Are there any trekies out there to tell what I got wrong in the last
chapter? I admit I only take a passing interest in the Star Trek universe,
and I wasn't paying an awful amount of attention to episode, so I likely
made an error.
Maybe if Star Trek were a product of Bandai I'd pay more attention. Last time I checked, Paramount Pictures owned most things Star Trek.
One news update: mine is now the only Action/Adventure story of over 40,000 words starring Duo and Zechs. How excellent that I've accomplished a milestone no other has at . Yet I still have no reviews. Sure is lonely.
North of Suarez Diego
All armada ships battened down securely and shut off all nonessential decks and compartments. The youths on these boats may be bug-eyed at the order and logic of the Star Trek universe, but the critical eye of a captain can never forgive Kirk, Picard, Archer, et cetera ad infinitum, for allowing so much negligence aboard their black water vessels.
Those deaths will never occur on a ship under dominion of Admiral Heidi Revere, a shrewd safety advocate if there had ever been one. The goings on within the Specials and the ranks of Sweepers like Duo Maxwell simply aren't done in Revere's Navy. How Howard put up with the kid, she could never tell, and how the Alliance put up with the Specials, even with Aristocratic and Oz support, she equally couldn't comprehend.
Heidi is of retirement age, sticking it out in command of a navy surface fleet just a couple of years ago looked to everyone else as an animated fossil.
Like her, some had stated, but times have changed just as her mind had seen it. Intrigues turned one hand of Romefeller against another, and popular uprisings ascended the likes of the Peacecraft siblings to the top. Now the mobile-suit is the endangered one, as it should be. She'd seen to that long before the day she defeated the Masked Count at sea.
Today, surface naval power is nearly all the World Nation can turn to for patrolling the seas and coasts of the sun's third planet, and Revere's previously mothballed set had been the first to declare allegiance to Une's new world police force. The Oz chief had been thrilled to take in the fleet, and the politicians had also been thrilled; to have a military alternative to the mobile-suit. The catch, for there is always a catch, is that the queasy governing body asked her to keep the deadly hardware far from European waters. Well, the South Pacific and Indian Ocean are almost as far away as one can go, and it's a far more pleasant place, anyway. Nature is at the top of her game out in these tropics, and port leave can be really fun for the sailors out here. Port leave. The Admiral gave her head a shake. The limited government oversight committee agrees to every little request she makes, because they're just so ignorant of her ships. You see, Admiral Revere's boats are a mixture of fission and fusion craft- no fossil fuel required! Her boats should be making voyages extending to six months, but she has that down to that number of weeks. All for a good cause, she tells herself. These young men could always find other careers. Many in this crew aren't wishing for any parting from their communities, and six months out can limit the number of reenlistments.
Another thing is maintenance. When an emergency confronts the Preventers on Earth, the few threadbare fleets must be top notch, for they are in all likelihood going to be the backbone when the G-Boys aren't available.
The last reason for such regular turnover is personal.
Heidi had a draft for the grieving families written up when the XO, Dent, keyed the PA mike.
"Admiral, please batten down, we have contacts with multiple mobile- suits, Pisces and Cancer types, bearing due south for Suarez. Our Ensign was right on; they've tripped the barrier arrays. Fleet destroyers targeting solutions sketchy, but generally concur," Heidi could overhear Dent exchanging barks with the COB, "Authorization given, fire at will. Radioman, give the birds my authorization to fire danger close, those suits are coming for us."
Everywhere within the box, surface destroyers exercised in plinking, joined by whirling sea helicopters and fixed-wing patrol craft.
Countermanding the executive officer's suggestion, Heidi Revere dragged herself to the situations room, occupying an officer's seat. Amid the tumult of officers, her presence had no notice.
A sonar tech called out a hydra of snapshots flowing in at their picket line. He called out bearing and screw speeds, and the XO shouted back commands to the proper stations. Cancer and Pisces are meant for taking out peers and Anti-submarine Warfare (ASW), so the threat of a hit or two are minimal, but all captains will leap through fire to avoid damage to his ship. Dent ordered snapshots at those torpedoes with Preventer opposite numbers, yep, anti-torpedo torpedoes do in fact exist, and ordered the CIWS Vulcan cannon operators to do their worst.
