Chapter 20 - Operation Diamond, pt.2
Chapter 20 – Operation Diamond, pt.2
The general feeling amongst the pilots of the 302nd that night was one of tension, one of trepidation… and in a slight dichotomy to both, one of boredom, Jet thought to himself as they approached the first waypoint.
Their mission was arguably one of the most important of the war – to put the Adamasian Air Force's main airfield out of commission until a more permanent solution could be found, and it was one that their Tornado was well suited for.
During their Cold War, it had been the main role of many RAF squadrons based in Germany to dash over the border, using the Tornado's excellent low-level characteristics and specialised anti-runway weaponry, and put Soviet airfields out of commission… even though such a mission would be suicide for anyone tasked with that mission.
He supposed that summarised much of the hypothetical World War 3: it was a slightly more drawn-out suicide for everyone involved. Mutually assured destruction was an accurate way of looking at it, because even those who didn't die in the initial waves wouldn't find much out there to live for, as bleak as it sounded.
He'd seen Threads and When the Wind Blows, and to say he'd come away from it far more terrified of the concept was to put it politely…
Thankfully, it didn't appear that Strangereal had any nuclear weapons yet – the one they'd encountered over Avalon was some kind of incendiary warhead, hence they'd survived with only some scratches, though he imagined such a weapon would be far more terrifying should it be used against ground forces, or worse still, against civilians…
"Cap, we're nearing the AO. Game faces on?" Sierra asked from the backseat.
"Yup. Solitaire Lead to all Solitaires, this is the big one." Snapping back to their current reality, rather than a hypothetical WW3 that thankfully never happened, he told everyone.
This also marked a different strategy to them – they would be working with a battlefield controller in the form of an EC-121 Warning Star that would be providing everyone with instructions of where to go after they had disabled their primary targets, and whether they had disabled their primary targets in the first place… "Batcat to Solitaire, request you hold back. Missiles are inbound to soften up X-2s defences."
Missiles? Just another thing Bercouli had failed to tell them then… that they would be the second wave into X-2, not the first. Still, he wasn't complaining if it took away their chance to shoot them back; the less lead in the sky, the safer they were dashing in at 100 feet ASL!
"Radar's set, Sierra?" He asked his RIO.
"Set." Sierra told him.
"Nautlius, Yuna, where are we on the jamming?" He looked out the cockpit to try and find the Raven in the darkness.
He couldn't.
"Jamming is active." Yuna told him.
"Good. Let's get our butts in gear." He told them, looking at the sky outside of the Tornado – a pitch black sky, lit by only the stars in the sky and the glowing exhausts of the other aircraft in the distance.
"Solitaire, missiles should be impacting their targets… now!" In the distant view of the island, he saw a number of fires suddenly erupt, no doubt struck by the cruise missiles. "Viper, good effect on target."
"Commander, we've got a situation down here. Those forts are preventing the troops from getting off the beach, and we've got no way of killing them from up here."
"Damn it…" Bercouli sighed. "Open to suggestions here, people!"
"Solitaire Three, you bought bigger bombs – rragh! - right?"
"Yes, four Mk84s. Not bunker busters though." Zeliska answered.
"Good enough to lay the hurt on them. Zel, head south and rendezvous with the Black Blades. Between us and Kureha, we should be able to handle the runway. Itsuki, escort her down to Point Rain. Idol Two, shift support further south, so we don't make it too easy for them!" He ordered, hoping that the missiles had softened up the base enough that the pair of bombers would be enough to disable the base for the time being.
They should've been – their Tornado was carrying a pair of JP233 pods to disable the runway, and make life very hard for the clean up crew sent out try and repair the runway later in the morning, whilst Kureha's Thunderchief was loaded with as many Snakeeyes as they could reasonably carry, to destroy as much of the airside infrastructure as they could…
"Understood." Itsuki answered, and he watched the Crusader III peel away in pursuit of the Corsair, the J75 glowing against the dark night sky.
"Moving further south, sir."
"Black Blades, this is Solitaire Three. ETA is six minutes."
"Acknowledged, Zeliska. Black Blades, we've got six minutes to clear the airspace of fighters!" He heard Kirito order, and he moved back into readying for the strike. Unlike many of their weapons, the JP233 required a set of conditions to be met to effectively use the weapon in the role it was intended for:
Firstly, they needed to approach the runway to be destroyed fast, low and wings level to ensure the munitions would release onto the target, and not ended up cratering the sand next to the runway instead. They'd need to be at an indicated airspeed of around 450 knots and an altitude of 100 feet ASL to best employ the weapon, and then haul arse as soon as the pods beneath them had each emptied out their deadly payload of thirty anti-runway mines, and 215 anti-personnel mines, preferably before the Adamasian gunners found zero on their aircraft…
Nice and easy, Jet had thought rather sarcastically, and for once, Sierra had agreed with him. Unfortunately for them, Bercouli had reminded them that aircraft that could carry the JP233 weren't exactly common – to his knowledge, only the Tornado and Jaguar could carry the massive canoe like pods, and the Tornado was arguably the most effective of the two.
And the only one of the two currently present at Canaveral, which meant that the law of probability had volunteered them for death defying stunts once more…
"Solitaire to Batcat, what kind of defences are we still looking at down there?"
"Air defences around X-2 are reduced to light triple-A fire, and possible MANPADs threat. SA-3 and SA-6 threat is mostly removed."
"Well, at least we aren't going to get a big missile slamming into us…" Sierra shrugged from behind him.
"No, just death by a thousand cuts instead…" He grumbled as he moved into position for the sprint towards X-2. "Kureha, you still with us?"
"You have to ask?" She joked. "Someone needs to make sure your butts don't get killed!"
"Oh yeah… like I wasn't plucking your butt out the fire when we were kids, missy!"
"Eh, fifty-fifty." She deflected, knowing that Sierra was telling the truth for once, and changed topic. "Jet, what's the exit strategy?"
He thought about it briefly, and decided simple was best, given they were already tempting fate a little bit down here… "Full burners, run like hell for the tankers before they can shoot back." He told them.
"Let's get started then, shall we?"
In addition to the Warning Star picking out the ground targets across Adamas, and managing the air battle in that theatre, the remaining Navy E-2 Hawkeyes had been tasked to provide a radar perimeter, in order to ensure that any Adamasian aircraft was soon disabled and that aircraft weren't just wandering off to go shoot down anything they saw in the distance… "Magic, Solitaire is at the RP. Go, no go?"
"Solitaire, this is Magic, mission is a go." The Hawkeye's operator told them, and he pushed the nose down gently, so that they would hit 100 feet as they reached their IP, rather than with any sudden drop that could tear the JP233 cannisters off their pylons, jeopardising not only the mission, but also their continued existence…
"Good luck, boys. See you back at base!" Kureha said as they watched the brightly coloured F-105 bank away to hit her targets at her optimum position – he imagined that jettisoning Snakeyees at 100 feet would be… an experience, and probably one that no one would ever want to repeat!
The ride down to 100 feet was really quite smooth, he thought; the Tornado almost cushioning every bump and nestle that they would've felt in anything else, and the turbulence was significantly less than he'd have expected…
He made a note to send a letter of compliments to whoever had been responsible for the Tornado's low-level flight characteristics, because it was genuinely impressive!
Reaching the IP, he had got his calculations spot on, because they hit the target altitude exactly as they passed over the point, and he began to line up with the ILS marker to line up with the direction of the main runway…
"Weapons ready?"
"Ready to roll."
"One mile to target."
"Fingers on buzzers." Sierra answered – his own code for saying he was ready to go, inspired by the many panel shows he had essentially forced the American to watch back in the real world. "Looks like they're ready for us, Cap!"
