Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 58
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During the few month since First Impact, Earth had found itself with a rapidly growing economy thanks to a heavy influx of new advanced technologies, more numerous and better trained workers and engineers as well as the need to be able to defend itself against extra-terrestrial threats.
While CNN, BBC and the like were filled with news about the growing space and space based forces, and the politicians were funneling more and more money into the gaping maws of the new space based naval forces, a great number of generals and admirals directed money into smaller projects to upgrade the technology they already had until the large companies were able to take care of their still planet bound forces.
Germany was one of the few countries, besides Scandinavia and other smaller first world nations, that funneled more money into upgrading their already existing military technologies.
Two of these projects were the Panavia Tornado IDS and the Diehl IRIS-T ER.
The only changes about the Tornado IDS were rather moderate, but intense. The entire electronics suit of the IDS was exchanged with the electronics suit of the Thunderbolt Starfury, which was already in production by MBB, and able to receive a software upgrade to work in the Tornado. The other change was switching from the dual Mauser BK-27 27mm cannons to the similarly sized dual Mauser 20mm PCC-24.
This resulted in the Tornado IDS GR.5 variant with a vastly improved EW and dogfight performance, even greater than that of a vanilla F-22.
The Diehl IRIS-T ER or Infra Red Imaging System Tail/Thrust Vector-Controlled Extended Range missile was another modified version of an already existing project, through the IRIS-T had been in the last stages of development before actual deployment.
The previously short ranged air-to-air missile had been modified to carry a more powerful warhead, an improved IR seeker head and an improved solid propellant, while the rest of the missile remained the same, giving the IRIS-T ER a range of 40 kilometers and a higher velocity, while remaining as maneuverable as the original IRIS-T.
Maybe it was a sense of fate that the day when a German city was under attack of extra-terrestrial pirates, was the day the German Luftwaffe had scheduled a life fire test for the IRIS-T ER carried by the Tornado IDS GR.5.
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The sonic boom from a pair of Tornado and four Typhoons shook the ground as they passed in little under two hundred meters above.
Both planes were running at their highest possible speed, being a little more than before thanks to a small computer program that optimized the fuel burn of the after burners continuously.
Leutnant Joachim Bauer was nervous as he glared at the holographic HUD in front of him. It wasn't just the fact that he was flying into maybe the first actual combat action of a German fighter pilot since World War II, but also the fact that his GR.5 variant Tornado used to be a GR.4 variant until about four weeks ago and still had a few bugs that needed to be ironed out of the software of the new electronics.
At least those bugs weren't something that would cause him to slam into the ground at supersonic speeds.
"There we got him," his weapons officer, Leutnant Mark Walddorf, said from behind him." And he brought some friends."
Immediately several targeting rectacles appeared in the HUD and Bauer didn't feel any more confident. Rather the opposite actually, it made him more nervous.
"Anyone else feel like they are in 'Independence Day'?" he asked out loud, directing his question at his wingman and the pilots of the Tyhpoons.
"Lets hope they are not going to shoot green shit at us."
Bauer suppressed a slight groan.
"At least there are enough targets for everyone of us," said another pilot. "The big guy is the problem through. Any idea how to take him?"
"No idea," Bauer noted dryly and glanced towards the small tactical map on his dashboard, pressing a few buttons. "But it seem that the Amis have launched some of their fighters from Ramstein. Maybe they have some big guns to down the big guy."
"Thankfully, he would go down in the Westfahlenpark at the moment," Walddorf noted. "Could change any moment through."
"Stop talking," Bauer finally noted as they speed over Lünen, a small city only ten kilometers north of Dortmund." We are there."
Bauer breathed in deep as he pushed the engine leavers forward to kill some of his speed.
"Fox Two," he spoke and with a slight pressure of his trigger finger one of his IRIS-T missiles flew towards one of the armed shuttles of the pirates, before pulling the Tornado into a rise. The pilot of the second Tornado did the same.
"Typhoon One through Four," he said coldly," Do a few flybys on the Big Guy and look if we can't raise some hell with it, while we take care of the shuttles. Other wise everyone for himself."
"Roger that, Tornado One."
Below them the two IRIS-T missiles had found their targets, detonating as they slammed directly through the lightly armored hull of the shuttles, reducing them into debris that rained down onto the city that burned here and there.
"About time you got here," a new voice said over the ground-air channel." We can't take all of them on our own."
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Back in 1962 J.C.R. Licklider conceived the idea of a 'Galactic Network', a series of globally interconnected computer that eventually eventually condensed into the first larger computer network, the ARPANET.
Over the next few decades, other networks were created and the TCP/IP protocol allowed to link more and more computers eventually becoming what was to be known at 'The Internet'.
In the last decade of the 20th century and the first few years of the 21th century, the Internet continued to grow in size and in content, even if about eighty percent of the entire traffic of the Internet composited of Spam messenges and e-mails.
It was the influx of new technologies from the so called 'Earth Force Files', which were slowly copied from an orbiting server to just about every server of any university worldwide, that increased the amount of traffic and computing ability of the entire Internet.
