FicWad

A blood red Dawn


SAC-NORAD Primary Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
0238 GMT, 29 November 2001 (7:38 PM MST, 28 Nov 2001)

In the relaxed calm of the climate controlled NORAD control room, many of the night controllers used the eight-hour shift as their own personal naptime. They hadn’t been put on an alert status higher than DEFCON 4 since the end of the Soviet Union and Cold War, so why bother expecting something that hadn’t happened in the last ten years. When the loud three-tone warning signifying the detection of missile launch came in though, every one of the men and women snapped into a flurry of action.

“Is that a missile launch? I mean a real one?”

“I doubt those are gift baskets, Lieutenant.”

“Call Commander Rickenbacker and get General Eberhart on the line now! We have to let Space Command and NORTHCOM know about this, and get SAC ABM options back online. BMEWS at RAF Fylingdales sees a multiple missile launch from… Europe, narrowing the search area… Western Europe, narrowing further… France? Why the hell would they launch missiles?”

“Are we sure this isn’t some kind of readiness drill? They’ve done…”

“A readiness drill with a missile launch from France? Are you nuts? Why the hell would they…”

“One-three-Sierra-Whisky-Sierra TRACSAT constellation sees eight outbound signals from French first line strike base Mike-2-Alpha-Victor-Golf; known missile type is Minuteman III, range of 5200 miles, probable warhead is Tango-November-niner-zero, yield 3 to 5 megatons. Other first strike bases are quiet, and no evidence of launches from any Le Triomphant SSBN station or the L'Inflexible SSBN station. Seven signals appear to be moving to the north-northwest towards the UK, while the eighth is moving west-southwest over the Atlantic. First seven sigs have high flight arcs, short-range targets likely, probable targets in United Kingdom displayed on the big board, targets in Russia, Iceland and Greenland should be up in a few moments. Sig eight has a shallower flight arc, probable intermediate to long range shot, headed toward New England; probable targets are displayed on big board two.”

“Notify FEMA, I want the entire northeast in fallout shelters in twenty minutes.”

“Commander, that’s not possible! Half the fallout shelters have been demolished and the other half is condemned. Most of the warning systems were disabled in the late seventies and early eighties.”

“Then sound the air raid sirens, tornado sirens, fire engines, police cars, bullhorns, I don’t care what you sound, just get people to safety now!”

“Notify British military liaisons, it looks like the UK is going to be hit damn hard. Try to get as many people as possible into shelters or the subway stations as fast as possible, and keep it up until the missiles hit.”

“General Eberhart is on line 3, and British Air Marshall Stirrup is on line 1. SecDef Ryan is holding on line 2, and the President is on line 4. Every one of them is screaming for answers, and Ryan is asking whether this is some kind of move against NATO. We have someone on the secure command access line; he has identified himself only as codename Fafnir, and he is requesting priority access to the nuclear command structure. Apparently, Fafnir is a codename that only the base commander or General Eberhart can authenticate. A search on the name brought up several top-secret files that we could not access. Should we let him through the firewall?”

“No. I have never heard of this ‘Fafnir’ character, and I doubt that General Eberhart has heard of him either. If that moron wants in, tell him that he has to go through proper channels like everyone else. And give the SecDef this exact message, verbatim: ‘A move against NATO from inside NATO?’ It makes no sense, and hell, its France! The last time they attacked anyone first was in 1803 under Napoleon. Why would they even …”

“Target envelopes are closing. Probable strike on London, probability of .961 according to the computers, we can count that one as definite; time to impact is approximately 14 minutes at present missile velocity. Bristol, probability of strike is .883, impact in 15.3 minutes at present velocity. Leeds second most probable strike location with .914, ETA of warhead is 14.1 minutes at present missile velocity. Four other targets deemed most likely are in descending order of probability, Manchester at .794, Cardiff at .788, Belfast at .780, and Glasgow at .778. Projected ETA envelope is 17-25 minutes; tell Air Marshall Stirrup to get the Royal Family to safety now, and to sound alarms throughout the nation. Sig eight’s target envelope now limited to states of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and all of Washington D.C. ETA envelope is now 26-38 minutes at present velocity of 1.94 kilometers per second.”

“Notify Washington; get the President and the whole NCA onto NEACP now. Get Congress out of Washington and to the old blast shelters. Don’t argue with me Torsten just do as I said. Tell Travis AFB to get at least three Mercury aircraft in the air ASAP or we might be FUBAR.”

“I am receiving confirmation from RAF Strike Command; civil defense warnings in London, Manchester, and Belfast are online and sounding. FEMA reports that all civilian electronic transmissions from broadcasting stations on the Eastern Seaboard are now transmitting the standard emergency warning with special instructions. The President and his staff are now en route to Andrews AFB, and the Vice President is being moved from her suite in Hanoi to a secured location. Designated survivor is Janine Allison Fitzpatrick, Vice President, staying on USS Theodore Roosevelt, Charlie-Victor-November-seven-one, current location at holding station India-Zulu-Yankee-two-six-seven-Lima.”

“Are we absolutely sure this isn’t some kind of drill?”

“Negative. Independently collected data from RAF high altitude radars and BMEWS confirms that this is not a drill.”

“ETA to first impact now 8 minutes. Target envelope on sig eight has narrowed to an ovoidal plane of one hundred miles major radius and sixty miles minor radius, centre of 40° 45’ N, 73° 50’ W, probable targets displayed on big board two. Projected casualties are now approaching 110 million.”

“We have confirmation; the royal family of the UK is safe in Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. NEACP has just left Andrews and is en route to safe house Kilo-2-1-Quebec, grid reference Uniform-Sierra-four-four-seven-two-six-one-niner-Oscar-November. The President and the SecDef have made it very clear that we are not to launch retaliatory strikes until we have confirmation that this is part of an actual attack. He has ordered us to go to DEFCON 1, posture one-Alpha-zero. All nuclear launch orders are to go through him, via the Football. Repeat, there will be no nuclear launches without the President’s express approval on the target and intention of the strike in question. We have been ordered to reactivate all nuclear commands to prepare for full scale war.”

“Roger, DEFCON One, posture one-Alpha-zero. Activating 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman AFB, 47th Missile Squadron at Tsiolkovsky Spaceport, Maine and Third Missile Group at Cochrane Spaceport in Montana, the first three commands are signaling full readiness for full thermonuclear conflict. Informing all commands that all leaves and vacations are cancelled until further notice, violators are to be rounded up by the MPs, using any force necessary, excepting deadly force. Four flights of eighteen B-52I Stratofortresses are moving to Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean. We are receiving notices of confirmation from King’s Bay, Bangor and San Diego; all boomers are leaving the barns as quickly as possible. Our boomers should be at their assigned fail-safe points in less than three days, and each should have an escort of two to three attack subs.”

“Target envelopes in the UK have retracted to twenty miles square. Projected impact at London in five… four… three… two… one… impact!”

“Jesus tap-dancing Christ! Look at that fireball! It has to be at least two miles wide! That’s got to be a full megaton device, at the very least.”

“We have lost North Atlantic TRACSATs one, four, six, eight, nine and ten. TRACSATs two, three, five, seven, eleven and thirteen are moving to compensate for the loss. Resolution is reduced by 24.22 percent, and we will not be able to see high definition photos of the areas around GZ until the formation is repaired. Next impacts are projected in three, two, one, and zero! TRACSAT confirms Cardiff and Bristol are hit. Next impact is at Manchester in seven, six, five four, three, two, one, zero, goodbye Manchester and Manchester United. Leeds in six, five, four, three, two, one, zero; Leeds is gone. Projected casualties are now above forty-four million and still rising.”

“What about the missile over the Atlantic?”

“Signal eight now has a target envelope of 750 square miles, centered on New York City. Probability of strike on New York City is .971; we can count that as a certainty. Time to target is 12 minutes 17 seconds. Update FEMA and get them to evac NYC on the double. Sanders! You go over the NEACP station and …”

“What about ABM options? Do we have any?”

“Negative. No effective anti-ballistic missile systems are currently in operation. It would take three days to get the first one ready to fire in any case.”

“Glasgow in six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. Belfast in three, two, one, zero. All targets in UK have been hit; we see blast damage in all seven targets, and it is consistent with a warhead in the one to three megaton range. We have no idea what kind of damage we could be looking at, at least until we rebuild the TRACSAT net.”

