AUTHOR'S NOTES: This was a chapter I've been wanting to write for over a year. I hope you like it!
Incidentally, not a single member of Team RWBY (or in this case, Ruby Flight) actually shows up in this chapter. They'll be back next time, I promise.
Near Zagan, Poland
5 September 2001
12:01 Local
Cinder had stopped the SUV about five miles out of town, pulling off the main road and onto a forest trail. She knew it was only a temporary refuge, at best; Arashikaze would be combing the woods before long. She rested her head against the steering wheel. "Still nothing?" she asked Schrage.
"No." Schrage looked at the radio, as if doing so would achieve the desired results. "Nothing." He had been trying to contact the Hound and his team since they had careened out of Zagan. There had been only silence.
"You know, there's a chance he might've gotten killed. I assume the Schnees have their own security." Privately, Cinder hoped the Hound had failed. Besides the fact that the silver-eyed clone creeped her out—he reminded her of some unholy child of Adam Taurus and Ruby Rose—she wanted the pleasure of killing Ruby herself.
"That is a possibility. But his entire team?" Schrage shook his head. "And we must assume Stormavik and Daina are either dead or captured. They're not answering comms either."
"Which means the longer we stay here, the more chance we have of joining them," Arthur Watts put in. "There's a good chance Arashikaze is triangulating on your radio broadcasts."
Schrage nodded. "You're right, unfortunately. And if the Hound or his team, or Stormavik and Daina, are exfiltrating, they may have destroyed their radios." He started taking the radio apart for travel. "That means we must also get out of here. We can make our way through the lines. It will take a few days, but it can be done—probably easier than we think, if that Neo character was able to get through so easily."
"I've got a better idea." Cinder straightened up. "The Hound landed the Night Raven not too far away through these woods. Do you know where?"
"Yes." Schrage had flown in with the Hound.
"Show me." Cinder pulled out a map, and Schrage marked on it with a pencil. "Okay. No offense, but Dr. Watts is the objective here. So my plan is to load him into the backseat and fly the Night Raven back to Warsaw. You and Horror Picture—"
"Horror Show," the big man corrected.
"Whatever. You two exfiltrate with the SUV, since we're not getting all four of us in the aircraft. I can get Watts back home by dawn. How's that sound?" Cinder hoped it sounded good, because she wasn't relishing the idea of trying to kill these two men if they didn't like it.
"It's the most logical course of action." Schrage pointed roughly due east. "It will probably take you about thirty minutes to reach the Night Raven. We'll draw off Arashikaze if necessary, but they won't be looking for people on foot. They also might be delayed by whatever happened at Schnee Manor." He stuck out a hand. "Good luck, Comrade Fall."
"Good luck, Comrade." She shook his hand with her real one, then grabbed her pistol. "C'mon, Watts." Horror Show helped the scientist out of the SUV, and to Cinder's surprise, picked her up and kissed her on both cheeks. Watts was relieved he didn't do the same to him, and instead handed Watts an old Tokarev pistol. The big Russian then climbed into the SUV, and Schrage drove off, headed back down the road.
Cinder sighed. "Well...I guess we'd better be going."
"I will admit it feels good to stretch my legs a bit." Watts kept up with her as they made their way through the woods.
It was quiet for a few minutes, broken only by the soft rush of leaves beneath their feet and the wind through the trees, coming from the southeast; Cinder knew that if the wind kept up and didn't change direction, simply walking into the wind would get her to the hidden Night Raven. There was no sound of pursuit, even from the road. "So what did you tell Arashikaze?" she asked into the silence.
Watts chuckled. "You assume that she broke me."
Cinder laughed. "Oh, please, Watts. She's got a reputation as being this badass master spy. I assume that she stuck your nuts in a vice and started turning the crank until you did what she wanted." She gave him a sidelong glance. "Or she offered you a lot of money."
"A little of both," Watts admitted. "I told her a lot, but most of it was worthless. Eventually she might have gotten more, I'll admit. She could be...persuasive." He sighed. "Though I'm hardly ungrateful, a shame you couldn't have rescued me tomorrow night. I was to get access to Penny Polendina tonight."
