After having their mission cut short by the chain of command, Wardog Squadron returned to Sand Island after a two hour trip and a quick fillup from a loitering KC-135 tanker. Touching down on the runway and taxiing over to the flight line, Blaze saw Hamilton, Sergeant Major Hallaway and Colonel Perrault waiting for them nearby.
"Is that Perrault?" Chopper observed from behind Blaze's aircraft.
"And Sergeant Major Hallaway." Zoomer added. "Must be something serious if it's the big three."
Seeing the base commander, the base adjutant and the base enlisted advisor all on the flight line waiting for the squadron didn't inspire hope in Blaze. What it did inspire, however, was confusion. Blaze had no idea what they had done that warranted getting them pulled off an active mission. Blaze wasted no time in powering down the aircraft and hopping straight out to appear before the Big Three.
"Colonel Perrault, Major Hamilton." Blaze popped a quick salute as the rest of Wardog came around to back her up. "May I ask what this is about?"
Perrault looked down at Blaze for a moment before looking at Chopper, Nagase, Grimm, Pops, Kitagawa and Zoomer all individually.
"Follow me." Perrault said after a long silence, spinning on his heels and walking off towards the administrative building, Hallaway close on his shoulder. Blaze looked at Hamilton, looking for a more immediate answer. The major offered a disapproving shake of the head, indicating his thoughts on whatever the fuck was going on.
The squadron was directed into Briefing Room 1, where Hallaway was setting up a projector while Perrault sat down heavily. His chair creaked and strained under Perrault's extreme weight.
"Take a seat." Perrault ordered, leaning back and waiting for Hallaway to finish setting up the projector. Wardog Squadron sat down in the row closest to the front of the room. Once Hallaway had finished with the projector, she stepped out of the way as Perrault pulled up what appeared to be a hastily made presentation. There was a hazy image of what appeared to be a ruined building on fire.
"During the course of your mission, a university was attacked and almost totally destroyed." Perrault spoke. "At least a hundred people were killed, twice that injured, more people almost certainly dead or injured on top of that."
The room was silent. Blaze bit her lip hard enough to make it hurt. Nagase covered her mouth in horror. Chopper and Grimm didn't know what to make of it and Blaze was fairly certain she heard Zoomer exhale sharply through his nose.
"From first hand testimony, this attack was conducted by four Osean fighters." Perrault continued. "Your squadron was the only four-strong fighter group in the nearby vicinity."
Blaze frowned. "Sir, are you implying that we carried out the attack?"
"I'm not implying anything, Captain." Perrault shot down Blaze's question. "I'm stating the known facts."
Hallaway took over. "The brass up the chain of command have requested an in-person hearing. You are to report to a hearing at Leavenworth Court as soon as possible."
"Leavenworth?!" Chopper piped up. "That's all the way in Oured! The war's on the other side of the planet!"
"Chopper." Blaze reprimanded Chopper in an attempt for him to shut up.
"Believe me Captain, we wanted to hold the hearing here." Hallaway sympathised with Chopper's annoyance. "But the order came from above me, from above Major Hamilton, from above Colonel Perrault. We didn't have a choice in the matter."
"Sergeant Major, if I may." Zoomer spoke up. "We're being accused of attacking civilian infrastructure while we were on an intercept mission. I don't know if there's a difference between Navy and Air Force ordinance management, but shouldn't there be an inventory report that would exonerate us?"
"In normal circumstances, yes." Hamilton answered for Zoomer. "And we looked. Wherever somebody made a mistake or somebody was acting with malicious intent, there's no inventory check corresponding with your mission.
Blaze turned to look at Zoomer. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. After a few seconds of silent pondering, Zoomer nodded.
"Understood, sir." The former sailor leant back.
"If you're all done trying to think of an excuse, I'd suggest packing your best formal uniforms and leaving for Oured ASAP." Perrault butted in. Blaze wanted to swear, but she maintained her composure for long enough to keep face in front of the base command staff.
"Yes sir." She muttered. "Wardog! Take a piss, get something to drink, take a grab bag and let's go. You've got twenty minutes."
"Dismissed." Perrault formally dismissed the squadron. Wardog slowly filtered out of Briefing 1 to invariably carry out the tasks that Blaze had mentioned just before they were dismissed. Blaze felt like she should have been angry, but what she actually felt was a mixture of confusion and disappointment.
"What kind of false flag bullshit is this?!" On the other end of the spectrum, Chopper was definitely angry.
"Thunderhead was watching us the entire time…" Kitagawa murmured as she yoinked her grab bag from her locker. "What do they need us in the capital for?"
"I have no idea, Kita." Blaze replied dryly. "I have no fucking idea."
"Can't wait to get stuck in limbo for a week." Grimm quipped sarcastically, walking past the two with a bag over his shoulder.
"Fuck it, I'm not even grabbing my dress blues." Blaze decided, sighing irritatedly as she pulled her own grab bag from her locker, slamming the door shut. Zoomer snickered.
"Sure that's a good idea, Captain?" Zoomer asked, swinging his bag over his shoulder.
"It's a terrible idea, but I'm trying to prove a point." Blaze retorted as she walked out into the squadron room. "That we're fighting a war and this is a waste of time."