“What is the status on the evacuation of New York?”

“The UN Security council, most of the general assembly and the General-Secretary have evacuated and they are on their way to Chicago, and from there they will be moved to St. Louis. Most of the ancillary committees and councils have moved to temporary headquarters in southern New Jersey, upstate New York and Massachusetts Bay. They should be safe there from the radiation, thermal, flash and blast effects, but headquarters that are more permanent will be setup in the next few weeks.”

“How about the civilians’ situation?”

“Every road is clogged with traffic, the airports are gridlocked, and the Air Combat Command is going nuts trying to get all the airliners out of the projected damage path. We might save about 7 percent of the city’s total population, but beyond that, it is just too late to do anything.”

“Get Air National Guard cargo and rescue helicopters if you have to, just get more people out. Move all military assets out of the area and …”

“Sending people into the area will only create more casualties, sir. It is simply too late.”

“New York warhead impact in twelve seconds, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero!”


New York, New York, United States
03:31:13 GMT, 29 November 2001 (10:31:13 PM EST, 28 Nov)

The warhead’s ground zero was located directly above the neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, about three eighths of a mile from the boundary with Downtown Manhattan. Within a single second of the implosion that created the superhot temperatures and super high pressures needed for the deuterium-tritium fusion processes to occur, a fireball more than a quarter of a mile wide had formed at 3000 feet. The fireball initially burned at more than 50000 °F, over four times hotter than the surface of the sun, and the internal pressures reached more than one hundred million times the pressure of the atmosphere. Over the next twelve seconds, the fireball expanded rapidly to a maximum diameter of just over 1.6 miles, and as the massive ball of flame expanded, the temperature gradually cooled to just over 5500 °F. The radius of the fireball was greater than that of the height of the burst, and as such, over a thousand tons of material was almost instantly converted into a quasi-plasmatic state from the heat, increasing the luminosity of the fire at an exponential rate. For just over a minute and a half, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut beheld a second sun, more than a million times more intense then the star some 93 million miles away. Shadows permanently etched themselves into the streets, buildings and sidewalks, making a grizzly mausoleum of shades of black and grey.

A wave of 22-psi overpressure moved ahead of the initial shockwave, shattering windows into innumerable pieces, smashing so much decorative masonry and sending cars flying into the air. The brick buildings directly below the fireball didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell; the bricks superheated to over 4000 degrees Fahrenheit. Above 1700 °F, construction quality, non-fire bricks become ticking time bombs ready to explode violently at the slightest touch; at 4000 degrees, each individual brick could have the explosive power of five pounds of C4. The compression force of the overpressure made the hundreds of thousands of bricks shatter both outward and inward, creating billions of molten fragments that destroyed anything in their paths. All of this happened in nanoseconds.

Only five seconds after the initial explosion, the outer pressure wave was more than 2.75 miles from ground zero. The modern steel and aluminum built skyscrapers in the Downtown district swayed dangerously away from GZ, like palm trees in a hurricane. When the second pressure wave hit eight hundredths of a second later, the skyscrapers simply snapped off their bodies from a third of their total height. The blast of heat melted the glass into molten pools, it caused any person caught in it to spontaneously combust, cremating them in ten-thousandths of a second, and their ashes were swept up in the following windblasts. When the tops of the skyscrapers hit the ground, the massive shockwaves shook every solid surface within them to a rough powder, furthering the radioactive spread.

Twenty seconds after the detonation, the shock wave had reached Staten Island, and while the force driving the wave had lessened considerably, the force of the overpressure collapsed hundred-year-old buildings instantly. The newer industrial complexes didn’t collapse, but when the heat wave reached them, any flammable surface became a major fire hazard. Propane containers became deadly firebombs, natural gas lines exploded, taking out dozens of blocks almost instantaneously. Within microseconds, over a hundred city blocks were destroyed in the largest gas explosion in seventy years. The heat was later calculated to have reached a final temperature of 3184.1°C, hot enough to ignite the hydrocarbons in ordinary plastics such as in children’s toys or plastic soda bottles. The wind picked up the rubble and the now high-velocity rubble buffeted anything in front of it, which in turn helped to reduce even more structures into rubble, and they too became part of the unstoppable force.

Forty seconds after the detonation, the 225 mph after-winds began drawing dust and larger particulate matter back toward GZ, irradiating billions upon billions of micron-sized particles and sending them into the upper troposphere. From there, the radioactive particles would distribute over millions of square miles of ocean and land, carried by the winds, happily quadrupling cancer rates all over the world. The characteristic mushroom cloud had only just begun forming and was no more than two kilometers high, but it was expanding at a rate of more than 340 mph upwards and 20 mph outwards. The few surviving photographs of the cloud would be called, by engineers, excellent examples of real-life Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. By now, most of the population of the city was either dead or dying. The sedans, trucks, vans and taxis clogging the bridges off the island of Manhattan flew about like leaves in a high wind, while the people inside were cooked alive almost instantaneously.

Two minutes forty-five seconds after the detonation, the mushroom cloud had reached its maximum width at just over 2.4 miles wide, but the top of the cloud was now eleven kilometers from the ground and it was still rising at 190 mph. By now, the blast and pressure waves had dissipated, and the afterwinds were pulling ever more material into the deadly cloud of dust and ash, which by now weighed several hundred tons. With every second, over three tons of particulate matter was swept into the cloud, effectively doubling its mass every few minutes. By now, the larger pieces of irradiated material had begun the slow descent to earth, creating the most unpleasant effect of a nuclear detonation: the fallout. The clouds contained high levels of Iodine 131, Cesium 137, Iron 59, and extremely high levels of Cobalt 60 and Zinc 65, providing evidence that this warhead had been “salted” to produce high radiation levels.

Nothing could stop the cloud’s rise into the mid stratosphere. Almost as soon as the cloud broke into the jet stream, tons of radioactive isotopes began a slow inexorable march over the northern hemisphere, leaving a trail of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation in its wake. A strange curve in the local jet stream caused a large part of the toxic cloud to move, contrary to the normal circulation route, to the west over New England. The heavier particulate matter settled into the torrential rain system that had occupied the area for the last three weeks, bringing radioactivity down with each tiny raindrop. The water began soaking in to the nearly saturated ground and eventually it would contaminate most of the water tables in the area, making the local water supplies toxic for decades. Most of the cloud began moving to the east, over the ocean, where the medium sized particles would eventually drift down and contaminate hundreds of cubic kilometers of ocean water. The fine particles would stay in the air for years, falling to earth gradually, making sure that cancer rates stayed at high levels throughout the northern hemisphere.


Secured Facility, United States, grid reference Uniform-Sierra-four-four-seven-two-six-one-niner-Oscar-November, exact location classified above top secret
0340 GMT, 29 November 2001 (9:40 PM CST, 28 November)

“Sir, we have received confirmation. Nuclear detonations have occurred above seven cities in the United Kingdom and New York. Damages are expected to be close to total, with at least seventy million casualties in dead, wounded and missing.”

“Thank you, Jack. Now what does the Defense Department know about this attack? Is it a move against the principal partners in NATO, is it a freak accident, or is this some kind of terrorist incident on a scale which we have never seen before?”

“President Chirac has assured us that this is not of his doing, nor is this missile launch sanctioned in any way, shape or form by his government. Early reports from a scout team in the area indicate that the personnel in control of the missile site are dead. It is my belief that this is a terrorist incident, and the French government should bear no responsibility for the previous events.”

“Ryan you’re up. Have either one of your departments picked up anything that would have given us forewarning? What about your contacts in the Air Force Intelligence Command? You do still hold the rank of Colonel, do you not?”

“Negative. Neither the CIA nor the NSA have picked up any chatter that would normally precede an operation of this magnitude. The LifeGuard system has not sent any computer documents that indicated any operations of this type anywhere in the world. If they planned this at all, they did not use computers at any stage in either planning or execution. I had thought this to be impossible at this point in time, where computers are used for just about everything. The Air Force has picked up nothing, and yes I am still Colonel Ryan A. Potts, on detached service to the IIC, serial number 9241-614-32ZB-AA.”