"Polendina was at Zagan?" Cinder missed a step.
"Well, supposedly." Watts shrugged. "Arashikaze might have been lying. There wasn't too much security there for a Maiden bearer to be in residence."
"Damn!" Cinder's hands, flesh and metal, curled into fists. "It would've been nice to get the Winter Maiden under our control."
"And you back in Salem's good graces?" Watts needled.
Her lips curled into a snarl. "Yes."
"Well, you'll understand that I'd rather not go back."
Cinder stopped. "Wait a minute. How did you convince Arashikaze to give you access to Penny?"
Watts bent down and stretched. "Damnable cramp." He got back up. "I suppose there's no point in lying. It seems our enemies are a bit divided themselves, dear Cinder. Arashikaze wanted control of the Winter Maiden herself. So does Ironwood. Neither of them trust a poor, dear, naive clone girl to actually use the Maiden. And neither Arashikaze or Ironwood trust each other. Not like us, eh?" The sarcasm was thick.
"And you were helping her?"
"Why not?" Watts started to walk again. "Cinder, I prefer not to have my nuts in a vice, as you put it. Or my arms in ropes, which was what Arashikaze actually did. She offered me a deal in which I don't end up in terrible pain and maybe even make some quid on the side—and the accomodations were certainly better at the Hotel Great Escape than at Spandau Prison. You would've done the same."
Cinder caught up to him. "I wouldn't have. I wouldn't betray Salem."
"Then you're a damned fool."
She grabbed him, with the artificial arm. "You'd better remember who you work for, you son of a bitch."
He shrugged off the arm. "You know, it's impressive that you haven't realized this yet, but I don't work for you, Cinder." She grabbed him again, this time harder, enough for the metal fingers to leave bruises, but Watts looked unimpressed. "Please. You can't just threaten me like everyone else."
"You think you're so damn smart, don't you, Arthur?" Cinder snapped.
"It's because I am damned smart, Cinder. Salem sent you to bring me back for that reason—"
"Salem isn't here right now, is she?" Cinder cut him off. "I propose a new plan." She let go of him and stepped back, raising her pistol. "First, I'm going to shoot you in the fucking head for being a traitor. Second, I'm going to get in the Night Raven—which I imagine I can fly a damn sight better than that idiot Hound. Third, I'm going to orbit around here, and wait to gun down Arashikaze's aircraft, because I'm guessing she didn't drive down here. Unlike you, I'm going to actually kill something that threatens Salem, and me, and not make deals with them."
To her surprise, Watts did not even flinch. In fact, he grinned at her. His own Tokarev was stuffed into his belt at the small of his back, but he made no move towards it. "Oh, of course that's your plan, Cinder. But if you're going to kill me, do me a favor and quit trying to bullshit me!" He started to laugh. "You don't give a damn about Arashikaze. You're going to wait for Ruby Rose." His grin widened. "Oh yes, Cinder dear. I'm smart, so let me figure this out, for the intellectual exercise. You flew into Zagan's airport to come rescue me, but then that fool Hound saw Ruby Rose's F-16. And because his programming, for lack of a better word, was to go after anyone with silver eyes—like his—that overrode his orders to get me. He took most of the team and went after her, and probably got his fool head blown off. And even if Ruby doesn't oblige you by taking off, you'll strafe Zagan airport, just to get a little bit of revenge. Because that's just what you do, isn't it?"
"Shut up, you miserable bastard," Cinder barked.
He stepped forward until the muzzle of the pistol rested on his forehead. "And how has that worked out for you? You're supposed to be Salem's right-hand woman, but what have you actually done? You killed Amber Tardor, who was dying and helpless. What an achievement!" His eyes bore into hers. "You shot Pyrrha Nikos down and managed to kill her boyfriend, but couldn't finish the job because Ruby Rose rammed you, and almost killed you. Then you made a deal with Raven Branwen for the Japan operation. Get all your enemies in one place so you'd have a shot at revenge—but you failed at that, too! If only someone could have warned you against such a stupid idea." He made a show of thinking about it. "Oh wait—I did! But you pushed ahead and you lost it, when all you had to do was your job! And let's not forget your latest balls-up, when you went after Penny and Fria Gletscher, which ended up with you losing another aircraft and being blinded for your troubles!" He ticked off the points on his fingers. "That's what, three fourth-generation aircraft you've managed to lose? You were doing better in that ancient Sabre that Malachite gave you."