Blaze grabbed her phone and charger from a socket on the wall as Wardog shuffled out to go collect their personal items and formal uniforms. Content enough with her phone and the contents of her grab bag, Blaze swung the strap around her shoulder and walked down to the flight line. Arriving at her hangar, she saw that the ground crews were still busy refitting her F-15E with external fuel tanks. Backing off from the flight line, Blaze sat down at a nearby bench. She reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.
"Smoking, Captain? At this time of day?" Nagase's voice rang out from Blaze's side. Blaze didn't look up as she lit up a cigarette and took a long drag.
"Given the situation, I feel like it's warranted." Blaze replied, being mindful to blow the smoke away from Nagase.
"Right." Nagase sat down next to Blaze, dropping her bag between her legs. "What's going on, Captain? None of this makes any sense."
Blaze shook her head. "I'm just as confused as you are, Kei. No transmissible location information, no inventory reports to help our case. Hell, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if our guncam tapes are wiped when we get to Oured."
"Who would attack a university?" Nagase asked another question on the same topic. "There's no logical reason to target a place like that.
"Oh, I could think of a couple." Zoomer was the next person to show up. "Yukes committing a false flag operation to gather both local and international support and sympathy comes to mind."
"Or some moron without their transponders on hit the wrong building." Chopper was a couple of seconds behind Zoomer. "I swear, man…"
"Just… for the love of god." Blaze took another drag of her ciggie. "Whenever we get to this hearing and they ask about what happened, don't come up with some bullshit on the spot. Tell them the truth."
"State the obvious." Grimm said, rocking up with Pops and Kitagawa in tow. Wardog Squadron had been assembled just short of the flight line. Blaze dropped her cigarette butt and crushed it under the heel of her boot.
"You know the drill." She blew the smoke in her lungs away from the members of her squadron. "Load up, let's go."
And so they departed for greener pastures and an investigation that could damn well end up getting them permanently grounded. They were in for a long flight. Oured was on the complete opposite side of the country from Sand Island. Accounting for layovers to refuel, Blaze wagered they were in for a five or six hour flight. Carrying three external fuel tanks for the trip, plus an empty carriage pod for their bags, Blaze stretched and did what little she could to get comfortable for the continent-spanning trip.
Over on the continent where Wardog were supposed to be doing their job, Nastasya Obertas was doing her job, sitting at a desk and writing up a report regarding the analysis of Osean troop movements on the Bastok Peninsula. Nastasya spent hours flicking through troop reports, satellite imagery, terrain radar mapping and thirty other kinds of collected intelligence to come to a conclusion that was obvious from the moment it had been penned: Osea wasn't bluffing, they were very much committing to a major offensive.
"Major Obertas?" A junior office clerk was at the door of Nastasya's little cubicle. He had a manilla folder in his arm. "The records you requested came through."
"Thank you, Corporal." Nastasya leant forward from her chair to grab the folder. The corporal dismissed himself and went on with his day. Nastasya put the folder on her desk and saved a draft of her report before opening the folder. Inside the folder were several pages worth of times, dates, locations, squadron names, aircraft and numbers of aircraft deployed, ranging from the start of August to the start of November.
"Let's see…" Nastasya mumbled to herself, immediately skipping through to the end of August. Specifically, August 28th. Bartlett had mentioned a single Yuktobanian-marked prototype flight on that date. Nastasya found plenty of other flights that had occurred in the same time bracket, but none of them met Bartlett's description.
Hmm…
Nastasya flicked forward to the next date Bartlett had explicitly mentioned, the 29th of August. This incident detailed four Naval Aviation Su-35Ks intercepting a civilian airliner. One of the four Flankers had been shot down. Again, Nastasya saw plenty of Yuktobanian aviation sorties for that day, but none of them lined up with Bartlett's retelling of events and none of them reported any losses of aircraft.
The next date was the 23rd of September, more than three weeks later, where eight Flankers were engaged in open combat with eight Mudhens. Nastasya would have figured an incident like that would have made headlines or have a special mention in the documents, but once more, no report matched the details. Hell, no report even came close.
Hell, the first reported contact that had a corresponding log in the documents was the following day, on the 24th. A Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft and eight Navy Yak-141s had been shot down by Osean forces in the vicinity of Cape Landers, the mainland due east of Sand Island. That very same day, eight Su-34s and two MiG-29s had been shot down the night of the attack on Murska Air Force Base. Up to the declaration of war on 27 September, a dozen reconnaissance UAVs and a handful of escort fighters had been reported as shot down. Yuktobanian air activity exploded from there.
Nastasya leant back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. A single missing report could be chalked up as a mistake, two reports a fuckup. But three reports going missing or never being lodged at all, all within the same operational region, wasn't a coincidence. What that meant, Nastasya wasn't certain, but it was an indicator that something was off. Nastasya emptied the folder and dumped the sheets into a paper shredder to be destroyed. Before knocking off for the day, she finished her report and submitted it to her division chief for review. Leaving the office and heading home for the day, Nastasya wondered what Bartlett's reaction to the information she had dug up would be.