Accidental Historian

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 11

[Author's Note: This is part eleven of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

They stood on the porch, scrubbed faces impossibly clean, teeth impossibly white and framed by painted-on smiles.  Painted-on smiles that did not quite reach their eyes.  This pair was not here to make friends.  They were con artists in search of marks.  They were the guy with a whiskey sour looking for a quick fuck at last call.  They were sharks on the hunt.

Well, maybe.  Things had been pretty weird since the disappearances.  It had been increasingly difficult to trust strangers.  The number of con artists who had hung out shingles and started missing people finding businesses was depressingly large.  Business was booming for people willing to look past human misery and focus on human fallibility, though.  Business always seemed to boom for heartless bastards.

They weren’t the only traffickers in misery out there.  They weren’t even the worst.

“May we come in?” the one on the left asked.  “We’d like to talk to you for just a moment.”

“No, I’d rather you don’t, actually.”

“But we have news of great importance,” the one on the right said.  “We’re sure you’d like to hear it.”

“No, thanks, I’m good.”

The one on the right reached for the handle of the screen door.  “I think you’d like to hear this,” he said.

Katie reached over and clicked on the lock.  “Go away,” she said.  “I’m not interested and if you attempt to enter my house without my permission I will call the police.”

“Very well,” said the one on the left, “But just know that if you don’t invite the Lord into your house then the Lord will not invite you into His.”  He held up the Bible in his hands.  “But the Lord still is willing to let you repent.  For a limited period of time.”

The two then spun on their heels and stepped off the porch in unison.

Katie closed the door, threw the deadbolt, and slumped back against it.  She sighed and rubbed her forehead, trying to get rid of the headache that had been plaguing her for nearly a week.  Unfortunately for her, though, she knew the reason for her headache was Joe.  The new evangelists who were circling her neighborhood like vultures weren’t helping.

She pushed off against the door and headed back to the kitchen.  Joe was sitting at the table with his laptop open.  Stacks of printed paper were scattered all over the small wooden table and haphazardly dumped on the chairs.  A pair of giant, vertical timelines were taped to the shelf on which she kept teapot and tea cup collection.  A grotesque diagram of fantastical animals and disturbingly – almost lovingly – rendered pictures of disasters and death covered most of the wall.  She did not consider it an improvement over the set of her grandmother’s china plates that they’d spent the previous summer mounting there.

Joe paused his YouTube video of some preacher or other as she walked in.  “Who was at the door?” he asked without looking up.

“No one,” Katie replied.  “Well, no one we knew.  Someone looking for family who had the wrong address.”

“Oh,” Joe replied.  “Okay.”  He grabbed a piece of paper off one of his stacks.  “Hey, look at this, I think it’s proof that that Anwar Al-Saafi guy from Iraq is the Antichrist.  Someone should do something about him.”

Katie walked over and started rubbing her husband’s shoulders.  “Honey, you know I think this stuff is a load of total bullshit, right?” she asked.

“I know that’s what you think,” he replied, “But I need you to believe me.  This shit is real.  It’s right there in the Bible.”

“I told you, Joe.  It’s not in the Bible.  It was invented by some Scottish girl with mental health problems in the 1800s.  It only went mainstream because someone figured out they could use it to sell books back in the ‘80s.”

Joe slammed the paper down.  “No, this is real,” he said.  He stood up, turned around, and grabbed Katie by the shoulders.  “If it’s not real how do you explain the fact that all of this is happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “Maybe it’s aliens or something.  All I know is that there was never a real Bible prophecy for any of this stuff.”

“It has to be true,” Joe said, gripping her shoulders tighter.  “It has to be.  There’s no other explanation for any of this that makes a damn bit of sense.”  He stared at her, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.  “If it is true we can use it to survive to the end of this.  We can see Eddie again.”

Katie’s shoulder muscles began to tremble under Joe’s tightening fingers.  She felt his thumbnails begin to dig into her flesh.  But she stayed fixed on his eyes.  His wild, angry, frightened eyes.

“Stop it, Joe,” she finally said.  “Please.”

“You have to believe me.”  His grip tightened.

“Please, Joe.”  She whimpered slightly.  “You’re hurting me.”

His grip relaxed.  Joe closed his eyes and his hands slipped from her shoulders.  “Oh, god, I’m sorry, Katie.  It’s just…”

“I know,” she said, “It hasn’t been easy.”

He tentatively lifted his hands back to her shoulders and rubbed them for a moment.  Then he sighed heavily and slid his arms around her.  “I just know there has to be an answer out there and I want to find it so bad,” he said.

“I know.  But you also haven’t slept for nearly a week.”

“I can’t.  I have to keep looking.  There’s not much time.”

“There’s enough time to sleep, Joe.  And things will make more sense if you’ve slept.”

“Okay.”

She reached up and pushed his arms away, then grabbed his hands with hers and backed out of the kitchen, leading him towards the bedroom.  “C’mon,” she smiled and cocked her head, “Let’s get you to bed.”

The State of the Blog 2013

I tend to put up some sort of State of the Blog post every year.  I usually do it in January, I think.  I also usually put up a bunch of grandiose plans that there’s no fucking way I’ll ever be able to actually carry out.

In truth, the blog isn’t really an important focus of mine.  Nobody pays me to do it.  Not that many people read it.  I just do it because I like writing and I don’t have a lot of outlets for writing these days.

So I don’t have a big State of the Blog this year.  I have five plans, such as they are:

1.  I’m going to do the After Tamerlane stuff.  Because it’s cool.

2.  I’d like to get back to the Byzantine Logic stuff.  I realized the other day that I haven’t done a proper Byzantine Logic post since before the move from Blogspot to Typepad, which is kind of crazy.

3.  1434 Fridays.  At least, I’d like to do 1434 Fridays at least three times a month.

4.  I’ve had an idea kicking around that I call “sketches.”  Basically, I get some interesting character sketches knocking about from time to time.  They’re usually short, single scenes of interaction between two or three characters.  I usually don’t have any intention of doing anything with the scene itself in a larger scheme.  I believe, though, that writing fiction is an act of empathy and sometimes a writer simply has to practice that empathy.  Sometimes it’s in the form of characters who occupy a whole series of novels.  Sometimes it’s in the form of characters who occupy a single page.

5.  I never finished A Distant, Dreadful Star.  This, I fear, is inexcusable.  Part of the problem is that I started writing it right before I bought the house.  Part of the problem is that I started writing it because I had a beginning but had no end.  It’s now sat dormant for nearly a year as far as writing is concerned.  It hasn’t been dormant in my mind, however, and I know exactly where the story has to go.

As such, feel free to read the first ten installments of A Distant, Dreadful Star.  The long lost (no, really, I wrote it back in March of 2012) 11th installment shall go up tomorrow.  For some reason I thought it would work better as the 12th installment and I needed to write another, more differenter installment first.  Looking back, I don’t think that’s the case.  With any sort of luck there will be a new installment every Wednesday until I finish.

Also, and I say this with a certain level of amazement, I’m really excited about this.  I was re-reading some bits that I haven’t looked at since I originally wrote them and there were several things that caused me to think, “Holy shit, I can actually write.”  I know that writers are supposed to hate everything that they wrote in the past because they’re never supposed to be satisfied.  I’ll admit that A Distant, Dreadful Star is far from perfect.  I’ll also admit that there are some parts that say exactly what I want them to say in exactly the way I want them to do it.

Sometimes you have to acknowledge the good is what I’m saying.

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 10

[Author's Note: This is part ten of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

“We have incoming ships!” Communicator Ht’nika called out.

Three flashing yellow dots appeared on the main display, indicating three ships dropping out of faster than light travel.  They cut a rough circle around Wanderer, each about a half light cycle out.  As Hnr’dulka watched a fourth yellow icon lit up, followed by a fifth.

He opened all his eyes.  The Wanderer’s sensor’s would be automatically marking the locations of the new ships on the rest of the displays, along with relative distances.  He immediately saw three of the ships.  One was almost directly above, slightly aft.  Two more were to either side.  He swung around on his perch and found the other two directly below Wanderer.  They weren’t exactly surrounded, but it was close.

“Who’s ships are they?” Hnr’dulka asked.

“I’m getting an ID on two of the first three,” Ht’nika replied.  “Hold on.”

