Bob Schroeck Wrote:Mm. Were there any fen (of major importance) over/in the fen!USA when it poofed? Might make for an interesting subplot.

Quote:20,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean
18 November 2016, 23:55 LST

The
whale king Tyger Tyger sailed through the clouds on autopilot. With
it’s owner currently down in his workshop. Sabre kicked back in his
telepresence body at the desk in his workshop. Feet set upon the desk
top as he leaned his chair back. Electronically running the last of the
checks on the Shadow Fox zoid he been working on as a personal project
through his head. The fun thing about being a ghost in a machine shell
is that you can do a lot of things from one spot. What he didn’t know
was that a bunch of alien space bastards where about to play a shell
game with reality right in front of his ship as the clock struck the
hour.

Sabre
and his chair crashed over backwards as his head was filled with alerts
from the Tyger. It was as if a curtain had been slammed down across the
path the Tyger was flying. The autopilot reacted to avoid the wall that
the sensors where suddenly reporting. Then everything was normal again.
This left the autopilot confused so it threw the Tyger into a racetrack
holding pattern and hid in a electronic hole gibbering. The sensors
being sensors just reported everything as cheerfully normal again.
Sabre picked himself up off the floor and gave his head a shake as he
accessed the Tyger’s systems. “What the hell was that?”

He
called up the last three minutes of sensor and external camera data.
Watching as a massive wall of clouds formed from horizon to horizon in
front of the Tyger and lasting nearly a minute before disappearing as
suddenly as it formed. He reviewed it a few more times before uploading
it to his youtube.fen account with the comment, “What the hell is
this?” Included is a link to the sensor data at a fen file sharing
site. Before turning his attention to the sensors and scanning the area
as he started the ship creeping towards the US east coast.

10,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean
19 November 2016, 00:20 LST

The
sensors picked up a weak radar signal coming from the northwest and
moving slowly west. His ears perked at this and a silent command sent
the Tyger heading off towards it. Probing with the sensors to get a
reading, “Er? six surface contacts, radar is coming from the center
one. Maybe they saw something.” A thought activated the comms and set
them to radio. “This is the fen craft Tiger Tiger calling unknown ships
on a northwest heading. Come in, over.”

Quote:Re-entry passed without incident. The Ciara blazed a trail through the atmosphere, before angling down to an always rough landing in the North Atlantic.

Milly brought the main transceivers back up, re-connecting to the orbital interwave nodes. She expected maybe a few replies to their all-call email to come through. Three seconds after hooking in to the nodes, all three servers had been DDoS'd into the ground. It seemed like the whole of Fenspace was trying to connect right to them, and the servers just couldn't handle the load. The whole lot just came to a grinding halt.

“Fuck,” she swore.

Not even able to use a virtual terminal on the machines, Milly just pulled the network connection and waited for things to settle down. The tech took a deep breath,

Misha looked at her. “This is big,” the catgirl said.

“You don't think,” Milly snarked back. “A terrorist attack on the United States big enough to bring most of their infrastructure down... and we happened to be right above it when it happened,”

“I wish I'd been able to tell the Soviet's more,” Misha said.

“They probably know more than we do at this stage if they were launching those fighters,”

“The Stellvians knew enough to call a Convention after only a few minutes,” a pause to think, “they called it so fast, they've got to know what happened and how serious it was,”

Jackson nodded. “Maybe they caused it? Another kaboomite.”

“Huh?”

“Before your time. A Stellvian researcher mucking around with stuff called Kaboomite caused a lot of damage at Islandcon.”

A pause.

“They can't have blown up an entire continent. We'd’ve seen a blast that big.”

Good point Misha. And probably have been caught in it too. And planet Earth would likely be spinning out of control.

“Okay Misha, it's not an explosion I know. Then what? Let's lay this out. Captain's on the horn with a contact in Seattle. The line dies at exactly midnight. At the same time, I lose my connection to US groundlinks, and we get that massive particle burst. All normal radio traffic from the State's stops, but everything else is OK... it's like the US just isn't there anymore.”

Misha nodded, thinking.