“Okay, so you both agree that this is a terrorist incident. Now, which particular group of terrorists are we dealing with? Could it be Osama bin Laden with his merry band of nitwits, Khaled Mashaal and his unique brand of assholery, or is it someone we haven’t met before? Any way you slice it, I don’t care who they are, I want them hung from the highest branch of the tallest tree on live satellite television. Nobody but nobody attacks America without severe consequences. First impressions gentlemen, I want to hear ‘em.”

“Kevin, I don’t have a clue. I don’t know who could have done this without some word leaking out. From a practical standpoint, it is simply impossible to do these types of operations without security leaks of some sort.”

“/I/, however, do have an idea as to who may have done this, Kev. A fortnight ago, we began tracking strange movements of large numbers of both troops and equipment in the British Isles. I have conferred with the British military liaisons, and they told me that they had no troops or equipment of the sort our recon birds saw in those parts of the country. Strangely, when the birds took a second look for the equipment and troops ninety-six minutes later on the next satellite pass, they were nowhere to be found. They would reappear sporadically, but whenever the sats would look for them again, they had vanished into nothingness. Whoever owns the equipment and commands the troops is our man.”

“That sounds good, although I have one bone of contention with that supposition of yours, Ryan. You said that these troops and pieces of equipment were located in the British Isles. Now why would anyone in the British Isles launch nukes at their own country? It does not make sense.”

“I don’t know why, but it is possible that these troops and equipment belong to a group of anti-monarchists attempting to overthrow the Crown. I believe this because of the targets that were selected. All the cities were the command centers for regional military commands, all were near at least one of the known royal residences, and three of them were the capitals of a part of the UK. If the terrorists were planning a decapitation strike, then they very nearly accomplished their goal; the Queen and most of the command staff were set to return to London early tomorrow morning.”

“It sounds good, but how do you know these ‘troops’ were just a bunch of drunken civilians out partying after a soccer match?”

“Do drunken civvies have access to former Soviet Surface to Air missile systems, Katyusha rocket launchers and T62 tanks? If they do, then it is entirely possible.”

“I don’t know; you can get almost anything over the internet nowadays. I once saw a guy offering a shrunken head for a thousand bucks.”

“The IIC keeps very close tabs on the sale of any current or former military technology, and we have not noticed any significant purchase orders in the last fifteen years. Every now and then you’ll see the odd T62 being sold off to some eccentric multimillionaire, but the formations we saw had at least a hundred tanks, and forty Katyusha mobile rocket launchers. You can’t just shrink those things into toy-sized pieces and carry them through security checkpoints, it is literally and physically impossible. We flag any order of more than one of those tanks or rocket launchers –with the ones we don’t flag we follow up– and I am telling you that they could not have come through any internet site, period, and end of discussion.”

“It is not the end of the discussion Ryan; we have to figure out where these people got the equipment.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, you are getting off course. Right now, you are telling me who is probably responsible, and what we should do about this whole situation. We can argue about where the military equipment came from later. Now Jack, you tell me whether this might have something to do with Al Qaeda.”

“It is highly unlikely. Bin Laden usually prefers to make grandiose claims of being able to duplicate his attacks within minutes of their occurrence and at any place on the planet. He also prefers to proclaim responsibility as loudly and obnoxiously as possible, and as soon after the attacks as humanly possible. He has done neither, and the probability that this was one of his designs is microscopic.”

“We don’t have to worry about bin Laden. With a single command, I can send a missile straight up his ass and have it pop out of his mouth. If he so much as twitches we can have him dead before he can blink. One of his personal bodyguards is a deep-cover agent, and he has kept us informed of every single change of address of Mr. Bin Laden.”

“The man is on the FBI Top Ten Terrorist list, and you don’t supply his location? That could be construed as obstruction of justice.”

“You didn’t ask Kev, and I didn’t tell. Besides, he’s in southern Tajikistan, and they won’t let us into their country for almost any price. If I remember correctly, the last time we even asked, they demanded special economic considerations and a permanent spot on the UN Security Council, ‘or else’. I had every reason to believe that their price would just as outrageous this time. They have been antagonistic and sort of tetchy ever since the revolution in ’98.”

“Potts thirty, Martindale seven. I’m putting my money on him, Kevin. I’ve lost too many bets.”

“You don’t gamble Jack.”

“It’s a figure of speech, get over it.”

“In any case Kevin, you now know the long and short of it. I have to leave for a prior engagement now, but I will be at the press conference in two hours. Farewell.”

Two hours later, the President gave a live televised speech to the nation. The transcript of the speech follows:

"My fellow Americans, it is with great sadness that I address you tonight. I must inform you that at approximately 10:31 PM Eastern, the city of New York was obliterated by a 5-megaton thermonuclear warhead. Over ninety-five percent of the city has been destroyed, and forces unknown have heinously murdered almost twenty-seven million people.

“We do not know who is responsible for this tragedy but I will assure you that they will not escape punishment. This is not only an atrocity against America, but also an attack on the sovereign state of United Kingdom; seven cities in the United Kingdom now no longer exist, and the casualties are expected to run close to 93 million people with all attacks combined.

“We do not know what the intentions for this attack are, but if they were to bring America to its knees, then it has failed. We may be down, but we are most certainly not out, nor will we throw in the towel before the final bell.

“I now ask you, the people of this great and powerful nation, to support me as I ask Congress to declare war on the evil that has orchestrated these attacks with all the righteous might of these United States. An assault of this magnitude must be met with our valor, our blood, even our very lives to ensure that these evildoers will not escape our righteous retributions, and that evil such as theirs will not tarnish the surface of the earth. While we may not know precisely who is behind these attacks, we can be sure that they hold no reservations on committing mass murder, which is precisely what these attacks were. Mass. Murder.

“I say in the immortal words of the 35th President’s inaugural speech that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to ensure the survival and success of liberty. We have already paid a terrible price for liberty; in the Revolutionary War many died to make this nation a reality; in the Civil War, brother fought against brother and America knew great suffering. In World War II, America lost a great many of its best and brightest to the works of dictators and the notions of fools who believed that America can ignore the rest of the world and its affairs.

“Our hardships have been many, and I have no doubt that in the coming months and years we will face hardships that make those previous seem meager pittances and minor trifles. However, we must endure the trials and tribulations, and we will win through to absolute victory at any cost if we are to defend the principles of justice and liberty for all.

“I now end by asking for a moment of silence for the many millions who have died this night. Good night, Good luck, and God bless America."

Around the nation, people were applauding the television sets, enthralled by the simple unbridled passion the middle-aged man could inject into his prose. His manner of speaking was one of the reasons he had received more than seventy percent of the popular vote in the presidential election of 2000, and why he was the first Senator to be elected to the Presidency in over forty years. Even though he had originally been a simple carpenter, he had a gift with words; he could weave a tapestry of emotion and imagery so perfect that one could not help but be swept away with the ebb and flow of the prose.

As soon as Martindale was off camera, Colonel Ryan Potts ran over to congratulate him on the speech.

“Great speech Kev, I almost got teary eyed up at the reference to JFK, and alluding to the Pledge of Allegiance was simply brilliant. I just hope that Congress lets us do what has to be done.”

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us.” Other than that, Martindale was silent and pensive for the rest of the night, hoping against hope that he had made the right decision in asking for war.


Hogwarts Castle, Scotland
0531 GMT, 29 November 2001

“Albus, we have a whole new ballgame on our hands. We simply cannot ignore the possibility that these attacks were carried out by You-Know-Who. If he is behind these, then we are dead in less than two weeks.”

“Kingsly, I agree, but we must not reveal ourselves unnecessarily to the Muggles. It could spell disaster for our kind.”

“Without the assistance and military forces they can provide, we won’t last two months. Before this happened we had lost just about every major stronghold controlled by the Ministry or the Order, and we were getting ready to send up the white flag. If you persist in obstructing the only logical course of action, then I have no choice but to call for a vote of no confidence in your leadership.”

“So it’s a coup you’re leading.”

“I am not leading a coup. I just believe that the leadership of this organization has become ineffectual and ponderous, and I am seeking to change that with a shift in the entrenched bureaucracy.”

“Kings, stop hangin’ about the politicians, you talk like they do. I didn’t understand a word you jus’ said.”

“Dung, you couldn’t understand what I said even if I brought it down to your level.”

