Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and commentary

=O=

Warning: depiction of the unethical use of child soldiers.

The use of child soldiers is highly unethical, and not acceptable unless in extremis. The author is of the opinion that, in-story, the Headmistress's position is probably incorrect – i.e. the conditions of the ongoing total war depicted do not justify at all the use of children as active combatants – in fact, it is a gross misallocation of scarce wartime resources. Relatively safe rear areas (the free half of the mainland) still exist, and children can still be evacuated to them. Readers are as usual encouraged to come to their own conclusions, but this author would like to emphasize that the practice is highly unethical.

On the other hand, HTTYD gave Astrid an ax to kill people with, but that was in a fantasy preindustrial setting, so, uh... on with the story!

=O=

Chapter 23: 'Peaceful' Embargo or Blockade

Fourteen years earlier

Wuhan, Hubei Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Crack! Crack!

The exigencies of war had required that the school soccer field be converted into a makeshift rifle range. Live rounds now crisscrossed the airspace where soccer balls had once flown, and a series of dummies, caricatures of Japanese uniforms scrawled on their surfaces, stood in place of goalposts.

Blocking out the noise of the makeshift range, Astrid hefted the carbine, pressed the wooden stock against her shoulder, and gazed down the sights.

Steady now. Safety off. Stance. Aim.

Crack!

The butt kicked against her gaunt frame. Dirt cheap, weighing two and a half kilos and firing a reduced-power carbine cartridge, the select-fire carbine was manageable even in the hands of the most overburdened or least fit soldier – which was why tens of millions had been produced for the Provincial Militia and rear area troops.

But while the tallest girl in her class (no mean feat, considering that a good ten percent of her bilingual seventh grade class was also Anglo), Astrid was still a twelve-year old girl, with the build to match. She still marveled at how the sixth-graders - especially the pint-sized Han kids - handled their carbines at all.

She checked the dummy. A new scar graced its torso.

"Excellent shooting, Astrid. You must have some Viking blood in you. The blood of warriors."

Astrid turned to face the Headmistress, and blushed.

The Headmistress, a survivor of one major civil war, countless riots, and six influenza pandemics, smiled back at her blond-haired charge with a toothless grin. The 85-year old crone, who had come back to run the school after her successor had been called up for war work, had been the driving force behind the student rifle training program on the Wuhan school board.

Even as the rest of the board had wasted time arguing about the barbarity of using children in war and the horrible scars violence would leave on young psyches, she had charged ahead, "requisitioning" carbines, submachine guns, and lightweight disposable rocket launchers from Militia stocks while instilling (indoctrinating) her charges with the patriotic fervor and martial spirit necessary for Total Victory.

She continued smiling as Astrid sent more rounds downrange.

Astrid was precisely the kind of student she had wanted. Oh, if only there existed a whole army of Astrids with which the homeland could be defended!

Another young girl approached her, a letter clutched in her hands. The Headmistress's smile disappeared, replaced with a firm scowl. "Headmistress, my mother wants me to stop rifle training. She's afraid it'll make me act rashly when the Japanese come."

The Headmistress's scowl deepened. Even now, with half the country under Japanese occupation, clear evidence of Japanese mass atrocities from Beijing to Hefei, and Japanese tank armies bearing down on Wuhan, the feckless government was still faffing about with teaching children to hide and evacuate instead of handing out rifles and rocket launchers to every man, woman, and child! The ranks of the Provincial Militia, fifty million strong, were hardly adequate when over four hundred million Pacificans still lived free on the mainland!

Did they not understand the nature of the war their own country was embroiled in? This was no longer an age where soldiers and officials waged war while the peasantry got as far out of the way as possible! This was an age of mass war, of Total War!

"Tell your unpatriotic, lily-livered mother that she can come and tell me this herself! Until then, you will continue practicing with your carbine!" The Headmistress spat.

Astrid safed her weapon as she discreetly tilted her ear towards the Headmistress.

The Headmistress raised her voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "There is a war on! It is Total in character! Every free Pacifican is a part of the industrial war machine of our great Republic! Every citizen must work! Every citizen must fight!"