“Now, we come around the block again and we pick up these AM radio transmissions.” She started to chew on a pen. “And only AM radio from CONUS. Nothing else. The radio we're getting, we get a man named Featherston preaching like a Nazi is a president of the Confederate States of America... “ She knew she'd heard the name Featherston before. “And what else we get sounds like it dates back to the 40's”

“Maybe the US got replaced by this Confederate States somehow,” Misha said, simply.

“Yeah, but how the hell could they replace an entire country? It's just not possible,”

“We're on a spaceship made out of a sea-ship, powered by handwavium, that travels through space at a tenth the speed of light. And I'm a catgirl.”

Good point Misha. Again.

“Alright alright... so the US got chopped out somehow. What's replaced it? A Confederate States of America, ruled by some English speaking fascist. An America where the CSA won the Civil War somehow and took over. And if they're at a 1940's level... then that'd explain why we're not getting any internet from them, and why the continent is so dark. They're missing seventy years of urban development,”

Misha nodded, showing she was still listening. Milly was feeling sick to her stomach.

“It sounds like a big version of that interdimensional incident three years ago... only instead of people... a country got sent instead. If one thing's been a constant of Fenspace, if somebody can do something small-scale, you bet someone'll do it ten times bigger just because... and since that started on Stellvia, maybe they figured out how to detect them. We got that particle burst... which our detectors just called a radiation burst, maybe they could see that it was the radiation that comes from one of these dimensional whizz-bangs, and reacted to it.”

“So, The 'danelaw United States got replaced with an alternate universe version where the Confederate States annihilated them a hundred and fifty years ago and took over. And they're seventy years behind us in technology.” Misha summed up.

“And the people who were in the US... probably..” Milly swallowed a lump, “Went wherever they hell this CSA came from, because that’s how these things usually work on TV” a beat. “Makes sense”.

“Yup,” the catgirl nodded.

A silent pause, broken only by the server fans and the clatter of the ship’s engines.

“My family was in Detroit,” Milly whispered.

“Maybe we should tell the Captain,” Misha changed the subject.

“Yeah. I’ll tell him.”

---->>

Garret listened to Milly speak. He took it all in and thought for a moment. Then remembered that he was the Captain of a spaceship powered by dead dinosaurs and miracle goo. And his XO was a catgirl, busy trying to organise a fuel tanker over the radio.

“Makes sense then,” he said. That was the worst part of it. “And I’m sure your parents are okay Milly.” He tried his best to sound reassuring.

“Thanks” the voice on the other end of the link said, “Uh... there’s one more thing. I know I’ve heard the name Featherston before... but I don’t know where. “

“Right. Concentrate on getting our interwave links working again. Chances are a thousand people are out there know, and are just trying to tell us all at once.”

“Aye... I’ll try. “

“Good. Then for God’s sakes get some sleep,”

“Aye,”

Garret heard the yawn before she hung up. He placed the headset back on it’s holder, before staring out at the lights of Cork City and Haulbowline island in front of him. Actually a Naval base, it was one of the few places he knew that could handle the Ciara quickly, that wouldn’t have been swamped by Fendanes diving for ground or be overflowing mundane gawkers wondering if they knew anything.

“Not good news?” Platowski questioned from the pilot’s seat.

“I don’t know,”

“Then what?”

Meg’s voice was tired, with a worried quiver.

“I’m not sure you’ll believe th...” he stopped himself. Anne’s ears pricked up. “Alright,” he reached for the mic again, and keyed it open to the entire ship’s intercom, “This is the Captain.” He still hated these. “You all know that something has happened in the United States, and that an emergency convention has been called. Well, I think we’ve figured this out.... “ a deep breath, “Somehow, the United States has been swapped out for an alternate Confederate States of America, from another universe. One that’s about seventy years behind our tech.”

Meg just gasped.

Anne sighed to herself. “Makes sense nyaa~”

---->>

Micheal Perry stood in the break room looking up at the speaker, before looking down at his ‘Chief Mate’ shoulder patch.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered

Touji, busy trying to fix the cooker, looked up at him. “Wonder what’s on TV about it,”

They turned it on. Nothing over freeview, RTE were on closedown, and only broadcasting music and cheap decade-old programs that weren’t worth watching. Nobody else broadcast over the air.

---->>

The ship slipped into dock. It was just a routine action. Aisha and Orla began to shut down the main engines and switched the generators to match a change in demand.