“Will you three knock it off? I’m trying to take a nap before I report to Fylingdales. And why are you in my room anyway? By the way, Shacklebolt, stop working at the Ministry, you sound like a useless, feckless bureaucrat.” The voice was slightly slurred and husky with sleep, but it could only belong to one person.

“Well excuse me, Mr. Potter, but I didn’t realize that I was disturbing your precious sleep.”

“Shacklebolt, I have a loaded .50 caliber handgun under my pillow. If you would like to meet it and have a little tête-à-tête with the bullets, then keep speaking. Otherwise, shut up and let me get more sleep.” Obviously, Harry is not a morning person.

“I vote we move this into another area.”

“Why should we cater to his wishes?”

“You will do as I said because I am the only one present with both a loaded gun and the willingness to use it if you do not leave, immediately.”

“Good enough reason for me. ‘Ow ‘bout you gents?”

“I will not leave just because some brat believes he can order us about because he is the Man-Who-Lived.”

At this point, Harry had lost his temper and drawn out the aforementioned pistol from underneath the pillow. In a single fluid motion, he had cocked the gun and pointed it directly at the space between Kingsley’s eyeballs.

“Leave. Now!”

“We’re leaving! Just don’t shoot!”

The acquiescent pair dragged the dissenting party out of the room quickly, and they went to what had been converted into the main meeting chamber of the Order. Within fifteen seconds of their exit, Harry was blissfully returned to dreamland.

“Kings, I think you best avoid ‘im for the nex’ few days.”

“I quite agree with that, Mr. Shacklebolt. You are a valuable asset, and losing you would be a terrible detriment to the cause.”

“Getting back on track, we must ask for international aid before we lose this war entirely. We are two steps from losing this war, and you know it. I won’t act unilaterally, but it is in our best interests to reveal our existence before the sword of Damocles falls.”

“Kings, Albus, I just got the official list targets that have been hit. There is no apparent pattern to the targets, but they are all quote-unquote desirable targets for what the mundane military have termed a decapitation strike. It is a strike intended to knock out all possible response to a nuclear attack or conventional invasion by eliminating the civil and military leaders of a nation. If this is the work of the Dark Lord, then it would be the perfect prelude to a full on war.”

“I told you, but you just wouldn’t listen. We might be on the fast track to losing this war. I think that all four of us can agree that that occurrence would be bad. Now, what the hell are we going to do about this can of worms?”

“I say we should put this matter before a committee created for the express purpose of responding to these circumstances.”

“Is there any kind of action implied in that idea at all? If the action is wasting time and delaying any type of action then you are going down the right path Albus. Remember, a committee is a life form with at least three heads, and no brain.”

“I have to agree with Kingsly here. Forming a committee to create a plan of future action is putting a Band-Aid on a slashed throat. We have to play it fast and loose with the rules here, and not make any plans set in stone. Right now, we have to be as fluid as water, quick as lightning and as deadly as a killing curse if we are going to survive the next few months. As a famous man once said, we have to eat lightning and crap thunder. We are on his turf now, and we need to be very bloody careful that we don’t figuratively step on a landmine and royally fuck ourselves up.”

“Fine. We will do as Mr. Shacklebolt has suggested and reveal our entire world to the muggles, which will affect not only those of us here in Britain, but the entire world. I leave the execution of this to you, Nymphadora, and to you Kingsly; this matter is now under your purview, and I wash my hands of the whole business.”

Soon after that, representatives were selected from the elite of the order to be sent to the most important heads of state on the planet. The representatives were selected for their geniality, their ability to speak and sound both educated and civilized, and most importantly, their diplomatic abilities and their tempers. Neither Tonks nor Shacklebolt wanted to ask Harry whether he would be willing to meet with the king of Sweden, the Bundespräsident of Austria, or the President of Russia for fear of meeting the object underneath his pillow, so they sent Fletcher into Harry.

Fletcher opened the door to the bedroom as quietly as he possibly could, and ever so slowly moved to the side of the bed. He moved to gently shake Harry awake. As soon as his hands had touched Harry’s shoulders, however, Harry had Fletcher’s right forearm in a vice grip, and two seconds later he had broken it. Within five seconds of being touched, he had his pistol jammed against Mundungus Fletcher’s left temple, ready to fire. Then, Harry woke up.

By this time, Fletcher was pleading tearfully for his measly blip of an existence to be extended past the next few seconds. Harry blinked, looked at the sidearm in his right hand, then looked at the sobbing man in front of him, and then repeated the process several times before lowering the handgun.

“I thought I told you not to wake me up by touching me the last time this happened.”

As you can probably gather, he did not receive a response. In fact, as soon as he had finished speaking, Fletcher made an unconscious decision. That is to say, his body decided to go unconscious.

Now fully, and quite grumpily, awake, Harry strode to the operations center, formerly the potions classroom, where almost every day of the war was fought and planned.

“Somebody needs to go up there to tend to Dung.”

“What did he do? No, wait. What did you do? You don’t need to try to kill everyone who attempts to wake you up early in the mornings.”

“I could debate that, but I won’t. Remember how Hestia once tried to wake me up by shaking me? Right after I had gone through the MI6/SAS joint training program? Remember how she ended up?”

“Really Harry, must you attempt to shoot anyone who wakes you up? She was babbling incoherently for almost a week after that, and she still won’t get within twenty feet of you.”

“I was trained to defend myself even in sleep. When I broke Dung’s ulna and radius, I wasn’t even awake, nor was I awake when I put my gun to his temple. I did warn you not to attempt to wake me up with anything other than a bucket of ice water.”

“Yes, we all know that, but time was of the essence. We did not have time to get a gallon of ice water, chill it to precisely 3.97 degrees centigrade, and carefully pour it on your head.”

“Fine, I get it. You needed me immediately. What is so fucking important that man had to have his arm broken to get me down here?”

“We have selected you as a diplomatic envoy. Where would you rather go: Sweden, Austria or Russia? Before you explode, we needed to get your decision now because the envoys are going to meet with the respective heads of state at 0800 Local time in each respective time zone. You should still be able to make it to Fylingdales with plenty of time to spare.”

“I am not even going to dignify that request with a response. I have neither the time nor the inclination for diplomacy. To me, diplomatic processes go something like this: Do what I say, or I shoot your brains out. Get Longbottom to do it.” As he said this, he began walking out the door.

Kingsly decided to be most unhelpful and provide a quip that strengthened the currently red-haired woman's position all of none.

"You must admit, his version of diplomacy does have a very simple and persuasive argument."

Ignoring the entirely unhelpful comment, Tonks continued in her efforts. “Harry. Harry! You can’t just foist this off on someone else, and besides, Neville is already on his way to Canada.”

“Just watch me ‘foist this off on someone else’, Nymph. Now that I’m up, I might as well get my ass to the airbase and start reading up on and trying out the weapons available to us. Sayonara.”

“You can’t run away from your responsibilities all the time you jerk!”

From off in the distance came the faint mocking reply of “Just watch me!”


Somewhere in the United Kingdom
0612 GMT, 29 November 2001

“Lucius, do you have any information on these explosives? What are they? How do they work and how many of them are there?” As he spoke, he congratulated himself once again for ridding his speech of that annoying hiss.

He hadn’t been completely insane when the puling idiot Wormtail had resurrected him, but after two years of hearing everything he spoke accented with a slurring hiss, he felt ready to sod it all and check into the Cuckoo’s Nest. When Malfoy had found a spell that would rid him of the abominable sibilance, he felt like a new man. A mere two days after the spell was performed, he had managed to delude himself into thinking that he had found the spell and that everyone on the planet was in complete awe of his power and prowess.

His throne sat on a raised dais made of pure black obsidian from the area around Pompeii and Herculaneum, carved into the forms of all the demons of hell. His throne itself was made of a single black diamond, carved into the form of a monstrously beautiful seat composed of human skeletal remains. The back of the ornate seat looked as if it were made of the spinal columns of at least a hundred men and women, and the arms seemed to be made from four femurs each. At the very top of the chair was a part of the carving that looked like the body of a small child, with the mandible of the skull broken and the top punched outward, making a crown of sorts. The effect of the whole was simultaneously grotesque and breathtaking.

