10 November 2010

Fuscum Sea

After departing from Sand Island, Wardog and Thunderhead travelled north along the Osean coast until they reached the latitude along which the Fuscum Sea ran, at which point they banked west to head towards their meeting point and refuelling stop with aircraft from the Republic of Emmeria Air Force, the vetted REAF.

Given that any point of the Fuscum Sea was no more than a fifteen minute trip from either Yuktobanians looking for a fight or Estovakians caught in the middle of a bloody civil war, Blaze was keeping a firm eye on her RWR for any signs of Yuktobanian fighters or AWACS. They weren't exactly trying to hide, flying at thirty thousand feet above the water, but they did have all of their radars switched off so they didn't emit any signals that could be intercepted by the Yukes.

After a couple of hours of non-stop flight, Wardog entered the mouth of the Fuscum Sea. Some minutes later Blaze got several hits on the RWR. Four 18Fs and a single E2. Four Rhinos and a Hawkeye. Ordinarily this would be the sign that an Osean carrier was nearby, but Osea wasn't the only country in the world that operated that combination of aircraft.

The radio crackled to life.

"Group of five aircraft in the vicinity of Garbaldi Island, this is Avalanche 1 of the Republic of Emmeria Navy. Squawk ID." The light-hearted tone of a Rhino pilot who sounded far too young to be a squadron leader crackled in over the radio. Blaze grinned. Avalanche Squadron was their point of contact.

"Avalanche 1, this is Wardog 1 of the Osean Air Defense Forces, reading you loud and clear." Blaze called to the Emmerian naval aviator.

"Ah, Wardog." Avalanche 1 sounded pleasantly surprised. "Welcome to Anea. I imagine you bunch are running low on fuel. Meet up with us and we'll carry you to a tanker."

"Sounds good, Avalanche. Forming up on your six." Blaze said. "You heard him Wardog, let's go."

A formation of F-15Es, F/A-18Fs and E-2s wasn't unheard of, particularly with Osean forces, but it was certainly strange to see in this part of the world. Flying westwards in international airspace through the Fuscum Sea, Blaze observed from the datalink that there were a pair of REAF A330 MRTTs - Multi Role Tanker Transport - trailing west at slow speed. Approaching the two hybrid transport-tankers, Blaze saw that the two aircraft had been fitted with refuelling booms. To her knowledge Emmeria didn't operate aircraft that used booms to refuel, so Blaze appreciated the gesture as she and Grimm hooked up, refuelled and then backed off for Chopper and Nagase to refuel. After they were all topped up, the twelve strong group of Emmerians and Oseans turned north-west for Emmerian airspace.

Ordered to fly through designated air corridors as they entered Emmeria, Wardog and Avalanche Squadrons flew over King's Bay and past Gracemeria deeper into the country. Blaze looked down at the capital city. From up in the air, it didn't appear to be that much smaller than Oured and it certainly had more majesty than the Osean capital, what with the ancient castles and walls that lined the bay and the massive bridge that spanned the tips of the bay. Nevertheless, the spectacle that was Gracemeria soon faded into the distance.

The base Wardog had been assigned to fly from was a base high in the mountain ranges near the northern reaches of the continent next to the border with Estovakia. The location was fairly remote, so Blaze was surprised to see significant infrastructure and a large number of aircraft stationed at the base as they came in for their landing approach. Rather appropriately, Wardog and Thunderhead were directed over to a row of unoccupied climate controlled hangars. As they rolled behind the flight line and into the hangars, the doors shut behind them, keeping out the frigid mountain winds, something Blaze was thankful for as she stepped out of the cockpit. Condensation from the change in temperature dripped off the Mudhen.

The building they were staying in had all of the basic amenities that could be found back at Sand Island. A commons room, two-bedroom dorms, a kitchen, bathrooms and a laundry, everything Wardog would need for their stay. Blaze entered her dorm room and dumped her carryall bag on the bed before walking out to the commons room, picking up a phone in the room and dialling in a specific number.

Click-click-click-click.

Riiiiiiing… riiiiiiing.

Click.

"Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell." Mitchell was on the other side of the phone.

"Captain Paige." Blaze spoke. "We're in position, sir."