He wasn't kidding either – triple A fire lit up the night sky ahead of them, firing blindly as they looked for the Tornado. Thankfully, the gunners were aiming way ahead of them, probably assuming they were higher than they really were, a deception that wouldn't last when the aircraft was being lit up like a Christmas tree by the deployment of the JP233…
"Yeah, thankfully they think we're somewhere else for now." He answered. "We're lined up, let's put them out of commission!"
"One mile to go, cap."
"Fingers on buzzers."
"Ready for the big prize."
As they passed over the antenna farm for the ILS, Jet took one deep breath and held his hands firm on the stick in front of him. "Go!"
A press on the button behind, and a dull thud could be heard from beneath them as their explosive payload dropped out of the canoes mounted under them, and illuminated what felt like the entirety of Adamas as they tore up the runway, a wall of dirt and fire behind them as the SG-357 mines tore apart the asphalt, whilst the HB-876 mines set about setting themselves upright as an unwelcome present for any repair crews…
In all, and during the five second dash over the runway of the X-2, they had released nearly five hundred mines onto the runway below, and made themselves a really obvious target now – the silhouette of the Tornado neatly illuminated by the explosions behind them, giving the triple-A gunners an almost perfect target to aim for; a design flaw he wondered if the designers of such a weapon had ever considered, although he had his doubts considering survivability was a pretty low concern during the Cold War.
"Cap…!" Sierra called, and he slammed the throttles straight to the firewall as he pulled the nose up and away from the burning slab of shattered asphalt behind them. Triple-A fire continued to follow them as they climbed away, but by nothing short of a miracle, the tracer fire never once hit them, and as they reached a thousand feet, he felt himself breathing a sigh of relief for the first time this evening, and even a little bit of laughter at just how insane that had all been…
"I think they won't be getting any fighters airborne tonight…" He said, looking back towards the runway and the field, just before Kureha rolled in, in a dive-bombing attack – something they clearly weren't expecting, as the gunners fired on what looked like their insertion path instead, rather than the one that the Thud was coming in from.
If he'd thought the fire from their dash had been something to behold, the sight of almost thirty 500-pound bombs dropping into a relatively confined area was something else, and made for an almighty fireworks display, if nothing else…
"Solitaire, good effect on target. Looks like the commanders are running around like headless chickens now." Batcat told them.
"Magic to Solitaire, you have interceptors heading your way. MIG-25s from the speed of them…" Well, there went the idea of outrunning them…
The Tornado was fast on the deck, but the MIG-25 was faster, the behemoth of an interceptor using two engines from a cruise missile design to essentially brute force the airframe to reach Mach 3 at altitude, and supersonic speeds at low level.
Fortunately, whilst it had the speed to run them down, it didn't really have the weapons to do so – from what they knew of the Adamasian Air Forces Foxbats, they were using the long-range R-40, the Acrid, which was certainly a potent bomber-killer… but not so great at tracking low flying, and fast-moving strikers like they flew.
In reality, no sane pilot would've tried to hunt down an escaping Tornado on the deck in a MIG-25, but based off what they knew, the Foxbats were the Generalissimo's propaganda squadron – a squadron of former models, picked for their loyalty to his regime firstly, and their competence second.
Still, he knew the Foxbat could carry other missiles – the extremely manoeuvrable, but short ranged R-60 Aphid could be carried too, though he reckoned they were carrying just the R-40s tonight. He couldn't answer why he thought that; it was just a gut feeling he had…
"You've gotta be kidding me!" Sierra called out from the back.
"I mean, at least we can outturn them!" Kureha said, and normally, she'd have been right. The MIG-25 was fast… but much like the MIG-23 it supplanted, it had the turning circle of a large cruise ship. It wouldn't have surprised him if most airliners could outturn a MIG-25 at full chat… those big wings may have had a vast area to them, but they also had a very high wing loading too in order to keep the massive jet in the air.
Unfortunately, they were still G-limited, thanks to the useless canoes under their fuselage now, or at least, they were until he could eject the canoes over the coast. About the only thing he was thankful for was that those MIGs would have to be vectored towards them by a ground-based controller, and if Nautilus and Yuna were doing their jobs, those controllers would be very, very busy right now…
Not that it was going to help them though, as those Foxbats were bearing down on them fast…
"So what's the plan, Cap?"
"Jettison the canoes, and we'll handle those Foxbats." He answered, questioning his own sanity in that moment. The Tornado was not a fighter, by anyone's definition, and even the Air Defence Variant, the F.3, was an interceptor, rather than a fighter.
Still, they had a pair of Sidewinders and a pair of cannons onboard – more than enough to make sure those MIGs had a bad day when they got too close… "Radar lock, they're firing on us!"
"Drop chaff and flares when we're on the deck. Those MIGs don't exactly have a look down-shoot down radar, thankfully. " He hoped they didn't anyway – Philia had told them to expect Foxbat-A's, the earliest MIG-25 variant, or possibly even a downgraded version of that, given it was being exported… and Yuktobania shared a similar ethos with the Soviet Union in that regard, that ethos being: "yes, we'll give you arms, but no way are we giving you what we use. Also, the engine will be knackered in thirty hours, and you'll have to send it back to us and buy a new one then."
Watching against his instruments carefully, he dropped the Tornado down to fifty foot above the waves and ordered for chaff and flares to be dispensed. Much to his relief, he watched as one of the R-40s sent after them passed almost a thousand feet above their heads, whilst the other had disappeared altogether. "They missed." Sierra sighed in relief behind him.
"Boys, looks like they've decided they're killing you regardless. They're descending in hot pursuit!"
"Don't you just love being the centre of attention?" Sierra added sarcastically.
"I've got a plan, just make sure the Sidewinders are ready to go!"
"Setting them up now." He heard from the backseat and glanced over his shoulder to see two trails behind them – the two Foxbats, no doubt.
Two trails that soon became one, and a huge plume of water where the other had been. Were these seriously the pilots entrusted to defend an island, because if they were, he wasn't sure he'd have slept very well knowing that they were the first line of defence…
"He's closing on us, Jet…"
"Yep, I can see that." He told him, opening the airbrakes, and throwing the Tornado into a right-hand bank. "Ready with the missiles!" He shouted as the Foxbat flew straight past and he caught a glimpse of the full outline of the aircraft…
Before they were buffeted like nothing he'd ever felt before. "Oh christ!" He shouted as he wrestled the stick to pull them away from an impending high-speed collision with the water, and to get them into a firing position…
A growl roared into both of their headsets, and before anything had to be said, a Sidewinder dropped away from the rail, and flew straight into the back of the Foxbat. Rather than the instant disintegration he'd have expected, the large and heavy interceptor carried, though even he could tell its engines bore the brunt of the impact from the Sidewinder, and both aircraft pulled away from the perils of an almost wave top dogfight…
"Well, even if we didn't get 'em, I doubt they're coming back for another-" Sierra started, as a bright orange glow engulfed the canopy ahead of them… followed quickly by an explosion that threw his hands off the stick briefly, before he regained his composure…
"I think you're probably right." He said sarcastically.
What had only moments before been a MIG-25 was nothing more than a fireball and a smoke cloud above the dark and cold waters… and a lot of slivers of metal, many of which now found themselves showering the Tornado in razor sharp blades.
"Damage report?"
"Brown alert."
"Brown?"
"Named for the colour of my pants after that one."
"Well, at least it's not red, aye?" He joked. "Solitaire Lead to Magic, the MIGs are dealt with, and we're heading home."
"Understood Solitaire Lead, Batcat is reporting positive effects of the bombing. Don't think they'll be getting anyone else up tonight…"
"Thank god for small mercies, huh."
