Dmitry unconsciously exhaled a sigh of relief seeing that his efforts paid off in the end as he caught the other MiG retreating fast from the fight; having some room to breathe, he brought his own jet to a leveled and much more relaxed cruising speed, while searching for the other target he tried to take down. He didn't get a fix on any other fast-mover, but he did see a parachute floating its way to splash into the blue waters, so he could only assume that it was the MiG pilots. He couldn't determine who downed the enemy jet since he couldn't spot the remains of the MiG, but he it could have been either him, either Charnel or a third fighter that just joined the conflict; it was an F-16 charging straight for the fleeing enemy fighter, thus, Dmitry assumed that it had to be on their side. Taking advantage of the brief moment of relaxation, the Su pilot checked in with Marciano through the comms, his voice giving away his enthusiasm of today's outcome:

"[i]Dobre[/i], Charnel, one bandit down, the other one's going back to momma's skirts. 'Ey I never caught your na-"

A bright flash of light illuminated the cockpit as a star seemed to cut the skies in half as it crashed straight into Thunder Island, the resulting shock wave was strong enough to cause a perceivable turbulence, which Dmitry briefly fought off with a wiggle of his control stick. [i]Fuckin' smart peasants[/i] he cursed to himself while he banked around to get a better view of what just happened and assess the damage done to the base; it was unbelievable that someone had such a grudge that they would launch a cruising missile and an invasion force against them. As he took a few moments to think for himself about what happened, he interpreted the whole ordeal as a warning message with a debilitating punch. The radio became a mess of panicked voices, Dmitry was trying to catch the frequency the Black Knights used and just managed to understand the nature of the weapon used to slam the waters; now, he didn't know if this attack was indeed a message or if it was a deadly threat towards the integrity of the company. He tried not to let dark thoughts cloud his judgement, even if shock had him mostly frozen and immobilized in his seat. It took him a while to reanimate and instead concentrated on trying to find the leader of the new squadron he was assigned to and fall in line, but soon realized that all he had to do was follow his fellow pilot to catch up and take place in the formation.

"Stalin, reporting in. Really long day ahead, I feel. I say we go back home, debrief and I buy you all a drink, da?"

The rest of the flight, he remained silent and took a moment to actually wind down and loose some of the tension that came from the dogfight. He took off his oxygen mask to sigh loudly and stretch as much as he could in the cramped cockpit. He followed the squadron until they closed in with the carrier they were supposed to land on, thus, Dmitry reduced the throttle down to 85% in preparation to hit the deck and come to a full stop. The first to go was the squadron leader, which landed successfully and taxied out of the way. He thought it would be best if he was next to land, since he had to delicately steer a 15 meters wide and 22 meters long jet on a carrier's deck without slamming into it or scrape other parked aircrafts on its deceleration.

"This is Stalin, coming in hot in a Russian Wardrobe." He declared to the carrier's comms tower.

He made sure everything was in place: flaps extended, landing gears deployed, brakes on, nose up, hook extended and throttle at landing speed. He lined himself perfectly with the angled runway and tried to fly as accurate as he could to catch the first wire, fighting with the plane itself to get the sweet spot; he carrier's deck almost instantly appeared beneath him and, with high amounts of luck, the hook snagged on the first wire, which caused the whole plane to stop from its dizzying speed after a few more meters of sliding down the deck. Dmitry felt himself pushed out of his seat as the jet was pulled back by the wire to completely halt its movement and once he came to a full stop, he thanked his luck, drew an imaginary cross and immediately pulled the hook back up and rolled away to the side of the carrier to park his large Su wherever the crewmen pointed him to. Once he was fitted in his own corner of the deck and securely pinned his jet into place, Dmitry got out of the cockpit and allowed himself to stretch again, grunting as he felt his articulations loosen up after being stuck to a place for long enough to feel stiff.

[i]Now what?[/i] he asked himself, even though he knew the answer to that question already. Keeping as far away as he could from the runway, the pilot walked down the deck at a moderate pace as he tried to kick out the nervousness of meeting his new squadron leader; on the radio, he felt that the man was thrice as nice as any of his other squadron leaders could ever have been, still, he preferred to remain skeptic until he was proven wrong. Finally being out of the Sukhoi, Dmitry had a brief moment of clarity in which he rewound today's chain of events that lead to him ending up on a carrier; everything played out so smoothly he didn't have the time to seriously question the situation he just ended up in, let alone thinking of the people on the island, the base and the laptop back in his bed he was SURE he forgot to charge again. His thoughts were quickly wiped out of his mind as he made contact with the Intruder he believed to be the same with the one he flew, confirming to himself that once he recognized the decal. Meeting up with the two pilots, the man gave them an involuntary toothy grin before he shook it off his face and instead formally saluted both Scott and St. Helen.

"Dmitry Aleksei Novikoff, codename Stalin, at your service and it is an honor to be part of your squadron. [i]Dobroho ranku[/i], good morning. Uh-" he threw a glance over his shoulder at the next aircraft to land on the carrier to see if it would land safely or if it had to loop around for another attempt.

"Actually, a pretty bad fucking morning, da? Glad everyone is OK."