The miniature ordinance sounds less like the rushing crash of the larger torpedoes, and more like the flushing of an airplane toilet, hardly noticeable from Revere's vantage, and became fully drowned out by the rotary wash of the Vulcan multi-barreled pieces.
"Admiral on the bridge!" Heidi isn't used to announcing herself on the ship, but for once, she must speak up. Hair rose on most officers, but some dutifully relayed the announcement.
She instructed the weapons officer to attack the tracks with anti- ship torpedoes. To which he reminded they weren't meant for.
"Doesn't matter, just fire! I told all of you in advance that overkill was the way to go in this case, or did you forget that the objective here was to kill the enemy?"
"You've got it!" Far larger ordinance rocked the flagship, and no one eyeing the sea could miss the broad squalls generated vital RPM rate of those propulsive screws.
"My weapons officer, get your sailors to manually control those beasts; give those suits a right hook!" Her attention held rapt to the sonar screen, her tone an icy contrast to her fiery words.
She dialed the fleet frequency.
"This is the fleet admiral speaking: I'm authorizing a full-scale general depth-charging of all suspected enemy locations. Code word Delta, Alpha, Tango, Alpha." She indulges the crew's popular love of Star Trek whenever possible, in this case naming the authorization code after the Trek fan's favorite android, Mr. Data.
No science fiction movie fan ever gets used to the sound that follows: when in action overboard tossing over sub-killing charges, depth- charge mortars have an eerie semblance to the shriek of TIE fighters that not even the most casual fan of the classic films can miss.
"Number One," she called, addressing Harold Dent, "I want the air search to resume for subs and suits evading this maelstrom. Have them pay the most careful attention toward the roiling African coast."
She'd discovered over time that most sailors and officers aboard felt amiable toward Captains who referred to their Executive Officers as "#1." These guys have The Next Generation in their blood.
A jovial message burned through the air.
"Captain, we have some sure hits on multiple contacts..." He read off the designations, somewhat muddled, something to cleanup when the melee settles. "Threats to the flagship are sweeper scraps."
Harold connected the search network.
"This is the XO speaking. Code word Lima, Oscar, Rio, by order of the captain, all search aircraft are to search due west of the engagement area to find straggling enemy. Pursue with the best of your discretion, and happy hunting."
Istanbul
The Russian that answers to the "Stalingrad" moniker very patiently loads a very special bullet into the .223 chamber of his police-issued Armelite rifle. His target is halfway across the long Sultan Mehmed Bridge, so this is going to be a six hundred meter shot, a shooter's Hail Mary, with this gun. This Teflon and aluminum shell sported a sharper proboscis than other ammunition, and had a freshly coated on pimple over a hole used to add mercury fulminate to the fore. His alterations didn't end at the Teflon coating and the addition of the vitriol mercury. The sniper also packed more grains of propellant to give his shot magnum power. The arrangement didn't exactly put him at ease; two different exothermal chemicals poured in different end of the shell in overdoses, but the veteran shooter had confidence he'd constructed it properly.
Every artillery battery has a commander in charge of loading and firing; it's just the spotter's duty to identify him, should a sniper team have the fortune to come so close. Another name to etch on the wall of his lodge back home. He settled into a wooden chair and rested the Colt rifle atop an elevated table in the very back of the tower. It's really difficult for a counter-sniper team to locate a shooter hanging to the back of a room, where the old pros hang. Guys that hang around the windowsill, in contrast, don't last too long. Best to take the extra time for targets to walk into the more-narrow field of fire than to impatiently hang out the window. Grunts are lazy and stupid, just give them an hour without a hostile stimuli and they'll herd themselves toward danger.
"Sonny, I'm taking that commander, but I need those arties masking the shot," he instructed his finest apprentice, referring to the police with grenade launchers.
"Got it, Sir." In all of twenty seconds, they had everyone on the same page.
