Operation: White Out
—北の目の破壊—
Opening Crawl
【Opening Theme: Summon the Heroes】
※
Since Erusian bombers are no
longer a factor to be worried about,
ISAF finally frees one hand to address
many urgent issues. One of them
is pulling back remaining forces
stranded in northern provinces of
Usean mainland, to North Point for
regrouping.
※
Erusea, well-aware of ISAF's plan,
had deployed countermeasures to
impede their efforts, and intensified
attack on those ISAF units, intending
to bury them under the snows and
glaciers, alive or otherwise…
As Opening Crawl and background music fade into depth of daylight sky, camera pans up, until the bright-shining sun occupies picture's center. Suddenly several sharp silhouettes sweep through, across the front of the sun.
Camera shoots down to a fighter squadron of F-15S/MTDs, with the ISAF's insignias printed on their hulls. The ISAF squadron is flying over mountainous landscape covered by ice caps also carved by deep valleys, their canards are slightly moving vertically to adjust flight attitude.
The leading aircraft's canopy is twinkling, looks like some kind of laser transmitter with Morse code, the only viable communication method in an atmosphere filled with electronic interference, the strongest they have ever encountered. Thanks to jamming, ISAF fighters are also unable to use radars and any sorts of modern navigations, subsequently only can rely on old-fashioned, print-on-paper flight charts. Their destination is a particular position marked on these charts, tagged as "Northern Eye, Mt. Shezena" with an insignia of Erusea.
【Dissolve to】
A place looks like a central command bunker, built inside a Multi-Purpose Reinforced Container, filled with styles resembling Battlestar Galactica. Several colossal-sized screens are displaying detailed real-time map of different scales. Dozens of base staff personnel are working on consoles or walking between work stations. One of them, apparently the base's commander, is on an inspection tour, personally making sure all subordinates are running at maximum efficiency.
"A flight of ISAF F-15S/MTDs is approaching from 180, altitude 4300." One operator reports in French, as icons representing a squadron of said aircraft model show on screens, with an ISAF tag.
"Another flock of moths attracted by our lights? This is the third one in a week!" Base Commander responds: "Charge up AA defenses, fire when ready."
"Oui, monsieur."
Camera shifts to another place, a much smaller control room, obviously responsible for controlling the base's anti-air defense.
"Commence quick charge procedure."
"Power supply stable. All capacitors green."
"Cooling and thermal exhaust systems normal."
"Imputing data of targets' coordinates, prepare to fire."
ISAF squadron is advancing fast with radical maneuvers, pilots are well-trained and are battle-hardened, but they're dealing with something new. More than a dozen of thin, reddish-pink, swaying beams of light are cutting through their formation — the primary reason of why they maneuver so radically, whatever those beams can do, they're definitely not just for show. Humming sound generated by ionization when those laser beams are slicing through atmosphere, pierces canopies, helmets and eardrums.
Despite it is laser weaponry they're dealing with, ISAF squadron is surprisingly weaving through firepower grid. A common phenomenon in fictional universes: As long as the author approves, anything is possible, including immortality and invincibility…until suddenly the approval is rescinded. As moving closer to the target marked on map, pilots find evading lasers becomes more and more difficult, simple geometry taught in elementary schools. Finally one ISAF fighter, who happens to be sluggish for a second, becomes focal point of several laser beams. It begins glowing red, first dimly, but brightens in a blink of eye, indicating that hapless fighter is searing hot like an iron anvil placed in blacksmith's furnace.
Then the F-15S/MTD explodes by this acute overheating. As if starting a trend, one by one, other ISAF fighters caught in single or multiple laser beams and subsequently get detonated. Last one who goes down, or goes up in flames, is the squadron leader, he manages to dodge lasers for several times, yet not enough to save himself from same fate shared by his teammates.
Mt. Shezena
Longitude: 336 Degree 03 Minute 40 Second East
Latitude: 50 Degree 46 Minute 05 Second North
October 10th 2004, 16:28
【Background Music: The Northern Eye】
A miniature hologram of XFA-27 is flying inside holographic gorges among snowy mountains, with all necessary numeric information also displayed in form of holograms, much like a glorified Third-Person View in a flying simulator game. As camera pulls away, it's revealed this holographic interface, which can be toggled to any angles at will, is projected inside the actual XFA-27's cockpit, positioned in a correct place for the pilot, Mobius One, to use as a guidance to fly her fighter through such area flooded with powerful electronic interferences, so powerful that all means of modern navigations are not functioning.