"Good to hear." Mitchell replied. "Keep your ear to the ground, I'll be in touch."

"Roger that sir. Out here." Blaze put the phone down, sat down and turned on the heater. The next few days were going to be interesting.

The waiting period itself was uneventful, mostly spent trolling around the building they had been posted at and looking out for their aircraft while waiting for a call from Mitchell and his staff back at Sand Island.

On 14 November, four whole days after they had arrived in Emmeria, that call came.

"Is this channel on? Can you hear me?"

"Line's open sir, we're all listening."

Blaze, Samurai, Chopper, Zoomer, Nagase, Pops, Grimm and Thunderhead were assembled in a conference room fully kitted wearing thick cold weather survival uniforms with their helmets sitting on the big wooden table. A handful of Emmerian Air Force personnel were managing the secure radio uplink and downlink, as well as the projector.

Mitchell coughed to clear his throat.

"SOSUS nets detected a supply submarine departing Ochkabursk Naval Base earlier this morning. We've determined that the submarine is heading north with a full package of burst missiles for the Hrimfaxi. Based on their course and speed, we assess that the submarine will arrive at the Hrimfaxi by 1700 local time." Mitchell explained. "The Hrimfaxi will need to surface for this process. Once on the surface, the two submarines will be on the surface for thirty to forty minutes."

Blaze wrote all this down. Supply submarine arriving to Hrimfaxi LOC by 1700. Submarines on surface for 30-40 min.

"Once she has been detected by the NAVSAT network, you are to approach at low altitude to strike and sink the Hrimfaxi." Mitchell paused to gather his breath. "Now, the Hrimfaxi can rig for an emergency dive and get underwater in one minute. If you're detected on your approach, you will have one minute to inflict damage before the Hrimfaxi dives. Any questions?"

Blaze looked around the room. Everybody seemed to understand the mission and the mission intent.

"None here, sir." Blaze answered Mitchell.

"Very well. We'll transmit the target coordinates to AWACS Thunderhead as soon as we receive them. Until then, sortie to the general area and wait out." Mitchell ordered.

"Will do." Blaze stood up and slung her helmet under her arm. "Is that all, sir?"

"Yes. Good hunting, Captain."

"Wardog, let's go!" Blaze barked and the squadron stood up as one. They crossed from the conference room, down the long hallway with the dorm rooms and into the hangars where their aircraft had been sitting for the past half a week. The Mudhens were each carrying two GBU-24s and four GBU-12s with an additional external fuel tank for range and four Sidewinders for defense. Grimm once again was acting as their shield against air threats, carrying a full spread of AMRAAMs and Sidewinders.

Wardog powered up their aircraft, the increasingly noisier whine of their turbofans reaching an obnoxiously high level before the hangar doors opened, letting out some of the noise and preventing the hangars from becoming echo chambers. Roaring to go, as soon as their turbofans were fully spun up, the squadron rolled up the taxiway, onto the snow-kissed runway and up into the air.

"Turn heading 040, Angels 10, speed five hundred knots." Blaze ordered as they departed the base for the Arctic Circle.

WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E

WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E

WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E

WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C

14 November 2010

Razgriz Straits

Birthplace of the Demon of Razgriz.

"The demon soars through dark skies. Fear and death trail its shadow beneath…" Samurai recited an old fairytale as the pure white ice sheets and sub-zero waters of the Razgriz Straits loomed below.

"Until men united wield a hallowed sabre. In final reckoning, the beast is slain." Blaze finished the paragraph Samurai was referencing. Even in the climate controlled cockpit wearing a thick winter suit, Blaze felt a deep chill in her bones as they crossed what felt like endless icebergs and ocean. If any of them punched out here, at best they'd be dead in minutes, at worst they'd be dead in hours.

"We really are dealing with the devil here, aren't we?" Samurai asked, adding a mischievous giggle. Blaze sighed.

"You believe in that old fairytale?" She asked, looking back at her WSO through a tinted visor.

"Of course I don't." Samurai retorted back, staring back at her pilot through a clear visor. "That fairytale is for superstitious people and-"

"Wardog, relay from NAVSAT." Thunderhead spoke up, cutting Samurai off. "The Hrimfaxi and her escort has been detected. Turn heading 022 for 300."