He studied the commander, apparently an Armenian male of about thirty, not strictly speaking a terrorist, for he's definitely wearing a uniform, an asparagus jumpsuit, the same as that worn by the others. A name patch reads in the Latin alphabet: Kabul. Commander Kabul? Probably a nom de plume, but it's good enough for the wall. He seems settled in a grove, resting his hands on the truck bonnet and crouching ever so slightly. What's he saying? Can't tell: "That's what I'm talking about," or something befitting that sort of body language.
The grenade fusillade registers as lines of surprise across his face, and his knees bend more deeply. The Russian gently dips his scope's dim garnet LED dot until it's eclipsing the forehead just above the nose's bridge. The man's gritting down on the crown's of his teeth, he's crouched in a baseball catcher's squat, gripping his own rifle within the 'V' of his widely parted legs. The man squinted, shielding himself as the cascade rained to and fro. Well, if he's going to shut his eyes, he'll just need a third one. A really big one. The Russian slothfully retracted his index finger, applying a progressive increase of pressure until the trigger touched the guard's posterior. Illuminated particles and flame ejected out with the spent cartridge, and another kick of flame parted from the other escape offered. The epoxy resin he'd applied on the rifle butt absorbed some of the added kick, and the shooter managed to keep his scope lined on the new trophy for his wall.
The extreme acceleration of the bullet's magnum propellant thrust the mercury warhead back a lot harder than usual, a factor he'd been worried about, but the integrity held, and the force transferred over the commander's head with a viscous backlash, scooping out skull fragments and brain matter totaling the aperture equaling the size of a CD jewel case. The enemy commander crashed with a thud, and putrid smoke elevated from the head's latest orifice.
Columbia, and on the way there
As Quatre, Trowa, and Zechs would know first-land, the old mobile- suit production base on Corsica is capable of handling space planes and super sonic transports. The date is the day following Thanksgiving as recognized by the United States long ago. The Canadian date wasn't even considered, by the way, and the World Nation passed the American date without any contention.
But that's a side topic. What's core in the minds of the flight crew taking off from the base on this date is a rare bombing mission signed off by Pagan himself, the old intelligence officer currently assigned to watching over the national security interests of the Sanc Kingdom, a fiercely independent nation officially pacifist and a member of the United Nation, but in fact has the best organized and equipped special forces branch on God's green planet.
Pagan's crew is a composite crew of Quatre's trusted Arab Maguanac fighters, and Howard and Duo's most trusted allies within the Sweepers organization. The black jet finished with preflight checks belongs to Zechs, but has a few modified pieces of hardware donated by the Deathscyth, namely the particle-generating hyper jammers, attached under opposing wings on hard points installed for that purpose.
Zechs' old ship also stowed away a light payload of old guideless drag bombs first used by the United States in the nineteen sixties, by the old Christian calendar.
Not because of the added weight, but for the sake of conserving fuel of the planned long-term afterburner burn over Columbia, the jet, loosely based on the 1960s era American B-70 bomber, didn't takeoff under its own power, but rather accepted the boost from the base rail launcher, a magnetic catapult that is a hover train rail meant for pitching shuttles into the air.
This it did, and the added help of strictly unnecessary JATO rockets (disposable takeoff assisting boosters as seen attached to the American space shuttle orbiter) conserved yet more fuel that could come in handy for a hypersonic dash over the narcotic state.
According to the fictitious flight plan filed by the Sanc Special Security Forces, they are a sub-orbital shuttle journeying from Charles de Gualle International Airport, to the aerodrome in Lima, Peru, on yet another Sanc goodwill visit. There are so many legitimate ones these days, that should be believable enough, but one can be sure Bartista's unsavory government will have some Aries suits aloft to properly "escort" (harass) the passive dignitaries.
That's just fine. They don't know what they're getting into.
The flight across the Atlantic is as uneventful as always, and the Maguanac pilot finds some good shroud in the form of some cloud cover at thirty-eight thousand feet, and tucks the black jet away there when the laser turret gunner spies a loose deuce of olive Aries, each with live missile batteries latched under the stub wings.