ISAF GHQ had identified a large-sized radar base, dubbed as "Northern Eye", atop Mt. Shezena. It is emitting a jamming that is gravely hampering ISAF's efforts of pulling out allied units stranded in northern mainland of Usean Continent to North Point — which is primarily using the routes off-coast northern coastlines, across Cascade Ocean. The jamming must be deactivated if any further withdrawal is to be carried out, and if evacuation isn't completed before late October, General Moroz (Генерал Мороз, literally General Forst in Russian) will spell certain doom to these allies even before Erusea does the same. During the past week, three squadrons were sent in to stick needles in this Northern Eye, but none of them made it back and the jamming field is still quite operational, so it's assumed all squadrons never made it to target. As the first snowfall is drawing near, Mobius One, the hero (gender-wise, heroine) who had proved her worth in previous battles, is tasked as the last resort to put an end of such perplexity.
Knowing the first step of successfully accomplishing the mission is nearing targets unnoticeably, Mobius One flies deeply inside maze-like gorges that almost one thousand meters in depth, to elude powerful hostile detections. With all modern navigations unavailable, such approach is suicide both theoretically and practically — not to Mobius One since she has her ways. First off, flying in subsonic speed grants sufficient reaction time for maneuvering should any necessities arise. Second, there are numerous laser sensors/scanners installed allover XFA-27's hull, resembling those featured on Parameter Uplink Spectagraph in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, only to be more advanced. These omni-directional, ECM-immune, live lasers precisely scan surrounding terrain from a considerable distance, supercomputers onboard XFA-27 process all collected data to create an accurate, scaled-down holographic live reconstruction of landscapes, and is incorporated into the pre-mentioned interface, enabling Mobius One to have a timely and directly understanding of her flight attitude and proximal geography. All these factors, plus her skills, turn the hardest crayon flight into a walk in park.
"Did you just see something on radar?" Inside Northern Eye's central command bunker, an operator asks his colleague who sits next to him.
"Negative, I can't see anything on radar, nor on infrared." Another operator answers.
"I must be seeing something."
"You must be seeing your imagination."
"Maybe. Hypothermia and anoxia really give me delusions…"
Outside the bunker, on the snow and ice, Erusian troops are on routine patrol, by piloting Amplified Mobility Platforms customized to adapt this frozen land, suffocating air and freezing wind. Life and work in this base are boring, for nothing is going on. Indeed, ISAF do made several attempts to knock out this place, but their squadrons are flapped out of sky even before registering any visual conformations, thanks to the laser defense system. As a result, personnel who assigned to patrols only need to do one thing: Walking to designated positions by walking along designated routes. While they can enjoy the great view of blue sky and white mountains, but thanks to days after days of repeat, most of them had lost interest, even the breathtaking Krasinsky Crater, named after astronomer Professor Romanov Krasinsky, craved by a major fragment of Ulysses 1994XF04 Asteroid over an nearby mountain and looks like a volcanic crater more than an impact crater since the heat generated by impact vaporized millenniums-old sheets of solidified Dihydrogen Monoxide and is still releasing steams nowadays, had long since fallen out from attraction.
But today they will learn dying in boredom is way better than dying in boom, and will learn it through the hard way.
Sounds like distant thunder, not from blue sky far above, instead from icy land beneath. The XFA-27 rises up from a deep valley like a bouncing dolphin or a mortar shell, and sinks into the valley on the opposite side after flying over the complex, following a parabolic trajectory, with the canopy pointing downward. Mesmerized by what just unfolded in front of their eyes and concluding it must be a hallucination, most of Erusian personnel who happens to be witnesses, demonstrate no apparent reactions. In less than one minute, XFA-27 bounces over again in same manner, this time still half of them are in a status of dumbstruck, as if in a basketball court, athletes are frozen when the ball reaches apogee point. Finally, after XFA-27 finishes its bounce for the third time, Erusians realize two objective truths: First, an ISAF fighter had already slipped through their defenses, by flying all the way inside valleys, what they think nobody is capable of; second, that ISAF fighter is now dangerously close to their base and it's here neither for a peaceful, friendly sightseeing, nor for a non-profit photographing. Very regret for depending on jamming and ground-based anti-air defenses too much, thus leads to absence of aerial patrols, the Erusian must be now.