In the right-hand seat of the Raven, Yuna was having a surprisingly fun night, she thought to herself, whilst her colleagues fought a pair of MIG-25s…
Not only was she broadcasting live across the island of Adamas, but watching the mild concern of the GCI staff as their fighters went off wherever they felt like it, because they were spoofing the instructions issued to the fighters as well as the disruptive radio broadcast…
"Good morning, General! We've got one heck of a lineup for you tonight!" She grinned as she spoke into the microphone aboard the modified Raven. "But one from a caller first! The Clash are up now, with a message to you especially General… Rock the Casbah!"
"You're having way too much fun with this, Yuna…" Naut rolled his eyes, though she knew he was trying not to laugh inside.
"What can I say, I think I've found my calling!"
"Radio DJ?" He asked with a look that rapidly changed from "why?" to "yeah, actually that makes sense."
"Besides, you never know what's going on on the ground. Maybe they'll put their arms down and start dancing instead of fighting…"
"Unlikely, but it would make this a lot easi-missile lock!"
Switching from idle chatter, she went back into systems officer mode, deploying chaff and flares into the night sky as Naut broke the Raven into a tight turn to the starboard. "Idol One, we've got an interceptor coming for us!" She called out over the combined arms frequency.
"Idol One, hang in there. I'm on my way!" Yuuki called out, no doubt having completed their bombing raid. Her Sea Harrier wasn't the best interceptor, but she'd be damned if there were many better fighters at Canaveral when it came to a low-level dogfight…
Now they just had to survive until she arrived.
"Yuna, any ideas what it is?" Naut asked, and she craned her head around to get a look at the pursuing light. Only one plume behind it, so it probably wasn't a Foxbat at least…
"MIG-23 by the looks of the afterburner trail."
"There goes running away as an option then." Naut sighed. "Might be able to outturn it though…" Considering the EF-111 was a gigantic aircraft, the size of most medium sized airliners, it said something about the turning performance of the MIG-23 that they could be reasonably certain they would outturn the much smaller interceptor…
Fast it was, agile, not so much, as the captains had taught them after the Battle of the Bay. As Captain Sierra had put it, any pilot who entered a turning fight with the MIG-23 was automatically on the offensive, because of how poor the aircraft was in a turn…
He probably hadn't anticipated they would be flying an aircraft that had no way to shoot back though, and short of annoying the MIG into the ground, they could only dance around the aircraft so long before the pilot figured out a way of hitting them, either with missiles or the GSh-23 cannon it carried…
As it turned out, the captain had been a bit off – he'd probably meant any fighter could outturn it, and despite the designation, the EF-111 was not a fighter. It could just about hold its own in snap turns to evade fire, but in a sustained turning fight…
Thankfully for them, the first shot – probably an IR guided missile, likely an R-23T at this range - missed, trashed by the flares they'd released, but the second shot, the one that had tripped the radar warning receiver, hadn't obviously failed to hit them and she could no longer see the vapour trail that the missile left.
"Idol One, I'm a minute away, are you guys still alive?"
"We're still dancing out here, Yuuki!" She told her. "We've got a MIG-23 chasing us though!"
"And he's just fired another missile!" Naut called out, as another missile trail became evident.
"Punching flares!" She told him, as flares ejected from the back of the aircraft and the missile sailed past them. She couldn't help but be glad that the Adamasian aircraft were still armed with the old R-3 Atoll, meaning that those missiles were far more limited than the more advanced R-60s that they had fought against with the Belkans…
That didn't mean it wouldn't still hurt if it hit them, and almost as soon as they had successfully evaded one of the Atolls, a second exploded underneath the Raven, showering the underside in shrapnel.
"Idol One, we're hit!" She told them, looking over the instruments and out of the cockpit to spot for obvious damage. She couldn't see any, but that wasn't surprising given it was likely beneath them…
"We're still airworthy though." Naut called out in addition. "Probably won't be if we take another hit like that, though!"
"Yuuki to Yuna, I have him!" In the distance, she watched as a missile trail streaked away from a smaller aircraft – no doubt Yuuki's Sea Harrier – and straight for the pursuing MIG. Not that it had chance to hit it, she noticed, as the MIG pilot attempted to bank out of the way and found himself ploughing straight into the Southern Sea below them, the only remains of the hapless MIG being the waves around the crash site… "Aww, I nearly got him then! Ah well, I still get a maneuvering kill, right?"
"I'd say you will, yeah!"
Out of nowhere, Nautilus went from relieved at their dance with death, to a dawning realisation of what was coming head on with them… "Oh you have got to be-"
"What is-woah!" She felt the Raven shudder violently again, this time only barely staying the right side up as it absorbed what felt like the entire flak inventory around the Northern Bay area…
Which was worrying, because most of the flak guns in that area had been neutralised! "Batcat, tell the ground forces to stop shooting us!"
Thankfully, it only took a moment before the shaking stopped, and the pair could regain their senses without risk of being blown up by triple-A shells. "Oh, thank the heavens…"
"Idol One to Command, we're heading back to Bana. We're in bad shape and could do with landing ASAP."
"Nautilus, Yuna, are you okay?"
"Yes captain, we just took a few hits back there. We're fine, though Lisbeth is probably going to kill us…"
"Yeah, well let's make sure you get back first, shall we?" Jet told them. "Idol Two, you still there?"
"Loud and clear, Captain. Coastal batteries have been dealt with, and Zeliska and Itsuki are heading back your way."
"Got it. Zeliska, Itsuki, if you two are out of bombs, head back with Idol One. They took a hit, but they're still in one piece."
"Solitaire Three to Lead, I'll take them back with me."
"Understood, Zel. There're still fighters out here, so keep your heads on a swivel."
"Will do, Lead."
"Itsuki to Jet, I will continue to engage fighters. I still have weaponry onboard, and it would be a shame if I weren't to use them…"
"Understood, Itsuki, good hunting. Twilight, Itsuki's heading towards your AO, just to give you a heads up."
With the MIGs dealt with, and Rain and Seven moving into position to take over their track, she looked back at the coast and realised something – as much fun as the musical theatre of their operation was, the ground assaults were nothing short of carnage as the fires raised high into pitch black night sky, and fighter bombers carried on pouring in to release their payloads on the coastal targets that were left…
The first wave of aircraft began to return just before the sun had risen at Bana, and amongst the very first was the damaged EF-111, which had made a textbook landing, despite sustaining some nasty damage from their blue-on-blue incident and the partially exploded Atoll still firmly lodged in the Raven's backside…
"It's not great, but it could've been a lot worse." Lisbeth admitted. "Most of its cosmetic, so I can patch it up quickly, but there's a few areas that I'm going to need to have it grounded to fix. Mostly in the ECM gear though, so you'll still be flying… just not as effective."
"No more radio shows then, I take it?"
"Not until I've checked it won't just catch fire spontaneously." Lisbeth told her, and her expression dropped.
"Besides, you aren't the only ones who took some flak either…" Lisbeth looked over pointedly at the Captains, and both looked away sheepishly.
"We did take down a Foxbat though…" Sierra told them with an unhelpful grin.
"How?" Lisbeth asked. "By ramming it? Because there's enough of it in your plane that I'd believe that!" She pointed to the almost hundreds of pieces of shrapnel now lodged firmly across the Tornado, and watched as the two of them looked at each other with a strained intake of air…
"We were a bit close; I'll grant you that." Jet admitted, uncharacteristically awkwardly.
"Men…" Lisbeth walked away, grumbling about the opposite sex.
"Well, that went better than I imagined." Sierra said with a sigh, as he slumped into his shoulders.
"How?" Naut asked, an amused look on his face.
"Well, we all still have our limbs and our lives, right?"
"I don't think Miss Lisbeth would do that… would she?" She asked, spotting that Lisbeth was still in earshot of their conversation, and looking deeply unamused by it.