Both had their chain guns raised rudely, though that's hard to see with the naked eye from eight miles out. Both approached from starboard, from forty thousand feet and above, gently lagging behind at four hundred knots before jacking the throttle up and maneuvering behind the jet wash for a simulated kill.
Both gently approached before noticing, too late, the military background of the special Oz shuttle.
A Maguanac gunner snapped several kilojoules of needle-sharp brilliant energy clean through the lead, and fire-hosed in conjunction with the ship's machinegun turret, and roasted the other.
The flight Captain's name is Abdul, a Maguanac soldier running his third shift for the Preventers during this crisis, but promises himself more rest after clearing Columbia.
He power dives low level through the more unprotected southern border of Bartista's corrupt regime, and reads the inputted coordinates to the almost worthless target.
The numbers vector the booming SST well, and Abdul spots the tortilla walls of one of the Grandee's many grand villas. The ship skims above orchards and plantation fields and arms the bombs for unguided ("dumb") delivery.
The hyper jamming broadcast electronically cloaks the craft from immediate danger, and Abdul drives the craft as effortlessly as in a proficiency run.
The sweeper bombardier sights the target with an optical instrument, and unbolts the cargo bay doors, then disgorges the bundle of 750 lbs general-purpose drag bombs.
The death seeds delay detonation until they spill through the face of the southern villa wall, then havoc more than superficial damage. As if that matters. Chances are, the Grandee isn't home, and that wasn't the point in the first place. The mission, Pagan has him understand, is a red herring meant to protect an operative staging bogus air strikes on the ground. Sounds important, so Abdul leaped at the chance to supervise one more op.
And now for the getaway, a mach six race for New Edwards in California.
Also in Columbia... The Republica de Columbia, heartened by Gemini's recent shutdown, and the leadership-targeting Preventer air strikes, take up offensive operations in La Violencia, broadening a general offensive line two hundred and fifty kilometers wide from the front lines near Camp Prevention, toward the heart of the strife-ridden country: Bogotá.
The aggressive actions win the endorsement of Director Une, which may not be a benefit for long, but for now, it means the clear and present infusion of war material from trucks driven from the internationally controlled Panama Canal Zone into the region under republic control.
Cheap conventional surplus artillery shells of the 105, 130, 155, and 175mm variety arrive around the clock with the colossal eight-inch rounds, and just as quickly land on the heads of the antagonists marked for destruction.
The RDC's (Republica de Columbia) General de la Ejercito(Army), Juan Caballero, personally inspects the Andean contract labor as they construct firebases and clear kill zones out in the hedges.
The General sees the network coming to shape even as the barrage comes underway, seeing the jarring recoil and flash of a grouped quartet of eight-inch pieces lob shells over the horizon on the way to a congregation of wood and stray shacks Preventer overhead imagery indicates are quarters for Bartistan enemy.
Immediate bomb damage assessment is impossible at this time, but the General has no reason to believe the target survived the initial fusillade. The target list is pretty thick this day. A Hogan, in one place, a tent, a grain silo, a teepee, some boats, some shacks like those attacked, more than one primitive lean-to, wigwams, tree houses, some bicycles, holes photo interpreters claim are foxholes, some storage pits, tight clusters of poles serving no purpose, and even what look like dog houses blot the target list. All of these must go, along with the sparsely common valuable targets: small-gauge railroad lines, the depots and surrounding structures, the sod and log cabins, the antennas and radar towers, the water towers, and the munitions dumps.
Up close, a few concrete and dirt pillboxes and trench lines are visible, and these aren't just to be pulverized, but to be overrun by infantry.
Once the hundreds of targets are holed, petrol-carrying rockets will set fire to the undergrowth beneath the jungle canopy so a fire can clear the humans and livestock missed by the more precise artillery assault. Helicopter gunships will take care of them, while Aries and straight-wing fighters challenge suspected missile sights from the air in "wild weasel" missions.
But that's to occur in a few days. For now, a one-sided gun battle proceeds.
Meanwhile, the Republic's Prime Minister must refute any press claims that the campaign parallels the French and American experience in Vietnam.