"I'm going to kill you, you fucking cocksucker!" Cinder shouted.
"No, you're not." Watts said it with pure confidence. "You're not because Salem won't let you, and you serve her. You think you're entitled to everything just because you've suffered. Suffering isn't enough, Cinder. You can't just be strong, you have to be smart. You can't just be deserving, you have to be worthy." He shook his head. "But all you are, all you have ever been, is a bloody pain in the arse!" He took a step back. "Now, if you're going to shoot me, do it. If you're not, put the pistol away and let's be off."
Cinder's hand was trembling, but slowly, she lowered the weapon. I am deserving, she told herself, but it felt hollow. She looked down, at her artificial arm. The black fingers seemed to mock her, along with her reduced vision, a constant reminder of her own hubris. She felt her throat tickle at the reminder of nearly drowning after her Su-27 had gone down at Tsushima. She remembered the utter terror that she had gone blind after being hit with Penny's laser. I am deserving...am I? Or am I the failure that Stepmother always said I would be? In her mind's eye, she saw her reflection as it was now, the ruined face. Am I the monster now? Cinder flexed the metal fingers. Who are you, Cinder Fall? Who are you, really?
"What in God's name..." Cinder looked up. Watts was not paying attention to her, but looking to the east. Then she saw it too: almost invisible in the clear night sky, but a ripple across it—not the aurora borealis, but something else. Then they heard it, a distant rumble, followed by another ripple. Through the trees, there was a brief but bright light, and the ground shook beneath them, enough that they had to grab at trees to keep their feet. The shaking did not last long, but both of them stared at each other in shock.
"What the hell was that?" Cinder said.
Watts looked frightened, far more than he had a moment ago with a gun to his head. "My God. Vesuvius. She did it. The crazy, pale old bitch did it."
Belchanow Coal Mine, Poland
12:25 AM Local
After Ironwood had recovered what he thought was the only nuclear warhead from the Belchanow coal mine, he had evacuated the area. Jacques Schnee had intended to reopen the mine, as he technically owned the place, but circumstances had prevented it. As a result, Salem's engineers had been able to recover the second warhead, move it closer to the surface, and rig a remote detonator. Her intention was to detonate it as the 1st Armored Division moved past it, but Hazel had ensured it would detonate early. Salem had also forgotten that the blast effect of even a two megaton nuclear weapon would be somewhat muted by the fact that it was a hundred feet underground.
It was still spectacular. The entire earth around the coal mine surged upwards almost two hundred feet in a dome before the blast tore out of the earth, sending several thousand cubic tons of soil into the air. The fireball, now exposed to oxygen, raced outwards and expanded upwards; behind it, the superheated earth fused into green trinitium glass and fell backwards, down into a crater a quarter of a mile wide and almost four hundred feet deep. Even temporarily delayed by the underground explosion, the nuclear fireball expanded to half a mile wide, and everything within a mile of the fireball was obliterated. Entire villages simply disappeared, though few were killed, because most had been evacuated ahead of the GRIMM. Of the GRIMM, dozens were vaporized or set afire as they were caught by the blast effec, then thrown for miles by the shockwave. Woods burst into flames five miles away as the thermal pulse reached them at beyond the speed of sound. A hideously gray and brown mushroom cloud boiled out of the fireball and coiled upwards.
The leading edge of the 1st Armored—Task Force Snowbird—was, by pure luck, outside of the blast radius and thermal pulse. Another fifteen minutes, and it would have been caught in the blast, but the delay to refuel at Wielun and Hazel's act saved them.