"Eh, you don't work for her, Yuna. She absolutely would. She is, to quote Jet, a bloody mean bit-"
"I can hear you, asshole!" Lisbeth shouted from across the room, accompanied by a middle finger, interrupting the cursing.
"See?" Sierra exclaimed, as he hadn't just been poking at that particular bear…
"One day, that gob of yours is going to get you killed." Jet told him bluntly, though the reaction to such a comment was quite underwhelming, considering… he simply shrugged. "Anyway, whilst you try to dodge a Lisbeth shaped bullet, I need to go have words with the Commander about something…"
The talk with the Commander was not going quite as he'd hoped. Actually, it almost felt like Bercouli was being purposefully obtuse, trying his hardest not to see even the most obvious of points, to the point that he was forced to almost spell things out…
"We nearly got torn up out there, Commander, because we didn't know what was going on half of the time." Jet told him bluntly. "It was only a damn miracle that we all got back, and truthfully, I doubt that'll hold, sir."
"Captain, we are fighting a war. You know that as well as I do, and in war, we lose people. It's a harsh reality, but it is reality. Given who we're fighting, you need to get yer head in the game, kid." He thought twice about asking who it really was they were fighting, given what they all knew, and especially with what they suspected after the failed rescue attempt. Too much had gone wrong during that operation for there not to have been a leak somewhere and based on how certain the Commander had been about those missiles, he couldn't help but agree with something that Sierra had floated as an idea.
Bercouli was an old war hero, and old heroes tend not to adapt well to peace time. He did seriously have to wonder if the man knew a lot more than he was letting on, or what exactly his agenda was out here…
It hadn't taken long for Bercouli to walk off with his back turned before Jet offered an insulting gesture in return – one of a two fingered insult to the French variety.
"I take it he didn't share your concerns then?" Zeliska asked, with a sympathetic smile.
"How'd you know?"
"You've still got your fingers in a V-shape despite the fact your hand's by your side." She answered, with a little snicker. "But yes, I do get the distinct impression he's too busy trying to hunt down the FRO, instead of actually co-ordinating us too."
"I'll give you something, Cap, you've got balls. It takes a braver man than I to flip off the war hero…" Sierra admitted, tapping a hand to his shoulder sympathetically.
"Oh, I didn't flip him off…" Jet dismissed with a roll of his eyes. "I gave him the V for victory instead."
"Yeah, that's what that means…" Sierra drawled, with a smug laugh at the end. "Still, it doesn't look great that he's acting like that. Even if he's not up to anything, I kind of see why he was passed up for promotion a load of times."
Almost as soon as they'd said that, the conversation was interrupted by the rumbling of their stomachs – it had been nearly a day since they'd properly eaten, and a chocolate bar or bag of sweets snuck into the cockpit didn't really count, even if it did keep their energy up a little bit.
"I think we should probably go put our stuff in our lodgings and go get food. We can continue this discussion then, eh?"
There was no answer, just a load of enthusiastic nodding as the group split apart to head to the lodgings at Bana Base…
Despite the name, Bana Base was neither a base, nor was it anything to do with the Osean military. It was, in fact, a holiday park that they had requisitioned over the summer low months, in order to house the many, many staff needed for operations of the magnitude that Diamond was, especially given they were hosting both Osean and Yuktobanian forces at the former Bana City airport…
His first reaction to that news had been somewhat positive – holiday camps were meant for families after all, so they would probably have more space than their usual huts at Canaveral.
That was until they had reached the front desk, where they had, for all intents and purposes, been thrown a key and told to go look for their accommodation.
The camp itself was full of chalets, low buildings that had clearly been designed by someone with a ruler and very little else, and to say either of their reactions were positive as they walked through the camp looking for chalet 141 would be an understatement.
"Jesus." Sierra thought aloud. "This is bleak…"
"It's like Pontins but worse… somehow." He answered, remembering that holiday in Brean Sands. Some people might have said having a holiday less than an hour from your house was a little bit pointless, and he'd have agreed normally, but the idea had seemed enticing at the time…
And then they'd ended up at Pontins.
"Ah, 141, that's us." Sierra snapped him out of that, as he opened the door to their chalet. He already knew what to expect, and even so, he was disappointed by what they saw…
A sofa, a small kitchenette, a bedroom through a plain wooden door and a table and three chairs. "The 1970s called, they want their style back…"
"It's 1969, Cody." He pointed out.
"Oh yeah, it is, isn't it?" Sierra slapped himself. "So… you want the sofa, or the bed?"
"There'll be two beds in there." He told him, as they poked their head around the wooden door…
"And an army of bedbugs by the looks of those mattresses." Sierra answered blithely.
"I'll take the sofa." He told him, deciding he would be taking the more comfortable option. Well, more comfortable in the universal sense, anyway. He imagined it wouldn't be all that comfortable either way, but it certainly beat sleeping on those rank mattresses…
After some time to settle in (which in both his and Sierra's cases involved literally throwing their bags down beside their chosen areas, and immediately leaving to go and get food), the members of the 302nd met up in the dining area of the camp…
Also known as the pub.
Was it a bit bleak that they were all in the pub at 10:30 in the morning? Yes, yes it was. Was it also cheaper than everywhere else? Yes, it was.
Besides, it wasn't like they were drinking – it was just for breakfast, and pub breakfasts were usually pretty good, in his experience.
"So, what happens next?" Rain asked, twirling her fork.
"Best guess? We finish off the Adamasians in the air, whilst the Yuktobanians deal with them on the ground." Sierra answered. "Still, there's a few wildcards that I'm not sure on."
"Like the whole FRO thing?" Kureha asked. "I dunno, that just… something feels off there."
"I happen to agree with Kureha there. Bercouli is not telling us the full story, that much I'm certain of." An unusually expressive Itsuki answered – probably still starving as they waited for their food to be bought over to their table.
"It's not just that, I was talking to Tiese and Ronye, and they mentioned that Pitohui and LLENN knew one of the Adamasian pilots. Called her Medina, I think." Rain added.
"That's not too surprising, we knew the Adamasians were using mercenaries to bolster their numbers." He pointed out, though it was a little worrying that they knew who she was, enough to be bantering with her…
"We still have no solid intelligence on those missiles either, which is concerning." Seven reminded them all of the reason they were supposedly going into this island… the stolen Scud missiles.
"We did intercept signals traffic that indicated they were being moved, but we got targeted by a SAM at that point, so we had to break off." Rain explained.
"So, they knew you were snooping then. That's worrying." Zeliska hummed.
"That's not all. Ronye told me they were using the same jamming tricks we were doing over St Calippo, though without the music."
"That answers one question – who were Notte and Rano working for. The Adamasians, I guess."
"Doubt it, cap. I'd probably say they were more likely working with that Chudelkin's lot, but even so…" Sierra trailed off, lost in his own thoughts.
"They know some of our tricks, yeah." He finished, before some of the members of the 303rd plonked themselves down besides them.
"Let me guess, your operation went to plan as much as ours did?"
"I know the old saying is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but it does kind of help to survive contact with your allies!" Philia exclaimed. "Is the Commander usually that secretive with what's going on?"
"Not really, he's usually pretty hands off." Kirito admitted. "Though I guess there's a difference between handling one wing of pilots and handling the majority of mission command for a major joint operation."
"Yeah, well, if he keeps up this level of secrecy, someone's going to end up taking a missile to the face." Kureha told everyone.
"It is troubling, I agree. But perhaps we should see how things play out before we judge him further, should we not?" Alice said, as their meals began to arrive, and a sense of normality took over for the first time in around a week.
A sense of normality that the group were aware was just as fragile as their planes often were, and a sense of normality that would soon be completely shattered… though no one at the tables could have known that in that moment.