Alarm is sounded, ballistic ammunition is loaded, and lasers are energized. Erusian defenders are ready to hit the intruder aircraft with everything they've got (including ice cubes and snowballs) when it emerges again. Already too late, Mobius One is about to mount attacks. During the process of the triple bounces, she had observed the installations' layout, also cataloged composition of structures, by naked eyes, because the laser sensors/scanners are designed for landscapes instead of targeting — as a protagonist of a fictional universe, Mobius One is capable of things considered beyond others' limits — obtaining and processing huge amount of information with no assistance of modern tools, for instance.
Erusians are still waiting for the ISAF fighter to show itself, their patience is paid off in no time. High-pitch sound in the sky, something is cutting through air with high velocity. A UGB flies out from inside of a valley, like a basketball of three-point shoot, or an oversized grenade tossed by a hidden giant. The bomb lands on center of a group of AMPs, result is they're blown to at least a dozen of different directions, explosively.
More bombs rise up from different positions of valleys, and fall down to various places such as ammunition storages, barracks, power plants and, of course, groups of Erusian, accurately. This is called "over-the-shoulder bombing", a dynamic variant of toss bombing, mainly implemented by pilots who don't want to expose themselves to anti-air defenses. Doing so requires quite an extension of space to maneuver and a degree of skills to pull out maneuvers, but valleys' width and depth, as well as Mobius One's proficiency, are more than enough to meet these demands. Moreover, even targets are well outside visual range, based on previous observation plus precise memorization and mental calculation, Mobius One is able to make every bomb she tosses achieving maximum margin through minimum investment, namely inflicting severest damages to largest quantity of enemies with least ammunition-spending. Many may claim it's impossible, but an objective truth is, in both real-world and fictional universes, there's always someone capable of something that are claimed to be impossible by majority, an fine instance is many so-called analysis experts asserted North Korea is impossible to access nuclear arsenal, but they not only established an arsenal of nukes, even managed to process missiles to deliver them — quite a ferocious slap on those presumptuous analysts' faces (Chinese netizen sarcastically created a slang for similar turn of situation, called "godly slap"). We can't all be geniuses, can we? That's what James Bond says in Dr. No. So never ever challenge, even question any geniuses, especially when you're not a genius.
The primary complex of Northern Eye is done in a very short order. But there is a secondary complex, located atop another mountain a couple of kilometers away, and it had sent out distress signal — then gets itself decimated by Mobius One in no time — subsequently brings about the cessation of jamming field, which means ISAF's evac and regrouping efforts can be proceeded without blinded navigations, and can be completed before being trapped in falling snow and frozen seawater. However since jamming is no more, restoration of XFA-27's onborad radars' functionality reveals quite a few bandits are coming this way, must be summoned by the distress call, and they won't let Mobius One gets away with upsetting Erusea's applecart. They just don't know escape is not Mobius One's plan, although not listed as the secondary objective, she doesn't mind to gun them down. Doing so is neither for competition nor for extra bonus, but for one more she destroys here and now, one less needs to be destroyed by allies sometime somewhere.
The leading formation of enemy reinforcement elements are MiG-31M Foxhounds, chosen by the closest responding Erusian base for three appealing points: High speed, capability of launching long-range and ultra-long-range missiles, and avionics to provide better guidance to missiles. Upon arriving on scene, Foxhounds' pilots decide to demonstrate these points immediately, so they lock on Mobius One and launch all available SRAAs and XLAAs.