She began to pace. "I was six years old when the Taiping uprising swept through Wuhan! Back then, the Taipings made every one of us hold a spear – even me! We stabbed the Manchus and beat them back when they tried to retake Wuhan! And when the Joint Government came to liberate us, we stabbed them too until we realized that the Taipings had lied to us! Then we stabbed the deluded Taiping fanatics! I fought to defend our great nation from the ravages of barbarism! Now it is your turn!"

The frail woman picked up a carbine, and demonstratively fired a round downrange. "You youngsters have it lucky! I didn't even have shoes to wear! All I had was a sharpened bamboo stick! You have shoes, you have rifles, you even have antitank rockets! When the Japanese come, you will do your duty! If you are so unfortunate to have to die for your country, you will take at least one if them with you!"

=O=

Present day

It's happening again. It's happening again and Hiccup is still screwing around.

Toothless taxied to the runway in silence.

But this was not the silence of amity and anticipation of a few weeks earlier. This silence was oppressive, born of fear, of anger - anger at the Indians, at the risk of nuclear war. At that idiot sitting three feet behind her.

Why? Why would he do this to me? Force me to choose between friends and social standing? Force me to reflect? To stop? Feel? Now?!

Hiccup said nothing as the aircraft skidded to a halt at the end of the runway – not that he had said much for the past week. Good. Astrid's face wore a hard expression as she glared at the red runway light, daring it to turn green.

This wasn't a milk run - well, last time hadn't been a milk run either, but that particular route had been flown dozens of times, its SAM sites mapped, its radars characterized.

Today's route would take them over suspected missile bases in the very heart of India, over the floodplains of the sacred Ganges, over the great stone palaces of the Deccan highlands.

Astrid tensed as she remembered the carefully plotted route - and the angry red overlapping circles of radar, SAM, and fighter bases between which it wove. And those were just the units satellite reconnaissance had identified.

They were heading off into the unknown.

We call on the Republic of India not to interfere with these peaceful unarmed reconnaissance flights, which are necessary for the security and peace of mind of the people of the Joint Government of the Pacific…

Astrid scoffed as the words of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs bubbled to the surface of her consciousness. There was no way the Indians would not shoot at them. Heck, if their positions were reversed, she'd shoot at her.

Hiccup spoke. Great. "Uhh… Astrid… I'm still very sorry about the whole mess. I… hope we can handle this… professionally."

The light turned green. Astrid angrily shoved the throttle forward, and Toothless shot off the runway into the predawn sky.

Her weapons systems officer (WSO) spoke. "Heading 275. On course for reference point one." Hiccup felt the compulsion to keep talking. "I reverted to old habits. And I lost objectivity."

But if the risks were great, so was the necessity. The Soviets had proven too adept at evading, deceiving, manipulating satellite surveillance. Worse, scuttlebutt had it that the brass had lost a few critical low-orbit recon birds in the aftermath of the Indian test, and that at least one station had lost its entire stock of film to radiation damage.

Strategic nuclear war was in the cards, and the flyboys needed to know where to shoot to blast those missiles into radioactive scrap before they could be launched.

"Copy, WSO. On course, 275. Hiccup: do your job."

Good. Compartmentalized. Just like any well-designed ship or aircraft.

Hiccup sighed. "Astrid, please…"

"Coming up on reference point one in five minutes! Just do your job like you agreed you would on day one! For your country!" Astrid snapped.

"For me." She whispered.

Sometimes, I don't even know who you are. Hiccup inhaled sharply. "Reference point one, change heading to 180. Initiate turn in 240 and counting."

Astrid's eyes narrowed as they barrelled towards the Nepalese border, and sovereign Indian airspace beyond. Okay, India. Let's see what you've got.

=O=

Toothless heard the radars even before they hit the Indian border. Even as the shrieks and chitters of Fan Song and Spoon Rest SA-2 radars echoed across the Himalayas, Hiccup kept a steady gaze on his threat board, on the lookout for the low growl of the SA-5 Gammon – the only weapon available to the Indians that could reliably shoot down stratospheric supersonic aircraft.