"Here we go. Wardog, dive to five hundred feet and pick up the pace. We've got game to hunt." Blaze ordered. She inhaled. They were close.

"Copy." Chopper.

"Roger." Nagase.

"Copy that." Grimm.

Cruising at ten thousand feet, Wardog dived down to a scant five hundred feet above the icebergs as they ran their afterburners. For once, Grimm was the fastest member of the squadron. He occasionally popped open his airbrake to keep pace with the laden Mudhens.

"I'm getting chills." Chopper said from the rear end of the formation. "This northern sea is where the Demon of Razgriz came from."

"Feeling too scared to go to the bathroom?" Pops poked some fun at Chopper, chuckling at his little joke.

"Hey, I'm serious!" Chopper protested. "This place looks uninviting."

"Razgriz…" Nagase mumbled quietly enough that Blaze wasn't sure if she had meant to broadcast the word. They were two hundred kilometres away and closing fast on the Hrimfaxi.

As they approached, Blaze dared to take a look at the various icebergs and the vast ice sheets that stretched as far as the eye could see. She agreed with Chopper's assessment, this place was incredibly uninviting.

"Hey, are those polar bears on the ice?" Grimm asked. "Ten o'clock, low."

Blaze looked over the lip of the canopy off to her left. It took her some searching, but she just barely saw something moving slowly away from the crack in the ice sheet that showed the water's surface. She had no idea how Grimm had seen that, but knowing what a polar bear could do, now the surface below seemed very uninviting. They were now just under a hundred klicks away.

"Huh. Reckon that's the real Demon of Razgriz?" Chopper joked.

"Hold your chatter. Commence comm out procedures and maintain radio silence." Thunderhead softly reprimanded Chopper by inducing EMCON - Emission Controls - protocols to reduce the risk of them being detected before they could pounce on the Hrimfaxi.

"Aww… guess I'll cut off the mic and try talking to myself." Chopper said before he went off the air with an audible click. Two more clicks followed as Nagase and Grimm cut off their mics. Blaze giggled to herself as she reached down and turned off his microphone.

"Zoomer's gonna go insane." Blaze joked about Chopper's chatty tendencies.

"He's already insane from putting up with Chopper twenty four-seven." Samurai joked back. Blaze scoffed as they got to within fifty klicks of the target. Samurai remained quiet, focusing on her instrument and sensor displays. The only thing Blaze could hear was the arctic winds rushing over the canopy and the faint roar of the Mudhen's afterburners.

Wardog approached to within twenty klicks of the Hrimfaxi. Blaze saw the 'river' they had been following start to widen out. In the distance she saw two small rocky mountains surrounding a wider body of water. It looked to be about twenty klicks away and it was right along their heading, 022. That was where the Hrimfaxi was resupplying.

On the other hand, Samurai saw something else.

"What is that…" Samurai muttered. "Is… is that a submarine?"

And just like that, everything went to shit.

"Wardog, open channel transmission detected." Thunderhead spoke up again. "Enemy picket submarine has alerted the target of your presence! The Hrimfaxi is rigging to dive! Attack immediately!"

"Shit." Blaze growled between grit teeth. She pushed the stick down to trade some of their limited altitude for a slight boost in speed.

"Hey, I can start talking again." Of course the first thing Chopper said out of radio silence was a wisecrack. This time Blaze didn't flinch, she had to close the distance on the Hrimfaxi before it submerged. She would only have one shot. Blaze's hearing started to fade out as she narrowed in on her objective.

"Thirty seconds until the Hrimfaxi dives!" Thunderhead yelled.

"Only one shot at this, Ash!" Samurai called to her pilot. Blaze didn't reply, caught in her own little world. Blaze knew that with the limited time they had there wouldn't be any time to guide in a bomb. She set up the bomb predictor sight in her HUD and prepared to toss her bombs right into the middle of the sub. Off to Blaze's right, Nagase was doing calculations in her head.

"Captain, you'll only have two seconds to get bombs on target!" Nagase warned.