Or most of them. The shockwave still bent the woods around them, snapping some of the weaker ones off, and the ground seemed to leap up around the fast moving M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley personnel carriers. The shock was such that Karelia Bighorn-Vlata, who was riding with her hatch open, her eyes scanning the ground in front of her for targets, was bodily thrown upwards out of the hatch. Instinctively, she dropped the binoculars and grabbed the handles of the .50 caliber machine gun in front of her, which left her turning a somersault in midair and landing between the machine gun and the loader's M240 next to her, knocking the breath from her. Robert Lee grabbed the sight and somehow managed to avoid being smashed into the turret ceiling, and Sammy Lougheed was actually thrown upwards into his hatch, which was also open, crushing his shoulders into the lip. The Abrams slammed back down with vicious force, but kept moving forward until it went off the road, tore through a fence, and finally came to rest in a cornfield.
Karelia, for her part, could do nothing but stare upwards for a few minutes, gasping for breath, wondering if her back was broken, and watch as the mushroom cloud rose over her. She could hear Lougheed cursing in pain, but couldn't answer him. Finally, she felt Lee's hands on her shoulder. "Cap! Cap! You okay?"
"Erp," she managed to grunt out, but after another deep breath, she finally was able to speak. "I don't know. Back...my back might be broke."
"Okay, Cap. Don't move." Lee dropped back down in the turret. "Sammy, you okay?"
"What the fuck do you think?" Lougheed was flexing his fingers. "Fuck, I think my shoulders might be busted."
"Well, you hold tight too, buddy." Lee pushed his headset microphone back up to his mouth. "Heather? Hey, Heather honey, you okay?" There was no response. "Damn." He reached up and levered himself out of the tank and looked around. The column had stopped, and Lee could see infantrymen and tank crewmen getting out to check for damage; some actually just got out and sat down, still in shock. "Medic! I need a medic over here! Hey, I need a medic!" He turned as he saw Karelia reach out, grab both turret machineguns, and start to get up. "No, no, no, Cap! Don't move!"
"I think I'm okay..." Karelia managed to sit up, and tested her limbs. The pain began to cut through the shock, and she figured if her back was hurting that much, it must be intact. "Just got the breath knocked out of me."
A group of men and women began running towards the tank, one of them carrying a medical kit. They began to climb on the tank, but Karelia waved them off. "Check on Heather—my driver! Check on her!"
"Hey!" Lougheed yelled. "I got a busted shoulder here! Maybe two of them!"
"Well, quit flailin' around, dumbass!" Lee yelled at him. He dropped back down into the turret. "At least lie down, stupid. Can you move your fingers?"
"Yeah. Fuck you, Lee."
"I love you too."
Karelia watched as the hatch was opened, and she felt a cold wave of horror pass through her. All she could see was Heather Redfeather's helmet resting against the hatch lip. Gingerly, one of the medics and an infantryman reached in and pulled her out, keeping her head straight as they did so. Another pulled a stretcher out of the Abrams' bustle rack and unfolded it, as they lay Redfeather down on the stretcher. The medic reached forward and put two fingers on the driver's neck, and Karelia noticed that Redfeather's head, even being held, seemed to be at an odd angle. "I need a board!" the medic shouted. "Hold her head steady!" He pointed at Karelia. "Don't you move, Captain! You stay right there!" Another medic was clambering up on the turret, but Karelia waved her to Lougheed as she watched the first medic and his assistant start chest compressions, as a third took over holding Redfeather's head and neck.
Lee got out of the turret to give the other medic some room to work on his friend. "Cap, what the hell is that?" He pointed at the sky. The stars were being blotted out by the cloud, which now had flashes of lightning through it, and gave off an odd blue glow.
Karelia's brain began working again. "Oh shit." It was a half-remembered memory, one her parents had told her, of the day that World War III had happened, that darkest of days. Her hometown of Phoenix had been spared—the old joke was that no one would've noticed a nuclear detonation in Arizona—but her parents had told her of watching the mushroom clouds on the western horizon, as San Diego and Los Angeles had died.