Hiccup frowned as they zipped into Indian airspace. "This… wasn't here three weeks ago. I'm picking up at least half a dozen Fan Songs covering the entire Ganges valley. Oh, boy. SA-6 radars. The flyboys are going to have a tough time ahead of them."

Mounted on a tracked chassis, the SA-6 was a highly mobile medium-range SAM system, designed to kill transsonic aircraft at medium and low altitudes. Deadly against TAC's fighter-bombers, but about as useful as a thrown rock against supersonic aircraft at 60,000 feet.

Toothless whimpered as the torrent of electronic noise intensified. Hiccup deftly adjusted the EW suite, blocking out the least important signals and allowing him to concentrate on the main threats. The growl of a Gammon search radar finally came into focus.

Astrid kept a keen eye on her own instruments. Stay on target.

"Uhh… Astrid… none of this was on our mission plot." Hiccup's mouth went dry as he contemplated calling an abort.

No. Far better to stare death in the eye than face Astrid's wrath.

Astrid grunted. "No kidding. Ballistic missile sites weren't on those charts either. This is our job, Hiccup. Maintain EMCON. That radar stays off until objective point one."

Crap. She'd heard the fear, the doubt, that had crept into his voice.

Far below, as it had for millennia, the holy Ganges flowed leisurely by, ignorant and uncaring of the vast leaps in technology, in industry, in social organization, that had taken hold amongst the species of small-jawed, big-brained hairless bipedal apes that had bathed in its cool waters since time immemorial.

Should not have read that travel guide last week.

Even as his sonic boom echoed across the landscape and his turbojets blazed a brilliant plume across the heavens, Toothless stayed whisper silent, emitting not a pipsqueak in the far more important realm of microwaves and radio. While in no way a "stealthy" aircraft, the F-12B had been designed for somewhat reduced visibility on radar, with canted tails, radar-absorbing coatings on specific surfaces, and even injectors for special additives to the otherwise highly detectable exhaust trail. Between these measures, supersonic speed, radio silence, and careful route planning to stay far away from radars, Toothless could in theory stay hidden – for a short while.

Hiccup's heart seemed to fall into his stomach as his threat board lit up. "MiG radars. Four Gammons. Another dozen Guideline radars. Dead ahead. This… is pretty much the densest air defense network anyone's ever seen in South Asia."

Astrid's voice was a whisper. "What are they protecting?"

"Probably missile dispersal fields." Hiccup shrugged. "But that's what we're here to find out, right?"

New search radars sprang to life, and the chitters around them changed subtly as microwave beams swung across the sky. "Okay. They see us. Dun-dun-dun, we're dead."

Somewhere in this electronic maelstrom, Hiccup knew, were orders – orders to air defense batteries, interceptor squadrons. Orders to shoot down the interloper zipping through the sacred airspace of India, orders to lay traps, to block off likely flight paths and escape routes. To corral the enemy into kill zones… and kill them.

"Astrid, adjust heading 145, hold at 60,000 feet." Hiccup was pressed into his seat as Astrid gave the pre-identified overlapping SA-5 sites a wide berth – but one just within the range of the big synthetic aperture radar in Toothless's weapons bays. "Radar on."

Sure enough, the growl of the Gammon search radar soon became oppressive. Hiccup kept a wary eye on his left even as Toothless dutifully kept his ears open.

"So far, so good." Hiccup noted.

A Gammon fire control radar roared to life.

"Spoke too soon, Hiccup." Astrid opened the throttle, and Toothless purred amicably as the jet pitched gently skyward and climbed effortlessly into the stratosphere.

SA-2 fire control radars screeched, adding their cacophony to the roaring Gammon radars. Hiccup's threat board was afire with lights as harsh microwave beams chased Toothless across the sky.

"Missile launch signal! Infrared on! Got 'em! One and four o'clock! Four SAMs in the air!"

Taking a turn now would probably throw any missile off their tail. But to so would mean abandoning their mission – leaving critical areas of the Indian heartland un-reconnoitered, unsearched for nuclear missiles. It would mean coming back for another round against the enemy – worse, sending one of their squadron-mates up against these defenses.

And Astrid would kill him.

He gritted his teeth. They could probably make it. "Hold steady, Astrid. ECM on. Evasive maneuvers."