“I know only a little, my Lord. There are made of very certain types of metal, and they can obviously destroy entire cities in seconds. They work by an arcane art known as physics, and they somehow turn matter into other types without magic.” This is where not having been brought up in a society trapped in the sixteenth century would definitely help with any sort of understanding. Well, that and having any knowledge of basic atomic theory would help immensely.

“According to my research, there are thousands of these weapons all over the world, including here in Britain. However these are all made by muggles, and are therefore inferior to anything that we could produce.”

“Agreed, but can we make these bombs?”

“Whether we can or cannot is unknown at this time, although if the muggles did it, we should be able to duplicate the results with no problems.”

“Good, get a team on that as soon as possible. Now how did the raids go? I expect that with the explosions, we managed to accomplish all of our goals without any casualties. Is that what happened?”

Lucius gained the classic deer in headlights look that any minion of any dictator sported when he had to disappoint the megalomaniacal despot, which quite possibly could mean the end of his privileged life.

“Umm… Ah…” He moved to a nearby door, went outside, and closed the door.

“No.”

He then found the sensation of being dragged through a solid wooden door to be rather unpleasant, and in truth, it was downright painful. However, it was nothing compared to looking at one of the most hideous excuses for a human being from less than six inches away, while said persons hand are grabbing your collar in a death grip.

“I assume that I must have misheard you, Lucius. You just told me that my brilliant and utterly perfect plan failed. Did I hear you correctly?”

“Yes.”

“Yes I heard you correctly, or yes you gave the incorrect response?”

“Umm… yes! No! No! I don’t know! Maybe so!” This confused babbling went on for some time before the herpetologically inclined humanoid decided that he should relieve the strain on the man’s brain.

“I won’t kill the messenger, Lucius. I will merely maim the messenger.”

Suitably reassured by this admission, Lucius calmed himself to the point where he would not hyperventilate in the middle of a sentence.

“No, they did not accomplish their goals. Military resistance was much stiffer than we had anticipated and as soon as the teams ported in, the enemy began firing on them. We suffered over eighty percent losses and accomplished nothing. Even at the suspected Order strongholds, our operations turned into bloodbaths on a scale we had never anticipated. Right now we are at thirty-eight percent strength.”

“But you are doing everything in your power to rectify this mistake, are you not?”

“Yes! Yes I am! It will be rectified, I promise you!”

“Good. Now leave.”

“Yes my Lord!”


Secured Facility, United States, grid reference Uniform-Sierra-four-four-seven-two-six-one-niner-Oscar-November, exact location classified above top secret
1400 GMT (8:00 AM CST), 29 November 2001

“What do you take us for, madam? Do you think we are all fools born yesterday? Magic does not exist, period. Saying that magic exists is like saying that a jolly pink marshmallow king created the planet or that Scientologists have IQs higher than thirty.” Colonel Potts usually said what the President was too much of a genteel man to say, although what the Colonel used as the Presidents thoughts was often highly insulting to a great many.

“As incredible as it sounds Mr. President, it is all true. The whole shebang, the whole kit and caboodle, everything I have told you is true. Every fairy story you have ever heard has a basis in reality, and almost all of them have a beginning in the magical world. Hansel and Gretel was based off the life of a woman named Agatha Sorenson who lived in the early 1300s. She actually did eat children, but when one of the children got a hold of a wand, the child set her on fire, roasting her alive.”

“Excuse me, but you could have pulled any name, date and fairytale out of your ass and made the story just as believable. Moreover, those so-called ‘memories’ look like they could have been shot by any motion picture crew with an adequate amount of pecuniary assets and perseverance; I mean, just look at what Spielberg did with ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Thus far, I neither seen nor heard anything that would make me believe in magic.

“You, my dear, are merely an insignificant charlatan who somehow managed to get inside our defensive grids without being killed by the numerous levels of security. Now tell me who you are and who you are working for before I make the remainder of your soon to be short life a living hell.” The man who spoke was Colonel Potts, a firm skeptic of that which he could not observe in action, and those that had no scientific backing.

“My name is Cho Chang, I am working for the Order of the Phoenix, and I am on a diplomatic mission to secure military aid against our common enemy. Give me five minutes, please. At the end of five minutes, if you still are not convinced, I will gladly go into your custody.”

“Very well. Five minutes, starting… now.”

“Ok, look at this. This is an ordinary hat-”

“And now you pull a rabbit out of it. Congratulations, you just lowered my estimate of your intelligence to that of a low-grade moron or a creationist. Any idiot who knows how to follow basic directions can do that trick, so I’ll go and call the MP-”

“Potts shut up and let the woman work.” While the president did respect that his chief of intelligence often obtained results in a very timely manner, he had become weary of the man’s intolerance for those who had views different from his own.

“Kevin, she isn’t going to do-o-o-o. How the hell did you do that?”

She turned the hat into a rabbit. From six feet away.

“I told you already, magic.”

“Nice try, but David Blaine could do the exact same thing, although he would have probably done it while encased in flames. Got any other tricks to show us?”

She pointed her wand at a nearby desk and uttered /bombarda/. Within a tenth of a second, the desk was in thousands of pieces, and the Colonel was looking much less cocky than a moment before. The President however, looked absolutely livid.

“What in hell did you do?! That desk was carved in 1864! It was one of a kind, you crazy bitch! If you don’t fix it right now…” The President was rather fond of the desk that had been carved for Lincoln’s second term, and he had it in a very secure place for safekeeping. Well, it should have been safe, but who counts on demonstrations of magic while selecting a safe location?

The sheer fact that he swore was incredible, and that he used foul language in front of and directed at a lady doubly so. He had been brought up as an old school southern gentlemen, kind and courteous to all with a deep sense of honor.

When Cho looked at the Colonel again, she noticed he had unsnapped the holster to his service weapon, and that his hand was hovering over it cautiously.

“Please, both of you calm down. President Martindale, the desk will be restored in perfect condition in just a few seconds. Mr. Potts, please don’t threaten me. /Tabula Reparo/.”

Before the stunned eyes of her now captive audience, the desk reassembled in whole.

“Still a skeptic?”

“That was rigged, I know it was. Magic cannot exist, no scientific evidence supports it, it is impossible.” He said it with such a fanatical air that it almost sounded like a practiced mantra.

“‘There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ You remember that I have always espoused the virtues of an open mind, and this is a situation that requires an open mind to deal with it. If you feel that you cannot deal with the new reality we seem to be facing here, then I may have no choice but to find myself a new national security advisor.”

“I shall endure that which I have no control over, though I shall wish I did. I am still skeptical about the validity of the very idea that this is real in any form, but I will not abandon you over a trivial dispute such as this. I promised to stay by your side through the remainder of your tenure, and I am a man of my word.”

“Good man! Now, we have let the nation now about this. Get my speechwriters on the line and tell them…”

Two hours later, the President was once again on national television, along with Miss Chang and several representatives from the American magical community. The representatives from America did not appear in any form of robes, for their society is much more integrated with its counterpart. They still kept mostly secret and very well hidden, but at least here, the flow of ideas did not stop at the cultural demarcation line.

The transcript of the president’s speech follows.

“My fellow Americans… today is a day of many firsts. Today is the first time our military forces have ever been put on DEFCON 1 in response to any form of violence against America, and it is the first time that America has been subjected to the horror of a nuclear weapon. Today… is also the first time we will openly meet a previously unknown component of the great American Melting Pot, and indeed the world.

“What I am about to tell you, may seem bizarre, insane, and downright foolish. However, after seeing what I have been shown, there is no doubt in my mind that this is as real as anything under the sun is. Until now, a part of our society has felt the need to remain hidden from the vast majority, for fear of tyranny, persecution and annihilation that could probably have been enacted by the majority.

“With these most recent events, which have cost millions their lives, they have decided to ask for military aid against a supremely dangerous foe. A foe that they have not been able to gain ground upon in several years from all accounts. Until the events of last night, they were ready to throw up the white flag and sue for peace.

“With the events of last night, they came to realize that this enemy is a global concern, rather than a national concern as they had previously thought. They decided to ask for military aid from every nation on the planet that will send it, so that they might defeat the evil that they face. These people are those with magical powers.