Space travel was a complicated enough endeavor as it was.  Simple physics made it even worse, especially when it got down to important issues like knowing if the ship that had just appeared in-system would want to talk, trade, or destroy everything and everyone you loved.  Ships using faster than light drives did not technically travel faster than the speed of light, as that violated all of the known laws of physics.  They instead enfolded themselves in a bubble of warped space that, in turn could move at faster speeds while the ship inside stayed relatively motionless.

Creating the warped space required a great deal of energy and trapped the ship inside an envelope of radiation that rapidly dissipated when the bubble collapsed.  The subsequent wave of radiation traveled outwards from an arriving ship at the speed of light.  It was that wave that Wanderer had picked up.  Any other signals, however, had to follow the initial wave.  In friendly space a ship announced its presence the moment it arrived, which meant that any ship that picked up the initial wave of radiation would quickly know who was behind it.  In unfriendly space or uncharted space, however, announcing yourself was not standard operating procedure.  Any enemies would know a ship had arrived once they picked up the wave, but anything the uninvited guests could do to keep the local forces from figuring out exactly what they were up against was a potential advantage.

Physics worked to the advantage of the aggressor in that situation, too.  Space, being mind-bogglingly vast and mostly empty, is extremely difficult to keep under constant observation.  The limitations of the speed of light meant that any observer could only know where a ship was when the signal originated.  The farther away the signal the less certain the observed object’s current location.  Invasion fleets, then, could use any number of slippery techniques to draw a defender off on the wrong direction.  They could also drop in-system and fire off a volley against a planet or orbiting base with a known location and then disappear before anyone knew they were in danger.  Such tactics were considered cowardly and not exactly civilized, but they could be effective.  And terrifying.

Wanderer was running silent and dark.  The ship was a tiny little dot in empty space giving off only the minimum amount of radiation.  It wasn’t completely undetectable, but it was close as anything that had a crew to serve and life support could be.  That gave Wanderer an advantage if the new arrivals were enemies.  It also meant that if they were friendlies there was no real way for them to detect Wanderer and transmit that information.

Fortunately there was one thing the ship could do.  All ships had slightly different energy signatures.  While the basic rules dictating faster than light travel were the same for every ship, each civilization had reached that technology in slightly different ways, even those, such as the People themselves, who had gotten a boost from the Hidden Ones.  The energy wave was dictated by a ship’s mass and configuration and engine power.  Known ships could be positively identified by those slight differences.  Unknown ships could still be narrowed down to civilization and, usually, type.  It just took a bit of work.

“I have the first three ships,” Ht’nika reported.  “Two are ours.  Jumper Between Stars and Expander of the People’s Greatness at Heretofore Unknown and Unknowable Speeds is to our right.”  One of the icons flashed green.  “The other ship is an unknown configuration.”  One of the icons below Wanderer also flashed green.  “One is a Gorlan Hiveship.”  The yellow icon above and aft changed to blue, indicating an allied ship.  The Gorlan were a hive-mind species.  Their ships looked like nothing so much as giant, shapeless lumps.  In combat they broke apart into hundreds of smaller craft that fought independently but controlled by the central consciousness.

“I told you I had gotten help,” Gabrel said.

Hnr’dulka nearly lost his grip on his perch.  He’d nearly forgotten about Gabrel.  The Hidden one changed to a greenish hue and made a sound Hnr’dulka took as amusement.

“Send a messagepod to Jumper’s last known coordinates,” Hnr’dulka ordered, trying to cover his embarrassment.  “Let them know we are here.”  He knew the enemy ships would know that there was a new force in system in a few cycles but saw no need to let them know about Wanderer just yet.  Every little bit of surprise helped.

“You can send a tightbeam message,” Gabrel said.  “They have not moved yet.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Very well.  Send a message.”

----------------------------

Hnr’dulka stared out at the magnified image of the ship maneuvering into formation below and slightly behind the Wanderer.  The computer identified it as the greatship Arbiter of Galactic Peace and Justice, but Hnr’dulka knew it by a completely different name: Celestial Carrier of the People Across the Infinite Expanse of Starlight which Fought Off the Starving Ones and Escaped the Exploding Star and Successfully Maintained its Struggle Against All the Impossible Odds While the People Still Sang Their Songs and Remembered that from Whence They Came.  The Great Council for Military Affairs had decided to strip everything out the old carryship and rebuild it as a greatship.  It was a decision that made a great deal of sense, as the carryship was significantly bigger than a greatship.  As it was not necessary to carry stores for a journey that could last hundreds or thousands of rotations and possibly only end when the original generation had died out and been replaced by their offspring, the carryship’s hull could be converted to a much more powerful greatship than any of the first generation, including the Wanderer.

Hnr’dulka did not question that decision.  He hated that he had to discover the Great Council’s decision in this way, in this place, however.  More than anything, he wished he had been offered command.

He stared at the ship with his fifth eyes.  The old carryship was built on a different design aesthetic than the newer greatships.  They had been envisioned as ambassadors of the People, swimming through space to find new vistas and settle new worlds.  As such, they looked like the People.  The main body of the ship was a giant, elongated oval.  It ended in a cluster of ten narrow projections designed to look like tentacles.  They were fixed in place, however, and only served as an artistic embellishment on the long, narrow exhaust chamber of the main drive.

He forced himself to look away and fixed his vision on the smaller ship next to Arbiter.  It was a Joshan patrol ship, a relatively small, circular ship with a spherical central node that had paired drive engines attached at the top and bottom.  A second Joshan ship, this one a larger, but similarly designed, Emperor-class, rounded out the little flotilla.  It had been the first ship to rendezvous with Wanderer and was currently holding position off to the greatship’s left.

“Open up a tightbeam call to all ships,” Hnr’dulka ordered.

Ht’nika worked the controls.  “Done,” she said after a moment.

“Friends,” Hnr’dulka addressed the new arrivals, “We of the Wanderer of the Infinite Web of Light are filled with joy and appreciation at your presence.  I do not know how you were summoned to this place, but I am sure you know it is a matter of great urgency and importance.”

He paused as a low hum filled the chamber.  “We of the Gorlan have been contacted by the First Ones,” sounded in a voice that sounded like hundreds.  “We have been told of this.  We prepare to serve.”

“Thank you,” Hnr’dulka replied.  “We have sent you all of our sensor data taken in this system to date.  For the moment our mission is to find a way to divert the asteroid that has been targeted at this system’s third planet.”

“And those other ships?” this question came from the First Keeper of the Jumper.

“We are assuming they are hostile,” Hnr’dulka replied.  “As of yet we do not have complete information on their capabilities, however.  The Wanderer is not equipped to take on so many foes at once and we have kept hidden until this moment.”

“We will find out soon enough,” the many voices of the Gorlan said.

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 9

[Author's Note: This is part nine of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

Hnr’dulka pulled himself up on the First Keeper’s perch and checked the main bridge display.  It showed the system’s star and the six closest planets, out to the second big gas giant.  Information about the planetary orbits, the star’s type, and the makeup of the planetary atmospheres were superimposed on the display.  A cloud of red dots hovered a half light cycle away from the third planet.  The computer had gathered as much information on the potential enemy fleet and painted the ship icons with as much information as possible.  A red box by the asteroid belt showed the location of the engine-equipped asteroid.

The drive on the asteroid had stopped firing not long after it started.  It appeared that all anyone was trying to do was nudge the rock out of its stable orbit, then let the local star’s gravity pull it in on its own new, unnatural course.  A string of figured near the box indicated that drive had fired several more times in the intervening period, however.  The computer calculated a 97% chance the course corrections were intended to push the asteroid directly into the path of the system’s third planet.

Hnr’dulka closed his first eyes and opened his fifth eyes.  The system Wanderer was observing was located relatively “above” the ship and, as such, was laid out in all its glory above him.  The image, at least, was above him.  Wanderer’s Central Information Processing and Displaying Center was located deep in the heart of the ship.  It was a rectangular space with stations for the First Keeper, the Communicator, the Watch Officer, the Weapons Officer, and up to three other crew members suspended in the middle.  The walls, ceiling, and floor were giant displays, with the display towards the front of the ship designated as the “main display” by tradition more than anything else.

