"I remember the day the stars fell from the sky. I remember, because I am the one who found them."
Doctor Sylvester Hall in an interview in 2007
25, December, 1994
Federation of Central Usea
"Merry Christmas!" Cheers of the timeless words went up around the small office space of the FCU's Large Telescope Array in the Comona Islands. A tree stood in a corner, decorated to the nines with all manner of garland and baubles shipped from the mainland, a tiny bit of home in this distant and often very lonely corner of the world. While the Comona's were inhabited, the island that the LTA was built on was not, aside from the facility and a small 'town' for its dependents, there were less than three hundred people on the island, and at the moment there were ten of those people, the rest had gone back to the mainland, to their families for the holiday season to celebrate the birth of the Lord. Eggnog was drank in copious amounts, non-alcoholic, sadly, and light foodstuffs were passed around in good cheer. Gifts had been exchanged earlier, and while it was mostly ties and shaving cream, everyone was legitimately happy. A brief respite in the monotonous glory that was watching the heavens.
Earlier that month they had discovered a plethora of new small solar system bodies, asteroids to the common man, and cataloging was still under way for the majority of them. Atop the observatory a lone figure remained at the eye piece for the LTA. Sylvester Hall, Doctor of Astrophysics from the University of Carlly in the FCU was the largest egg at the LTA and the personal discoverer of an asteroid that had them all, beneath the cheer of holiday festivities, extremely worried. 1994XF04 Odysseus, discovered on December 7 was by preliminary measurements on a flat trajectory out of the Jovian system on a path towards the inner solar system. The Lord of the Planets, the shield of Earth, had let one through the vast net that was the Jovian gravity sphere. Over the days following its discovery they had been watching the body at every given opportunity, weather permitting, and communicating with the Oseans' National Aeronautics and Space Administration for pictures of it from their brand new Hubble Space Telescope launched back in '90. It was the hundredth sixth asteroid discovered in that period, and honestly they wouldn't have given it a second look after cataloging it, were it not for the fact that as they did the numbers it started occurring to them. Odysseus as they were calling it, wasn't just wandering into the inner solar system. It was coming directly at them.
So, Doctor Hall sat in a chair, next to a telescope on Christmas Day, looking at the sky, watching the garden of God with a paranoid eye, a computer near by beeped, for a moment he removed his attention from the sky and looked to the blockish monitor. Mathematical equations from the Oseans added to the initial equations from themselves. He read over the numbers quickly and as he did so his face started to sink, when he reached the bottom he sighed deeply and pushed himself away from both the telescope and the desk set up next to it. Doctor Hall made his way down a flight of circular stairs and into the base of the telescope where the scant number of other people were who immediately fell silent. It had been agreed upon, leave that station only if…
"So that's it, then?" Another scientist, Jeffery Anderson spoke with trepidation towards his colleague who after downing a glass of eggnog began speaking.
"The Osean boys just sent over their amendments, and I've forwarded it to our continental counterparts in Charlottetown. I regret to inform you all, the height of our careers will be the end of the world. Odysseus is lining up for an earth-impacting orbit, not an earth-crossing orbit like we originally thought. It currently looks to strike us within five years, sometime in mid to late nineteen ninety-nine."
No one spoke. That was it then, so ended the world.
Of course, the world didn't end. At least not with finality. Governments passed laws and measures were taken. Taxation was jacked through the proverbial roof to pay for any idea, any concept that could bare fruit. The nations of the world threw money at whoever thought they had half an inkling on how to save the world.
Then of course, in 1995, the Belkan War buried all mention of the impending crisis as the Belkan Federation invaded its neighbors, intent on reincorporating break-away territories and challenging the Osean Federation by themselves. It was a hard lesson learned for the world, featuring the second use of nuclear weapons in warfare after the Osean-Estralian war in the 1950s, and the loss to the world was greater than some could have imagined. Not only in the millions dead or displaced by the what was now termed informally as the second world war, but also in the destruction of Excalibur. The incredible monument to Belkan engineering was foremost, an anti-ballistic laser system, an immense boon to the defense of the planet from the impending asteroid impact, destroyed in the fires of petty war. It set the defense of Earth back by leagues.