If it's some regular pilots, these missiles could take down several squadrons of them. But sadly, MiG-31M pilots are facing Mobius One and in this deadly encounter, she is the predator despite being single, let alone being different from natural predators that only strike down one prey each time, she's going to round them up to every last one. XFA-27 activates its own jammers, installed inside ECMPs it's carrying, and dives into gorges, making those missiles end up in waste also avoiding bandits' sensors. Similar to the gryken depicted in "The Future is Wild - The Vanished Sea", who hunts scrofas by crawling through the grykes and popping up to capture its prey by surprise, this valley-rich landscape is now Mobius One's playground of Whac-A-Mole, with a reversed gameplay.
Foxhounds' design is based on one assumption: Attacking enemy aircrafts way beyond ranges of opposite side's offensive capabilities, and achieving good kills within two salvos, three at max, never enter battles up-close and personal. Such guiding ideology of design is taking its toll under current circumstances, for they stand little to very little chances when facing air-to-air missiles shot to them from nowhere down below.
It's just a target practice, soon there's no functional Erusian MiG-31Ms airborne, and the mountainous snowfield is littered with charred wreckages. Sympathies to those hapless pilots since bailing out in such a hostilely freezing environment of high-altitude, anoxia and hypothermia will kill them quickly. Sympathies to those officers in Federal Erusea Air Force who must write to deceased pilots' parents too, since it's hard for any parents to accept letters with contents like "We regret to inform you that your son/daughter was killed in action during an operation of responding a distress call from a friendly base, when confronting the only ISAF fighter presented in that area" so easily.
Still, this hunting party is far from end despite Mobius One's triumph, for a flight of Rafale Ms is getting close. Throughout history, Français is an ethnic group with its own, distinctive attitude, known as "Just Français, only Français, unique Français". So after leaving (more precisely, being dropped out) from the project which would lead to creation of EF-2000 Typhoon, they started their own R&D program as a notion to prove their own worth, and subsequently succeeded by giving birth of Rafale models. A Rafale M is quite an impressive piece of machinery, high performance on aspects of speed and turning, plus a wide diversity of armaments, adaptive to any kind of air-to-air and air-to-ground requirements. Although looks like a Typhoon in many ways. what makes a Rafale M even more deserved to be proud of is it's conceived by a single, small-sized nation, instead of being a collaborative work of multiple countries. However even Rafale M is always a decent choice of birds for war, now it is deployed to a wrong place at a wrong time, as the squadron is scattering and is flying into the ravine maze to find and to destroy Mobius One. Guess they have never played Pac-Man before, in the game, those Ghosts are always devoured by Pac-Man one by one when they're separated in singles, and the worst part is this time Pac-Man comes with power pellet with non-expiring effect and the Ghosts don't come with properties of respawning.
The game is on. One Rafale M is engaging Mobius One by CRA inside a crooked ravine, Mobius One does maneuvers accordingly, swaying, rolling and releasing countermeasures. Suddenly she makes a sharp turn and disappears into a fork which almost 90 degrees to previous course, leaving the Erusian pilot dumbfound, so dumbfound that fails to timely realize end of the line — a cliff, is coming up fast. Rafale M slams into cliff, gonna be very hurt even with helmet on and with airbag inflated. Maybe CRA is not a good idea in a network of constrained, non-straight passages.
"Où est-il allé?" "La dernière fois qu'il a été vu dans le Secteur D4." Inside another ravine, a couple of Rafale Ms are cruising side by side, and are exchanging conversations. Without any warnings, XFA-27 appears from an intersection, the two immediately give chase, firing missiles and guns. Mobius One drags them to a section where is sufficiently narrow, she sends four XMAAs to the canyon walls of the narrowest part, and clears the gap by rolling 90 degrees as well as folding wings, before clouds of dust and debris completely block the way. Two pursuing Erusian fighters falls for the trap, one is literally buried beneath such a large volume of dirt, the other one survives but also sustains damages, just a matter of seconds for Mobius One to dispatch it to join its companion.
Like the bait-and-chase of Xenomorph Runner and prisoners in Alien 3, Erusians don't know when and where that murderous ISAF fighter will pop-up to snatch one or more victims, all they can do is flying aimlessly in the gorges and fighting desperately when their times come. Several Rafale Ms happen to be in a column inside a zigzag valley, Mobius One inserts herself into the formation, triggering confusing and panic among bandits, those who're in front of Mobius One, hurry to evade possible attacks, crash into walls of both sides, saving her some ammunition. Those who're behind her, attempt to mount retaliations, Mobius One decelerates and incredibly maneuvers through intervals among them to rear-most position, eliminates all targets by missile salvos.