Author's Note:
I promise the pilots will reemerge in the next chapter. This chapter's just an anomaly.
Maybe if Star Trek were a product of Bandai I'd pay more attention. Last time I checked, Paramount Pictures owned most things Star Trek.
One news update: mine is now the only Action/Adventure story of over 40,000 words starring Duo and Zechs. How excellent that I've accomplished a milestone no other has at . Yet I still have no reviews. Sure is lonely.
North of Suarez Diego
All armada ships battened down securely and shut off all nonessential decks and compartments. The youths on these boats may be bug-eyed at the order and logic of the Star Trek universe, but the critical eye of a captain can never forgive Kirk, Picard, Archer, et cetera ad infinitum, for allowing so much negligence aboard their black water vessels.
Those deaths will never occur on a ship under dominion of Admiral Heidi Revere, a shrewd safety advocate if there had ever been one. The goings on within the Specials and the ranks of Sweepers like Duo Maxwell simply aren't done in Revere's Navy. How Howard put up with the kid, she could never tell, and how the Alliance put up with the Specials, even with Aristocratic and Oz support, she equally couldn't comprehend.
Heidi is of retirement age, sticking it out in command of a navy surface fleet just a couple of years ago looked to everyone else as an animated fossil.
Like her, some had stated, but times have changed just as her mind had seen it. Intrigues turned one hand of Romefeller against another, and popular uprisings ascended the likes of the Peacecraft siblings to the top. Now the mobile-suit is the endangered one, as it should be. She'd seen to that long before the day she defeated the Masked Count at sea.
Today, surface naval power is nearly all the World Nation can turn to for patrolling the seas and coasts of the sun's third planet, and Revere's previously mothballed set had been the first to declare allegiance to Une's new world police force. The Oz chief had been thrilled to take in the fleet, and the politicians had also been thrilled; to have a military alternative to the mobile-suit. The catch, for there is always a catch, is that the queasy governing body asked her to keep the deadly hardware far from European waters. Well, the South Pacific and Indian Ocean are almost as far away as one can go, and it's a far more pleasant place, anyway. Nature is at the top of her game out in these tropics, and port leave can be really fun for the sailors out here. Port leave. The Admiral gave her head a shake. The limited government oversight committee agrees to every little request she makes, because they're just so ignorant of her ships. You see, Admiral Revere's boats are a mixture of fission and fusion craft- no fossil fuel required! Her boats should be making voyages extending to six months, but she has that down to that number of weeks. All for a good cause, she tells herself. These young men could always find other careers. Many in this crew aren't wishing for any parting from their communities, and six months out can limit the number of reenlistments.
Another thing is maintenance. When an emergency confronts the Preventers on Earth, the few threadbare fleets must be top notch, for they are in all likelihood going to be the backbone when the G-Boys aren't available.
The last reason for such regular turnover is personal.
Heidi had a draft for the grieving families written up when the XO, Dent, keyed the PA mike.
"Admiral, please batten down, we have contacts with multiple mobile- suits, Pisces and Cancer types, bearing due south for Suarez. Our Ensign was right on; they've tripped the barrier arrays. Fleet destroyers targeting solutions sketchy, but generally concur," Heidi could overhear Dent exchanging barks with the COB, "Authorization given, fire at will. Radioman, give the birds my authorization to fire danger close, those suits are coming for us."
Everywhere within the box, surface destroyers exercised in plinking, joined by whirling sea helicopters and fixed-wing patrol craft.
Countermanding the executive officer's suggestion, Heidi Revere dragged herself to the situations room, occupying an officer's seat. Amid the tumult of officers, her presence had no notice.
A sonar tech called out a hydra of snapshots flowing in at their picket line. He called out bearing and screw speeds, and the XO shouted back commands to the proper stations. Cancer and Pisces are meant for taking out peers and Anti-submarine Warfare (ASW), so the threat of a hit or two are minimal, but all captains will leap through fire to avoid damage to his ship. Dent ordered snapshots at those torpedoes with Preventer opposite numbers, yep, anti-torpedo torpedoes do in fact exist, and ordered the CIWS Vulcan cannon operators to do their worst.
