3 November 2010

Oured

"Tower, Badger 1, no visual on bogies. I say again, no visual. Request bogey dope."

"Badger 1, dead ahead, heading 100 Angels 5. Advise caution, you're right on top of them."

"Wardog Squadron, airborne."

WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E

WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E

WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E

WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C

Originally Wardog Squadron was going to depart Oured for a cross country flight to Sand Island, but with the potential of a threat to the capital, they had been reassigned to intercept any potential leakers that got past the early warning radar network.

"No vis… wait." Badger went off the air for a brief moment. "Tally two bogies. Looks like a pair of small cruise missiles."

"Roger Badger. Wait. What the fu- Badger, popup group on your six o'clock, three klicks closing fast!"

Blaze gripped the stick just a little bit tighter.

"Badger 1 eva-"

"Badger 2-"

Both Badger callsigns went off the air back to back. A quick glance at the datalink indicated that both F-15Cs had gone dark. On their position were now two hostile contacts.

"Badger Flight has been lost from radar." The ground control back at the airbase declared. "Wardog Squadron, turn heading 045 for 100 to intercept bandits!"

"Wardog, wilco. Chopper, follow me, Edge, Archer, maintain your course." Blaze split Wardog into two flights to go chase down the two aircraft that had downed Badger Flight. Given the comparatively short distance between them and the enemy, it took barely any time to enter weapons range of the original two bogies and the new popup group.

"I have the lead two bandits." Blaze informed Chopper. "Blaze, Fox 3, Fox 3!"

"Chopper, Fox 3!"

Blaze and Chopper let off two missiles each, one for all four enemy aircraft and cruise missiles. The missiles carried on with their original heading and speed, but the two aircraft were alerted by the radar signal of the two Mudhens and turned into them at full speed to close the distance, in the process painting Blaze and Chopper with their own radars. Blaze looked to her RWR. SLU.

"Tower, Wardog 1, bandits identified as SLUAVs." Blaze relayed this information to ground control. Its name an acronym standing for Submarine Launched Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the SLUAV was a small Yuktobanian drone designed to be used as a quick response interceptor for submarines as the name implied. Their presence made Blaze wonder what was sitting underneath the surface of Oured Bay.

"Blaze, I'm picking up five- make that six more aircraft to the east!" Nagase had spotted six more bandits coming towards them.

"You know what to do, stack them up and knock them down." Blaze said to Nagase as she and Chopper pushed the north-eastern pair of SLUAVs. Blaze heard Nagase rattle off a Fox 3 call as she engaged. One of the nice things about the SLUAV was that because of their small size they weren't big enough to carry radar guided missiles, which meant Wardog could safely push to just beyond visual range without fear of return fire. Blaze and Chopper halved the distance between them and their targets before the latter disappeared from sensors.

"Wardog 2, splash two!" Chopper claimed the kills. Not terribly long after, the two missiles Blaze had fired at disappeared.

"Blaze, splash two." Blaze reported her own kills. She and Chopper turned back towards Nagase and Grimm. "How are things looking over there?"

"Getting there." Pops answered. "Drones are trying to bypass us."

"Not for long." Nagase cut Pops off. "Edge, splash six!"

"That's not the last of them." Grimm piped up. "Archer, Fox 3, Fox 3."

Blaze glared down at her datalink, wondering what Grimm was shooting at. Sure enough there were four additional bandits even further out to the east. Finding themselves being fired upon, the group of four split into pairs and flanked north to south.

"Archer, going after the north pair." Grimm elected to maintain a radar lock on the pair heading north.

"Chopper, engaging the south pair." Chopper leapt in, firing upon the south pair. "Chopper, Fox 3, Fox 3!"

Blaze decided to hang back and let the boys sort out the drones. Nagase stuck like glue to Blaze's wing as Grimm and Chopper shot off into the distance.

"Twelve SLUAVs? Who the hell's launching all of those?" Samurai posed a question to her pilot.

"I have a couple of ideas and I don't like the possibility of either." Blaze answered. As far as she knew, SLUAVs had two specific use cases: as point defence on Yuktobanian ballistic missile submarines, and as a force multiplier on Scinfaxi-class super submarines. And since the likelihood that Yuktobania had deployed six SSBNs right up to Osean waters was too low to be worth considering, that meant Scinfaxi's Atlantic Fleet counterpart was somewhere nearby.

"What are the chances the Arkbird's overhead?" Samurai suggested.

Blaze shook our head. "That's somebody else's problem."

"Archer, splash two."

"Chopper, splash two!" The two had successfully eliminated all four SLUAVs.

"Tower, Wardog 1, request bogey dope." Blaze checked in with ground control to see if they were picking up any new contacts.

"Wardog, Tower, picture clean. Reinforcements are on station. Wardog, return to base, I believe you have an express ticket out of Oured."

Blaze smirked. "Sounds about right, tower. Wardog is returning to airfield."

Briefly returning to the base they had departed from, the four aircraft had their missiles and guns switched out for external fuel tanks for the cross country journey back to their home base. Once they were fully fueled, they were dispatched away from Oured. Watching as the capital disappeared below the horizon, Blaze settled in for the flight home.

South-west of Oured, a good two or three hours by aircraft away from the capital, a second attack swung into action. Bana City was a coastal city of roughly three hundred thousand people a good distance away from major military bases. Much like Dresden, Bana City had a sizable and well established university. Much like Dresden University, Bana City University was about to feel the wrath of a focused military attack.

"Falcon 2 is in position."

"Roger, Falcon 1 is in position." Sergeant Yuri Klinov looked back to his six man team. "Masks on."

Sitting in an unmarked white van with tinted windows across the road from the entrance to the university, Yuri and his men donned gas masks with black visors before putting their helmets on and loading their rifles. The filtered breathing of six men punctured the silence inside the van as Yuri raised his hand to his radio push to talk.

"Falcon 2, execute."

On the top of a building a block away, the loud THUMP of mortar rounds echoed through the city.

"Rounds complete, splash in ten seconds."

"Thirty seconds." Yuri said to his men, his grip tightening around his rifle.

"Splash… now."

Yuri waited a few seconds for the four round fire mission to be completed, and another twenty seconds after that for the rounds to disperse their contents. He checked his watch. 1600.

"Falcon 1, executing."

The front doors and side sliding door opened simultaneously as Falcon 1 dismounted the fan. In the upper bounds of his peripheral vision, Yuri could see a yellow-green mist wafting up into the sky. Standing next to a car, a police officer noticed the armed soldiers and spun around. His hand went for his sidearm. Yuri raised his rifle to his shoulder, lined up the police officer in his optic and fired.

BANG!