The general feeling amongst the pilots of the 302nd that night was one of tension, one of trepidation… and in a slight dichotomy to both, one of boredom, Jet thought to himself as they approached the first waypoint.
Their mission was arguably one of the most important of the war – to put the Adamasian Air Force's main airfield out of commission until a more permanent solution could be found, and it was one that their Tornado was well suited for.
During their Cold War, it had been the main role of many RAF squadrons based in Germany to dash over the border, using the Tornado's excellent low-level characteristics and specialised anti-runway weaponry, and put Soviet airfields out of commission… even though such a mission would be suicide for anyone tasked with that mission.
He supposed that summarised much of the hypothetical World War 3: it was a slightly more drawn-out suicide for everyone involved. Mutually assured destruction was an accurate way of looking at it, because even those who didn't die in the initial waves wouldn't find much out there to live for, as bleak as it sounded.
He'd seen Threads and When the Wind Blows, and to say he'd come away from it far more terrified of the concept was to put it politely…
Thankfully, it didn't appear that Strangereal had any nuclear weapons yet – the one they'd encountered over Avalon was some kind of incendiary warhead, hence they'd survived with only some scratches, though he imagined such a weapon would be far more terrifying should it be used against ground forces, or worse still, against civilians…
"Cap, we're nearing the AO. Game faces on?" Sierra asked from the backseat.
"Yup. Solitaire Lead to all Solitaires, this is the big one." Snapping back to their current reality, rather than a hypothetical WW3 that thankfully never happened, he told everyone.
This also marked a different strategy to them – they would be working with a battlefield controller in the form of an EC-121 Warning Star that would be providing everyone with instructions of where to go after they had disabled their primary targets, and whether they had disabled their primary targets in the first place… "Batcat to Solitaire, request you hold back. Missiles are inbound to soften up X-2s defences."
Missiles? Just another thing Bercouli had failed to tell them then… that they would be the second wave into X-2, not the first. Still, he wasn't complaining if it took away their chance to shoot them back; the less lead in the sky, the safer they were dashing in at 100 feet ASL!
"Radar's set, Sierra?" He asked his RIO.
"Set." Sierra told him.
"Nautlius, Yuna, where are we on the jamming?" He looked out the cockpit to try and find the Raven in the darkness.
He couldn't.
"Jamming is active." Yuna told him.
"Good. Let's get our butts in gear." He told them, looking at the sky outside of the Tornado – a pitch black sky, lit by only the stars in the sky and the glowing exhausts of the other aircraft in the distance.
"Solitaire, missiles should be impacting their targets… now!" In the distant view of the island, he saw a number of fires suddenly erupt, no doubt struck by the cruise missiles. "Viper, good effect on target."
"Commander, we've got a situation down here. Those forts are preventing the troops from getting off the beach, and we've got no way of killing them from up here."
"Damn it…" Bercouli sighed. "Open to suggestions here, people!"
"Solitaire Three, you bought bigger bombs – rragh! - right?"
"Yes, four Mk84s. Not bunker busters though." Zeliska answered.
"Good enough to lay the hurt on them. Zel, head south and rendezvous with the Black Blades. Between us and Kureha, we should be able to handle the runway. Itsuki, escort her down to Point Rain. Idol Two, shift support further south, so we don't make it too easy for them!" He ordered, hoping that the missiles had softened up the base enough that the pair of bombers would be enough to disable the base for the time being.
They should've been – their Tornado was carrying a pair of JP233 pods to disable the runway, and make life very hard for the clean up crew sent out try and repair the runway later in the morning, whilst Kureha's Thunderchief was loaded with as many Snakeeyes as they could reasonably carry, to destroy as much of the airside infrastructure as they could…
"Understood." Itsuki answered, and he watched the Crusader III peel away in pursuit of the Corsair, the J75 glowing against the dark night sky.
"Moving further south, sir."
"Black Blades, this is Solitaire Three. ETA is six minutes."
"Acknowledged, Zeliska. Black Blades, we've got six minutes to clear the airspace of fighters!" He heard Kirito order, and he moved back into readying for the strike. Unlike many of their weapons, the JP233 required a set of conditions to be met to effectively use the weapon in the role it was intended for:
Firstly, they needed to approach the runway to be destroyed fast, low and wings level to ensure the munitions would release onto the target, and not ended up cratering the sand next to the runway instead. They'd need to be at an indicated airspeed of around 450 knots and an altitude of 100 feet ASL to best employ the weapon, and then haul arse as soon as the pods beneath them had each emptied out their deadly payload of thirty anti-runway mines, and 215 anti-personnel mines, preferably before the Adamasian gunners found zero on their aircraft…
Nice and easy, Jet had thought rather sarcastically, and for once, Sierra had agreed with him. Unfortunately for them, Bercouli had reminded them that aircraft that could carry the JP233 weren't exactly common – to his knowledge, only the Tornado and Jaguar could carry the massive canoe like pods, and the Tornado was arguably the most effective of the two.
And the only one of the two currently present at Canaveral, which meant that the law of probability had volunteered them for death defying stunts once more…
"Solitaire to Batcat, what kind of defences are we still looking at down there?"
"Air defences around X-2 are reduced to light triple-A fire, and possible MANPADs threat. SA-3 and SA-6 threat is mostly removed."
"Well, at least we aren't going to get a big missile slamming into us…" Sierra shrugged from behind him.
"No, just death by a thousand cuts instead…" He grumbled as he moved into position for the sprint towards X-2. "Kureha, you still with us?"
"You have to ask?" She joked. "Someone needs to make sure your butts don't get killed!"
"Oh yeah… like I wasn't plucking your butt out the fire when we were kids, missy!"
"Eh, fifty-fifty." She deflected, knowing that Sierra was telling the truth for once, and changed topic. "Jet, what's the exit strategy?"
He thought about it briefly, and decided simple was best, given they were already tempting fate a little bit down here… "Full burners, run like hell for the tankers before they can shoot back." He told them.
"Let's get started then, shall we?"
In addition to the Warning Star picking out the ground targets across Adamas, and managing the air battle in that theatre, the remaining Navy E-2 Hawkeyes had been tasked to provide a radar perimeter, in order to ensure that any Adamasian aircraft was soon disabled and that aircraft weren't just wandering off to go shoot down anything they saw in the distance… "Magic, Solitaire is at the RP. Go, no go?"
"Solitaire, this is Magic, mission is a go." The Hawkeye's operator told them, and he pushed the nose down gently, so that they would hit 100 feet as they reached their IP, rather than with any sudden drop that could tear the JP233 cannisters off their pylons, jeopardising not only the mission, but also their continued existence…
"Good luck, boys. See you back at base!" Kureha said as they watched the brightly coloured F-105 bank away to hit her targets at her optimum position – he imagined that jettisoning Snakeyees at 100 feet would be… an experience, and probably one that no one would ever want to repeat!
The ride down to 100 feet was really quite smooth, he thought; the Tornado almost cushioning every bump and nestle that they would've felt in anything else, and the turbulence was significantly less than he'd have expected…
He made a note to send a letter of compliments to whoever had been responsible for the Tornado's low-level flight characteristics, because it was genuinely impressive!
Reaching the IP, he had got his calculations spot on, because they hit the target altitude exactly as they passed over the point, and he began to line up with the ILS marker to line up with the direction of the main runway…
"Weapons ready?"
"Ready to roll."
"One mile to target."
"Fingers on buzzers." Sierra answered – his own code for saying he was ready to go, inspired by the many panel shows he had essentially forced the American to watch back in the real world. "Looks like they're ready for us, Cap!"
