…" Grimm murmured. "There she goes."

"Is that us done for the day?" Zoomer asked.

"All forces in the AO, this is AWACS Thunderhead, relay from Sand Island Command." Sure enough, Thunderhead piped up. "The enemy is pulling back. Mission complete. All squadrons currently airborne, you are authorised to return to base."

"And that's a wrap. Alright. Let's get outta here." Chopper instructed.

Damaged but no longer spraying fuel, Blaze brought herself and Samurai to a controlled landing. Once the aircraft was in the hands of the mechanics who were no doubt going to be busy for the next week with repair duties, Blaze removed her helmet and wiped off the layers of sweat and grime that had accumulated on her face. She checked her watch. Much to Blaze's surprise, it was only 0800. The entire operation had only taken three hours. It felt like a lot longer than that.

Blaze crumbled into taking a seat at the rear of the hangar. Pulling high gees constantly over the course of a few hours had drained almost all of her energy.

"That out of shape?" Samurai mocked her pilot.

"Fuck off." Blaze retorted. Samurai giggled.

"Got any orders, captain?" Samurai asked. Blaze rolled her eyes and smiled faintly.

"Rest or something." Blaze muttered. "I'll be with you in a second. Just need a moment."

"Yes, ma'am." Samurai gave Blaze a mock salute before wandering off. Blaze waited until Samurai was out of line of sight and out of earshot before crumbling onto the concrete ground behind the hangar, more exhausted than she was willing to admit to anyone. As the first wave of aircraft started coming in to land, Blaze got off her ass and went to the squadron room to get changed and prepare for what she assumed was going to be a heavy debrief.