Hiccup twisted a knob, and Toothless gave off a mighty roar, unleashing a barrage of noise at the incoming missiles, drowning out their command signals and confusing their insectlike electronic brains. Yet more noise escaped to the ground far below, where radar operators looked on in shock as their systems went blind, or began seeing double, triple, quadruple.

Astrid pitched the jet back down, and the mach indicator ticked upward even as the earth screamed towards them. The missiles, aimed too high and too far behind, seemed to implode in Toothless's wake.

"More fire control radars. One o'clock."

Missile contrails seemed to mark Toothless's path across the sky as the supersonic aircraft bobbed gently up and down – a majestically twirling, locomotive-sized bullet, hiding amongst clouds of electronic ghosts and banal noise.

They passed the Deccan, a highland of ancient kilometer-thick lava flows and ash banks, ejecta from a long-dead supervolcano that had once smothered the subcontinent in lava. Astrid maneuvered Toothless around a stately preplanned turn. Hiccup took a sip of water from his water bag, and deftly gave his nose a scratch with the straw.

Out of the darkness came the roar of three Gammon fire control radars – from all points of the compass.

"One, two, and ten o'clock! Six SAMs in the air!"

SAM trap. Astrid gulped, and nudged Toothless upward just a bit more. Come on, boy. You can do this.

"Eight SAMs in the air! Holy cow… they're trying to box us in." Hiccup's eyes flitted to his navigation chart, their flight plan, and the inviting expanse of friendly ocean just five hundred kilometers east. No.

A fourth Gammon fire control radar roared to life. "Ten SAMs. Astrid, we're boxed in."

Astrid rechecked the inlet temperatures even as Toothless, inlet spikes fully retracted, screamed across the sky at 90,000 feet and Mach 3.6, nearly twice as fast as a bullet from a rifle. The engines won't take it. They'll overheat.

The first pair of SAMs broke 60,000 feet, closing with Toothless at Mach 8.

Hiccup looked on in horror at the rapidly growing dots on his infrared screen. He didn't have ranging data, but the missiles were closing, and closing fast. "Roll on my mark, Astrid! Three.. two… one… mark!"

Astrid yanked the stick, and Hiccup braced himself as Toothless began to slowly roll, plummetting as the aircraft traded altitude for speed without a single degree of change in heading. Astrid eyed the throttle as the engines heated further in the thickening air.

The star-studded sky gave way to the poorly-industrialized Deccan, an empty, uninviting black expanse that seemed ready to swallow them whole.

The dots on his scope twisted wildly as they burned towards them. Come on. Come on. Come on…

Seemingly diminutive puffs of smoke and fire erupted all around them as missile warheads – big enough to sink a warship – detonated on command, sending vast clouds of razor-sharp debris screaming across the sky like murderous hypersonic confetti cannons.

A bang rocketed through Toothless, and Hiccup's hands flew across his station as the master alarm blared to life. Astrid tensed, feeling every flutter in her controls and every minute rumble in the airframe.

Toothless emerged from the roll, higher than before and not a knot slower.

"They missed. They missed! We had a puncture in tank six. It's sealed." Hiccup's voice was thick with relief.

Astrid eased the throttle back as she brought Toothless back into a comfortable performance band.

That was predictable. Big mistake.

"TURN! TURN! TURN!"

"What?" Astrid fumed.

"TURN, ASTRID!"

Crap. Astrid pulled hard on the stick, and took Toothless into a countrysized turn that pressed them both into their ejection seats.

"Radar on! Tracking!"

"What the heck, Hiccup?!" Astrid fumed as she contemplated the ruination of a near-perfect reconnaissance mission. At least the poor sod who would have to fly over the target again could fly a much shorter mission from the Bay of Bengal.

"New interceptor radar. Next-generation Soviet gear. Close!"

Radar warning. Unidentified fighter radar. Strong. Too strong – too close. Rumors of a new superfighter with missiles powerful enough to shoot us down with a radar in that band. We're being intercepted! Hiccup's hands shook as the moment replayed in his head, over and over…

"What radar, Hiccup?! What new Soviet gear?" The grinding of Astrid's teeth was audible over the intercom.