When the ship was not traveling at near-light or faster than light speeds most of the displays were taken up with direct feeds of the surrounding space.  When Hnr’dulka wrapped his tentacles around his narrow perch it felt like he was sitting naked in the middle of space itself.  He loved the feeling.

The People, with their five pairs of eyes and inherent understanding of life and death in the depths of the sea, were natural swimmers in the three-dimensional world of space.  Adjusting to the needs of space combat were more a matter of scale and distance than anything else.  That, as much as anything related to technology or diplomacy, was what had made their addition to the forces in the Great Interstellar War crucial for victory and catapulted them to their exalted position in local space.

Most races that developed the ability to travel between stars were land-dwellers.  It was simply easier to develop the necessary technologies, primarily including fire and metallurgy, on dry land.  The People certainly hadn’t begun developing the necessary technologies until they left the cold embrace of the sea.

Living on land offered a difficult transition to space for many species, however.  They tended to think in terms of up and down, forward and back, side to side.  Threats tended to come from one place or another.  Danger tended to have consistent avenues of attack.  In the sea, however, threats came from every direction at once and had to be countered in every direction.

The People built their ships with that in mind.  Even the most primitive Central Information Center’s showed as much of the surrounding space as possible.  As levels of technology increased so did the sophistication of the control area.  After the arrival of the Hidden Ones and the discovery that the local areas of space were, in fact, filled with potentially deadly foes the need for information had increased.  They had developed scanpods and drone weapons platforms that were launched on arrival in a new system and spread out from the ship in a tightly controlled web designed to leave no avenue of approach uncovered.  Longer-range probes and stand-off weapons could then be deployed at truly impressive distances.

Effectiveness in such weaponry was limited by two factors: the speed of light and the capabilities of the weapons’ artificial intelligence.  The first simply meant that the farther the weapon got from the ship the longer it took for messages to get from the pod or platform to the ship and back.  That, in turn, meant that the ship’s crew had to rely more heavily on the remote object’s automated systems for threat detection, assessment, and response.

Hnr’dulka did not trust the automated systems aboard Wanderer’s remote platforms.  As such, he rarely deployed his weapons farther than a light vibrance out from the ship.  It gave him control at the expense of early response times.  That did not really bother him, though.  At least, it bothered him less than the idea of a computer starting a war over a misinterpretation of data.

“So who are these…intruders?” Hnr’dulka asked, unsure of what to call the unidentified enemies.

“Servants of the One,” Gabrel replied.  He, or she, or it, had traveled to the Central Information Processing and Displaying Center with Hnr’dulka when he’d called off the Conclave.  The Hidden One now floated diffusely in the large, nearly empty chamber, casting a bluish glow over the surface of the displays.

“But this One wants to destroy the universe.  Who would serve such a being?”

“The One is a master of lies,” Gabrel replied.  “The fleet down there is made up of cast-offs from their societies.  The One promised them power, or wealth, or vengeance.  Maybe all three.  So now they do the One’s work.”

“But why would a god need a starship?” Communicator Ht’nika asked.

“The One cannot leave this place,” Gabrel said.  “The One also has a limited control over the various universal forces.  We made sure of that when we laid our trap.  But we could not keep others from coming.  We could not stop others from listening to the promises and the sweet, poisoned lies.  Believe me, we would have if we could.”

“So what is this One’s goal?” Hnr’dulka asked.

“I told you.  To destroy the universe.”

“Yes,” Hnr’dulka replied.  “You did.  I suppose I asked the wrong question.  What is the plan?”

“After the war we made sure the One was weak and tied to this one place.  We assumed that would be enough.  As long as the One could not manipulate the forces that hold the universe together there could be no escape or mischief.  The only way out would be a conscious manipulation of life and will and we knew that the One did not understand either.

“Give even the least gifted student enough time, however, and any lesson can be learned.  As life took root on this planet the One guided it towards one will: control and death.  They thought of every new advancement in terms of what it would mean for death and destruction.  Metallurgy meant stronger weapons.  Chemistry meant explosive power.  When they unlocked the secrets of the atom itself it only meant a bigger weapon for them to use on each other.

“At the same time the One whispered stories in their ears.  The stories were mad, destructive things.  They convinced the people of this world to think only of themselves and focus only on their own needs.”

“But I have heard some of their stories,” Ht’nika said.  “Some are filled with noble deeds and sacrifices.  Their religions talk of selflessness.”

“And then the people of this world take those messages and turn them to hatred and destruction.  That is the power of the One.”  Gabrel’s color shifted to a slightly different hue.  Hnr’dulka assumed that this was a sign of an emotional shift.  “From time to time some amongst these humans attain a greater understanding of the universe.  From time to time they turn from thoughts of violence and death to love.  But then the mad whisperings start all over again.”

“So how are we to do anything about this?” Hnr’dulka asked.

“Great forces are about to be unleashed on this world,” Gabrel replied.  “We must stop as much as we can.  The One needs the physical energies to break free and begin the unraveling of the universe.  To get beyond this place, however, the One needs the will of all life in this place to turn towards death, despair, and destruction at the same time.  It is only through will that the One can truly break free.”

“You have not answered my question.  What must we do?”

“The first step is to stop or divert that asteroid.  It cannot be allowed to hit the planet.”

Hnr’dulka hit a few controls on his perch.  The featurless starscape before his fifth eyes shifted slightly as the display tagged the third planet, the asteroid, and the fleet of ships between the two.  It tagged the ships with a threat assessment of 99%, indicating that the computer believed that the Wanderer would lose in ninety-nine out of one hundred engagements according to what was known.

“This will not be easy.”

“Do not worry,” Gabrel replied.  “I have called for assistance.”

Update

On the heels of last week's flu thing I ended up with an allergy/sinus thing that can only come from an unseasonably warm Chicago "winter."  That's the bad news.

The good news is that "A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 9" coming on the morrow.  Ten might be Friday, but more likely next week.

This, so far, has been a fascinating writing project for me.  It seemed pretty straightforward: aliens, the Rapture, end of the universe, done.  But when it gets right down to it, if you want to write a good disaster story, which any end of the world scenario is supposed to be, you can't write it simply or quickly.  This is the lesson we learn by observing the work of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

See, Joe and Katie were just supposed to be a pair of throwaway characters.  They show up for a scene, I write about how they experienced the end of the world as they knew it, and then we move back.  Y'know, to the aliens and shit.  But I can't, because now that they're in this story they insist on having their story told.

This, I think, is why we love disaster flicks.  We don't want to see the President's perspective on that disaster.  We don't want to see god's perspective on the disaster.  We want to see John Cusack as the slightly-nebbish schlub trying to hold tight to everything he can while escaping from the snatching claws of fate.  We want to see Jesse Eisenberg as the asocial weirdo who learns to trust after the entire world has gone straight to hell (also, too, thanks to musings based on Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy and Colson Whitehead's Zone One I have a unified field theory of the zombie apocalypse I want to write up).

The Rapture and its attendant apocalypse are disaster flicks.  In this case they're disaster flicks on a truly universal scale.  But the aliens, at least in my version, are, well, alien.  They don't know anything about humanity.  They don't care about humanity.  They do things differently than humans would.  While that's interesting from a writer's perspective, it doesn't allow for much of an emotional center.

As such, I need Joe and Katie.  I need to see the world fall apart through their eyes.  I need to tell their story as it happens.

And that takes a rather simple, straightforward idea and messes it right the hell up.  That's life, I guess.

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 8

[Author's Note: This is part eight of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

The drama on Earth passed almost completely unnoticed by the crew of the Wanderer of the Infinite Web of Light.  Distinguishing between the entertainment and news of the strange, short-lived creatures had been difficult from the beginning.  They were obsessed with death at the best of times, forever prepared for war and carnage.  It tired the People aboard the Wanderer.

Once the sensor net was fully deployed and they were convinced the unidentified fleet had no immediate ill intention towards his ship, Hnr’Dulka had put out the call for Conclave.  They would remain in Conclave until they received orders from home, the mysterious fleet exhibited aggressive tendencies, or they got tired of Conclave, whichever came first.  The answer would most certainly not be the third option, however.

The People had evolved in the oceans of a water-rich, low gravity planet that circled a yellow star similar to Earth’s Sun.  Had anyone from Earth met them they would have immediately thought of the People as something similar to two creatures they were familiar with: the octopus or the squid.  They would have been wrong, however, on several counts.