“Take first watch Aisha,” Ordered Orla,

“I’ll get my Red Bull while I’m at it,” the catgirl smirked, baring her teeth, “That’ll keep me going all night,”

Orla didn’t doubt it. Sometime she was even jealous of the pair. Then she remembered how she got the Chief Engineer’s patch, and hurried out of the compartment.

On the deck, deckhand Keith McSharry was timing his jump across onto the dock to catch the mooring lines. He felt the engines shut down beneath his feet, the ship now coasting into dock. Electric bow thrusters whined, white water bubbling up between grey hull and stone quay.

One. Swallow a lump. Two. Take a deep breath. Three... and Go!

He felt himself hang in the air for a few moments, before landing awkwardly on flaking concrete. He stumbled forward, throwing his arms out to catch himself. Instead, he hit the ground, gravel biting at his knees and elbows.

The deckhand pushed himself to his feet quickly.

“Alright Danjoe, throw the line!” he called back to the ship.

His fellow deckhand tossed a heavy hawser down to him. He caught it, nearly being knocked off his feet for a second time. Quickly, he looped it over a bollard and signalled for the line to be pulled tight with the capstan. Then he ran astern, catching the second line. Loop it, signal for it to be pulled tight, then onto the third. Loop it over a bollard, let it pull tight. Then don’t run into Kev who’s after doing the exact same thing in the other direction.

“Easy as usual,” he said.

“No problemo,” Keith shrugged, showing his skinned elbows.

Ciara’s generators were still running, the ship fully lit up. The apartments at the end of the island were dark, as could be expected at this hour in the morning. Odd, the Naval base was lit up like a Christmas Tree. Ciara’s older sister, L.E. Órla sat opposite her on the other side of the dock, getting ready to get underway.

The whole Navy side of the island was buzzing... if it was possible for the Irish Navy to buzz. Keith saw the BP tanker truck waiting for them. Great. Then the official looking blacked out Honda Accord, from which a man in a grey suit had just gotten out of.

He was carrying a large brown envelope, and was making a beeline right for them.

“Oh,” he said faintly, “That’s never good.”

Well, it was the Captain’s problem. He was glad he was just a deckhand. He heard a clatter from the deck. Anne had jumped down from the bridge, landing cat-like on all fours. The catgirl vaulted the rail, and landed on the dock, startling the suit. Calmly, she started to jog towards the tanker..

“Hey wait!” the suit called after her.

She stopped dead.

“I’m from the Department of Foreign affairs. I need to see the Captain,”

The man was obviously intimidated by her... she could smell it. And she could see him shaking. ‘Danes and biomods. She reached for her walkie-talkie.

“Captain, Captain. We have a problem. There’s someone here from the government to see you, nyaa~”

“Right, Right. I’ll be down to the dockside in a minute. I’ll meet him there,”

She could hear how tired he was,

“Y’know... maybe you might want to get a catgirl mod, you’d be able to handle late nights better,” she chuckled.

“Hah! My wife’d kill me,”

“I’m sure Meg’d go with you.” she purred, “Nyaaa~”

“I’ll be there in a minute. Just get the fuel loaded. And ask Micheal if he can find some food somewhere,”

“Right, alright.” Spoilsport.

----->>

Garret fixed his cap and Captain’s jacket, doing his best to give off the impression of a true Space Captain. He stepped down the gangplank.

“Captain Garret,” the man offered his hand, “We meet again, though I wish it were under better circumstances,”

“Mister Hall,” Garret shook it. “I’m guessing this is over what happened to the States.”

“Yes,” Hall nodded. “You remember what we discussed last year,”

“I do,” Garret fought down a momentary knot of discomfort. “Why?”

“We know the convention’s been called. The Union is already preparing to send a delegation. I want you to be the representative of the Irish Government on that delegation.”

Garret felt like he’d been shot... even though he’d been expecting the bullet.

“What?”

“We need someone who knows Fenspace, who better than someone who lives there?” He offered the Captain the folder. “Your diplomatic credentials, Ambassador.”

Raymond Garret looked at the folder like it contained his death warrant.

“There’s got to be someone better than me for this man...”

Hall shrugged his shoulder. “Like I said, you’re familiar with Fenspace. And Fenspace is reasonably familiar with you. You and your crew might not be famous as such, but you would still be well thought of, especially for your war record.”