"Only need one." Blaze growled, committing herself to the attack. The GBU-24s would lose a lot of speed off the rail owing to their wide bodies, so Blaze selected her package of GBU-12s and cued them to her trigger. The mountains got closer and sure enough, the Hrimfaxi was situated right in the middle of the body of water between the two terrain features, broadside on relative to the approaching Wardog Squadron. Blaze recalled from the Scinfaxi that the burst missile launcher was amidships at the neck of the narrow and wide segments of the boat. She aimed for that exact point.

"Eyes on the Hrimfaxi!" Chopper called out the Hrimfaxi's presence. "She's starting to go under!"

Blaze was now barely more than three klicks away. Even from a distance the Hrimfaxi stuck out like a massive tumor on the water surface, but like Chopper said, she was starting to slip under the waves. Right now was the best shot Blaze was going to get. She lined up the bombsight slightly ahead of the Hrimfaxi's midsection and pressed the trigger.

"Blaze, pickle!" Blaze screamed, yanking back on the stick and pulling up at high speed. The Mudhen handled like a pig with the weight of the two GBU-24s under her wings, but even so the force was enough to force Blaze and Samurai into their seats. As she pulled away, her four GBU-12s spiraled out towards the supersub. One bomb hit the water and shattered on impact. The second skimmed off the surface and ricocheted into the side of the Hrimfaxi, exploding on impact with her hull and leaving an ugly scorch mark. The third and fourth hit right where Blaze wanted, punching through the sub's double layered outer hull and exploding right against the pressure hull next to the missile launch tubes.

"Hits on the Hrimfaxi!" Grimm called out.

"Battle damage on enemy submarine unknown!" Nagase called just after Grimm.

Blaze pulled through a hundred and eighty degrees, ending up with the cockpit facing the surface and held in the seat only by her harness. Blaze looked down. She saw smoke rising from where the Hrimfaxi had been, but whatever fire she had started had been quickly extinguished by ice cold water rushing over the battle damage as the Hrimfaxi disappeared under the water. The only sign that she had been there at all now was the replenishment submarine sitting high up in the water.

"Can somebody deal with that supply sub?" Blaze requested, her breathing shallow from the extended high gee turn.

"On it." Chopper leapt at the chance to carry out Blaze's order. "Chopper, pickle two!"

Ten seconds after Chopper called his shots, Blaze saw two explosions amidships on the supply submarine that were both overshadowed by a massive explosion that cut the sub in two and sent debris and smoke flying all over the area.

"Thunderhead, Blaze." Blaze collected her thoughts. "Scored at least two hits on the Hrimfaxi, uncertain what damage has been done. The supply submarine has been destroyed. Orders?"

"Wait." Thunderhead replied. "Hrimfaxi is transmitting messages via VLF uplink. You may have caused critical damage."

"Copy, orbiting in the area." Blaze had since uninverted herself and was now orbiting around the two mountains waiting for whatever came of the situation. She was praying to herself that the Hrimfaxi would surface so she could get her heavier two thousand pound bombs on target.

"Hrimfaxi has stopped transmitting." Thunderhead reported.

"Hey, I see something on the surface!" Grimm called out an observation. "Low, twelve o'clock, towards the south-east crack in the ice sheet! The Hrimfaxi is surfacing."

Blaze felt her heartrate rise in elation. Her bombs had at least done something worth noting to the Hrimfaxi, which meant that Wardog had another shot. Blaze watched as a truly gargantuan torrent of water was violently thrown out of the Hrimfaxi's way. A thick layer of mist was kicked up as the Hrimfaxi bobbed on the surface. The moment that she had leveled out, a smoke trail rippled out from the Hrimfaxi's midsection.

"Hrimfaxi launching burst missile!" Thunderhead almost immediately identified what had been launched.

"That's not the only thing it launched!" Blaze cautioned. In addition to the burst missile now soaring into the air, what appeared to be six small drones had been launched from launch tubes towards the aft section of the supersub. "SLUAVs in the air!"

"Dealing with them!" Grimm immediately ripped into action. "Archer, Fox 3, Fox 3!"

"This is Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell." And while the action was unfolding, Mitchell made his presence on the radio known. "I'm getting your real-time info from a satellite. Time your attacks to strike when the Hrimfaxi's on the surface. Sink her before she does any more damage to our ground troops!"