The miniature ordinance sounds less like the rushing crash of the larger torpedoes, and more like the flushing of an airplane toilet, hardly noticeable from Revere's vantage, and became fully drowned out by the rotary wash of the Vulcan multi-barreled pieces.
"Admiral on the bridge!" Heidi isn't used to announcing herself on the ship, but for once, she must speak up. Hair rose on most officers, but some dutifully relayed the announcement.
She instructed the weapons officer to attack the tracks with anti- ship torpedoes. To which he reminded they weren't meant for.
"Doesn't matter, just fire! I told all of you in advance that overkill was the way to go in this case, or did you forget that the objective here was to kill the enemy?"
"You've got it!" Far larger ordinance rocked the flagship, and no one eyeing the sea could miss the broad squalls generated vital RPM rate of those propulsive screws.
"My weapons officer, get your sailors to manually control those beasts; give those suits a right hook!" Her attention held rapt to the sonar screen, her tone an icy contrast to her fiery words.
She dialed the fleet frequency.
"This is the fleet admiral speaking: I'm authorizing a full-scale general depth-charging of all suspected enemy locations. Code word Delta, Alpha, Tango, Alpha." She indulges the crew's popular love of Star Trek whenever possible, in this case naming the authorization code after the Trek fan's favorite android, Mr. Data.
No science fiction movie fan ever gets used to the sound that follows: when in action overboard tossing over sub-killing charges, depth- charge mortars have an eerie semblance to the shriek of TIE fighters that not even the most casual fan of the classic films can miss.
"Number One," she called, addressing Harold Dent, "I want the air search to resume for subs and suits evading this maelstrom. Have them pay the most careful attention toward the roiling African coast."
She'd discovered over time that most sailors and officers aboard felt amiable toward Captains who referred to their Executive Officers as "#1." These guys have The Next Generation in their blood.
A jovial message burned through the air.
"Captain, we have some sure hits on multiple contacts..." He read off the designations, somewhat muddled, something to cleanup when the melee settles. "Threats to the flagship are sweeper scraps."
Harold connected the search network.
"This is the XO speaking. Code word Lima, Oscar, Rio, by order of the captain, all search aircraft are to search due west of the engagement area to find straggling enemy. Pursue with the best of your discretion, and happy hunting."
Istanbul
The Russian that answers to the "Stalingrad" moniker very patiently loads a very special bullet into the .223 chamber of his police-issued Armelite rifle. His target is halfway across the long Sultan Mehmed Bridge, so this is going to be a six hundred meter shot, a shooter's Hail Mary, with this gun. This Teflon and aluminum shell sported a sharper proboscis than other ammunition, and had a freshly coated on pimple over a hole used to add mercury fulminate to the fore. His alterations didn't end at the Teflon coating and the addition of the vitriol mercury. The sniper also packed more grains of propellant to give his shot magnum power. The arrangement didn't exactly put him at ease; two different exothermal chemicals poured in different end of the shell in overdoses, but the veteran shooter had confidence he'd constructed it properly.
Every artillery battery has a commander in charge of loading and firing; it's just the spotter's duty to identify him, should a sniper team have the fortune to come so close. Another name to etch on the wall of his lodge back home. He settled into a wooden chair and rested the Colt rifle atop an elevated table in the very back of the tower. It's really difficult for a counter-sniper team to locate a shooter hanging to the back of a room, where the old pros hang. Guys that hang around the windowsill, in contrast, don't last too long. Best to take the extra time for targets to walk into the more-narrow field of fire than to impatiently hang out the window. Grunts are lazy and stupid, just give them an hour without a hostile stimuli and they'll herd themselves toward danger.
"Sonny, I'm taking that commander, but I need those arties masking the shot," he instructed his finest apprentice, referring to the police with grenade launchers.
"Got it, Sir." In all of twenty seconds, they had everyone on the same page.
