"Mmmpth." Ash blinked rapidly in succession. "Yeah, I can see that light perfectly fine."
Ash was sitting on a patient bed in Sand Island's rather expansive medical ward. Standing in front of her was a woman wearing scrubs over Multicam overalls, the distinct marking of an Air Force or Army doctor. The doctor had a small flashlight and was shining it into Ash's eyes to check for any damage.
"So run me through it again. Your vision was initially blacked out in the centre, but it's slowly returning?" First Lieutenant Emily Rogers, one of the doctors who had been stationed at Sand Island pre-war, asked as she pocketed the flashlight.
"Yeah. I could only see around the edges of my vision, but I can kinda see better now, it's just darker than normal." Ash explained her condition.
"Okay." Doctor Rogers stood up, walked to the other side of the room and pointed at a sheet glued to the wall with a random sequence of letters on it. A standard eyesight test. "Can you read out all the letters on this wall for me, please?"
Ash glanced at the letters. "Echo. Foxtrot, Papa. Tango, Oscar, Zulu. Lima, Papa, Echo, Delta. Papa, Echo, Charlie, Foxtrot, Delta. Echo, Delta, Foxtrot, Charlie, Zulu, Papa."
Rogers nodded. "On the upside, your eyesight is still 20/20." She grabbed a small book from her desk and brought it over to Ash. Inside the book were coloured circles, most of which had numbers drawn within them, some of which didn't. It was a colour blindness test.
"I assume you want me to read out the numbers for this." Ash guessed.
"Correct." Rogers confirmed Ash's assumptions.
"Okay. 7, 13, 16, 8, 12, 9." Ash read out the first six circles. Rogers flipped the page over to another set of six. "Empty, 5, 15, 6, 2, empty."
"All correct." Rogers put the book away. "My assessment is that your eyesight should make a full recovery within the day, Captain, and you shall be clear to return to flight duties. If your eyesight starts getting worse, you know where to find me."
Ash stood up. "Will do, doc. Am I good to go?"
"Yep, ring up if you need to come see me." Rogers cleared Ash to leave. The latter did so, leaving the doctor's room and walking into reception where Chopper was outside waiting. The 2IC of Wardog Squadron stood up.
"How'd it go?" Chopper asked. "Can you see?"
"I've been able to see since I got back." Ash retorted. "Yeah, I'm alright. There's a pit in the middle of my vision that's darker than the edges, but I can still see colours and small objects from a distance." She sighed. "In short, I've still got my wings.
"Thank god for that." Chopper said after a chuckle. "Running an entire squadron isn't my thing."
"And yet you got the promotion to Captain anyway." Ash giggled. "Your aircraft up and running yet?"
"The mechanics tell me they've installed a new rudder and new hydraulic lines. Yeah, my bird's good to go." Chopper answered about the condition of his F-15E.
"Thank fuck for that. I have a feeling we've got a long week ahead of us." Ash stated as she and Chopper walked back to the Wardog crew room. Inside, Nagase, Grimm, Wolf and Kitagawa were huddled around a table with Nagase at the head reading out what sounded like lines from a story while writing something down into a book with a little red cover.
"The princess couldn't feed the dove that day. She was too sick…" Nagase mumbled to herself as she attempted to recall the phrase.
"Is that A Blue Dove For The Princess?" Chopper asked as he walked inside after Ash.
"Yeah." Nagase looked up. "You know it?"
"I remember my grandma used to tell me bedtime stories about it. And when she did, I'd be too scared to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night." Chopper explained his experience with the book. Ash snickered as she took a seat at the table.
"Biggest man on the base and you used to be afraid of the monster in the dark…" Wolf chuckled. "Y'know what, I'm not surprised."
"Let's not dwell on that, shall we?" Chopper laughed as he, too, took a seat. Ash leant over to look at Nagase's book. It was a hardback copy of the aforementioned tale, complete with a tattered cover and ageing yellow pages. Ash herself had a copy of A Blue Dove For The Princess stashed back home in Risaka, and she had read it recently enough to recall most of the lines.
"That's not how it goes, Kei." Ash nudged Nagase's arm. She cleared her throat. "The Princess, who was always in good shape and made it a habit to visit the dove many times a day, did not show up one day. She did not come to feed it on that day."
"I see… thank you." Nagase went straight to writing the phrase down. Ash had been about to ask something when the phone started ringing. She sighed and stood up to go answer it.
"Captain Paige, Wardog Squadron."
"Major Hamilton. Captain, you and you alone are needed in Briefing 1." Hamilton was on the other end of the line.
"Be there in one minute." Ash abruptly hung up the phone and walked for the door.
"Where are you going?" Kitagawa asked, noticing Ash taking her leave.
"Hamilton needs something." Ash explained in the briefest of terms before zipping out the door and heading downstairs to the cool and air conditioned briefing room. Major Hamilton was in the room, as was a second man Ash had never met before. This second man was about Ash's height, was wearing a dirty multicam battle uniform and judging by the rank slide on his shoulder he was a Lieutenant Colonel.
"Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell, this is Captain Ashley Paige, the commanding officer of Wardog Squadron." Hamilton introduced the two. Ash stepped forward and offered her hand to the senior officer.
"Afternoon, sir." Ash said to Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell. The latter, an officer with a tanned complexion and absolutely no hair to speak of, smiled and shook Ash's hand.
"Good afternoon Captain." Mitchell had a firm handshake. "Hamilton tells me you can move mountains, so to speak."
"I dunno about literally moving a mountain, but I can make the effort." Ash quipped. "Is there something I can help you with, sir?"
Mitchell looked to Hamilton. Hamilton glanced at him, nodded and went to turn on the projector. Ash looked at the screen that popped up on the whiteboard. She was looking at an topographical image of Yuktobania annotated with several markings and arrows indicating direction of travel. There was a symbol that looked vaguely like the silhouette of a Scinfaxi-class submarine towards the north-eastern most corner of mainland Yuktobanian. Tracking south from that mark towards the Bastok Peninsula was a long yellow arrow. Tracking north from the mark was a long red arrow that went past Yuktobania, past neighbouring Estovakia and into the straits north of Estovakia before disappearing.
"The Hrimfaxi and her last known position, sir?" Ash put two and two together, figuring that the yellow arrow was the path of the Hrimfaxi's burst missiles while the red arrow was her direction of travel.
"Correct." Mitchell confirmed Ash's suspicions. "The Hrimfaxi launched ten burst missiles at the bases and ports near Bastok, plus another two at ships directed to intercept her, before running at flank speed into the icy waters south of Estovakia. We lost track of her after that."
"And I'm guessing you want us to sortie after her since we got the Scinfaxi as well." Ash clicked her tongue. "With respect sir, how? Even if the Hrimfaxi is detected on the surface, we'd never get there before she went under again, and then what? Our aircraft can't take torpedoes like an Orion can."
"I'm not asking you to go out and sink the Hrimfaxi." Mitchell corrected her. "At least not yet. I'm asking you to make a packing list for a week-long trip to wintertime Emmeria."
Ash blinked as her mind processed what Mitchell was asking of her. "...Yes sir, I can do that."
"Good." Mitchell smiled. "Unless you have any questions, that's all I wanted you down here to say."
"No… no questions from me, sir." Ash gulped. "If that's all, may I take my leave?"
"You may. I'll send for you if I need you and your squadron."
With that meeting done and dusted, Ash left Briefing Room 1 to head back upstairs to the squadron room. Wardog had dispersed during Ash's absence. Kitagawa and Nagase were sitting on the lounges watching The Simpsons clips on TV, Wolf was making a toasted sandwich and she had no idea where Chopper and Grimm had gone. Deciding that she didn't need to know the exact whereabouts of everybody under her command for now, Ash grabbed her laptop and plopped down on a lounge to sort out that packing list.
"What was that about?" Kitagawa asked, moving lounges so she could sit down next to her pilot.
"Staff officer flew in, apparently he might need us for an operation in the near-future." Ash replied. "Have you ever been to Emmeria in the winter?"
"Not in the winter, no." Kitagawa replied, touching hips with Ash and leaning into her. "Why?"
"It…" Ash opened up a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. "...might be relevant later."
"Fuck do you mean might be relevant?" Kitagawa looked at the screen. "Are we deploying to Emmeria?"
"Given that I have to make this fucking packing list, there's a good chance." Ash said, weakly chuckling."Now if you could stop pinning me against the edge of the lounge so I can get it done, that'd be nice."
"Oh, sorry." Kitagawa laughed, delivering a quick kiss to Ash's cheek before pulling away to go annoy somebody else. Ash blushed as she started moving her mouse and typing. Erring on the conservative side of what to bring for a week long trip into a cold environment, the final list came down to three sets of uniforms, a cold weather suit for operations in sub-zero environments, three sets of thermal underwear, eight pairs of socks, a cold weather sleeping bag, sunglasses and whatever personal items would fit within a carry pod. Ash saved the spreadsheet, attached the file to an email broadly addressed to Kitagawa, Chopper, Wolf, Nagase, Pops and Grimm and hit send.
"There we go, fuck me…" Ash muttered, leaning back and resting her hands behind her head.
Over the next two days, Wardog got to hear reports of the war effort as they themselves were held back at Sand Island pending a tasking from Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell and his staff. From what Ash had been able to glean, the Hrimfaxi had retreated into the icy waters of the Razgriz Strait, an icy body of water due north of the Anean continent. There, the submarine had remained silent for a day until it received a fresh shipment of burst missiles. The day after that, a new wave of hellfire was unleashed on Bastok. Notably, all of those burst missiles were fired through Emmerian airspace, something that the Emmerians had picked up on and weren't happy about.
Wardog Squadron was all assembled in their room when Hamilton personally walked into the room.
"Wardog!" He called out to get everyone's attention. "Grab your go-bags and scramble. Tower will give you directions once you're in the air."
"Where the hell are we going?" Wolf asked from the back of the room.
"Emmeria."