He wasn't kidding either – triple A fire lit up the night sky ahead of them, firing blindly as they looked for the Tornado. Thankfully, the gunners were aiming way ahead of them, probably assuming they were higher than they really were, a deception that wouldn't last when the aircraft was being lit up like a Christmas tree by the deployment of the JP233…
"Yeah, thankfully they think we're somewhere else for now." He answered. "We're lined up, let's put them out of commission!"
"One mile to go, cap."
"Fingers on buzzers."
"Ready for the big prize."
As they passed over the antenna farm for the ILS, Jet took one deep breath and held his hands firm on the stick in front of him. "Go!"
A press on the button behind, and a dull thud could be heard from beneath them as their explosive payload dropped out of the canoes mounted under them, and illuminated what felt like the entirety of Adamas as they tore up the runway, a wall of dirt and fire behind them as the SG-357 mines tore apart the asphalt, whilst the HB-876 mines set about setting themselves upright as an unwelcome present for any repair crews…
In all, and during the five second dash over the runway of the X-2, they had released nearly five hundred mines onto the runway below, and made themselves a really obvious target now – the silhouette of the Tornado neatly illuminated by the explosions behind them, giving the triple-A gunners an almost perfect target to aim for; a design flaw he wondered if the designers of such a weapon had ever considered, although he had his doubts considering survivability was a pretty low concern during the Cold War.
"Cap…!" Sierra called, and he slammed the throttles straight to the firewall as he pulled the nose up and away from the burning slab of shattered asphalt behind them. Triple-A fire continued to follow them as they climbed away, but by nothing short of a miracle, the tracer fire never once hit them, and as they reached a thousand feet, he felt himself breathing a sigh of relief for the first time this evening, and even a little bit of laughter at just how insane that had all been…
"I think they won't be getting any fighters airborne tonight…" He said, looking back towards the runway and the field, just before Kureha rolled in, in a dive-bombing attack – something they clearly weren't expecting, as the gunners fired on what looked like their insertion path instead, rather than the one that the Thud was coming in from.
If he'd thought the fire from their dash had been something to behold, the sight of almost thirty 500-pound bombs dropping into a relatively confined area was something else, and made for an almighty fireworks display, if nothing else…
"Solitaire, good effect on target. Looks like the commanders are running around like headless chickens now." Batcat told them.
"Magic to Solitaire, you have interceptors heading your way. MIG-25s from the speed of them…" Well, there went the idea of outrunning them…
The Tornado was fast on the deck, but the MIG-25 was faster, the behemoth of an interceptor using two engines from a cruise missile design to essentially brute force the airframe to reach Mach 3 at altitude, and supersonic speeds at low level.
Fortunately, whilst it had the speed to run them down, it didn't really have the weapons to do so – from what they knew of the Adamasian Air Forces Foxbats, they were using the long-range R-40, the Acrid, which was certainly a potent bomber-killer… but not so great at tracking low flying, and fast-moving strikers like they flew.
In reality, no sane pilot would've tried to hunt down an escaping Tornado on the deck in a MIG-25, but based off what they knew, the Foxbats were the Generalissimo's propaganda squadron – a squadron of former models, picked for their loyalty to his regime firstly, and their competence second.
Still, he knew the Foxbat could carry other missiles – the extremely manoeuvrable, but short ranged R-60 Aphid could be carried too, though he reckoned they were carrying just the R-40s tonight. He couldn't answer why he thought that; it was just a gut feeling he had…
"You've gotta be kidding me!" Sierra called out from the back.
"I mean, at least we can outturn them!" Kureha said, and normally, she'd have been right. The MIG-25 was fast… but much like the MIG-23 it supplanted, it had the turning circle of a large cruise ship. It wouldn't have surprised him if most airliners could outturn a MIG-25 at full chat… those big wings may have had a vast area to them, but they also had a very high wing loading too in order to keep the massive jet in the air.
Unfortunately, they were still G-limited, thanks to the useless canoes under their fuselage now, or at least, they were until he could eject the canoes over the coast. About the only thing he was thankful for was that those MIGs would have to be vectored towards them by a ground-based controller, and if Nautilus and Yuna were doing their jobs, those controllers would be very, very busy right now…
Not that it was going to help them though, as those Foxbats were bearing down on them fast…
"So what's the plan, Cap?"
"Jettison the canoes, and we'll handle those Foxbats." He answered, questioning his own sanity in that moment. The Tornado was not a fighter, by anyone's definition, and even the Air Defence Variant, the F.3, was an interceptor, rather than a fighter.
Still, they had a pair of Sidewinders and a pair of cannons onboard – more than enough to make sure those MIGs had a bad day when they got too close… "Radar lock, they're firing on us!"
"Drop chaff and flares when we're on the deck. Those MIGs don't exactly have a look down-shoot down radar, thankfully. " He hoped they didn't anyway – Philia had told them to expect Foxbat-A's, the earliest MIG-25 variant, or possibly even a downgraded version of that, given it was being exported… and Yuktobania shared a similar ethos with the Soviet Union in that regard, that ethos being: "yes, we'll give you arms, but no way are we giving you what we use. Also, the engine will be knackered in thirty hours, and you'll have to send it back to us and buy a new one then."
Watching against his instruments carefully, he dropped the Tornado down to fifty foot above the waves and ordered for chaff and flares to be dispensed. Much to his relief, he watched as one of the R-40s sent after them passed almost a thousand feet above their heads, whilst the other had disappeared altogether. "They missed." Sierra sighed in relief behind him.
"Boys, looks like they've decided they're killing you regardless. They're descending in hot pursuit!"
"Don't you just love being the centre of attention?" Sierra added sarcastically.
"I've got a plan, just make sure the Sidewinders are ready to go!"
"Setting them up now." He heard from the backseat and glanced over his shoulder to see two trails behind them – the two Foxbats, no doubt.
Two trails that soon became one, and a huge plume of water where the other had been. Were these seriously the pilots entrusted to defend an island, because if they were, he wasn't sure he'd have slept very well knowing that they were the first line of defence…
"He's closing on us, Jet…"
"Yep, I can see that." He told him, opening the airbrakes, and throwing the Tornado into a right-hand bank. "Ready with the missiles!" He shouted as the Foxbat flew straight past and he caught a glimpse of the full outline of the aircraft…
Before they were buffeted like nothing he'd ever felt before. "Oh christ!" He shouted as he wrestled the stick to pull them away from an impending high-speed collision with the water, and to get them into a firing position…
A growl roared into both of their headsets, and before anything had to be said, a Sidewinder dropped away from the rail, and flew straight into the back of the Foxbat. Rather than the instant disintegration he'd have expected, the large and heavy interceptor carried, though even he could tell its engines bore the brunt of the impact from the Sidewinder, and both aircraft pulled away from the perils of an almost wave top dogfight…
"Well, even if we didn't get 'em, I doubt they're coming back for another-" Sierra started, as a bright orange glow engulfed the canopy ahead of them… followed quickly by an explosion that threw his hands off the stick briefly, before he regained his composure…
"I think you're probably right." He said sarcastically.
What had only moments before been a MIG-25 was nothing more than a fireball and a smoke cloud above the dark and cold waters… and a lot of slivers of metal, many of which now found themselves showering the Tornado in razor sharp blades.
"Damage report?"
"Brown alert."
"Brown?"
"Named for the colour of my pants after that one."
"Well, at least it's not red, aye?" He joked. "Solitaire Lead to Magic, the MIGs are dealt with, and we're heading home."
"Understood Solitaire Lead, Batcat is reporting positive effects of the bombing. Don't think they'll be getting anyone else up tonight…"
"Thank god for small mercies, huh."