For one, the People had skeletons.  They also had some limited ability to draw nutrients directly out of water by absorbing them through gill-like structures.  This was something they did to supplement their omnivorous diet.

They were equally capable of breathing both in and out of water and, owing to their possession of skeletons and surprisingly robust musculature, were significantly more capable of locomotion on land than the Earth-bound cephalopod.  At some point in the mists of the deep past some of the People’s ancestors had crawled out of the ocean and on to land.  They’d discovered that if they climbed the home planet’s spindly trees they could hang, sometimes for days, and then drop down on the planet’s rather common large herbivores.  The sudden impact would break one or several of the prey’s legs, which were weak due to the planet’s low gravity, making the subsequent chase significantly easier.  Assuming there was need for a chase.

The biggest, and undoubtedly most surprising to Earth people, difference in the People, though, was the eyes.  They had ten.  Eight eyes were arrayed around their bodies in binocular pairs.  The ninth and tenth formed a fifth binocular pair at the “front,” defined as the area on the opposite end from their tentacles, so that pair was always looking forward when moving through water.

No one was entirely sure why the People had such an arrangement of eyes.  Finding fossilized remains in the deep oceans of their homeworld was difficult, if not impossible.  Some of the more primitive ocean-going creatures on the planet had light-sensitive strips encircling their bodies and others had developed eyes in similar arrangements.  The theory went that those were the evolutionary ancestors of the arrangements of eyes, allowing the creatures to better sense different light gradients and, in doing so, navigate more efficiently.

The fifth eyes were a trait the People only shared with a few creatures.  All of those creatures were predators.

It was the predators that had brought about the idea of Conclave.  No one doubted it had originally be an arrangement that allowed the People to gather together to keep watch for danger and protect the young.  Over time those in the primitive Conclaves had developed language.  At first it was undoubtedly simple sounds that meant, “Food over here,” or, “Danger over there.”  In time it had become a complicated system of maintaining memories and traditions and defining the difference between “us” and “them.”

The strongest and most vigilant were put at the outer edges of the early groups.  These were said to “be of strong fifth eyes.”  Over time the fifth eyes had taken on an almost mystical quality among the People, such that after they crawled up the ocean, up the trees, and eventually in to ships that took them to space they were lead by those who were said to “always look with their fifth eyes.”  The weak were said to have “lost the fifth eyes.”  Those who did not believe in progress were said to “keep their fifth eyes closed.”

In truth, Hnr’dulka was one who kept his fifth eyes closed.  He had no use for faster than light travel.  He had no time for the Hidden Ones.  Although the Wanderer was a marvel of technology it had, as far as he was concerned, absolutely nothing on the old Celestie.  It was this streak of regressivism that had caused him to call Conclave in uncharted territory with a potentially overwhelming enemy force in the same system.  The crews of the old carryships had been able to get away with that, but they’d spent rotation upon rotation traveling alone through the endless void between stars.

Hnr’dulka justified his decision by claiming the goal was to figure out where the People’s stories intersected with the stories of the creatures they’d been sent to observe.  No one had objected.  Everyone loved Conclave and plenty of the crew felt the same as he did.  They’d set the ship to automatic and climbed into the giant water tanks kept aboard the Wanderer.  They served a utilitarian purpose as well as a place for Conclave.

Third Enginewatch Officer Gtha’nik started off, telling both the story that had lead to her discovery and the stories from their own People that included similar creatures.  Then the Conclave, as it tended to do, went in its own direction.  Gtha’nik’s stories reminded others in the crew of similar stories, and those of still other stores.  Eventually, however, they worked around to stories from other races that the People had met since the arrival of the Hidden Ones.  It was then that the whole thing took off.

Story after story from race after race suddenly snapped in to place.  It seemed that all races had similar heroes, similar villains, and similar ideas of what it meant to live and die and prosper.  The Wanderer’s crew was on to something.

----------------------

Conclave had been going for some thirty or forty cycles.  It was hard to keep track of times floating in a sea of tentacles in the warm, dark interior of Wanderer’s main waterhold.  Lack of predators meant that no one had to keep watch.  Pumping nutrients in to the waterhold meant that no one had to stop to eat.  Everyone got to just be and hear.  They told their stories and sang their songs.

Gtha’nik started a new song.  “This,” she said, “Is one of the tales I’ve learned that goes back to the Hidden Ones themselves.  I think it might contain the reason we are here now.  It is called ‘The War at the Start of the Universe.’”

The waterhold was suddenly filled with a luminescence.  A voice, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, spoke.  It said, “I believe I can tell that story.”

“Who are you?” Hnr’dulka challenged.  “How dare you invade this Conclave.”

“I am Gabrel,” the voice said, “I am of the Hidden.  We have waited long enough for you to engage in your silly games.  It is time for you to do the task for which we have called you to this place.”

“This is not how things are done in Conclave,” Hnr’dulka replied.  “But I will allow you to tell your story.  Then we will decide if it warrants calling an end and following your direction.”

“In the beginning there were Seven,” the voice began, offering no acknowledgement to Hnr'dulka's challenge.  “No one knew from whence they came.  There was the void and then there were the Seven.

“They fought amongst themselves, the Seven.  At times they fought as siblings, filled with love but aware of the fact that there was too little space and too much them.  At times they fought as bitter enemies, wishing nothing more than death and conquest.  Over time the One came to hate the rest of the Seven.  In time the One conspired to kill the rest.  In time the One succeeded.

“Now all there was to see was the void and the One and the dead bodies of the rest of the Seven.  So the One took them and ripped them apart and used them to create the six forces and from those six forces the One created the universe.  These six forces are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak interaction, the strong interaction, life, and will.

“The One wanted control.  In time the One found that it was possible to control the first four and create a universe that obeyed all the rules.  In time the One found that life combined with will to form consciousness and consciousness did not like to be controlled.

“We were the first to come to being in the universe.  We found we could harness life and will and, in doing so, manipulate the universe to our whims.  We could travel great distances with a single thought.  We could become anything we wanted and explore any part of the universe.  We thought we were gods.

“In time the One took notice of us.  In time the One came to hate us.  The One conspired to destroy us as the One had destroyed the others among the Seven.

“The One did not understand life or will.  The One did not understand us.  We were prepared, but found we could not kill the One.  Instead we lured the One to this place and used all our powers together to trap the One here.

“We paid a great cost.  It nearly destroyed us all and took our corporeal forms.  Since then we have not been able to manifest except as light and speech.  We have cultivated the younger races so we could use them, use you, to keep an eye on the One.”

“So that is why we are here?” Gtha’nik asked, “To watch for this One?”

“No,” the voice responded.  “The One has conspired to escape this place since we won the war.  All life and will in this system has been manipulated to that task.  Soon the One will have everything in place to manipulate the other four forces.  When that happens the One will escape our bonds.”

“What will happen then?” Gtha’nik asked.

“The One will destroy the universe.”

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 7

[Author's Note: This is part seven of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

Chicago smelled of smoke and fire.

It had smelled that way for nearly a month.  Most of the time the prevailing easterly winds blew the scent of the fire still smoldering in the southern suburbs out over the lake, but on days when the wind changed or simply stopped the smoke just kind of drifted in and hung over the city, blocking out the sun and any sense of life.  It had worked its way into the buildings, the seats on the L, the sidewalks.  It had worked its way straight through to the soul of the city itself.

A pair of men in business suits hurried past, breathing through surgical masks.  Public health officials had announced that it was a good precaution.  Particulate matter in the sky could be deadly, after all.

Not that there were too many people to breathe the smoke and dust in.  The streets of Chicago were nearly deserted.  What foot traffic there was consisted of people hurriedly rushing from one place to another, intent on their errands, or possibly simply intent on being inside.

Even the ever-present homeless were nowhere to be seen.  In the days after the disappearances the police had begun daily sweeps of the Loop, rounding up any homeless person they found.  They’d been sent to several now-empty grade schools in need of a new purpose.  The official story was that it was done for their own protection.  They would be rehabilitated, re-educated, re-integrated with society, the rosy promises continued.  Surely there would be need for extra laborers now that so many of the able-bodied had disappeared.  Op-eds in the Trib and the Sun-Times tended to use words like “draconian,” “fascist,” and “undesirables.”  The powers that be mostly ignored the opinion pages.