The last three Erusian fighters finally realize they're taking on someone they cannot afford to confront and there's no chance to survive once confrontation is started. Took them long enough, people can be very lagged in wits, from time to time. Three Rafale Ms escape from valleys as fast as they can, to where they came from, yet not fast enough to escape from Mobius One's chase, and she has a good habit of not letting anyone she intends to shoot down to get away. One escapee is being CRAed by Mobius One, a XMAA achieves a direct hit, completely blowing wings, cockpit and engine sections into pieces. Another one attempts to fight back, attacking Mobius One head-on, she easily evades incoming missiles with a barrel-roll, turns around to gun it down. There's only one left, and this one is apparently better than others, maybe that's why Mobius One reserves him to the very last. The pilot, after witnessing his companions' demises, decides to die on feet instead of die on knees, he spares no effort to turn as hard as he can, to grab Mobius One's six, once in position, he launches two missiles to her. Mobius One quickly does a split-s, shaking off missiles. Erusian fighter keeps on struggling, once again he's on her six and enters CRA, however just as the circle-gauge on his HUD finishes charging, Mobius One does a cobra, nullifying his attack by transiting to his rear. Rafale M slows down, barrel-rolls, Mobius One overshoots and is placed under CRA, but just as a missile is fired to her, she flings countermeasures and does cobra for second time. Erusian pilot attempts a high-g turn, which becomes his ultimate undoing, because as he turns, the missile from Mobius One, which is supposed to pulverize rear-half of fuselage, right slices through cockpit.
【Background Music Stops】
Game over, overall elapsed time is not too long. Final tally of scores indicating Mobius One has swept the board like she did before. Erusian bits, organic and nonorganic, are everywhere, thanks to freezing temperature and thin oxygen, natural decomposition could take forever and artificial cleanup would be too costly. Environmental impacts of armed conflicts and post-conflict remedy efforts are relatively unvalued fields of research, hope Greenpeace doesn't get mad about this.
Mobius One opens a channel to ISAF's GHQ. But instead of informing accomplishment of the mission, which is absolutely unnecessary since cessation of Erusian jamming had spoken for her, she requests coordinate of the nearest refueling aircraft, for she volunteers to participate the escort details for allies retreating via northern routes. Many military personnel whine and scold for their workload, but Mobius One, as a labor model, never does so. Indeed everyone has the right of resting up after hardworking, but they also bear the obligation of contributing for the group, especially when such group is categorized under "healthcare occupations", "education and training occupations", "law enforcement occupations" and of course, "military occupations", which all need more spirits of dedication and sacrifice. To say the least, if you can't stand your job, why apply for it at first place?
After confirming the coordinate, XFA-27 folds main wings and ignites thrusters, quickly shrinks into sky's depth. Then screen gradually goes black.
【Ending Theme: Blue Skies】
(Ending Sequence: Identical to Operation: Umbrella)
【Post-Ending Sequence】
Outskirt of Saint Ark, or outskirt of Saint Ark's ruins. It used to be a massive metropolis stretches for tens of kilometers, and full of museums and historical architectures, all but now only exist in memories of days past. A piece of Ulysses 1994XF04 Asteroid, approximately one hundred meters in diameter, crashed into northern mountain range, taking most of urban area and population with it. Since the city is too smashed, Erusian military deems this place having little to no value for leaving significant garrisons, allowing it to become a haven for stragglers, scavengers and, of course, resistances.
An AT-99 Mosquito with Erusian insignia is flying away. Inside a nearby, seemly abandoned office building of plain design, Larry Foulke is monitoring the gunship's movement via an electronic binocular, when it's far enough, he packs up equipment and walks downstairs.
Bottom floor of basement, Larry knocks on an alloy door with a particular pattern, speaking: "Larry Foulke. The daffodils sing in the moonlight." Observation port on door plate is abruptly slid open, revealing muzzles of two IMI Galil ARMs and eyes of two alerted sentries who are holding rifles: "It's him, open the door."