Hiccup hesitated. "They… said the Soviets were making a new fighter with a radar in that band. It was… close! That kind of signal strength…"

Astrid's jaw dropped. "Who said, Hiccup? Who said it?"

Hiccup's eyes widened as he realized the magnitude of his mistake. "A… friend of mine. And a few scattered reports in the EW journals. And everybody knows the Soviets have a new jet in the pipeline…"

Astrid gritted her teeth. "You had us lose an objective because of hearsay? Rumors and speculation?!"

"It… it was an educated guess. We… we can review the radar tape…" Hiccup stammered.

Astrid shook her head. "Nope. That doesn't change anything. We ran into an undefined threat. And you panicked and let your… fascination with new technology and fear of the unknown compromise your judgement! Not every new radar is a superfighter, Hiccup!"

"It's called initiative, Astrid! This could be useful…" Hiccup refused to budge.

She snorted. "It doesn't matter what actually took a potshot at us! You screwed up!"

Hiccup inhaled sharply. "No! You screwed up, Astrid! I have the threat picture! You don't! You can book me for poor judgment all you want, but you really need to evade when I tell you! Or we can't do our jobs!"

"Well, you…"

Hiccup's threat board lit up. "Not now, Astrid! Air search radar, one o'clock!" Hiccup took a gander at his map.

They were feet wet, heading over the Bay of Bengal. "Crap. One of ours! IFF's on. Tiara, come in. Tiara, come in…"

Astrid stared out her window as Hiccup tried to establish contact with the Navy. She'd hesitated. Damnit, she'd hesitated. They needed to fly as a team to pull this off, and she'd hesitated.

"Astrid, we have contact with Tiara. Search radar on." Hiccup chuckled.

Hiccup turned on his search radar, even as he examined his board.

Scores of dots bobbled on the moonlit waters of the Indian Ocean, spread across hundreds of miles. Some were obviously warships – the super-powerful air search radar of the big air defense cruiser that had caught his attention could not be mistaken for anything else.

Four other dots blared with common air search radars, used on virtually every ship in the Navy – from aircraft carriers to corvettes. Hundreds more stayed silent, or emitted commercial surface search radars – also installed on every ship in the Navy. If any of the ships turned off their radars, it would join the silent mass.

The vast commercial traffic headed for the straits of Malacca and the ports of Southeast Asia, swarms of fishing vessels scouring precious protein from the rich waters of the Indian Ocean, and the warships and supply ships of the Joint Government Fifth Fleet all blended together into an amorphous mess, leaving any potential attacker bereft of targets.

Such was the beauty of naval warfare. As it turns out, on the timescales relevant to modern warfare, you can hide a ninety-thousand-tonne aircraft carrier.

High above the armada, a veritable swarm of turboprop-powered patrol aircraft buzzed, identifying ships by the bushel and tracking the Indian Navy's carriers as they put to sea. Navy helicopters flitted between destroyer escorts and Soviet bloc ships headed for Indian ports, boarding and inspection teams at the ready, allowing a score of ships to exercise effective control over thousands of kilometers of open water, from the Red Sea to the Bay of Bengal.

The flimsiness of the helicopters, turboprop-powered slow patrol planes, and little destroyer escorts – each of which could have been sunk by a single well-armed Indian missile boat or fighter aircraft – was immaterial. For behind them lay the might of three powerful carrier battle groups, capable of crushing virtually any threat – even India's ex-British surface force – that threatened the integrity of the blockade.

Toothless warbled in alarm as a vigilant sentinel of that force – a turboprop-powered Hawkeye radar plane – illuminated them suspiciously with its search radar. Hiccup switched his radar to air search, catching a glimpse of a pair of naval interceptors, tracing lazy circles on outstretched wings, ready to pounce.

Hiccup shook his head. "It's a madhouse down there. Navy's busy."

Astrid didn't reply.

Apart from banal instructions, the rest of the flight was conducted in complete silence.

Good.

=O=

Author's note: I wrote most of the Astrid segments in December; again, before the outbreak. Historically, major pandemics, often of influenza, have happened every decade or so, give or take a decade, for the past century, occasionally with greater loss of life and more suffering than usual.