Through vast overspending and pushing technology to its limits, the nations of the continent of Usea managed to complete the weapons' system now famous for saving the world. The vast Stonehenge Turret Array would use electromagnetic rail-guns to engage Odysseus as it entered the atmosphere. Everyone agreed, breaking an asteroid up was a generally bad idea, however, Odysseus was of such mass, that not doing so would have guaranteed its impact as an ELE, Extinction of Life Event.
The fateful day came on July 3, 1999. The guns of Stonehenge had barked for days, barrels warped by the immense heat energy released by the electromagnets, engaging Odysseus out at lunar orbit at first. The Union of Yuktobanian Republics unleashed nuclear fury as the rock, yes, singular, began its descent from the heavens. The Osean Federation joined them, the weapons of war that had threatened to end the world entire for years, in a single moment used for the salvation of mankind. It was not for naught, these efforts combined shattered and eviscerated much of Odysseus's wrath upon the world. When the barrage stopped however, a new problem emerged. What was one immense earth-killer had become hundreds, if not thousands, of at the very least, city-busters. The fragments of Odysseus landed with rage, from the continent of Usea to the continent of Anea. None were spared however, as energetic asteroid fragments slammed into the Summer Sea with more energy behind them at the point of impact than every single one of the nuclear warheads deployed against their mothership. The Earth shook mightily, for hours and hours. The most hardened cities were flattened against the Wrath of God. Then came the waves, enormous tidal waves crisscrossing the planetary surface striking every corner of the globe. Tens of millions were killed. Millions more were displaced utterly, and that was not to be the end of it.
In the wake of Odysseus's wrath, man resumed being man. While the nations of the continent of Osea rebuilt, while the nations of Anea picked up the pieces, the nations of Usea, the saviors of mankind, went to war with one another. The First Usean Continental War shook the nations of the Spring Sea Treaty Agreement and threw them into the mud of destitution. The Second Usean Continental War famously turned the saviors of man unto other men, not as symbols of survival, but as what, logically, they were. Weapons of war. The Stonehenge Array shattered the skies of Usea, and the shells, with such energy behind them as was generated by their guns, did not stop, launched out into escape trajectories to places only the gods of man knew.
In time, peace settled, for a while. Then the world ended, when the fear of the nineteen seventies and eighties came to pass, and Osea and Yuktobania went to war. The world stood on the brink of annihilation, not by the Fist of God as Odysseus had been, but wrought by the Hand of Man. This too, passed, and treaties were signed, peaces were forged, and war, people foolishly thought, would be forgotten.
It is the Year of Our Lord, Two-Thousand Fifteen. The Federal Republic of Estovakia, laid low by Odysseus and shattered by civil war, has reunified under the control of a cabal of strongmen calling themselves The Generals. To the west of their formerly flagging nation lay a nation of enemies. A nation who had supported their rivals, yes, but more importantly, their killers. Estovakia, her scars fresh from the civil war and the preceding end of the world, had built up her strength. Quietly, so as to not bring alarm. Loans were taken out in exorbitant amounts, cities were rebuilt, crops resown. She would need all of her strength for the day when they enacted their revenge.
That day, is today… As the fighting men of Estovakia prepare, their neighbor sits in peaceful splendor, they have not had the harsh times of Estovakia. They could not know of the bitterness, the intense hatred, the loathing that their neighbors had for them…
Ace Combat: The Emmerian War
Author's Notes: Welcome to the second telling of Ace Combat: The Emmerian War, a novelization/expansion of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, from the perspective of the Federal Republic of Estovakia. This story takes place in an alternative universe.
Estralia is my fan-nation for SR, it is vaguely English, it's somewhere in Verusa, the Estralian-Osean War is basically the Pacific War of WWII.