"Chopper, Edge, break left and attack the Hrimfaxi! Grimm, you and I are dealing with these drones!" Blaze delegated tasks to her squadron as the six SLUAVs came screaming towards them.

"Copy! Come on Nagase!" Chopper took Nagase and peeled around to the side to attack the Hrimfaxi while Grimm and Blaze took the drones head-on. Grimm had dumped six AMRAAMs, the majority of his payload, at point blank at the SLUAVs, taking out five of them, but the last SLUAV got close enough to fire an R-73 missile addressed personally to Blaze.

"Wardog 1 defending!" Blaze declared, firing an AIM-9X back at the drone before diving down and popping flares. Being an autonomous drone, the SLUAV had in-built protocols for missile evasion, but clearly its on-board computer had decided against those protocols and instead continued to chase Blaze down. Unfortunately for it, this gave Blaze's Sidewinder a perfect kill shot, swatting the drone out of the air. Meanwhile, the SLUAV's R-73 had exploded harmlessly behind Blaze.

"We're clear!" Samurai pointed this out. Blaze leveled out of her dive.

"Archer, splash five!" Grimm declared his ace-in-a-day status.

"Blaze, splash one!" Blaze reported her own kill in kind.

"Edge, pickle two!"

"Chopper, pickle four!"

Nagase and Chopper in the meantime had gotten around to the Hrimfaxi's lengthways profile and had dropped bombs on her, Nagase with two GBU-24s, Chopper with four GBU-12s. The Hrimfaxi had started to dive almost immediately after getting off the burst missile and SLUAVs, but she didn't have anywhere near enough time to get underwater before she was slammed with four thousand pounds worth of bombs. There were two clusters of explosions on the submarine, one near the bow, one towards the aft. Blaze noticed a rather large hole in the Hrimfaxi's hull as she submerged, which made her think that Nagase had aimed for the SLUAV launch ports.

"That looked like it hurt." Samurai observed the damage.

"Hrimfaxi has submerged." Blaze reported. "That had to have cut through her pressure hull. Keep an eye out, she'll surface soon."

"Come on! Surface!" Chopper yelled in impatient frustration. "I'm sick of waiting for you!"

"Patience, Chopper!" Blaze growled at her second in command.

"Yeah, yeah…" Chopper groaned impatiently.

"Visual on the Hrimfaxi's antenna, she's surfacing!" The second time around, Nagase was the one to spot the Hrimfaxi surfacing, this time a couple of ship lengths back towards the two mountains. Wardog Squadron circled around like sharks sensing blood in the water, or in this case smoke in the air. Ugly black smoke was slowly wafting up from the Hrimfaxi's stern. It looked like a fuel fire.

"I've got it." Blaze called out, looking to bury her GBU-24s deep in the fire that Nagase had started. She started flying towards the supersub as she fired another burst missile and, more annoyingly, a trio of SLUAVs. Blaze carried forward towards the Hrimfaxi, but unfortunately she had human instincts and therefore a sense of preservation, and that outweighed landing a critical hit on the target when two of the SLUAVs moved to intercept her, firing R-73s as they closed. "Fuck! Blaze, defending!"

"Archer, Fox 2, Fox 2!" Grimm had closed the distance alongside Blaze and targeted the drones as Blaze was forced to evade the missiles coming at her.

"Hrimfaxi launching burst missiles!" Thunderhead declared. Blaze was about to chew Thunderhead a new asshole before he added context to the callout.

"Wardog, they're heading your way!" Thunderhead yelled. Suddenly the burst missiles carried a direct threat to Wardog. "Climb! Get above five thousand feet!"

"Archer, splash two!" Grimm had killed two of the three SLUAVs. Blaze looked up. The third SLUAV was still coming after her and there was no way in hell she could pull up without giving the SLUAV a free shot. That circumstance changed when cannon rounds cut the SLUAV in half. "Archer, splash three!"

"Climb, go!" Blaze put out a gargled scream as gee forces pinned her into the seat and made it hard to talk. The Mudhen pulled out of the dive and went into a climb. Nagase and Chopper were already situated well above five thousand feet, and Grimm practically ascended like a rocket past the five thousand feet hard deck.