“I know that right now a great many of you are already discounting what I have to say and are already calling me a loon, but this is for real. The people to my immediate right are some representatives from the magical world, and they will demonstrate only small part of their abilities so that you might be convinced as well. I must remind you that this is on live television, and this broadcast is not being edited or censored in any way, shape or form.”

Ms. Chang was the first of the congregation to step forward, and she motioned for a target dummy to be wheeled forward. Once the dummy was in place, she fired off a demolition spell, and the dummy disintegrated before the eyes of millions of people.

Next, she gained a look of concentration and after a few seconds, her body seemed to lose definition and morph into an entirely different body shape. When the outline to her body came back, she had turned into a 12-foot long Smiledon californicus, replete with sinewy muscles, jagged claws, and seven inch long serrated teeth, like steak knives. Those closest quickly took several steps back away from the giant saber tooth cat, and for effect, she gave a mighty roar, deafening in intensity and terrifying in its message.

The flashbulbs of the still cameras almost immediately were used to their utmost, as it is not every day that one sees a young Chinese woman turn into an animal that hadn’t been seen in over twenty five thousand years. After several demonstrations of the authenticity of her new form, she changed back.

Afterwards the delegation from the American community gave a more extensive demonstration of the capabilities of the magical world, notably impressing the military commanders watching the demonstrations.

“I know that this may seem like some tremendous waste of invaluable time, but it is most certainly is not. The enemy that the magical world faces is now the probable cause for the nuclear attacks, and as I said before, we will commit every possible resource to the capture and extermination of such a grave threat to world security, and I will not renege on that.

“The leader of the group that has so threatened the security of the entire planet has named himself Lord Voldemort, but his real name is Thomas Marvolo Riddle, an orphan born in 1928. In his attacks on a predominantly peaceful society, he has shown no mercy to women, children, the elderly, or to any who dare oppose him and his idea of racial purity and eugenics, which will lead to his version of a Nietzscheian superman. His motivations and goals are very simple: to eliminate, by all necessary means, the non-magical population of the world, including genocide of all undesirables and deviant aspects of society. From the accounts of his early life, we can assume that he is merely a neglected and abused orphan who decided that the best way to protect himself is to lash out at anyone he doesn’t like.

“This man is the modern day equivalent to Adolf Hitler, and he will stop at nothing to see his goals accomplished, no matter how high the cost may rise in blood or money. Many of you watching and listening are too young to remember the full horror of Adolf Hitler, but if we act now we can save the world from ever having to go through such a tragedy again. The first battles of this new war have already been fought in Britain, where forces under his command attempted to eliminate the few remaining martial and civilian command structures. Due to the vigilance of the remaining British armed forces, all twelve of his attacks on military and civilian centers failed, and thanks to the vigilance of the magical portion of the population, his attacks on their command centers failed as well.

“Now that we know who are enemy is, I call upon Congress to vote for full and total war with the Dark Lord and his followers, so that we may the save the future generations of the human race from tyranny, oppression and eventual extermination. Only by completely eliminating the threat of the Dark Lord, may we be sure that his evil will not continue to fester in the shadowed corners of the world. Do not think that because the enemy has been beaten on this one night, that this war will be over quickly. This spark will set off a chain reaction of problems that will, most likely, encompass the entire world in their scope, and involve every living human being with their magnitude and severity. The road before us is long, and it is surely a difficult path that we must tread, but once we have traveled the road before us, we will know that we have made the right choice for all humanity.

“I do not wish for war, nor would I ever wish for such a terrible occurrence to befall mankind, but I now call for total war in the hopes that it will initiate a new era of peace that will last many years. We must defend our home, our livelihoods and our progeny.

“God bless America.”

Within the hour, Congress had returned a unanimous vote for a declaration of war between the United States of America and the forces of Lord Voldemort. At the same time they voted unanimously voted to establish a “coalition” of nations to assist in the battle against this maleficent force opposing the good of the world.


Dreamland Air Base, Diamond Lake, 22 miles ESE of Las Vegas, 'Area 51'
1716 GMT (10:16 MST), 29 November 2001

Much of Area 51 was far beneath the surface of the earth. Only a few structures were actually above ground, such as four aircraft hangers large enough to each house a Airbus A380 with room to spare, a control tower and some buildings such as the base PX and other non-classified areas. The true heart of the base was actually a hundred feet below ground, were a hanger the size of a large international airport was safely hidden from both satellites and the occasional idiots who tried to sneak in to see some non-existant aliens.

Directly below the above ground hangers were four immense elevators that could lower the entire interior of the hangers to the main aircraft parking area. This allowed immense numbers of aircraft to be maneuvered on to the elevators, making evacuations a breeze. This also had the effect of stupefying anybody watching the base, because planes that had never arrived would routinely take off, making many watching wonder whether they made the aircraft there.

Major General Patrick Shane McLanahan II had been assigned to the base known as Dreamland since the late eighties, back when he was only a captain assigned here for a single special mission. After the mission, he stuck around and eventually he had been made commander of the 500th Special Air Wing, the premier special operations branch of the Air Force. Units under his command included the first 8 Special Weapons Squadrons, the 501st Heavy Bomb Wing, the 502nd Bomb Wing, the 503rd Missile Defense Wing, the 504th, 505th and 506th Advanced War Fighter Wings.

As he walked down the line of hangers, he looked into each and saw a mix of B-2 stealth bombers, modified B-1 Lancers and several heavily modified B-52 Stratofortresses being readied for frequent use. As he passed the last hanger, an unfamiliar lieutenant ran up, holding a sheaf of papers and a 25000:1 scale map of Scotland.

“General! Fafnir has ordered a strike on these coordinates to be executed in the next twelve hours. These coordinates are in England–”

“I can read the map, thank you very much. Who is ‘Fafnir’, Lieutenant?

“He gave no other identification, but his authentication codes put him at the very top of the command structure.”

“What do the computer files say about him?”

“Nothing, nil, zip, zilch and nada. It’s as if he called from nowhere with all the proper strike codes. The only file I was able to find with Fafnir as a keyword was encrypted in a way our techs had never seen before, and it appears to be in 512-bit code.”

“Whoa. I don’t know much about computer systems, but that’s pretty damn good, isn’t it?”

“It makes the regular mil-spec top secret encrypts look like a simple crossword puzzle made for second graders. With our current computer systems and decrypt software working on it, we should be able to read the file in a few, I don’t know, uh, years.”

“I won’t hold my breath, then.”

“I’ll get this to the ops center. Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

He walked over the main runway towards the entrance to underground concrete bunker that housed the ops center. He descended the long winding concrete stairwell to the ops center, and the intense arid heat of the Nevada desert gradually lessened until all that was left was a near constant temperature of 65°F.

As he entered the former nuclear fallout shelter, he saw JC Powell, a long-time friend, walking down towards the base command.

“Yo, Powell! I haven’t seen you in a while, how’s it hanging? Where have you been man?”

“It, as you call it, hangs to the right. I was just recalled from this op in Southeast Asia. Someone by the name of Fafnir gave me a duty reassignment to the 500th Special Air Wing until further notice.”

“It seems that Fafnir has been busy. He ordered the 501st to attack coordinates in southeastern Wales, and I heard from Rickenbacker that he tried to gain control of NORAD last night. Anyway, what do think of the recent events in the world?”

“They will have a positive outcome.”

“Positive? A hundred million people are dead, and you say this will have a positive effect? Would you mind explaining just how the effect on the world will be positive?”

“Not at all. Most of the world is now unified against a single enemy, which can only have positive effect on the relations between nations. In light of the danger to their individual sovereignties, nations who were fighting before have now put aside their differences to unite against a common enemy, which will strengthen their cordial relations considerably. For example, take the situation in the Middle East: two days ago, the Syrians were threatening to invade Lebanon, and the Iraqis were pretty steamed at the Israelis. Now, Israel and Iraq are cooperating as if they have always been the best of friends, the Syrians and Lebanese are reconciled, and all four of them have joined with Saudi Arabia in stating that none of them will ever join the Dark Dork.”

“Great. Are you going to be running interference on the upcoming strike?”

“You know it. I’ll be in a Cheetah.”

“No shit? You are one lucky duck; the Cheetah is an incredible aircraft. It can make it above Mach one point five without ‘burners, right?”