But like all protocols used in networks galaxy wide, the TCP/IP protocol had its inherited problems and, compared to most galactic protocols, a horrible error tolerance. With the growth of traffic in the worldwide networks, servers and routers, errors began to grow in number, completely randomly forming and being dealt with.
The new advanced computers and networks continued to use the TCP/IP protocol and the amount of errors began to grow.
Nathan, the quantum computer on the moon, connected itself to the Internet and did some of his business there, leaving behind errors and program traces and fragments in the Internet.
Slowly but surely these errors and traces began to form patterns, some errors responding to others, while using program fragments and faulty router programs as relays. The patterns began to grow, linking up and developing further and further.
Slowly they began to use individual computers to respond to each other, not caring if these computers were working with Microsoft, UNIX, Apple or Linux based operation systems as the Operation systems where able to interact with each other and shared mostly the same basic programs.
Had someone been able to see the patterns and links between the errors and their responses to each other, they would have been quite surprised to see that these growing patterns slowly began to form something that could be called neural responses and slowly becoming something that could be called a neural net.
Something like this had only happened once before on Ferrol, as galactic computers were much more secure and had a far better networking protocols and less chaotic growth of networks and networking ability on a global scale.
It was the beginning of a planetary networked sentience. The Internet itself slowly but surely gained sentience and conscious thought processes.
If this was a positive development remained to be seen as the growing sentience was presented with a multitude of Spam, porn and /b/.
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It was this moment when Goldmann decided that this was officially the worst day of his life. Just ten minutes ago he had been on the run from a power armored alien invader, before a Palestine kid of maybe ten grabbed his grenades to hurl them towards the alien and killed it.
Now he was on the run from a whole group of alien invaders in powered armor.
It wasn't something he liked.
He ran around a corner only to catch sight of a barricade, not much more than a car, with several soldiers behind, pointing their weapons in his direction.
One of the soldiers made a rapid hand motion mentioning Goldmann to get behind the barricade or move out of the line of fire.
"Fuck," he cursed and ran towards the barricade as he noted that one of the soldiers was holding what looked like a LAW.
Another thing he idly noted was that the soldiers where Americans. For a moment he wondered about that, before he remembered the American base that was established some time back close to Neguev.
Just as Goldmann dropped behind the car. He leaned against the side of and began to fumble with his M-4 with shaking hands, trying to change to his last magazine as fast as possible.
"There they come," he heard one of the Americans say and the other soldiers popped down on the car.
There was loud laughter from where the pirates had to be and Goldmann breathed in deep before popping up behind the car and steadying himself against the car next to a Afro-American Private.
"Bad day?" the American asked and Goldmann had to fight the urge to stare at him and forced himself to stare at the three pirates down the street. They were standing there trying to look intimidating, and succeeding as far as Goldmann was concerned. The gunfire from all around them and the low whooshing sounds of the still firing pirate ship didn't help either.
"Worst," Goldmann pressed out.
"Now, Kowalski," came from the American Sergeant of the small group of soldiers and they opened fire.
The LAW left its tube, streaking towards one of the pirates, impacting in his chest and letting the upper body explode in a shower of blood and gore as the powered armor carved in from the explosion of the Rocket Propelled Grenade, much like the frag grenade that had killed the other pirate earlier.
The soldiers around Goldmann held their fire and Goldmann became more nervous, trying to find an answer to the question why they didn't fire. He was pretty sure that the Americans had something in mind to deal with the other pirates, but for the love of God he wasn't able to say what it was.
Than he noted several familiar boxes lined left and right of the street.
Down the street the other two blood and gore covered pirates looked at the still standing remains of the third pirate. Everything above the waist of the pirate was missing and only the powered armor was holding the remains standing.
Than the looked at each other and towards the barricade with the soldiers behind. With a loud war cry something like laser swords activated in their hands and they stormed towards the barricade.
The American Sergeant just grinned and stood up behind the car, pressing a small trigger that was hidden in his hand, causing the six boxes at the walls left and right of the street to detonate, showering the immediate area in front of them to be showered by high speed ball bearing.
Six Claymore mines had turned a part of the street into a killing field, killing the two remaining pirates.
Goldmann stared down the range and at the cloud of dust and smoke. Next to him the Private tapped on his shoulder and Goldmann turned his head to look into a grinning face.
"Snickers?"
Goldmann blinked and than looked down at the piece of snack food in the Privates hand.
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"Status," came the voice of Captain Weiss over the TacNet and Lieutenant Davidson looked down on the various controls.
He was flying one of just four Thunderbolt Starfuries the Isrealian Air Force had been able to build up to date. And now he was getting ready to get it into the first fight. Not that it was the first operation he had took part in, but the first where he would fly the Thunderbolt.
He looked to the side and at the other three Thunderbolts and the F-16 and F-15 that were flying in formation towards their common target, the alien starship and armed shuttles above Jerusalem.
"David Two ready," he said into the microphone and breathed in deep. He really hoped that the Thunderbolts were up to their specs in the atmosphere. "And on a sidenote I feel like Will Smith in Independence Day..."