And hey, content! This time we cover the VVS overflight, and we make a terrifying realization. But in chaos comes opportunity, and the opportunity here is truly great. Will our heroes pull off the biggest stunt ever?
Stay tuned, True Believers!
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World USA No Pref. Unknown
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Dakota Foxboy StarRanger4 blackaeronaut
Mal Dartz ECSNorway
Firvulag Jinx
Rob RodH
Bob Ebony
JFerio CobaltGreywalker
--Mal
Gagarin Crater Air Force Base
19 November 2016 00:15 LST
It's a general rule that you shouldn't put an excitable genki girl in charge of anything more complex than a toaster oven. The Soviet Air Force liked to break those general rules, partly just to show that ‘general rules' were a bunch of crap, but mostly for their own amusement.
"C'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon LET'S GO!" Junior Lt. Tomo Takino, daring VVS X-COM pilot, was revved up and ready to go inside her virtual cockpit. Her steed for this mission, the Soviet Ga-15 fighter, gleamed faintly in the launch tube lights.
Her wingmate and superior officer for the mission, Lt. Yomi Mizuhara, was a little less ready to go. "Dammit, Cannonball! Calm down and finish the checklist!" she snapped, trying to focus on finishing her preflight instead of Tomo's ranting.
"Aw, Yomi! We're doing a high-speed run on the USA! Dodging anti-missile radars and TSAB black-project fighters! Adventure! Combat! This is going to be exciting!"
"You hope it'll be exciting; I hope this is nice and boring."
"Stick-in-the-mud."
"Glory-hogging lunatic."
"At least glory's the only thing I hog!"
"WHY YOU-"
"Ahem." Shad "Big Boss" Houben cleared his throat, and that was enough to stop his subordinates from attacking each other. "If you two are finished?"
The two pilots were immediately contrite. "Yes, Boss, sorry Boss," Tomo said.
"Right, you know the mission, just do the job and don't engage any hostiles, if there are any. You'll be reporting directly to the Committee at Korolev. Comm designation for this mission is Hawk Flight."
"Got it, Boss," Yomi replied. "Say, this thing's really got the brass in an uproar, doesn't it?"
Shad paused. "It does," he said. "Hopefully it's nothing. Your job is to find out."
"Understood, sir." Tomo said, as close to ‘all business' as her fundamental makeup would allow. "We'll find out what's happening."
"Very well. Hawk Flight is cleared for launch."
"WOO! Hawk Two, LAUNCH~!" Tomo yelled. The magnetic catapult in the launch tube responded by throwing Hawk Two out into the lunar landscape at 30 gees.
"Tomo..." Yomi growled. "Hawk One, launch!" The catapult in Hawk One's tube threw Yomi headfirst into space. For all her annoyance at her wingmate, Yomi couldn't help but smile as the acceleration from the catapult was replaced by the even harder acceleration of her fusion torch. While it wasn't where a digital schoolgirl from the Tokyo suburbs expected to end up in life, she just couldn't imagine anything more exciting than the thrill of flight.
~**~
Catching up with Tomo was easy enough; Yomi had plenty of experience in that. Chewing her out for leaping without looking was even easier. The rest of the short trip from Luna to Earth was quiet, both pilots only breaking silence to check back with the command staff at Korolev Air Force Base.
"Hey," Tomo said as they approached North America from the east, "I've got a ping, coming up over the hill."
"Ours or theirs?"
"Ours, I think. IFF pings as SS
Ciara, looks like they're on a landing trajectory for Europe."
"Hawk Flight, Korolev Actual. Hail the Ciara, see what they know."
"Roger that, Korlolev." On the common Fen band: "SS
Ciara, SS
Ciara[/]i, this is VVS Hawk 1, please respond, over."
"We hear you, Hawk 1, what's your status?" The radio operator onboard [i]Ciara sounded harried.
"
Ciara, we're looking into something that happened near your position at zero-hundred Zulu. Did you guys see anything?"
"Um... we didn't see anything, but we were talking to a contact in Seattle when everything went dark. Since then all we've picked up are some AM transmissions, over."
"Understood,
Ciara. We're continuing on, safe landings."
"Likewise, Hawk 1. Ciara out."
As the Irish ship passed overhead, the two pilots exchanged virtual glances. "You know what I said about adventure?" Tomo said. "I think I take that back." Yomi grunted, in lieu of further reply.
The two fighters hit atmosphere a hundred miles out from the East Coast. Plasma heating created bright coronas around both vehicles, though thanks to the miracle of handwavium sensors neither craft would be blind during the descent.
[/i]
~**~
Fifty miles below and a few dozen miles to the north, Sam Carsten stood on the deck of the[i] Remembrance and watched two shooting stars race in parallel towards the west. A group of the off-duty crewmen had gathered nearby and were flabbling on about signs and portents. Sam just watched until the shooting stars disappeared from view, then went back below.
Korolev Air Force Base Situation Room
19 November 2016, 00:27 LST
The air in the situation room was thick with tension. Ever since Sora had confirmed that some sort of dimensional incursion had happened right over the United States, everybody and nobody wanted to know what had happened to the planet.
"I bet that it's an invasion, the whole planet's becoming a patchwork like in TORG," Zib Stewart half-joked, watching the screens.
"Oh lord I hope not," fired back Cal Renken. "I haven't played a storm knight in forever. I don't think I remember what to do."
"Okay, we're approaching the entry window," Yomi relayed back to the base.
"No sign of high-bandwidth transmissions, we're not being painted by air-defense radar or challenged by military or civilian ATC."
"Understood, Hawk Flight," Mal said, entirely too calmly. "Maintain course and heading. Scan for any transmissions."
"Roger, Korolev." A pause.