“That’s right, and it can also carry twice the payload of an unaltered F-15E without any real increase in weight or any significant change to the flight dynamics. The changes the techs have been able to make from the first version are fantastic; over eighty percent of the airframe is now a lightweight plastic polymer with the same tensile strength of titanium alloy. The engines -”

Patrick knew how carried away Powell could get with his aircraft, so he cut him off for times sake. “Cool. Hey, I’ll talk to you later; I have to get the 501st ready to fly, and Joey Travone wanted me to swing by his armory later.”

“Catch you later.”

He moved down to the large steel door that protected the base operations center, the hub of all official military duties for the base and surrounding area. As he entered, he noticed his wife, Wendy McLanahan née Tork at one of the communication control stations.

“Wendy, I thought you were watching Bradley today.”

“My mother is watching him. I got a call that I’ll be on duty from now on, and that everybody is being put on deck.”

“Fine, it’s out of our hands. Try to get Dave Luger over to the armory; I have a feeling we might be going on quite a few ground missions in the next few days.”

“I’ll try but he’s been unreachable for most of the day.”

“Look under Spunky McFarlane III, it’s the name he registered an emergency line under. If all else fails to contact him that line will always get through, either to his home or his satellite phone.”

“O-okay.” She would tease Mr. Luger mercilessly with the name Spunky McFarlane in the near future.

He dropped the papers he had been given, along with the map, off at the planning station for the personnel there to flesh out workable plans of action.

From there he headed to the armory to look over some of the new toys they have been given to play with. He knew more than anyone did the benefits that experimental technology can have when used in a battle type situation, having used many experimental weapons and aircraft to great effect.

“Hey Joey. What do you have for me today?”

“I know you’re going to love this, Patrick. Follow me to bay 1.”

In bay one was something that looked like a very long, quite thick surfboard with a large dome near the front. When one looked closely, one could just make out the air intakes for the twin pulse-detonation engines.

“So what, it doesn’t look any different than any other UCAV we’ve used before. What’s so special about this?”

“This has twin Pratt & Whitney pulse detonation engines, mission adaptive flow control on every surface and twelve permanent gun systems. It can carry almost thirteen tons of any conceivable type of armament, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and its top speed is over Mach 2.2. This drone has almost a zero turning radius, an ELINT suite that would make the NSA drool and best of all: it is very cheap to produce and easy to make. It can carry out just about every mission a manned aircraft can, and it doesn’t matter if it is shot down, because we can always make another.”

“This is better than the NightHawk?”

“Compared to this, the NightHawk is a stone club. This aircraft is so stealth, our own radars can barely pick it up, and it is a V/STOL capable aircraft.”

“Awesome. What about infantry protection?”

“We just got these next items in early this morning. These are the first true powered exoskeletons in use by the United States military, called the Cybernetic Infantry Device, or CID for short. They are voice activated, with the newest motion control systems available, and they make a single man more powerful than an entire platoon. The suit multiplies a user’s strength by almost fifteen times, protects the user from all known biochemical weapons, and can even be used as a substitute for a radiological protection suit.”

“It’s a box, Joey.”

The box looked to be about four feet long and wide, and about four and a half feet tall. The outer layer looked like some kind of plastic.

“Try picking it up with the handles on the side.”

The general moved to the side of the box as instructed, and prepared to lift the supposedly light box with a mighty heave.

“Gah! Jesus fucking Christ, I think just dislocated my shoulder. That thing has to weigh at least eighty pounds.” Joey was not sympathetic. In fact, he was guffawing so hard that he had to catch his breath.

“Yes, very funny, Joey. Now why does that box weigh so much corporal?”

“Patrick, I’m a major.”

“Not if you pull a stunt like that ever again.”

“Sorry, I thought you had a sense of humor. Well watch this. CID One, activate.”

At that command, the alleged box began to unfold, revealing a robot with very intimidating features. The ‘head’ of the exoskeleton looked like a deformed insect human hybrid, with no discernable mouth, ears or eyes. There were several parts that were obviously fish-eye camera lenses, and once the top of the head was clear of obstruction, several small antennae extended to begin receiving and interpreting radio signals. The head made a complete 360° rotation as part of the standard start up procedure, and as the hands unfolded, Patrick noticed that each finger ended in a single gleaming point that looked like it could puncture reinforced steel. Actually, the claws on the fingers could pierce an inch of titanium alloy with little difficulty.

The exoskeleton continued to unfold, and once it was finished, it stood at more than ten feet tall. McLanahan had heard about how to operate one of these things, so he stepped up to the motionless exoskeleton and called out, “Pilot up!”

He waited.

And waited.

Finally, he was fed up with waiting.

“Joey, how come this damn robot doesn’t do what I tell it to?”

“You have to precede commands with its name for the first few times before it will automatically recognize your voice. Like this: CID One, pilot up.”

The exo kneeled, and the back panels of the exo split and opened for the general to step inside. As he did this, Joey donned a small electronic device that looked like a Bluetooth headset.

It was a snug fit, but once the back closed, he almost forgot about it being a little uncomfortable. As soon as the hatch closed, it was as if he wasn’t in a giant exoskeleton at all, but merely in his own body. The synaptic controls noticed the minute signals running through his nerves and the moved the corresponding part of the exosuit, creating an instantaneous harmony of thought and motion. McLanahan quickly got used to the control systems of the CID; this included the way the different functions of the exo could be accessed by menus he opened by looking at specific icons for.

“Take her for a spin around the track, running at full speed. You’ll love the results, I guarantee it.”

Thus far, the general had been dutifully impressed with all that he had been shown, so he decided to do as Joey suggested. Once he was moving as fast as he could go, he radioed back to the controller.

“Yo, Joe! I’m moving, now where are these results you promised?”

“Look at your speedometer.”

“57.12 miles per hour… Jesus. I am impressed Joey. What model did you say this was?”

“CID One, sub-designation CID Basic, Equilibrium Incorporated Model no. 04-221-0AQ, Mk I. The shipping schedule says they have two more models of these things coming out in the next two months, with even more enhanced capabilities. Don’t think that just speed and some claws are the only weapons on this exo. Give the command, ‘slice and dice mode, activate’.”

As soon as the words had left Patrick’s mouth, noticed a small text box on the wraparound OLED screen that said, ‘blades deploying, please wait…’ He looked at the outer arms of the exosuit and he saw two eight and ¾ inch long blades, one of either of his forearms, and the computer readout showed that he had 10 very menacing looking spikes coming out of the back panels.

“Those blades have been sharpened by computer controlled lasers to only a molecule at the very edges, and they are made out of a poly-metallic alloy identified as M3417, which is several orders of magnitude harder than diamonds. The blades can slice through almost any substance on the planet, so please, be careful with in close quarter with friendlies. To retract the blades, simply give the command, ‘slice and dice mode, deactivate’. Our final stop on the tour of the CID operating systems is the attachable weapons modules.”

“You mean there’s more this suit can do?”

“Ohhh, yeah. This exoskeleton was designed to make the US Army the strongest fighting force on the planet, while still having a relatively small number of personnel. The first module I will attach is the flamethrower. When fired, the fuel will travel from the external tank, through the fuel lines, and to the variable flow rate nozzles that attach to the forearm of the dominant arm. The fuel burns at about 2400 °F, so it will incinerate just about everything it touches, so once again, be careful using the flamethrower in close quarters with friendlies nearby. Try out the flamer on the target range I set up over there.”

Patrick moved to the indicated target range and pointed his right arm towards a deactivated M113, and he whispered the word ‘fire’. A tremendously bright light engulfed the armored personnel carrier, and before Patrick’s very eyes, the aluminum armor began to melt and deform into a molten pool. Before very long, the small amount of diesel fuel in the engines exploded, taking the rest of the APC with it.

Next, he moved to an old T-38 Talon jet trainer, and he whispered the word fire once again. Within less than three seconds, the cockpit glass had begun to soften, the control surfaces on the wings and tail began to fuse from the heat, and the thin aluminum skin began to drip off the internal steel framework. Soon even the steel frame softened and collapsed under its own weight, leaving only a pile of twisted metal as the only memorial to what was once an aircraft.

“Good lord this thing is powerful.”

“I still have one more weapon add-on to show you. A double 40-millimeter grenade launcher with 140 grenades ready to go is the final thing I have to show in the infantry weapons.”