Garret groaned. It made sense alright. Maybe it was a better approach than sending a stuffy diplomat who just didn’t get it... who didn’t know the culture and didn’t understand that green foods weren’t to be eaten.

“Alright, I’ll do it

“Good. Now the second matter. You’re ship is the first European fen ship to land after the dropout, and the only one we’re certain is going back up. So, the German, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, Polish...” he paused to think ...” Belgian and Lithuanian ambassadors making up the EU delegation will be travelling with you,”

“We don’t have the space aboard,”

“They’re travelling light. And naturally, we’ll pay your charter fees, along with a generous bonus for being such a rush job.”

Ever feel like a lamb being herded towards the slaughter?

“I still think you might be better of getting one of the Irish feddies.” he said “They actually do this sort of thing. I think the Captain of the USS O’Brien is from Kilkenny,”

“None of them are down here.” the diplomat stated, “And neither can we contact them quickly. You’re our man,”

Garret felt as uncomfortable with it as he looked. So... essentially, right from being a freighter Captain, to a high-ranking diplomat. Well, if Captain Picard could do it, he sure could do his best to figure out.

“What do I have to do, then?”

“Represent the State’s interests, and negotiate on behalf of the State in accordance with the guidelines in the dossier.”

“Alright, alright. “ He exhaled a long, deep breath. “When are they arriving?”

“When are you departing?”

“Two hours, after we’ve refueled.”

“They’ll be arriving by helicopter before then. Be ready for them. Goodbye and godspeed... Ambassador.”

Ray was just grimly quiet. Sitting right above the US when the dropout happened, and now about to be sitting right in the middle of the political mess that followed.

He wondered which God to curse for this turn of fate.

He made it known to the crew, who were as thrilled as he was. Yes, we’re getting paid quite a bit to do this. Yes, it is unusually fast for an EU mission, but they know how fast Fenspace moves, and the delegation was made up based on what ambassadors where available. No, we do not all get diplomatic immunity. Yes, this does mean we’ll probably get a priority dock.

“God help us, I think we might just have become important in this.”

Anne was right, Garret thought. He’d spent the last six years doing his best to keep from being in the middle of things like this. Notoriety, he’d always felt, was a good way to get people killed. He sighed, looking at that bulkhead in the break room that’d been covered with photographs.

Including one framed, taken on their first arrival into Port Phobos.

Of course, that didn’t stop people getting killed either. Some of the pictures on that bulkhead proved as much.

Feeling achingly tired, he desperately needed some sleep. But the roar of a landing chopper denied him.

---->>

Illuminated only by the glow of their computer screens, Milly and Misha dived through the torrent of information the ship had been flooded with. The felt the engines start up beneath them, the ship shuddering to life once more.

Milly knew she’d seen the name before, but just could not place it.

She checked the clock. The sun was near coming up outside, but still she kept working... having stolen some of Aisha’s Red Bull. The catgirl engineer would be pissed... but needs must, and she needed to stay awake.

Misha was doing her damnedest to keep things from collapsing again. The mundane web was gone... anyone who was awake was scrambling to find information on what had happened in the States. Since most of the major web infrastructure was in the US... even despite the inherent fault tolerance of the whole bloody network, what was left of the web had just gone belly up under the load.

The engines revved up, pushing the ship out to sea at what felt like top speed.

“They’re in a hurry,” Misha commented.

“Trying to get there by midday,” Milly didn’t even look up from her screen.

As if to put a full stop on it, Anne’s voice came over the intercom.

“Rig ship for takeoff. Secure all stations,”

Milly just reached over and pushed the button to signal they were ready. Misha looked perplexed... she hadn’t even checked... but didn’t doubt her. They just kept working, bracing themselves as the engines revved up to full power. The deckplates vibrated under their feet as the ship launched forward in the ocean.

Misha braced herself against the server rack as the ship pitched nose up. Featherston, Featherston... is anybody talking about Featherston. Is anybody talking to us? All the mail was on ‘all-call’... at a guess, maybe a thousand messages a second as everyone trialled their pet theory.