He studied the commander, apparently an Armenian male of about thirty, not strictly speaking a terrorist, for he's definitely wearing a uniform, an asparagus jumpsuit, the same as that worn by the others. A name patch reads in the Latin alphabet: Kabul. Commander Kabul? Probably a nom de plume, but it's good enough for the wall. He seems settled in a grove, resting his hands on the truck bonnet and crouching ever so slightly. What's he saying? Can't tell: "That's what I'm talking about," or something befitting that sort of body language.
The grenade fusillade registers as lines of surprise across his face, and his knees bend more deeply. The Russian gently dips his scope's dim garnet LED dot until it's eclipsing the forehead just above the nose's bridge. The man's gritting down on the crown's of his teeth, he's crouched in a baseball catcher's squat, gripping his own rifle within the 'V' of his widely parted legs. The man squinted, shielding himself as the cascade rained to and fro. Well, if he's going to shut his eyes, he'll just need a third one. A really big one. The Russian slothfully retracted his index finger, applying a progressive increase of pressure until the trigger touched the guard's posterior. Illuminated particles and flame ejected out with the spent cartridge, and another kick of flame parted from the other escape offered. The epoxy resin he'd applied on the rifle butt absorbed some of the added kick, and the shooter managed to keep his scope lined on the new trophy for his wall.
The extreme acceleration of the bullet's magnum propellant thrust the mercury warhead back a lot harder than usual, a factor he'd been worried about, but the integrity held, and the force transferred over the commander's head with a viscous backlash, scooping out skull fragments and brain matter totaling the aperture equaling the size of a CD jewel case. The enemy commander crashed with a thud, and putrid smoke elevated from the head's latest orifice.
Columbia, and on the way there
As Quatre, Trowa, and Zechs would know first-land, the old mobile- suit production base on Corsica is capable of handling space planes and super sonic transports. The date is the day following Thanksgiving as recognized by the United States long ago. The Canadian date wasn't even considered, by the way, and the World Nation passed the American date without any contention.
But that's a side topic. What's core in the minds of the flight crew taking off from the base on this date is a rare bombing mission signed off by Pagan himself, the old intelligence officer currently assigned to watching over the national security interests of the Sanc Kingdom, a fiercely independent nation officially pacifist and a member of the United Nation, but in fact has the best organized and equipped special forces branch on God's green planet.
Pagan's crew is a composite crew of Quatre's trusted Arab Maguanac fighters, and Howard and Duo's most trusted allies within the Sweepers organization. The black jet finished with preflight checks belongs to Zechs, but has a few modified pieces of hardware donated by the Deathscyth, namely the particle-generating hyper jammers, attached under opposing wings on hard points installed for that purpose.
Zechs' old ship also stowed away a light payload of old guideless drag bombs first used by the United States in the nineteen sixties, by the old Christian calendar.
Not because of the added weight, but for the sake of conserving fuel of the planned long-term afterburner burn over Columbia, the jet, loosely based on the 1960s era American B-70 bomber, didn't takeoff under its own power, but rather accepted the boost from the base rail launcher, a magnetic catapult that is a hover train rail meant for pitching shuttles into the air.
This it did, and the added help of strictly unnecessary JATO rockets (disposable takeoff assisting boosters as seen attached to the American space shuttle orbiter) conserved yet more fuel that could come in handy for a hypersonic dash over the narcotic state.
According to the fictitious flight plan filed by the Sanc Special Security Forces, they are a sub-orbital shuttle journeying from Charles de Gualle International Airport, to the aerodrome in Lima, Peru, on yet another Sanc goodwill visit. There are so many legitimate ones these days, that should be believable enough, but one can be sure Bartista's unsavory government will have some Aries suits aloft to properly "escort" (harass) the passive dignitaries.
That's just fine. They don't know what they're getting into.
The flight across the Atlantic is as uneventful as always, and the Maguanac pilot finds some good shroud in the form of some cloud cover at thirty-eight thousand feet, and tucks the black jet away there when the laser turret gunner spies a loose deuce of olive Aries, each with live missile batteries latched under the stub wings.
Both had their chain guns raised rudely, though that's hard to see with the naked eye from eight miles out. Both approached from starboard, from forty thousand feet and above, gently lagging behind at four hundred knots before jacking the throttle up and maneuvering behind the jet wash for a simulated kill.