/-/
In the right-hand seat of the Raven, Yuna was having a surprisingly fun night, she thought to herself, whilst her colleagues fought a pair of MIG-25s…
Not only was she broadcasting live across the island of Adamas, but watching the mild concern of the GCI staff as their fighters went off wherever they felt like it, because they were spoofing the instructions issued to the fighters as well as the disruptive radio broadcast…
"Good morning, General! We've got one heck of a lineup for you tonight!" She grinned as she spoke into the microphone aboard the modified Raven. "But one from a caller first! The Clash are up now, with a message to you especially General… Rock the Casbah!"
"You're having way too much fun with this, Yuna…" Naut rolled his eyes, though she knew he was trying not to laugh inside.
"What can I say, I think I've found my calling!"
"Radio DJ?" He asked with a look that rapidly changed from "why?" to "yeah, actually that makes sense."
"Besides, you never know what's going on on the ground. Maybe they'll put their arms down and start dancing instead of fighting…"
"Unlikely, but it would make this a lot easi-missile lock!"
Switching from idle chatter, she went back into systems officer mode, deploying chaff and flares into the night sky as Naut broke the Raven into a tight turn to the starboard. "Idol One, we've got an interceptor coming for us!" She called out over the combined arms frequency.
"Idol One, hang in there. I'm on my way!" Yuuki called out, no doubt having completed their bombing raid. Her Sea Harrier wasn't the best interceptor, but she'd be damned if there were many better fighters at Canaveral when it came to a low-level dogfight…
Now they just had to survive until she arrived.
"Yuna, any ideas what it is?" Naut asked, and she craned her head around to get a look at the pursuing light. Only one plume behind it, so it probably wasn't a Foxbat at least…
"MIG-23 by the looks of the afterburner trail."
"There goes running away as an option then." Naut sighed. "Might be able to outturn it though…" Considering the EF-111 was a gigantic aircraft, the size of most medium sized airliners, it said something about the turning performance of the MIG-23 that they could be reasonably certain they would outturn the much smaller interceptor…
Fast it was, agile, not so much, as the captains had taught them after the Battle of the Bay. As Captain Sierra had put it, any pilot who entered a turning fight with the MIG-23 was automatically on the offensive, because of how poor the aircraft was in a turn…
He probably hadn't anticipated they would be flying an aircraft that had no way to shoot back though, and short of annoying the MIG into the ground, they could only dance around the aircraft so long before the pilot figured out a way of hitting them, either with missiles or the GSh-23 cannon it carried…
As it turned out, the captain had been a bit off – he'd probably meant any fighter could outturn it, and despite the designation, the EF-111 was not a fighter. It could just about hold its own in snap turns to evade fire, but in a sustained turning fight…
Thankfully for them, the first shot – probably an IR guided missile, likely an R-23T at this range - missed, trashed by the flares they'd released, but the second shot, the one that had tripped the radar warning receiver, hadn't obviously failed to hit them and she could no longer see the vapour trail that the missile left.
"Idol One, I'm a minute away, are you guys still alive?"
"We're still dancing out here, Yuuki!" She told her. "We've got a MIG-23 chasing us though!"
"And he's just fired another missile!" Naut called out, as another missile trail became evident.
"Punching flares!" She told him, as flares ejected from the back of the aircraft and the missile sailed past them. She couldn't help but be glad that the Adamasian aircraft were still armed with the old R-3 Atoll, meaning that those missiles were far more limited than the more advanced R-60s that they had fought against with the Belkans…
That didn't mean it wouldn't still hurt if it hit them, and almost as soon as they had successfully evaded one of the Atolls, a second exploded underneath the Raven, showering the underside in shrapnel.
"Idol One, we're hit!" She told them, looking over the instruments and out of the cockpit to spot for obvious damage. She couldn't see any, but that wasn't surprising given it was likely beneath them…
"We're still airworthy though." Naut called out in addition. "Probably won't be if we take another hit like that, though!"
"Yuuki to Yuna, I have him!" In the distance, she watched as a missile trail streaked away from a smaller aircraft – no doubt Yuuki's Sea Harrier – and straight for the pursuing MIG. Not that it had chance to hit it, she noticed, as the MIG pilot attempted to bank out of the way and found himself ploughing straight into the Southern Sea below them, the only remains of the hapless MIG being the waves around the crash site… "Aww, I nearly got him then! Ah well, I still get a maneuvering kill, right?"
"I'd say you will, yeah!"
Out of nowhere, Nautilus went from relieved at their dance with death, to a dawning realisation of what was coming head on with them… "Oh you have got to be-"
"What is-woah!" She felt the Raven shudder violently again, this time only barely staying the right side up as it absorbed what felt like the entire flak inventory around the Northern Bay area…
Which was worrying, because most of the flak guns in that area had been neutralised! "Batcat, tell the ground forces to stop shooting us!"
Thankfully, it only took a moment before the shaking stopped, and the pair could regain their senses without risk of being blown up by triple-A shells. "Oh, thank the heavens…"
"Idol One to Command, we're heading back to Bana. We're in bad shape and could do with landing ASAP."
"Nautilus, Yuna, are you okay?"
"Yes captain, we just took a few hits back there. We're fine, though Lisbeth is probably going to kill us…"
"Yeah, well let's make sure you get back first, shall we?" Jet told them. "Idol Two, you still there?"
"Loud and clear, Captain. Coastal batteries have been dealt with, and Zeliska and Itsuki are heading back your way."
"Got it. Zeliska, Itsuki, if you two are out of bombs, head back with Idol One. They took a hit, but they're still in one piece."
"Solitaire Three to Lead, I'll take them back with me."
"Understood, Zel. There're still fighters out here, so keep your heads on a swivel."
"Will do, Lead."
"Itsuki to Jet, I will continue to engage fighters. I still have weaponry onboard, and it would be a shame if I weren't to use them…"
"Understood, Itsuki, good hunting. Twilight, Itsuki's heading towards your AO, just to give you a heads up."
With the MIGs dealt with, and Rain and Seven moving into position to take over their track, she looked back at the coast and realised something – as much fun as the musical theatre of their operation was, the ground assaults were nothing short of carnage as the fires raised high into pitch black night sky, and fighter bombers carried on pouring in to release their payloads on the coastal targets that were left…
/-/
The first wave of aircraft began to return just before the sun had risen at Bana, and amongst the very first was the damaged EF-111, which had made a textbook landing, despite sustaining some nasty damage from their blue-on-blue incident and the partially exploded Atoll still firmly lodged in the Raven's backside…
"It's not great, but it could've been a lot worse." Lisbeth admitted. "Most of its cosmetic, so I can patch it up quickly, but there's a few areas that I'm going to need to have it grounded to fix. Mostly in the ECM gear though, so you'll still be flying… just not as effective."
"No more radio shows then, I take it?"
"Not until I've checked it won't just catch fire spontaneously." Lisbeth told her, and her expression dropped.
"Besides, you aren't the only ones who took some flak either…" Lisbeth looked over pointedly at the Captains, and both looked away sheepishly.
"We did take down a Foxbat though…" Sierra told them with an unhelpful grin.
"How?" Lisbeth asked. "By ramming it? Because there's enough of it in your plane that I'd believe that!" She pointed to the almost hundreds of pieces of shrapnel now lodged firmly across the Tornado, and watched as the two of them looked at each other with a strained intake of air…
"We were a bit close; I'll grant you that." Jet admitted, uncharacteristically awkwardly.
"Men…" Lisbeth walked away, grumbling about the opposite sex.
"Well, that went better than I imagined." Sierra said with a sigh, as he slumped into his shoulders.
"How?" Naut asked, an amused look on his face.
"Well, we all still have our limbs and our lives, right?"
"I don't think Miss Lisbeth would do that… would she?" She asked, spotting that Lisbeth was still in earshot of their conversation, and looking deeply unamused by it.