And the radiation.
"Oh shit," she repeated, as she suddenly knew what she was looking at. She raised her voice into a yell. "Everyone in MOPP suits! Now! Get back in your tracks! Move your ass!" Karelia turned to Lee. "Break out our MOPP suits. Get Sammy in one—you too." She tested her legs again, found they worked, and got to shaky feet, ignoring the medic.
"Captain, what the hell is going on?" It was her second in command, yelling at her from atop his own Abrams.
"We just got nuked, that's what's going on!" she yelled back. "Everyone in MOPP! When that cloud starts to collapse, it's going to rain rads down all over us!" At least she thought that was what happened; for all she knew, they were already getting lethal doses. The US Army no longer trained for nuclear warfare, because no one was supposed to have them anymore.
Lee handed up her MOPP suit, and she sat down on the turret, trying to get on the cumbersome gear. She pulled on the charcoal-impregnated suit first, then took off her helmet to get on the gas mask. The galoshes to cover her boots would go on last, along with the gloves. The M1 was equipped with an overpressure system, but they had the hatches open, so she wasn't sure if the interior was already contaminated. "You'd better get her back to the bandaid!" she yelled at the medics, referring to the M113 APC converted to an ambulance.
The medic stood. "I'm sorry, Captain, but there's no need for that." He wiped his face. "She's dead."
SACEUR Forward Headquarters
Near Zielona Gora, Poland
12:27 AM Local
James Ironwood gripped the sides of his map table as the tremor passed. "What the actual hell..." When the shaking stopped, he ran out of the tent, to run into his aide. "What's going on?"
"I don't know, sir!"
Ironwood had to smile at that; at least the lieutenant was being honest. Penny Polendina was in the clearing between the camouflaged trucks and M577 command posts, picking herself off the ground. "You all right?" he called to her.
"Yes, sir, I think so."
"Earthquake," Ironwood observed. He had gone through a few of those, growing up in Utah; they were rarely enough to be felt. "Didn't know Europe got those."
"They do, but not here," Penny told him. "This area is tectonically stable." She paused. "I mean, I think it is."
"General!" A major ran out of one of the M577s. "General Calavera is on the line!"
Ironwood ran back into his tent and picked up the phone. "This is Jehovah."
"James, this is Miguel!" Calavera wasn't even bothering with codewords. "Someone just detonated a motherfucking nuclear weapon, right in front of us!"
Ironwood's eyebrows came together in confusion. "That can't be right, Miguel. It's probably a fuel-air bomb—a GRIMM probably delivered it." He felt fear suddenly grip his stomach. Or Salem somehow used the Winter Maiden. Could she have reverse engineered it? Did Cinder Fall manage to somehow get Amber's bracelet and keep it through all that—no, the Maidens aren't designed to be compatible; you can't use one to use the others. But she's still capable—no, Watts is in custody, unless...no, Arashikaze would've used it on Warsaw, not on our troops-
"No, it fucking isn't!" Calavera shouted back, interrupting his thoughts. "With all due respect, James, this is a goddamn nuke! I am standing outside my CP at Wielun, and there is a motherfucking mushroom cloud less than 20 miles from me. The whole thing is blue, the air is turning fucking blue around that fucking cloud. I don't care what you say, General, but someone just opened a can of nuke, and it damn sure wasn't me!"
The lieutenant stuck his head in the flap, followed by a very confused looking Penny Polendina. "Sir, Cheyenne Mountain is on the line. They say it's urgent."
The Mountain? "Miguel, get your people into MOPP gear. It's better than nothing. I'll call you back in a minute." He hung up on Calavera, and nodded to the lieutenant. "Patch them through to my line. And see if we've still got any of those NEST people here." The lieutenant dashed off a salute and disappeared—they were indoors, and that was against regulations, but everyone was clearly still in shock. "Penny, stay here with me." She obeyed, and Ironwood drummed his fingers impatiently until the phone rang. "Ironwood."
