Surface action group Angel, a misleading name at best. Yesterday they'd left their charges at Singapore, resupplied from the tankers and moved north by north east at twenty four knots. The operations tempo increased, a constant pair of fighters were kept above the fleet with awacs.
The carrier Resolution was operating at near full ops tempo, lightly armed aircraft hurtled into the sky, Su34s, Ko-45s… anything that had a camera or the ability to get eyes over potential hotspots or good landing zones. The planes soared across empty skies. The JRC needed an intel picture, and by god they were gonna get it for them.
While the Resolution and her air group focused on gaining that critical intel picture, the Quiero amor had its attention turned to fleet protection and anti-leviathan ops, a large chunk of the ship's helicopters were busy dropping sonar buoys and the occasional torpedo. Its task is no less important than the Resolution, and the presence of the smaller carrier enables the larger to completely focus on its reconnaissance flights.
But that left the rest of the fleet, a collection of destroyers and frigates and a Kirov class battlecruiser that were mostly there for decoration. But on the off chance a leviathan got within twenty miles of the fleet they would snap into action, anti submarine torpedoes would fly.
Spread across the South China Sea was a small flotilla of Akula attack submarines, assisting the fleet in its hunt of the leviathan menace. They'd dealt with a pair this morning when the A-22 killed south of Mindoro and the A-9 killed another west of Manila bay. While important work, it wasn't really what Blue Mirror's aim was. That was to get good intel on potential forward staging areas for Red Comet, preferably on Mindoro, but anywhere nearby to Luzon would realistically work, just not on Luzon itself.
But over the afternoon reports began to start to trickle back to the fleet. Low thunderstorms over central and southern Luzon meant they'd have to come again another day, the pair of fighters streaking overhead shaking their heads at the dismal ground visibility below.
"Manila's a bust, gonna have to come back tomorrow…" one grumbled to his wingman.
"Hotel 5, we have a bogey to your seven o'clock, rapidly ascending in altitude." The pilot received a message from the distant AWACS far offshore. He banked his plane slightly with his wingman, cranking his neck to see whatever the awacs had mentioned.
For a second all he saw was the dark, flashing pulses of the thunderclouds below. Then, in the darkness of the storm raging below, a flash, half of its arching pathway obscured as the outline of some terribly massive primordial beast was backlit. Then it broke through the clouds. Dark vapor being cast into the air as giant leathery wings tore at the sky, heaving a great hulking form of a scaled, legged serpent. A pair of heads arched up. A roar shattering the pall that had taken the pilots.
"Oh hell no!" They shouted, pulling up and slamming the throttle to the stops. They raced for the sky, twisting and craning for a view of the monstrous beast that should not be flying behind them. A cold sweat drenched them as they caught glimpses of it gaining on them.
"Over watch, we got some big fucking dragon flying with us! The hell you want us to do?" Hotel 6 demanded.
"Hotel… say again last?" Overwatch replied.
"Big fucking dragon!" Hotel 6 screamed. The inside of the awacs craft, small with only a crew of 6 being crammed into the small airframe. They began scrambling other nearby fighters to intercept. No one had thought they'd be dealing with any real aerial threats, the few aircraft with anything other than ammo for their cannons had a couple bombs or rocket pods strapped to them.
Swarms of harpies or gargoyles were only really a threat if you chose to fly into the swarm. Which was easy enough for most planes to avoid by simply flying at least a few thousand feet up and giving it a bit more throttle until the flying swarm was receding in the distance.
Hotel 6 glanced back again to see a gaping maw feet from the tail of his plane. He rapidly spun over and pushed the nose down as the maw snapped shut inches below his feet as he raced for the sea. The monster briefly stopped its pursuit as I gazed at both planes, then lunged for 6 as he raced for the sea.
Other fighters came screaming in as 6 pulled out of his dive only a few hundred feet above the sea. A pair staggered themselves and came screaming in, guns spewing streams of tracers that stitched the dragon's flank, the beast roared in pain but didn't let up its pursuit.
"God damn! Just how tough is this thing!?!" One shouted as another pair made a pass.
One of the heads snapped back, clipping the wing of the trailing sukhoi. The wing ripped itself free of the fuselage and the plane entered a spin, the pilot ripped his ejection seat. The canopy flew away before lifting him aloft. A soft blossoming parachute was the pilot's last reward before rows of teeth thicker than his torso slammed into him.
The parachute flattened against the side of the dragon's snout, then quickly vanished into its mouth. "Fuck… break contact!"
The pilots turned away from the massive creature and put their throttle to the stops. They raced west, the dragon roaring in rage as it gave chase, but as the Sukhois began passing Mach 1.3 the dragon began to fall behind before giving up and turning back east. The pilots chuckled, sharing a nervous laugh as they continued their get away. The hell was that thing? There were a lot of weird creatures they'd seen. But a two headed dragon that could fly faster than the speed of sound? That made a new level of shit.
"Resolution? You catch all that?"
"Good copy Hotel. We're passing the films to JCC for review as we speak, hopefully they get us some guidance on how to deal with that thing." Came the quick and curt reply.
"Can we get some missiles next time Resolution?" Another pilot asked.
"Yeah… we'll go with full combat loads till further notice. All aircraft, RTB." Came the reply.