Everyone else seemed to ignore them, too.  The news focused on two things: endless speculation on the disappearances and breathless reporting about the slowly simmering war in the Middle East.  People tired of hearing about past grief and anguish were becoming increasingly fixated on the potential of future grief and anguish, it seemed.  Future costs were a catharsis, a temporary respite and distraction from the all-too-recent past.

The geopolitical realities of the Holy Land had shifted overnight.  Israel was now a pariah state.  Even with the concerted Iraqi/Russian/United States intervention against Iran the Jewish state was sorely pressed.  Both Jordan and Syria pressed Israel’s borders, eager to take retribution against Israeli perfidy on the night of the foiled attack.  The Palestinians, ever eager to find a future without Israeli oppression, fought as a particularly determined insurgent force within Israel’s borders.

For the first time in three generations the big question was one of the involvement of the United States.  Most of the vocal defenders of Israeli interests in the US had vanished, some in the most literal possible sense.  Those who remained seemed aghast at the thought Israel would have used a worldwide calamity as a flimsy pretext to deploy nuclear weapons against civilian centers in Iran.  It was an unforgivable sin.

Two American Carrier Strike Groups now stood off the shored of Israel.  Neither seemed interested in assisting Israeli forces.  Every day the Jordanians and Syrians grew more bold in their skirmishes against the IDF.  Every day someone on the news speculated that the Israelis – having already opened the door – would unleash the nuclear beast upon their next-door neighbors.

None of that mattered.  The prospect of nuclear war had lost all terror for Joe.  It was as remote a threat as a war on Mars.  He walked, hand in hand with Katie, through the smoke-infused streets of Chicago.

A voice boomed out behind them.  “The Lord has called us to repentance.  Read your Bibles.  See the truth.”

Joe turned.  A beat up Chevy Astro van had just turned left on to Washington about a block back.  Loudspeakers were attached to its roof.  The word REPENT was painted on its hood.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god,” the van announced to the sparse foot traffic, “But the free gift of god is eternal life through Jesus.”  The van drew even with Joe and he saw that Bible verses were painted all over the sides and the windows.

“It was a lot better when the Blues Brothers did it,” he said to Katie, squeezing her hand.  She turned and looked at him, offered a tight, wan smile.

He’d spent a couple days at home after Eddie disappeared.  Finally, however, he’d been forced to return to work.  He worked for a company that manufactured and distributed emergency equipment.  Their products were suddenly in great demand and the office was short staffed.

Katie had refused to let him out of her sight.  “I lost Eddie, I can’t lose you, too,” she’d said, then insisted on following him to work.  Karen in HR had just shrugged and told Katie to take an empty desk near Joe’s office.  Protocol had no place in a world turned upside-down.  Joe hadn’t had a moment of privacy in over three weeks.  If he was honest with himself, he was starting to resent his wife.

For the moment, though, worry overrode any resentment.  Her refusal to let him be meant that she, in turn, was constantly in his care.  The bags under her eyes, her sallow skin, and her vacant, haunted expression kept him constantly on edge.  Worse, though, Katie barely ate.

As long as he’d known her she’d carried extra weight and had a host of body-image issues.  She’d never been fat, but by the same token she’d never been thin, either.  That had always bothered her more than it bothered him.  She would stand in front of the mirror in the morning and poke at the extra fat around her belly and tell him she looked awful.  He’d wrap his arms around her waist and kiss her on the cheek and look in to her bright, smiling eyes and tell her that, as far as he was concerned, she didn’t need to change a thing.  He loved Katie for her smile and her energy and for the way she made him feel like the luckiest man in the world.  He loved her for the way he missed her as soon as he left home in the morning and spent the day counting down the minutes until he’d return.  He loved her for the way that every time he looked at her he could see a little house in the suburbs and babies and puppies and growing old and sitting on the porch together shaking their fists at the damn kids.  What were a few extra pounds compared to all of that?

She’d only recently gotten rid of the baby weight and returned to her usual, pleasant dimensions.  But now she seemed to be wasting away.  Her face, usually round, was starting to thin out.  He was beginning to think of her as gaunt.

The transformation was terrifying, especially considering the speed.  He assumed that her lack of sleep didn’t help.  Every night he woke up to find her side of the bed empty.  Every night he walked in to the nursery and found her sitting in the rocking chair next to Eddie’s empty crib, hugging the teddy bear her parents had given them with the big balloon bouquet in the hospital.  In those moments he realized that even though she was with him all the time she was completely alone and suffering and absolutely nothing he could do seemed to help.

Unlike him, she couldn’t bury herself in her work.  She was an editor at a publishing company, specifically working with authors of parenting books.  That industry, unlike his, had completely ground to a halt.  All of the sudden no one needed a copy of the latest take-off on What to Expect When You’re Expecting and no one seemed willing or able to write What to Expect When Your Child is Suddenly and Unexpectedly Ripped from Reality Itself.

Every day Katie sat at a vacant desk near his office and read mommy blogs.  They had become a sort of mutual support network as well as a black hole inexorably pulling her deeper and deeper down a well of mutual grief.  One blog had even ended up as a memorial of sorts.

A Complicated Motherhood was a blog written by a woman in rural Montana who had been in the midst of a high-risk pregnancy.  It was a catalog of her daily difficulties, her doctor visits, and whatever else came to mind.

On the day of the disappearances she had suddenly discovered she was no longer pregnant and alone in the house.  The sudden collapse of the womb caused internal bleeding.  Unable to stand or walk, she’d called 911, but been unable to get through.

Finally, lacking any other options, she’d turned to the internet.  Her last few entries begged the world to send help.  No one could.

They reached Joe’s building and pushed through the revolving door.  He took a deep breath of the cleaner, recycled air.  The passed through security and got on the elevator, alone.

“Katie,” Joe said, “I think there’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you recently.”

“What?”

“I love you,” he said, “And I’m glad you’re still here.  I don’t think I could do this without you.”

She looked at him, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes.  Then she smiled.  The Katie he hadn’t seen in so long was suddenly on the elevator.  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, holding on to the moment.

----------------------

A few hours later he looked out the window and saw the Chevy Astro Van driving down Washington once again.

Two days after Eddie disappeared he’d taken Katie to visit her parents in Bloomingdale to try to cheer her up.  They’d passed through Wheaton on the way.  Even though it was a few days after the start of a new school year the Wheaton College campus had been quieter than he ever remembered seeing it when school was in session.  He’d taken a detour to see what was going on.

A big, stone sign had sat out in front of campus at the corner of Washington and College that said “WHEATON COLLEGE” and “FOR CHRIST AND HIS KINGDOM.”  Someone had painted the words “FUCK YOU” in blue spray paint over the name.  Two people who looked like students lay in the grass nearby, an upended bottle of Jack Daniels between them.  They presented the only signs of life.

He remembered hearing that Christians thought Jesus would come and take them back.  There’d been the big laugh at Harold Camping’s expense a few years back.  Ever since then he’d run across the occasional Rapture joke or accidentally ended up on a blog or message board that discussed the topic.  He’d always dismissed it as absurd superstition.

With a sudden start he realized he couldn’t be so sure anymore.

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 6

[Author's Note: This is part six of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

At any other time the news of a long range Israeli air raid targeting Iran would have been world-changing news.  In that particular news cycle it barely warranted a mention.  The planet’s attention was focused on the sudden, unexpected disappearance of what some estimates put at two billion people, including – as far as anyone could tell – every single child under 13.

Of course the disappearances themselves were bad enough, but they did not happen in a vacuum.

Within hours of the disappearances reports started to spread of plane crashes all over the world.  Post-9/11 security regulations on US airliners left pilotless planes in the sky with crews desperately trying to get through their cockpit doors.  Those planes either crashed or flew on under the control of their autopilots until they simply ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky.  Passengers and aircrew of an American Airlines flight whose pilot disappeared as the plane was pulling in to the gate at DFW in Dallas/Fort Worth were able to tell their stories.