"General Ironwood, this is General Fleming at Cheyenne Mountain." Cheyenne Mountain was the deep underground bunker and headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command—better known to the public as NORAD, whose job it was to monitor the various barrier systems defending the American Remnant. "Sorry to disturb you so late, but we've gotten a Vela alert for your area." Ironwood knew what Fleming referred to: the Velas were satellites that detected nuclear detonations, orbited to ensure that no one used or tested nuclear weapons without the United States knowing about it. They orbited much higher than any other satellite. "We're reading a nuclear detonation near Belchanow, Poland. We're still figuring out the details, but the satellite assessment said it was about two megatons. What's going on, General?"
Ironwood paused as it finally hit him. The missile we found in the Belchanow mine. Shit, there was more than one. There was more than one! The NEST team didn't find it—but how? Was it deeper? Did someone know and not tell me? Arashikaze—
"General Ironwood, are you still there?" Fleming asked.
"Yes...yes, I'm still here," Ironwood answered. "Are you sure about the detonation?"
"Positive."
"I don't know, General," Ironwood finally said. "Maybe...it might've been a old nuclear mine or something...possibly Salem set it off, trying to catch the 1st Armored in the blast."
"That's a good possibility," Fleming replied. "From our other satellites, it looks like a detonation partially or wholly underground."
The lieutenant returned, this time with a short, brown-haired woman with captain's bars on her shoulders. "Let me get back to you, General. We're still trying to figure out what's going on here." Fleming signed off, and Ironwood put down the phone. "Sir," the lieutenant said, "this is Captain Uraraka, the NEST team commander."
Ironwood came around his desk and shook hands with the captain. "Good to see you."
"Sorry about the circumstances, General. I came up this afternoon to brief you about the...special project you gave us." She couldn't meet his eyes, and Ironwood knew Uraraka referred to the other nuclear warhead, the one being held in reserve for his own use. "You were in a meeting, and then left orders not to be disturbed..."
"I apologize, Captain." Ironwood realized that, in the confusion over the Delta raid on Warsaw and Penny's arrival, he had completely forgotten about the NEST team. "Can you tell us what we're facing?"
Uraraka went over to the map. "What did Cheyenne Mountain say about the detonation?"
"Approximately two megatons," Ironwood told her.
"That sounds about right." She looked up at the lieutenant, and Penny.
Ironwood motioned at the lieutenant to leave. "Penny, I'd like you to stay." She nodded. "Continue, Captain."
"Yes, sir. The warhead we recovered was from an old Soviet R-12 ICBM, with a yield of 2.4 megatons. From what I can see of the cloud—we can see it, General—it looks to top out at around 14 miles high. We didn't find a second warhead, but if it was there, and Salem intended it as a booby trap, then it was likely detonated underground. That would account for the tremor we felt."
"But too early," Ironwood said. "The leading elements of the 1st Armored are well short of Belchanow."
"I don't know the answer to that one, General, but I know what we're facing now." She grabbed a marker and drew on the overlay of Ironwood's map. "The detonation's here. I'd say the fireball took out everything within this circle. Being underground contained a lot of the blast. Bad news for anyone inside, but it looks like none of our troops got caught in it." She made a small circle on the map, then a slightly larger one. "In fact, it looks like they weren't even inside the thermal pulse radius. We're going to have one hell of a forest fire in the area, but that's about it from the actual detonation. And also because it was underground, we don't have to worry about electromagnetic pulse."
Ironwood felt some of the tension disappear. "That's good, at least."
Urataka faced him, a pained look on her face. "That's about the only thing that is, General, sir. All that soil just got blasted into the atmosphere. It's going to start coming down. The heavier dirt and so on already has; that'll fall within the blast radius. But the lighter stuff—that's what we have to worry about." She drew four ovals, all to the northwest of the detonation. "This is fallout—and we're going to have a lot of it." She marked the ovals with numbers from 1 to 4. "Anything within the first zone is going to take a thousand rads an hour. That's going to kill anything in that zone. The second will take 100 rads an hour, which will result in acute radiation syndrome, and likely be fatal. The third zone is ten rads an hour, which is not great, but not terrible—you may not even get ARS from that. This fourth zone is one rad an hour, which is easily survivable."