After reporting to commanding officer of this hideout of resistances, Larry goes to his cell. Putting field gears into item box, he sits on platform bed and fishes out a photo from an inner pocket, a photo of a girl who looks identical to Mobius One, taken during a summer years ago. He smiles while looking at the picture.
Stuffing the pic back to pocket, Larry decides to use some shut-eye, only to be called up in a few minutes: "Radio team picked up suspicious Erusian activities in Sector C3, recon there if you'd be so kind."
"No problem." Larry grabs his belongings and sets out.
It's a large-sized parking area in front of a shopping mall, situated in a corner of a crossroad. Erusians really make this place useful, by parking utility trucks and deploying towed howitzers. All artilleries are arranged in a row and are pointing to south-southeast, numerous Erusian soldiers are unloading ammunition crates from trucks and are feeding fresh shells into bores. An officer is overseeing entire operation with shouting in French.
Howitzers fire in unison. Larry is watching the scene from afar, inside a building sitting on opposite side of road. He gives sitrep to CO then is green-lit to ruin these Erusians' day.
It's said good science is good observation, so is a good offensive. Not being hasty to strike, Larry patiently observes Erusians' actions, for finding exploitable opportunities. Soon his patience is paid off: Each time howitzers fire, the noise is more than sufficient to cover his gunshots, Erusians won't be alerted after quite a few of them are brought down.
Larry raises his Steyr Elite, aiming at an Erusian soldier who happens to be at out-most of the battery. When howitzers fire again, the sniper rifle recoils in his hands.
The Erusian soldier is dragging a crate of ammunition, suddenly as if being hit by a flying brick on back, he collapses. Others are too busy to notice this casualty and surrounding is too loud to hear gunshot.
Howitzers fire, Larry gets his second prey with ease, then shifts to a new firing position. After gunning down several more Erusians, finally the crowd realizes they're being targeted by a sniper, they cease operating artilleries and equip themselves with FAMAS G1s, pulled out from several crates of light arms. Judging from the postures of how their companions fell, Erusians speculate that sniper is hiding inside the building on opposite side of road, so a detachment consisted by dozens of people is send to seek and destroy.
But they overlooked a fatal factor, which will spell certain doom upon them. Larry switches to a customized Accuracy International AW L115A3, loaded with a magazine of specialized white phosphorus incendiary rounds, fires to a pile of artillery shell crates Erusians happen to pass by.
From Erusians' perspective, some invisible, tiny object punctures a crate of ordnance with high velocity, opening two flame-spewing holes, and in a blink of eyes, highly volatile materials contained inside are triggered, and from near to far, crates with same and similar contents are detonated in a rapid sequence.
Explosions consume everything in path of expansion, ground is trembling like mountain collapsing, although intervals between howitzers prevents entire battery from being destroyed as a whole, but the devastation is significant: Panicked, wounded, dead Erusians are everywhere, bloody Erusians bits are tossed everywhere.
Two Erusian soldiers, still unable to believe what's unfolding in front of them, standing frozen amid the scene of destruction, their helmets are missing, blown away by shockwaves. On the ground there are a few prostrating individuals, covered in gores, screaming while covering heads. One is sitting, eyes dull, holding his friends in arms, and his friend's head is completely flattened like a broken egg, must be hit by a piece of debris. Majority of Erusians who survive blasts, are running around stumbling, like Jawas in Star Wars: A New Hope.
"Just another day on the job." A satisfied Larry Foulke is to packs up armaments, but an AT-99, alerted and attracted by the fiery chaos caused by him, appears above clouds of thick smoke, ready to level the building where he's hiding. Inside the cockpit, the pilot pops up safety cap on joystick, but suddenly a steel-tip armor-piercing slug fired from L115A3 penetrates windshield, as well as his helmet and cranium.
Gunship begins to sway uncontrollably, as if the pilot is fighting a stowaway Xenomorgh in cockpit, then it crashes on ground solidly, cockpit-first, then explodes violently, while Larry leaves the scene safe and sound, for a well-deserved break.