Some of the carnage wasn’t limited to the aircraft and their passengers alone.  At Chicago’s south suburban Midway International Airport a Frontier Airlines plane was at full power, prepared to take off when the pilot disappeared and the plane flew straight off the end of Midway’s notoriously short runway and straight in to a suburban neighborhood.  The plane’s fuel tanks ruptured on contact with a house and shot directly out of the wings and into the plane’s still-spinning engines.  Hundreds of gallons of burning jet fuel washed over 55th Street and Archer Avenue, starting a conflagration not seen in Chicago since the days of the Great Fire.

Car accidents clogged freeways as suddenly driverless cars drifted out of their lanes, flew off roads, or spun and flipped.  Distracted, shocked drivers who suddenly found their vehicles a passenger or three lighter contributed to the carnage.  They lost track of the task at hand and simply crashed.

It didn’t sink in immediately, however, that most such disappearances and disruptions took place in the United States of America.  It was only there that large numbers of adults seemed to disappear.  Some pockets of adult disappearances took place in parts of Africa and Central and South America.  Europe, Asia, and Australia remained largely unscathed, save a few people here and there.  Save everyone except the children, that is.

The disappearance of children was a universal phenomenon.  Car seats emptied in Amarillo, Texas.  Schools were suddenly vacant all over Argentina.  Newborn babies disappeared from bassinets in Archangelsk.  Everywhere mothers were grieving.  All over the world fathers were searching.

The world simply had no time for a few Iraqi pilots dying in the middle of the night.

------------------

It surprised no one that the new Iraqi Army lacked a certain level of discipline they’d possessed under Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime.  There were many skilled, professional soldiers in the ranks of the newly reconstituted force.  There were also more than a few for whom corruption was the byword.  The gadabouts were largely allowed to stay on board due to a certain lack of institutional control and a definite lack of suitable, energized recruits to fill otherwise empty billets.

It was one such ne’er do well that managed to put Iraq’s sudden nighttime struggle on the map.

The first plane taken out of David’s Hammer by the Iraqi Air Force was one of Colonel Goldstein’s F-15I Ra’am strike fighters.  Sheer chance put that initial intercept directly above an Iraqi Army outpost.  The troops on site tracked the crash and searched for it in the desert the next morning.

Somewhere during the fall the aircraft’s Golan nuclear missile separated from the plane.  It came to rest, largely intact, near the wreckage of its mothership.  One of the members of the Iraqi patrol found it.  He then took a picture of it with his phone.

Then he posted it on Twitter.

The pic went viral.  At first no one knew what the missile was.  People all over the world compared it to every missile known to the internet.  Finally someone offered a theory.  The mystery missile was a Golan.  Word quickly spread that Israel’s heretofore only theorized air-to-ground nuclear missile programming was very real.

An enraged world looking for a scapegoat finally had one.  Jordanian and Syrian military units were on the move within hours.  Saudi Arabia and Turkey denounced Israel in the strongest possible terms and offered military assistance to any willing to push the pesky Jewish state in to the sea once and for all.  Hezbollah and Hamas immediately began a local campaign of disruption and terror.

The United States moved the Nimitz-class carrier George H.W. Bush to the eastern Mediterranean and announced the Theodore Roosevelt would be following shortly.  Their announced mission was to “keep the peace.”  In a step from long-standing tradition, however, a series of terse messages were sent from the White House to the Prime Minister and Knesset.  The message was simple: the United States had two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and a third in the Persian Gulf and US Navy’s job was to stop Israel from even thinking about launching another air strike.  Israel was truly alone.

Still, they refused to back down.  They promised to destroy Syria and Jordan on their way to finally taking out Iran.  Iran, in turn, began deploying all the forces at its disposal.  They began heading west, apparently unmoved by the fact that Iraq still lay in their path.

Iraq decided it was not to be ignored.

--------------------

Anwar Al-Saafi took a strange, circuitous trip to the office of the President of Iraq.  On the eve of Saddam Hussein’s murderous purges of the Ba’ath Party his father and mother – then three months pregnant – had fled Baghdad.  For several months the pair hid out in Cairo, but, afraid that Hussein would consolidate power and have a long reach, they’d endeavored to reach London.

They had eventually made the trip, but not before stopping in Rome, where Anwar was born.

In London the family had connected with a loose network of Iraqi ex-pats and Kurdish refugees, all looking for a way to push Saddam out of power and dreaming of a life in free Iraq.  Deciding that that diplomacy would put their son in a position to influence the world on Iraq’s behalf, Anwar’s parents had sent him to Oxford.  From there he’d travelled to New York and attended Columbia University and studied international relations.

He’d made connections within the United Nations and when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 the then-25 year-old Al-Saafi had called in all his connections and lobbied hard to be involved.  Eventually the United States command in Iraq had seen the value in having an Oxford- and Columbia educated, secular, Arabic-, Kurdish-, and English- (as well as Spanish, French, and German) speaking Iraqi ex-pat on hand.  They called him in from the sidelines in 2007.  Anwar packed up his home and his new wife, second-generation Iraqi-American named Nadia, and headed in to a war zone.

He quickly developed a reputation as being fair-minded and willing to sit down with anyone and let them speak their mind.  Power and influence seemed to naturally gather around him and soon he was regarded as a mover and shaker in the nascent government.  It was only natural that he would end up President or Prime Minister eventually.  But the fact that he made it before his fortieth birthday took everyone by surprise.

Anwar Al-Saafi was the youthful, confident face of Iraq, facing the world with boundless enthusiasm.

Three days after the disappearances he stepped in front of the cameras to deliver an announcement to the world.  He appeared to have aged ten years in seventy-two hours.  Still, as he looked up from the podium and at the camera his eyes were clear.

“I speak to you now,” he said to the world in crisp Oxford English, “Not as the President of Iraq.  I speak to you as a citizen of the world.  I speak to you as a citizen of a world that has suddenly turned itself upside-down, a world where nothing makes sense any longer.”

He stopped and took a deep breath.  “My son, Amir, is four years old.  We have…we had a ritual, of sorts.  Every day when I got home he would wait for me in the window, looking out.  Then he would run out the door with his hands raised and I would grab him by the arms and swing him on my back and we would run around and laugh and laugh and laugh.  He called me his camel.”

Anwar stopped, tears filling the corner of his eyes.  “For the last three days Amir has not met me at the door.  He has not jumped on my back.  We have not laughed.  There has been no laughter in my house.  Just as I am sure there has been no laughter in any house, anywhere.

“That includes Iraqi houses as well as Iranian houses and American houses and British houses.”  He paused for a moment, building the moment.  “It also includes Israeli houses.”

Eyes glinting, he leaned in towards the camera.  “I know that many are angry at the Israelis.  But theirs was an act of fear and rage.  Theirs was an act that was not justifiable, but that was understandable.  I want to know who took Amir and I want to send that person straight to hell.

“Death does not beget life.  Revenge does not create joy.  It does us no good, it offers the memory of our children no succor, to kill each other in our rage and fear.  We must draw a line right here and say that we will not bring greater madness to this vast, incomprehensible torment."

He paused again.

“Three nights ago five brave pilots of the Iraqi Air Force lost their lives.  They did not know they were dying to prevent a great tragedy, but still they fought and died.  We, the people of Iraq, will honor their memory by standing between Israel and Iran to make sure there is no more fighting.  But we cannot do it alone.

“Twenty-four Americans also put their lives on the line that night.  It was the might of the American Navy that ultimately brought the madness to an end.  But we cannot only rely on America to be our protector and defender.  So I ask the world to come to Iraq.  Come help us keep the peace this world so desperately needs.

“We cannot search for our missing and mourn our losses if we are busy piling more dead atop their heads.”

-----------------------

The next morning President Barack Obama of the United States and Premier Vladimir Putin of Russia announced their intention to make a joint troop deployment to Iraq.

That day elements of the Russian 58th Army began packing for deployment.  At the same time the US Army’s 1st Division, the storied Big Red One, received to ship out.  Meanwhile, two squadrons of Russian MiG-29S air superiority fighters headed for Iraq, followed by the promise of an additional two squadrons of brand-new Su-35 Flankers.  Not to be outdone, the US promised to send the 1st Air Wing, equipped with F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, in addition to leaving the Harry S. Truman in the Persian Gulf.

Reports soon followed that Iran was backing down.  Neither Jordan nor Syria seemed willing, however.  The world held its breath.