Ironwood stared at the map in horror. Calavera's command post was in the second zone. His own command post was in the third. The fourth zone stretched as far northwest as Berlin. "God in heaven," he breathed.
"We're going to need Him, sir." Urataka's hand swept the fallout zones. "And that's just my back-of-the-envelope guess. We found a high concentration of cesium in the warhead we recovered. Back in the bad old days, both sides used to 'seed' their nukes with strontium and cesium to make them dirty bombs, figuring anything that lived through the blast would die of radiation. That's what hit Los Angeles and San Antonio." She shrugged. "The good news...sort of...is that the half-life of those isotopes is about 30 years, so maybe it's decayed enough that we won't have to deal with that. But even if the Russians didn't make it a dirty bomb, we're looking at most of southwest Poland being irradiated for a really long time."
"Will our MOPP suits help?"
"Yes, sir. And the overpressure systems on our vehicles should help too. As long as we take precautions, and wash all surfaces that have been exposed, then we should be all right. But that's just us, sir. It won't affect the NATO units to the north; they're out of the fallout pattern." Urataka's hand hesitated over Wroclaw. "But all those civilians we evacuated...they're right in the pattern. And they've got no protection, General."
Ironwood nodded. "I know, Captain. I know." He took a deep breath. "All right. I'm putting you in command, Captain—make that Major Urataka. You just got brevetted. You're going to run our response to this. Get your people out there. Let's start spreading the word. I'll tell Calavera to pull his division back to Czestochowa; that will get them out of the fallout pattern."
"We need to evacuate the civilians," Urataka reminded him.
"I know. And we will—but our troops come first. Then we'll figure out how we're going to get the refugees out." He didn't want to think about that. The logistics alone would be staggering. He would worry about that later, if he had time. "Dismissed, Major. We've got a lot of work to do."
"Yes, sir." Urataka left the tent without another word.
Ironwood noticed Penny still standing there, paler than usual. "Penny," he addressed her. "We'll find you some MOPP gear. You'll be fine."
"What about the raid, sir?" She almost mentioned Yang, but caught herself.
"They're out of the fallout pattern. They'll be safe from that, at least. And with no EMP, we can still get them."
"The Winter Maiden?"
"That hasn't changed," Ironwood told her. "Go report to Lieutenant Myers. He'll fix you up. I have to call Calavera back."
"Yes, sir," Penny said morosely, and walked out. She stared off to the east. Even through the camouflage netting, she could see the mushroom cloud against the horizon. It was far away, but even from where she was, it looked terrible, like a monster from a half-remembered dream. "All those people..." she mused. "There must be something I can do. I can't just stand here." She put her hands in her pockets, and found her cell phone. "Ruby. Maybe Ruby will know what to do."
AUTHOR'S ADDITIONAL NOTES: Nuclear physicists would probably cry or laugh at my attempts at describing a nuclear detonation and fallout, but it's the best I can do-I used the Nukemap website to map out just what a detonation would do and fallout patterns, then tried to understand rads and roentgens and so on. (I'm probably on a NSA watchlist now.) And yes, I have seen the excellent Chernobyl miniseries. The blue glow that everyone is seeing is the Cherenkov Effect, caused when radiation ionizes the air. Not sure if a mushroom cloud would actually do that, but it adds to the effect of the story.
MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) is used by the US military to protect from NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) warfare. From what I remember from Dad, it does protect against radiation, but if I got that wrong, I apologize. The same goes for the earthquake effects-Penny is actually wrong, as Poland does have some earthquakes now and then, though not large ones. Note that the United States and the Soviet Union did experiment with underground nuclear detonations; in the US, the most famous was the Sedan test, which left a huge crater you can see on Google Earth. The Sedan test was a firecracker compared to the one in the story. (Incidentally, I've been spelling Belchanow wrong this whole time-it should be Belchatow. Oh well.)
Keep the reviews coming! We'll get Ruby Flight into a fight next chapter.