"Correction, we've just been tagged by CFB Bagotville and CFB Goose Bay, both requesting to know what we're doing."
"Tell them you're on a recon mission and you're not entering Canadian airspace." Shad directed. "Anything more, tell them to ask the consulate in Ottawa."
"Gotcha, Boss, relaying now."
"Hawk 2, what do you see?"
"Not a whole hell of a lot, Korolev," Tomo's normally chipper voice was subdued.
"We're passing over the coast, into the Ohio valley, and the city lights are... wrong. There's not enough of them, but the pattern doesn't look like a blackout."
"Curiouser and curiouser. Yomi, you concur?"
"Yeah, Korolev, I do. I'm also picking up transmissions on the AM band, I think it's the same stuff Ciara reported."
"Can you patch us through?"
"Standby, Korolev... there, that should do it."
"President Smith says the United States want peace. They act like they want trouble. We would rather have peace, too. But if they think we can't handle trouble, they had better think again. North America is a big place. We're not all crowded together, the way they are in Europe. There's room on this continent for two great countries-maybe even for three, if the United States ever bother to recollect what they've done up in the north. If the United States think the Confederate States can't be great again, if they think we shouldn't be great again, then they had better think again about that, too."
"COCK-WRANGLING DONKEY FUCKER~!"
Everybody in the situation room jumped at the outburst. Mal Fnord's seemingly unbreakable facade had not just cracked, it had crumbled. "Hawk Flight," he said, voice hard and angry, "new orders. Switch to a search pattern and run over the major populated areas. You're looking for something on the longwave that gives us a date."
"A date?"
"Yeah, day, month and year. Especially the year. I don't care what you pull it off of - time signal, news broadcast, whatever - just get me the year!"
"Um, yessir, we'll get you the year."
Mal nodded. "Good. As for the rest of you," he said, sweeping an arm out to encompass the entire Central Committee, "set Condition One and issue a recall order for all spacecraft. We're in it deep, my comrades, and the only way out is through."
The other Soviets sat there, confused. "Ah, Mal," Kat Stewart said, "would you mind explaining what's wrong? Why are you so focused on the year? It's 2016."
"It isn't in the US," Mal replied grimly. "Not if I'm right, and I hope to hell I'm wrong but if what we just heard is real..." He trailed off.
"Then?" Kat prompted.
Before Mal could answer, Yomi broke in.
"Korolev, Hawk 1. We've got the date information that the Chairman wanted, but it's wrong. It has to be."
"Let me guess," Mal said, "it's not 2016?"
"No sir, according to WPEN out of Philly it's 1940."
1940. The number hung in the room. Nobody dared move, or even breathe for a long moment. Finally, Shad cleared his throat and said "Allright, Hawk Flight. You've got the data Mal wanted. Time to head home, break atmo and return to the barn."
"Er, roger that Korolev. Mind explaining what's going on?"
"An explanation will be available soon, I think," Shad said, giving Mal a significant look.
"Copy that. Hawk Flight out." The comm line pinged out as Yomi and Tomo turned around and started the long climb back to Luna.
"Damn," Mal said softly. "Damn, damn damn damn damn.
Damn."
"So," Zib said, "care to fill us in?"
Mal looked up at the holographic display in the center of the room. Aside from the flashing indicators showing the Soviet forces now on full alert - just short of outright war - the solar system looked much like it always had. "I know that rant," he said. "I've read it before."
"What, in
Mein Kampf?"
"No, though it was inspired by Hitler's bullshit." Mal tore his eyes away from the display and looked at his people, his friends. "It's from an alternate history book," he said. "One where the Confederacy won the Slaver's Revolt and managed to stay independent all the way to the 1940s. The son of a bitch in the book who made that speech is downstairs
right now. He's
real and he's on Earth
right goddamn now." Mal took a deep breath. "I don't know the
how or the
why, but some dirty bastard's ISOTed a viable, fascist Confederacy into our nice clean universe!"
"Holy shit," breathed Kat.
"I thought this would be bad, but I
never imagined..."
"Fascist rednecks?! In
my United States?!"
"We've got to do something! We can't let a group like that just wander around loose!"
"And what about the rest of the world?"
As the others argued, Mal felt his calm coming back. The Zen and sarcasm that had fractured in those few minutes of panic reasserted itself. "Guys, settle down," he said. "The time for panic is over. Now it's time for
action."
The Committee gave him another look. "Okay, schmott guy," Zib said. "What do you propose?"
Mal grinned. The panic was fading fast and once again he was on the jazz. "I propose the biggest stunt we've ever pulled," he replied. "We pull in popular support, the SMOFs, the rest of the Fen, as much of the rest of the world as we can get and we
hit these redneck fucks as hard as we can. If we do this right, we might be able to stop a major war. And even if we can't hit the sweet spot we can shorten the war and minimize casualties. There's a lot of hurting people down there all looking for a savior. I think we might fit the bill."
"You've got to be joking."
"No joke. The plan's still embryonic, but I know what to do. And we do it
right. No shots, no playing, no whittling away at the fuckers. We line up everything carefully and shove it through their hearts in one go. And in the process we become the biggest damn heroes a sad little part of the world has ever seen."
Nothing. Then, something. Elena van Oorebeek, from her post on the edge of the system with the GCU
Yuri Gagarin:
"Well, Mal. I think I speak for all of us when I say that first, you're a gorram lunatic with delusions of grandeur. And second, I must be a gorram lunatic with delusions of grandeur too, because I'm totally in for this. Let's do this thing!"
"We'll need support."
"That won't be hard, half the SMOFs will be itching for a fight just as much as Mal."
"We'll need diplomatic contacts with the zone; maybe we can Commodore Perry our way out of actual fighting."
And on and on it went.
Whaddya think, sirs?[/i]
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