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 5

[Author's Note: This is part five of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

Colonel Saul Goldstein swore as his threat indicator lit up, informing him he was being painted with an ANG-68 airborne radar.  He briefly weighed the risks to operational security, then mentally shrugged.  The game was up no matter what he did.

He toggled his radio.  “Hammer Flight, this is Lead,” he said.  “We’ve been made.  Stay alert, stay together, remain passive.”  A series of microphone clicks told him his pilots had heard the order.

Goldstein was commander of the 69 Squadron, known as the Hammers, as well as overall commander of the strike.  He’d just broken operational orders for complete silence and if his mission was a failure it would be on his head.  The contact from an ANG-68 told him the mission was already compromised, as it meant the Iraqis had F-16s in the air and they were actively searching.

Discovery was a risk the General Staff was willing to take, but they’d attempted to hedge their bets.  The F-16Is of 107 Squadron were attached to the mission in their primary role as Wild Weasels: fighters designed specifically to engage and destroy enemy ground defenses.  An element had already taken out the first obstacle, coming in below the horizon of the tracking radar at Ar Rutbah and sending a HARM missile down its beam.  The plan had called for similar attacks all along the route, opening a corridor straight across Iraq that and even Baghdad itself.  It was a strategy that made up for in confusion what it lacked in stealth.  It was also a strategy that was completely blow away by the presence of Iraqi F-16s.

The best he could do now was to hide his numbers and rely on speed, surprise, and the absolute superiority of the veteran pilots under his command.  David’s Hammer numbered twice as many airplanes as the Iraqi Air Force, assuming all of their planes were even operational.  And there was no way the green Iraqis could outfight any of his veteran Israeli pilots.

----------------

Hassan “Hotfoot” Rashid stared at his scope.  “Can you get an accurate count, Cowboy?” he asked his flight leader.

“Nope,” Cowboy replied.  “They’re dancing around out there.  But I’m assuming at least a squadron, maybe two.”

“Say again, Lion,” Control chimed in.

“I said I cannot get an accurate count, Control,” Cowboy responded.  “I’d say to expect a minimum of twelve bogeys, but probably more.”

Lion Flight’s inability to make an accurate count of the mysterious enemy planes indicated the pilots were flying in close formation with their instruments on passive.  That meant that in order to detect the planes the radar needed to make actual contact with radar beams actually bouncing off the planes and returning.  Some of the contacts were flickering in and out, which meant the planes were flying close enough together that several of the aircraft appeared to be merged into a single contact.

The fact that they were flying such close formation in the pitch black night meant the pilots were good.  Extremely good.  Hassan shivered at the thought.

“I have four birds in the air now, Lion,” Control said, “Vectoring on your contact.  Four more launching now.”

“Hurry, Control,” Cowboy replied.  “They’ll be in range of Baghdad in less than fifteen minutes.”

“I know, Lion,” Control said.  “It’s the best we can do right now.  But be aware, we’re also looking for an assist.”

----------------

Captain Pete “A-Train” Johnson waggled the wings of his F/A-18E Super Hornet as he raced past the tanker.  Behind him trailed eleven more fighters from VFA-105, known as the Gunslingers.  Thirty thousand feet below the dark waters of the Persian Gulf roiled in the night.  Up ahead he could make out the lights of Basra.  The Gunslingers were headed for Iraq.

A message had arrived from Fifth Fleet HQ approximately six hours before.  The message contained a warning that intelligence indicated a nuclear strike was in the making against targets in Iraq or Iran and the pilots of the Harry S. Truman, CVN-75, were to stand by in preparation to stop the attack.

No one was quite sure what to make of the situation.  The only force that would have the will or capability of attacking Iran or Iraq with nukes was Israel, but everyone was under the impression diplomacy had forestalled any plans to do so.  Israel was also an ally, although relations had been deteriorating ever since the US withdrew its forces from Iraq and Israel had started rattling its saber harder.  That, in fact, was why CSG-10, the Truman's Carrier Strike Group, had been deployed to the Gulf.  A-Train and his pilots were supposed to act as a deterrent.  No one thought they’d actually end up with a shooting war on their hands.

Perhaps it had to do with the rumors of an attack on the US mainland.  They’d all gotten wind that something was happening before communications were abruptly shut off and the ship went to General Quarters.  The whole thing was weird.

There was no more time to think about it, however.  They’d received a panicked call for support from the Iraqis.  It was time to stop World War III in its tracks.

----------------

“Break hard left!” Cowboy shouted.

Hassan snapped his fighter over on to its left wing and hauled back on the stick.  It barely moved, but he felt the blood begin to drain from his head as the fighter screamed in to a high-g turn.  The F-16’s fly-by-wire system meant the stick didn’t need to move at all, giving him the sense of pinpoint control.

That control, coupled with Cowboy’s timely warning, saved his life.  Hassan looked up and back in time to see a stream of tracer rounds slice through the sky.  Had he not turned they would have sawed his fighter in half.

That quick look also gave him enough time to see a missile light off out in the distance.  “Evasive, Cowboy!” he shouted.

“On it,” his flight leader grunted.  A moment later a pair of flares sputtered to life along the missile’s path of travel.  The missile seemed to be fooled by the countermeasure.

Hassan didn’t have time to track Cowboy’s fight, however.  As his F-16 pulled through a 180-degree turn he leveled the wings and straightened his path.  At that exact instant a warning tone sounded.  Someone had locked on to him with a radar guided missile.  He snapped in to a Split-S and prepared to drop chaff.

The fight couldn’t have been going for more than five minutes, but it already felt to Hassan like he’d been in an hours-long struggle.  Lion Flight had shadowed the unidentified aircraft for approximately five minutes, helping to guide four more F-16s in with their radars silent, hoping to gain the advantage of surprise.  It had worked.  After a fashion.

No one in the Iraqi Air Force had the skill or experience to make a complete surprise attack.  The spotty ground radar network hadn’t helped the situation, nor had the fact that Cowboy had never arranged a long-range intercept.  As such, they’d given the enemy strike force enough time to engage their active radar systems and prepare for an engagement.  When the radars went active and the fighters spread out they revealed their true strength at three dozen.  Hassan’s heart had sunk far enough to scrape the desert sands.

One of the Iraqi fighters had managed to take out an enemy fighter on the first pass.  They lost three for their troubles.  It was not a fair exchange.

Four fighters, probably F-15s, had then broken from the main force on an intercept course for Lion Flight.  Cowboy had ordered them to engaged, knowing that all they could do was delay the aerial armada and possibly force them to burn too much fuel to continue on.  It was a slim hope to hang on, but it was all they had.

A dirty, orange fire suddenly blossomed in the night.

“Woohoo!” Cowboy’s exultant cry sounded in Hassan’s headphones.  “Splash one bandit.  Now let’s –“

A second blossom lit the sky.

Hassan was alone in the night.  A target lock warning sounded in his ears.  He offered a quick prayer for deliverance and snapped his F-16’s nose up.

----------------

“Watch out for friendlies,” A-Train warned his squadron.  “Assuming any of the Iraqis are still alive.”

The Gunslingers had sprinted from the Persian Gulf to the intercept area at just under the speed of sound.  Time was of the essence, but the Super Hornets would be out at the outer edges of their operational range, so fuel conservation was a concern.  Tankers would be available and they could always make an emergency landing at one of the Iraqi airbases, but everyone preferred the idea of sleeping in their own bunks.

Besides, they couldn’t have made it in time to help the initial Iraqi interceptors.  Word had come that the mysterious raiders had easily defeated an undermanned and overmatched wave of Iraqi F-16s, losing two but taking out five of the six Iraqis in exchange.

The Gunslingers would be heavily outnumbered, but only for a few minutes.  Another dozen F/A-18Es from VFA-32 were burning fuel to catch up.  The Iraqis were also in the process of launching all their available fighters.

The hope was, though, that a fight would be unnecessary.  It was one thing to risk the well-nigh impotent wrath of a still-rebuilding Iraq.  It was another thing entirely to ignore the US Navy.

It was time to find out.  Iraqi ground control had directed the Gunslingers to within thirty miles of the mass of bogeys.  They were now within range of the Super Hornets’ massed AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles.  As far as A-Train was concerned, that meant they were all dead unless they did exactly as told.