Both gently approached before noticing, too late, the military background of the special Oz shuttle.
A Maguanac gunner snapped several kilojoules of needle-sharp brilliant energy clean through the lead, and fire-hosed in conjunction with the ship's machinegun turret, and roasted the other.
The flight Captain's name is Abdul, a Maguanac soldier running his third shift for the Preventers during this crisis, but promises himself more rest after clearing Columbia.
He power dives low level through the more unprotected southern border of Bartista's corrupt regime, and reads the inputted coordinates to the almost worthless target.
The numbers vector the booming SST well, and Abdul spots the tortilla walls of one of the Grandee's many grand villas. The ship skims above orchards and plantation fields and arms the bombs for unguided ("dumb") delivery.
The hyper jamming broadcast electronically cloaks the craft from immediate danger, and Abdul drives the craft as effortlessly as in a proficiency run.
The sweeper bombardier sights the target with an optical instrument, and unbolts the cargo bay doors, then disgorges the bundle of 750 lbs general-purpose drag bombs.
The death seeds delay detonation until they spill through the face of the southern villa wall, then havoc more than superficial damage. As if that matters. Chances are, the Grandee isn't home, and that wasn't the point in the first place. The mission, Pagan has him understand, is a red herring meant to protect an operative staging bogus air strikes on the ground. Sounds important, so Abdul leaped at the chance to supervise one more op.
And now for the getaway, a mach six race for New Edwards in California.
Also in Columbia... The Republica de Columbia, heartened by Gemini's recent shutdown, and the leadership-targeting Preventer air strikes, take up offensive operations in La Violencia, broadening a general offensive line two hundred and fifty kilometers wide from the front lines near Camp Prevention, toward the heart of the strife-ridden country: Bogotá.
The aggressive actions win the endorsement of Director Une, which may not be a benefit for long, but for now, it means the clear and present infusion of war material from trucks driven from the internationally controlled Panama Canal Zone into the region under republic control.
Cheap conventional surplus artillery shells of the 105, 130, 155, and 175mm variety arrive around the clock with the colossal eight-inch rounds, and just as quickly land on the heads of the antagonists marked for destruction.
The RDC's (Republica de Columbia) General de la Ejercito(Army), Juan Caballero, personally inspects the Andean contract labor as they construct firebases and clear kill zones out in the hedges.
The General sees the network coming to shape even as the barrage comes underway, seeing the jarring recoil and flash of a grouped quartet of eight-inch pieces lob shells over the horizon on the way to a congregation of wood and stray shacks Preventer overhead imagery indicates are quarters for Bartistan enemy.
Immediate bomb damage assessment is impossible at this time, but the General has no reason to believe the target survived the initial fusillade. The target list is pretty thick this day. A Hogan, in one place, a tent, a grain silo, a teepee, some boats, some shacks like those attacked, more than one primitive lean-to, wigwams, tree houses, some bicycles, holes photo interpreters claim are foxholes, some storage pits, tight clusters of poles serving no purpose, and even what look like dog houses blot the target list. All of these must go, along with the sparsely common valuable targets: small-gauge railroad lines, the depots and surrounding structures, the sod and log cabins, the antennas and radar towers, the water towers, and the munitions dumps.
Up close, a few concrete and dirt pillboxes and trench lines are visible, and these aren't just to be pulverized, but to be overrun by infantry.
Once the hundreds of targets are holed, petrol-carrying rockets will set fire to the undergrowth beneath the jungle canopy so a fire can clear the humans and livestock missed by the more precise artillery assault. Helicopter gunships will take care of them, while Aries and straight-wing fighters challenge suspected missile sights from the air in "wild weasel" missions.
But that's to occur in a few days. For now, a one-sided gun battle proceeds.
Meanwhile, the Republic's Prime Minister must refute any press claims that the campaign parallels the French and American experience in Vietnam.
Author's Note:
I promise the pilots will reemerge in the next chapter. This chapter's just an anomaly.