Someone out by Jupiter thought it was the US pulling the plug on the web because they were dicks like that. Some thought he was a dick. Someone else thought it was Al Quaeda. Someone thought he was a cockless moron. Another blamed it all on random chance because, y’know, cockup before conspiracy. Others were pointing to the speed which the Soviets and Stellvians had reacted, and assumed they’d been involved somehow. Screaming tourists, desperate for a way home mingled with people asking questions about loved ones, and wondering just what the hell had happened to the USS Enterprise. Somebody else had mentioned the particle surge... others had also picked up on the radio dropout. Nobody seemed to be mentioning Featherston.

And these messages where hours old, just clearing backlogs.

Maybe their own message had just been swamped in the crowd?

Just one voice in a very loud crowd.

More came in, some messages older, some newer. It was haphazard... almost out of control. The ship’s own servers were doing their damnedest to keep up, only receiving about half of what they were sent. Older unreceived or corrupted stuff would be re-requested, re-sent, then re-lost in the digital blackhole to be requested again.

A hundred times a hundred other ships who’d never bothered to wave their computer systems, were having the exact same problem, dragging everyone else down.

Only use the bare-minimum of handwaving to get things working, that’s how it had been explained to her. It was three years later, and she still didn’t quite get it. It sure hadn’t stopped her from accidentally modding herself to look like Anri from Bubblegum Crisis...thanks to someone putting black handwavium in a coke bottle... so there wasn’t a safety issue to it. Ciara’s crew just didn’t wave things if they could help it.

“We’re not settling into orbit,” Misha commented. “They throttled back, but they’re still pushing it harder than normal. I guess we’re doing about point-one C.”

“You can tell?”

“Yup,” she wiggled her ears.

“Well, that is fast...for..” She just trailed off as her shell script turned up a few matches.

“I know, we’re really motoring now...” a beat. “Find something?”

Milly nodded... she was too busy reading. When she was done, she sat back in the chair and took a long, deep, centring breath, closed her eyes... the read it again. Well, that makes for a nice bit of icing on the cake.

“We’re going to have to talk to the Captain on this one... again.”

---->>

Halfway to Odyssey, and Ray had finally managed to get the other diplomats into his cabin for a friendly chat. They were chafing at the close quarters, being used to travelling in opulent Mercedes limousines, and government jets. But, it was only for a few hours, and if they really didn’t like it, they could get out and push.

“Alright,” he started with his favourite word. “I’ve asked you here because I thought I could fill you all in on what’s actually happening. Now, what do you know so far?”

Georg Lusser, Ambassador for Germany, spoke first.

“We know that all communication has been lost with the United States. Neither civilian, nor military links are operable. Canada and Mexico appear to still be intact,”

“Our embassy in Canada is still responding on shortwave,” Henri Dewoitine, Ambassador of France cut in. “They have no idea what has happened. One moment they were there, one moment not.”

His accent was thick enough that Ray had a hell of a time figuring out what he was saying.

“Same for us,” the Italian Ambassador added in. Her name was, if Garret recalled right, was Marie Morricone.

“The Spanish embassy in Cuba went down at the same time,” Manuel Adaro, said calmly. “Though, it has not spread down to Mexico City. We’ve been trying to get information from them, but most communication links with South America ran through the US. Everything else is overloaded.”

A silence, the other ambassadors looked at each other.

“I think that may be it.” Markas Kalinauskas, of Lithuania, said calmly. “None of us,” he looked at his Belgian, Greek and Polish colleagues, “Can add to this, I do not think.”

Garret nodded. “Well, here’s what we know. We were in orbit at the time of the dropout. I was on the phone with someone in Seattle at the time. We lost our connections, the same as you. FM radio, television, even cellullar. Anyways, we also picked up a radiation burst from the surface at the same time, on these detectors we have to warn us of solar flares. ”

The Ambassadors threw each other unsettled glances. What could cause a burst of radiation, but a nuclear weapon? A high altitude airburst? That theory ignored the fact that the ship they were sitting on, would’ve been incinerated by just such a blast.

“Now, this is where it gets interesting. We looked down, and the normal glow from metropolitan areas was dimmed a great deal, not gone entirely, just dimmed. We’re still picking up some radio transmissions from the United States,” he didn’t say ‘former’, “I think I have one recorded here,” He pushed play on the laptop’s keypad.