“Light ‘em up,” he ordered.

He flipped his radio to the 243 MHz, the international distress channel.  The bogeys would almost certainly be monitoring and it gave him the best chance to get his point across.  “This is Captain Peter Johnson of the United States Navy to the unidentified aircraft currently approaching Baghdad.  You are in violation of sovereign Iraqi airspace and I have been given authorization to use all necessary force against you.  Turn back.  Now.”  He paused.  “You do not want to piss off the United States,” he added.  “All hell will reign down upon your head.”

His targeting computer sounded.  He had a solid lock on the lead aircraft of the formation.  His finger tightened on the trigger.

The icons representing the fighter formation began to shift.  A moment later it became obvious what they were doing.  The fighters were reversing course.

A-Train relaxed his grip and breathed a sigh of relief.

A Distant, Dreadful Star, Part 4

[Author's Note: This is part four of the story born of this post at Slacktivist.]

The strike package lifted as the Sun sank over the western horizon.  Had the pilots looked off in the direction of the setting Sun as they rose ever higher in the sky they would have seen the brilliant orb settling in to the waters of the Mediterranean, that ancient sea of destiny.  Instead they turned east, towards a vast sea of sand.  Their destiny lay in the inky blackness of an already deepening night.

Twelve F-15I Ra'am fighters of Hammer Squadron joined up with the dozen F-16I Sufa fighters already loitering in a lazy figure-eight pattern over Hatzerim Airbase.  The two squadrons then set an east-northeast heading.  In a few minutes they would join another twelve fighters, the F-15D Eagle fighters of the Spearhead Squadron.  Once combined, the aerial armada would join up with the tankers of the Desert Giants before striking the first of what was expected to be many avenging blows.

The thirty-six pilots and twenty-four Weapons Systems Officers (WSOs) had been kept in complete silence since the early evening.  They had no idea why the long awaited and often re-planned air strike had finally been green lit.  All they knew was that this was a moment they had been training for, in some cases for years.  Well, it was close to what they had been training to do.  There was one minor change.

Israel’s General Staff had been anticipating a long strike in to Iran for several years.  The objective of the strike was to be Iranian nuclear facilities, seen as a clear and present danger to the continued existence of the state of Israel.  The strike would involve conventional smart munitions targeted at primarily military targets.  Collateral damage was to be avoided, as it would be an unfortunate news item.

Now, however, the Israeli strike force was carrying nuclear weapons.  Each F-15I carried a single Golan air-to-ground missile.  The Golan was an air-to-ground tactical nuclear missile with over the horizon capabilities and a 20 kiloton load.  Originally designed as a weapon of absolute, last resort, Israel was now deploying twelve of its eighteen Golan missiles on a single strike.

Their primary target was the Iranian capitol of Tehran.

All the men and women of the assault force – codenamed David’s Hammer – knew was that the operational change had come about because Iran had dealt the first blow.  In doing so they had done the unthinkable and targeted Israeli children.  Nothing was to get in the way of Israel’s vengeance.

Somewhere out ahead of David’s Hammer were the tankers.  Those fat, lumbering targets were, in turn, escorted by three more squadrons of the Air Force.  That group was pushing far in to Jordanian air space, fully prepared to engage in a fighter sweep and clear the skies of any in the Jordanian Royal Air Force foolish enough to attempt an interception.  David’s Hammer would then refuel over the desert wastes near the Iraqi border.

After that, they were on their own.  Fortunately, though, all that stood between Jordan and Iran was Iraq.  The military of that nation was still a pitiful shadow of its once-powerful self.  At last report the Iraqi Air Force had exactly eighteen fighters capable of stopping David’s Hammer: a collection of F-16 Falcons purchased from the US so recently they probably still smelled of primer.  The pilots were so untried they probably still wore diapers.  No one was worried about the prospects of being stopped by the Iraqi Air Force.  The main problem worry was that any engagement would cost the strike force precious fuel.

The possible ramifications of an early engagement had been factored in to the plan.  While all the pilots and planes of David’s Hammer were technically considered expendable for the greater good of the mission, it was also of the utmost necessity that the Air Force not lose any more trained pilots or advanced airframes than it had to.  Recognizing this need, the General Staff had added a new leg to the strike.

At that exact moment a flight of C-130 Hercules transports were making their way across southern Syria, loaded with fuel, munitions, and soldiers of the Paratroopers Brigade.  Their target was an airbase north and east of Ar Rutbah in western Iraq.  Abandoned since the United States pulled out and left the shriveled, impotent Iraqi Air Force in its wake, the base would make a perfect emergency landing strip in case any of the fighters of David’s Hammer needed to divert.  The transports’ only defense was stealth, so they flew low, under the horizon of any curious radar operators from Jordan, Syria, or Iraq.

------------------

Hassan Rashid stared blankly at the engine glow of his element leader’s F-16C.  It hung out there, an orange dot in the inky blackness like some sort of impossible cigarette.  There was literally nothing else to see, save the stars and a faint sliver of the nearly completely waning moon.

Hassan shook his head and reminded himself to remain vigilant.  Even a moment’s lax attention in the cockpit of a high-tech fighter could mean a mistake.  A mistake at nearly 450 knots with nothing in the way of a point of reference could mean turning the multi-million dollar fighter, not to mention its pilot, into a smear covering kilometers of an otherwise featureless desert.

He made a slow, methodical scan of his instruments.  Everything was sweet, as his American-trained flight commander would say.  At least, everything in the fighter was sweet.

Somewhere out in the dark his wife was mourning the death of their child.  Whenever Hassan closed his eyes he saw her face, beautiful dark eyes watery with tears, as she looked down at the empty shirt their son had so recently been wearing.  One moment he was there, playing soccer in the street with the neighborhood children.  Then the street was empty.

The parents in the neighborhood had all responded to the sudden, unexpected silence and run out of their homes.  All they found was their childrens’ empty clothes and a soccer ball, slowly rolling to a halt in the middle of the street.

An hour later the military, such as it was, was put on high alert.  And now here he was, running a patrol between Baghdad and Ar-Rutbah, searching for, well, what, exactly?  No one seemed to have an answer.

The representation of the main search radar at Ar-Rutbah flickered and died.  Hassan clicked his radio.  “Lion Lead, this is Lion Two.”  Lion Lead went by the call sign Cowboy.  Hassan was known as Hotfoot.  The former was due to the training Cowboy had received from the US Air Force in Oklahoma, the latter due to Hassan’s tendency to set his throttles too high and overtake any of his flight leaders.

“I see it, Two,” his flight leader replied.  “We’d better avoid being blind up here.  Go active.”

“Roger, Lead.”  Hassan activated his radar.  Protocol had dictated the patrol aircraft remain passive and allow ground control to vector their flight if necessary.  In the sudden and unexpected absence of ground radar made use of their on-board radar imperative.

“Control, this is Lion Flight, come in,” Cowboy said over the general frequency.

“Lion, this is Control,” came a clipped reply.

“We’ve lost Ar-Rutbah, Control.  Please advise.”

“We’re checking in to the situation, Lion Flight,” Control responded.  “Go active and continue your patrol.  Will advise.”

“Roger, Control.”

A contact appeared at the very edge of Hassan’s display, far out to the west.  Several more quickly popped up.  “Contact!” Hassan called out.  “I’ve got bogeys.”

“I see ‘em, Hotfoot,” Cowboy replied.

“Say again, Lion,” Control said.

“Bogeys, Control,” Cowboy responded.  “We’re showing multiple contacts, almost directly west, bearing 85 absolute at 9,000 meters.  Airspeed 700 knots.”

“Time to intercept?”

“Six minutes, give or take.  Add ten seconds before we intercept the desert floor.”

“Say again, Lion?”

“I’m showing at least two dozen bogeys, Control.  No way we’d stand a chance.”

There was a pause.  “Confirmed, Lion,” Control finally said.  “Shadow the bogeys.  We’ll try to send help.”

“Confirmed, Control.  Any idea who they are?”

“There are only three options from that direction, Lion,” Control replied.  “And you know the Jordanians and Syrians aren’t big on violating our airspace for the hell of it.”

“So we’re assuming…” Cowboy trailed off.

“Israelis,” Control replied.  “Likelihood is high your bogeys are Israelis.”