"Detonation in five, four, three, two, impact… now!"

Blaze had gotten above five thousand feet with a few seconds to spare, but she hadn't gotten high enough to get clear of the bone-rattling shaking that came with the colossal blinding explosion of a burst missile. This time around Blaze was able to save her eyesight by squeezing her eyes shut before the missile went off.

"Are we alive?!" Blaze called out to Samurai.

"Yeah!" Samurai called back. "Looks like we all made it!"

"Good." Blaze pressed the back of her head against the seat and looked towards the ocean. Hundreds of thousands of hot blobs of metal were peppering the ocean surface and icebergs. And right in the middle of the wake of destruction was the Hrimfaxi, slowly trailing north-west on the surface.

Samurai had seen where Blaze was looking. "We going after her?"

"Yeah." Blaze growled lowly. She drew the throttle back to idle, drew the airbrake and pulled back on the stick. Heavily laden, the Mudhen stalled and the nose fell towards the ocean. As soon as she was pointing down, Blaze withdrew the airbrake, threw the throttle as far forward as it would go and went for the Hrimfaxi. The latter fired one and then two more burst missiles.

"Hrimfaxi launching burst missiles!" Thunderhead had once again seen the burst missiles fly up on his radar. "Wardog, they're heading your way again."

Blaze had suddenly found a sense of serenity and clarity.

"Copy." She replied calmly, rushing towards the Hrimfaxi like a bull towards a red flag. "Wardog, stay above Angels 10. We'll be back before the end."

"I appreciate you dragging me down with you into the grave." Samurai said sarcastically and surprisingly light-heartedly given the circumstances. Blaze flipped up her visor and looked back at her WSO with a smile.

"Kita, if we don't make it, know that I love you." Ash put it as straight as humanly possible. "For now, and for always."

Kitagawa froze in spot, caught totally off guard and unsure of what to say. Blaze didn't give her a chance to reply, flipping her visor and focusing on the mission at hand. The burst missile shot up past them. Blaze put the GBU-24s on her trigger and looked for the opening Nagase had made. They exceeded Mach 1, breaking the sound barrier with a deep loud bang.

"There you are." Blaze muttered. She put the bomb sight over the opening and fired. "Blaze, pickle two."

"Ten seconds to impact." Thunderhead called out. Blaze broke out of the dive, almost certainly pulling more than nine gees as she and Samurai pulled through almost a hundred and eighty degrees of angle of attack. Blaze felt the brain physically draining out of her skull as her vision started fading into the gray.

"Five-"

Three thousand feet.

"Four-"

Three thousand three hundred feet.

"Three-"

Three thousand eight hundred feet.

"Two-"

Four thousand three hundred feet.

"Impact-"

The last thing Blaze saw before her vision went black and she slumped unconscious into G-LOC was a barely visible number.

Five thousand feet.

"Impact… now!"

The burst missile detonated well underneath Chopper, Nagase and Grimm, who were safely orbiting at twelve thousand feet. What was less clear was the status of their squad leader. Interference from the burst missile was scrambling both their radars and the datalink.

"Anyone have eyes on Blaze?!" Nagase asked. Sitting in his Viper, Grimm rolled slightly over to the side once the light below wasn't utterly blinding, looking for any signs of their captain. What Grimm noticed first was the Hrimfaxi, violently smoking and starting to sink aft end first into the water.

"Osean aircraft…" An unknown voice popped up on an open channel. "Looks like you're the real Razgriz… not us."

The voice faded into static before dropping off the line entirely.

"Who the fuck was that?" Samurai's voice rang clear over the radio. Her voice was met with a collective cheer from Wardog Squadron.

"You're alive!" Chopper called out to Samurai. "Are you and the kid alright?"

"Yeah, we're alright." Samurai replied nonchalantly. "Blaze is out cold. G-LOC, I think, she'll be back in a minute. Aircraft is all green."

"Good to hear, Sam, good to hear." Chopper let loose a sigh of relief. "So… Now that we've bested the Demon of the North Sea, can we get the hell outta here? This place is giving me the creeps."