"We're on the way! The Freedom Party is on the way, on the way to Richmond. The Confederate States are on the way, on the way back. And the white race is on the way, on the way toward settling accounts with the blacks who stabbed us in the back and prevented us from winning the war. And you all know that -- we should have won the war!"

“Stab in back. We should have won the war.” murmured Georg. “He even sounds like him, if he were from south America,”

Everyone looked at him.

“Well, we think that one’s a broadcasted recording. There’s more like it, but that’s the best one we have, that’s the one that shows what we’re dealing with,”

The French ambassador glared “Is this some Fennish bullshit? Could it be a hoax.”

“If it is, it’s a hoax on us too,” Garret shot back. “We’re only guessing at what happened here, but we have something that fits the facts.”

“Let Mister Garret speak, Mister Dewotine,” the Belgian said quietly. Garret had forgotten her name, but she had really nice brown hair. “I’d like to hear this entirely, before making any judgement”

“Thanks. That’s all that’s coming up from the United States, that we picked up. We also got some music from the same stations. It sounds like something from the 1940’s.”

He played a sample that wasn’t identified, but sounded a little bit like Vera Lynn, if she was from Florida.

“Now we get into a bit of Fenspace history. About three years ago, during the war, there was an incident. Travellers from... well another dimension arrived and they caused something of a fuss. Eventually, they left again, on to another universe. Now, this all started at Stellvia, and they were heavily involved in the whole thing.”

“And it was these Stellvians who called the convention,” Georg finished it.

Garret nodded, a little surprised that nobody questioned the whole travellers from another dimension thing. “It’s a reasonable guess then, that they have some way of detecting these sort of things. They called a Convention when we were still figuring out that something had happened, and we were right above the US when it did.”

“So maybe they caused it?” Marie theorised, “And they’re just calling us up here to make their demands to our face. Bow down before Fenspace, or we knock out your power from orbit.”

Ray wanted to facepalm.

“I don’t mean to impugn your honesty Mister Garret, but maybe the wool’s been pulled over your eyes, too. As I recall, you’re a freighter Captain, one of many, with few if any connections to Fenspace politics. My aide described your reputation in Fenspace as ‘Ciara Who?... Oh, those Irish guys.’ They know the filk about the ambush, more than they know who it’s about.”

“We trade with Stellvians regularly,” he tried to hid his annoyance. “And take charters from them. They wouldn’t do that. It’s bad for business.”

“Yes, but nation...”

“Have you ever actually been to Fenspace?” he snapped her down hard enough to startle the others. Well good, because he was bloody tired, and bloody annoyed. “I’ve lived up here for the last six years, I know who and what I’m talking about”

“Perhaps you should continue,” Georg nudged him back on track. He wanted to hear more.

“Right, Right,” Garret held back on a yawn. “I’m sorry I’m losing my temper, it’s been a long night and I’m tired. Now where was I?” a pause. “Okay, The Stellvians have some way of detecting these interdimensional shifts, and they called this convention very, very quickly. Now we picked up a burst of particle radiation... we can’t tell what kind. I’d bet money the Stellvians can, and that they recognised it as the kind given off by an interdimensional shift,”

He stopped for a second, and let them catch up. Here goes.

“What we think has happened, is that the continental United States has somehow been swapped out with a version where the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War. More specifically, “ he checked his notes, “The version from Harry Turtledove’s Timeline-191 series of novels. The reason for the failure of communications, is because they are about seventy years behind us in technology. That also explains the darker night-view... there’s less industrialisation and urbanisation down there now, along with the changes in radio programming. ”

Silence.

A God awful silence.

“Makes Sense,” Piotrek Juspescyk of Poland, said to himself. Everyone stared at him for a moment. “We’re on a bloody spaceship,” he stated.

“Good point.” Kókkino Poukámiso, of Greece, nodded.

They all had to agree with that.

----->>

Quote:Whoever set up the SMOFcon holoconference had a sense of humor. Or at least they thought they had a sense of humor.

Quote:Somewhere in the asteroid belt, the voice behind the monolith watched as his entire communications rig bluescreened.

robkelk Wrote:He thinks he's a wit. He's half-right...

Quote:A bit more story...

M Fnord Wrote:And added to the doc, which I remind you you *do* have write permissions on, so feel free to add/subtract crap on your own.

Quote:If I'm stepping on toes here, let me know. --Mal