"Eh, you don't work for her, Yuna. She absolutely would. She is, to quote Jet, a bloody mean bit-"
"I can hear you, asshole!" Lisbeth shouted from across the room, accompanied by a middle finger, interrupting the cursing.
"See?" Sierra exclaimed, as he hadn't just been poking at that particular bear…
"One day, that gob of yours is going to get you killed." Jet told him bluntly, though the reaction to such a comment was quite underwhelming, considering… he simply shrugged. "Anyway, whilst you try to dodge a Lisbeth shaped bullet, I need to go have words with the Commander about something…"
/-/
The talk with the Commander was not going quite as he'd hoped. Actually, it almost felt like Bercouli was being purposefully obtuse, trying his hardest not to see even the most obvious of points, to the point that he was forced to almost spell things out…
"We nearly got torn up out there, Commander, because we didn't know what was going on half of the time." Jet told him bluntly. "It was only a damn miracle that we all got back, and truthfully, I doubt that'll hold, sir."
"Captain, we are fighting a war. You know that as well as I do, and in war, we lose people. It's a harsh reality, but it is reality. Given who we're fighting, you need to get yer head in the game, kid." He thought twice about asking who it really was they were fighting, given what they all knew, and especially with what they suspected after the failed rescue attempt. Too much had gone wrong during that operation for there not to have been a leak somewhere and based on how certain the Commander had been about those missiles, he couldn't help but agree with something that Sierra had floated as an idea.
Bercouli was an old war hero, and old heroes tend not to adapt well to peace time. He did seriously have to wonder if the man knew a lot more than he was letting on, or what exactly his agenda was out here…
It hadn't taken long for Bercouli to walk off with his back turned before Jet offered an insulting gesture in return – one of a two fingered insult to the French variety.
"I take it he didn't share your concerns then?" Zeliska asked, with a sympathetic smile.
"How'd you know?"
"You've still got your fingers in a V-shape despite the fact your hand's by your side." She answered, with a little snicker. "But yes, I do get the distinct impression he's too busy trying to hunt down the FRO, instead of actually co-ordinating us too."
"I'll give you something, Cap, you've got balls. It takes a braver man than I to flip off the war hero…" Sierra admitted, tapping a hand to his shoulder sympathetically.
"Oh, I didn't flip him off…" Jet dismissed with a roll of his eyes. "I gave him the V for victory instead."
"Yeah, that's what that means…" Sierra drawled, with a smug laugh at the end. "Still, it doesn't look great that he's acting like that. Even if he's not up to anything, I kind of see why he was passed up for promotion a load of times."
Almost as soon as they'd said that, the conversation was interrupted by the rumbling of their stomachs – it had been nearly a day since they'd properly eaten, and a chocolate bar or bag of sweets snuck into the cockpit didn't really count, even if it did keep their energy up a little bit.
"I think we should probably go put our stuff in our lodgings and go get food. We can continue this discussion then, eh?"
There was no answer, just a load of enthusiastic nodding as the group split apart to head to the lodgings at Bana Base…
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Despite the name, Bana Base was neither a base, nor was it anything to do with the Osean military. It was, in fact, a holiday park that they had requisitioned over the summer low months, in order to house the many, many staff needed for operations of the magnitude that Diamond was, especially given they were hosting both Osean and Yuktobanian forces at the former Bana City airport…
His first reaction to that news had been somewhat positive – holiday camps were meant for families after all, so they would probably have more space than their usual huts at Canaveral.
That was until they had reached the front desk, where they had, for all intents and purposes, been thrown a key and told to go look for their accommodation.
The camp itself was full of chalets, low buildings that had clearly been designed by someone with a ruler and very little else, and to say either of their reactions were positive as they walked through the camp looking for chalet 141 would be an understatement.
"Jesus." Sierra thought aloud. "This is bleak…"
"It's like Pontins but worse… somehow." He answered, remembering that holiday in Brean Sands. Some people might have said having a holiday less than an hour from your house was a little bit pointless, and he'd have agreed normally, but the idea had seemed enticing at the time…
And then they'd ended up at Pontins.
"Ah, 141, that's us." Sierra snapped him out of that, as he opened the door to their chalet. He already knew what to expect, and even so, he was disappointed by what they saw…
A sofa, a small kitchenette, a bedroom through a plain wooden door and a table and three chairs. "The 1970s called, they want their style back…"
"It's 1969, Cody." He pointed out.
"Oh yeah, it is, isn't it?" Sierra slapped himself. "So… you want the sofa, or the bed?"
"There'll be two beds in there." He told him, as they poked their head around the wooden door…
"And an army of bedbugs by the looks of those mattresses." Sierra answered blithely.
"I'll take the sofa." He told him, deciding he would be taking the more comfortable option. Well, more comfortable in the universal sense, anyway. He imagined it wouldn't be all that comfortable either way, but it certainly beat sleeping on those rank mattresses…
/-/
After some time to settle in (which in both his and Sierra's cases involved literally throwing their bags down beside their chosen areas, and immediately leaving to go and get food), the members of the 302nd met up in the dining area of the camp…
Also known as the pub.
Was it a bit bleak that they were all in the pub at 10:30 in the morning? Yes, yes it was. Was it also cheaper than everywhere else? Yes, it was.
Besides, it wasn't like they were drinking – it was just for breakfast, and pub breakfasts were usually pretty good, in his experience.
"So, what happens next?" Rain asked, twirling her fork.
"Best guess? We finish off the Adamasians in the air, whilst the Yuktobanians deal with them on the ground." Sierra answered. "Still, there's a few wildcards that I'm not sure on."
"Like the whole FRO thing?" Kureha asked. "I dunno, that just… something feels off there."
"I happen to agree with Kureha there. Bercouli is not telling us the full story, that much I'm certain of." An unusually expressive Itsuki answered – probably still starving as they waited for their food to be bought over to their table.
"It's not just that, I was talking to Tiese and Ronye, and they mentioned that Pitohui and LLENN knew one of the Adamasian pilots. Called her Medina, I think." Rain added.
"That's not too surprising, we knew the Adamasians were using mercenaries to bolster their numbers." He pointed out, though it was a little worrying that they knew who she was, enough to be bantering with her…
"We still have no solid intelligence on those missiles either, which is concerning." Seven reminded them all of the reason they were supposedly going into this island… the stolen Scud missiles.
"We did intercept signals traffic that indicated they were being moved, but we got targeted by a SAM at that point, so we had to break off." Rain explained.
"So, they knew you were snooping then. That's worrying." Zeliska hummed.
"That's not all. Ronye told me they were using the same jamming tricks we were doing over St Calippo, though without the music."
"That answers one question – who were Notte and Rano working for. The Adamasians, I guess."
"Doubt it, cap. I'd probably say they were more likely working with that Chudelkin's lot, but even so…" Sierra trailed off, lost in his own thoughts.
"They know some of our tricks, yeah." He finished, before some of the members of the 303rd plonked themselves down besides them.
"Let me guess, your operation went to plan as much as ours did?"
"I know the old saying is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but it does kind of help to survive contact with your allies!" Philia exclaimed. "Is the Commander usually that secretive with what's going on?"
"Not really, he's usually pretty hands off." Kirito admitted. "Though I guess there's a difference between handling one wing of pilots and handling the majority of mission command for a major joint operation."
"Yeah, well, if he keeps up this level of secrecy, someone's going to end up taking a missile to the face." Kureha told everyone.
"It is troubling, I agree. But perhaps we should see how things play out before we judge him further, should we not?" Alice said, as their meals began to arrive, and a sense of normality took over for the first time in around a week.
A sense of normality that the group were aware was just as fragile as their planes often were, and a sense of normality that would soon be completely shattered… though no one at the tables could have known that in that moment.