The change-out from the flamer to the grenade launcher took less than a minute, and the weight of the large metallic canisters on his back was barely noticeable. As soon as the canisters locked in, he heard a faint whirr and picture of a 40 millimeter round came up displaying data that identified the rounds loaded as M923 practice rounds, which had the same ballistics as regular frag ammunition.

“The rounds are automatically sorted by your suit’s weapon recognition systems. Right now, they are all practice rounds, so try them out on range three. Targeting is controlled with your sight line, so just look at your intended target, and the computer will make the necessary adjustments to the elevation and azimuth of the barrels.”

On range three, Patrick knew he had found a favorite off duty toy. Every shot was dead on target, off his actual target by only a few centimeters, and the computer even gave him suggestions where the round would do the most damage to each individual target. It was clear that whoever wielded this system on the battlefield would be damn near invincible, and would rule at reconnaissance missions.

“Okay Patrick, time to bring it in.”

Dismounting was as simple as it was to get in, and when he ordered it to deactivate, he watched in awe of the tool he had just taken for a test drive.

“One last thing to show you, it’s the new flight suits that will be available to all the Air Force in the next six months.”

They walked over to an all-around garment display case, which contained a suit that seemed to be completely black. The garment covered the silver body of the faceless mannequin from the feet to the forehead, with a large area for the face cut out of the cloth. Every part of the body was covered, including the entirety of the hands, the wrists, the ankles, the neck and most of the head, making for a very sleek effect.

“A demonstration has been set up over here, and I know you’ll like this.”

On a stand some distance away, one of the new flight suits was on a foam dummy, and pointed at the dummy was a quadruple 23-millimeter anti-aircraft gun, ready and waiting to fire. The dummy was held in place by a three inch thick, seven-foot tall steel pole, and one of the practical jokers in the Quartermaster Company had stuck a cigarette in the foam where the mouth would be. It reminded Patrick of an execution scene in a clichéd spy movie.

“Shooting downrange on range five! Fire in the hole!”

The noise was deafening, and one could tell that live rounds had been loaded into the gun because the Plexiglas behind the dummy was already badly cracked and looked ready to shatter. After fifteen seconds of firing, Joey signaled the operator to stop, and as soon as the last bullet had been fired, he and the general jogged up to the dummy. What Patrick saw was simply amazing.

Not even a single round had penetrated the fabric, and the fabric still looked brand new.

“What is this stuff?”

“That stuff is a carbon nanofiber weave in twelve separate layers with an inner layer of synthetic cotton for comfort. According to the lab reports from the guys at Equilibrium, this suit will stop anything up to a .50 caliber round at point blank range, and 57-millimeter rounds at expected combat distances. This was a test with rounds altered to simulate fire from 3000 feet. I would say it passed.”

“How many of those do you have in stock? Tell me!”

“Calm down, we have enough in stock for every member of the flight crews to have two. These were designed to be resistant to most forms of wear and tear, along with the ability to remain relatively clean for weeks on end, even with constant usage. They are one size fits all, elastic and they breath just like cotton fabric so they can serve as regular clothing as well. They’re machine washable and the techs recommend that we use Tide, because other detergents degrade the structural integrity or something like that.”

“Good to know. Oh shit, is it one o’clock already? I was supposed to be in a conference with Jumper fifteen minutes ago. Joey, if you happen to see Dave Luger, show him what you showed me.”

“Roger that, Patrick. See you later.”

One hour later, the calls for the 501st Heavies to go wheels up went out, and two dozen EB-52 Megafortresses lifted off from the quiet of the Nevada desert. Once again, the few ardent nutcases who managed to get close to the base saw aircraft that had never arrived take off, causing yet another rash of underground speculations of aliens and evil government conspiracies to arise.

The planes flew swift and silent, many speeding to their doom.


Twelve thousand feet above a Scottish moor, British Isles
2341 GMT, 29 November 2001

“Bobtail Lead, this is Overwatch 1. Are you sure that there are troops at the coordinates we received? We can’t see anything down there, over.”

“Overwatch, I am sure that there are troops and vehicles at that location. The latest satellite images confirm that fact. I am sending them to you now, over.”

“Roger, we have received the transmission. There they are! We just started picking them up. We are not receiving any radio signals from the area, and our visual scans aren’t picking up anything. The infrared scanner and ultraviolet bands pick them up clear as day, over.”

“Hey Patrick, do you want me to do a flyby to get a better idea of what’s down there?”

“Powell, you keep your ass up here. And Tivoli, don’t you even think of going down there either. You are our first line of defense; without you, we’re sitting ducks.”

“Okay, okay, Jesus, it was just a suggestion.”

The 501st had been flying for just over seven hours, and they were all ready for some action.

“General, this is Overwatch 1-1; you are coming in range of their targeting radars. I am picking up emissions in bands A, B, C, F, G, and X, along with some laser tracks. We believe they have not picked you up yet, over.”

“ISAR has identified the key units in the formations, may we fire?”

“Are we within firing range of most of our weapons?”

“Yes sir.”

“Fire away, then.”

As soon as the wing opened their bomb bay doors, their radar signatures increased exponentially, and several large blips appeared on the radar screens below. However, at the exact moment the doors opened, the surface to air missile launchers on the ground launched several volleys of missiles at the incoming bombers. With the bomb doors open, they were easy targets to acquire and home in on.

“Bobtail this is Overwatch 1-2! We have just picked up several high speed contacts moving to your position. I recommend that you get out of there.”

“This is Overwatch; missiles identified as being of the SA-3 Goa, SA-11 Gadfly and SA-5 Gammon former Soviet designs. Maximum speed of the missiles is Mach 4.3, and expected impact is in 42 seconds. You are to deploy countermeasures, but do not deviate from the path to target.”

“Bobtail flight, this is lead, launch flares and chaff. Shake those missiles any way you can.”

“Estimating 30 seconds to impact.”

“Lead, this is Bobtail 2-2; none of our countermeasures are working! Our staff is giving no response and we can’t direct the plane. Diagnostics show zero pressure in the hydraulic system, and fuel is at three-niner-zero-one-one pounds and falling fast.”

“Bobtail 2-2, eject now, we’ll relay your position to the British Army so they can pick you up. Forget about the plane, your lives are more important.”

“Time to impact is now fifteen seconds. Bobtail 2-2 crew has bailed out, and LADAR sees them heading towards the enemy camp. We have sent the projected landing point coordinates to the RAF liaison; she will relay it to the appropriate commanders.”

“None of the countermeasures are having any effect. They’re gonna hit!”

“Five, four, three, two, one, impact!”

The proximity warheads on the missiles detonated when the radar signals told them they were within fifty meters of the aircraft, giving very little room for maneuver. Most of the missiles slammed directly into the cockpits or into the fuselages of the bombers, and the few that didn’t destroy the aircraft outright disabled at least two of the four engines.

The two heavy bombers on the immediate left and right of the lead exploded with frightful violence, the explosives in their weapons bays igniting into tremendous fireballs that consumed the whole of their respective aircraft.

“Sir, planes 4 through 13 got it right in the cockpits, and the rest are so badly damaged, they’ll have to ditch over the ocean. We have to get out of here. This was a trap, and a well planned one at that.”

“Roger that. Bobtail flight hook right, do an about face and go full speed away. I say we cut our losses.”

Just then, an altered voice came over the radio. The voice was deep and light, dark and bright, gravely and smooth, and dozen other contradictions all at once, making it impossible to tell whether the speaker was young or old, or male or female.

“McLanahan, this is Fafnir. You are not to leave without firing at least one weapon. Bobtail flight, disregard your last orders and complete the mission as fragged at all costs.”

“Fuck that, I’m not staying here any longer. We have effectively lost ninety percent of the wing, and I say it’s time to leave. Bobtail, head for home and disregard all orders given by the one known as Fafnir.”

“McLanahan, you are in violation of UCMJ provision number 1534–”

McLanahan then decided that he wasn’t going to listen to any military law bullshit, and he turned a knob on the radio, switching to a wing only net.

“I never liked that station anyway. Bobtail, we are heading for home. Overwatch, call Gascan and set up a refuel point.”

“Roger. We have a message for you from Fafnir; apparently you’re going to get to know the stockade very well once you get back.”

“Nothing new. This is Bobtail Lead, over and out.”