Chapter 73H
Above the endless windy snow fields of Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ screamed a huge fleet of military aircraft, flying low to maximise their radar stealth as they approached the Night Lord ground forces of the Sevenson so-called "Empire", getting ready to unleash absolute hell.
In his F-888 "Mad Goose" multi role fighter jet, Flight Lieutenant Blake Henry Wang the 4th expertly adjusted his approach altitude to remain below the enemy radar horizon, carefully avoiding the huge wind turbines at this extremely low altitude.
High above and to the rear flew a swarm of AWACS aircraft, feeding real time radar intelligence and targeting information directly into Blake's flight helmet visor HUD, every other pilot in the allied forces able to see the same information through their own helmet visors. Coming from a completely different direction a huge swarm of "Scapegoat" glide decoy missiles were simultaneously approaching the Night Lord ground forces, the small harmless expendable and cheap Scapegoat glide missiles designed to very strongly give off the radar returns and infrared emissions of military aircraft, specifically to distract enemy anti aircraft systems.
Simultaneously flights of radar jamming "Blind Bat" glide missiles were flying amongst the Scapegoat missiles to make it even harder for enemy radar to detect the real stealth aircraft coming from a completely different direction, the probability of mission success was very high.
The Sevenson Empire foolishly thought to only engage one nation at a time and start with the weakest to minimise their own casualties, but they had overlooked the fact that the various nations of Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ were under no obligation to sit back without attacking. Did they really imagine that every (patriotic) nation on the planet would not immediately come to the aid of the Constitutional Republic of The Lance of Vyaniah II?
The patriotic nations were doing exactly the opposite of this foolish assumption in fact, and a vast allied airforce composed of Air Forces from many nations was currently roaring towards the Sevenson forces to bomb them to oblivion.
Flight Lieutenant Blake Henry Wang the 4th looked over his shoulder at the Nurgle worshipping monk who was sitting in the seat behind him in the cockpit, nodding in approval to see the Nurgle monk praying fervently to Nurgle to poison the fate precognition of any Tzeentch psykers trying to detect the aircraft. Psykers of Tzeentch would be completely blind to the presence of this aircraft, just as would be the jammed radar systems.
Blake adjusted his fuel consumption rate, reducing his speed. With the Maelstrom wide petrochemical war still ongoing the price of aviation fuel was prohibitively expensive. This current tank of fuel had to last as long as possible, Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ had very little aviation fuel left in their reserves.
Blake checked his visor HUD for target allocations, and he selected one of the four "Nimble Bird" wingmen drones that were autonomously accompanying his F-888 Mad Goose fighter, wirelessly directing the selected Nimble Bird drone to open its fuselage hatches to fire all six of its long range anti tank missiles at distant armoured vehicles.
Other aircraft all around him were firing missiles of their own at selected ground targets simultaneously, and Blake got a second Nimble Bird drone to launch its payload as the first drone flew back to an allied airfield to rearm.
The missiles were all extremely long range and hadn't hit anything yet, and Blake got his remaining two Nimble Bird drones to fire their missiles at ground targets and disengage, leaving only the F-888 Mad Goose fighter to loiter around at an economical pace to finish off whatever survived the missile strikes. Other aircraft were doing the same, having expended their drone ammunition and just loitering at extreme range to see how the situation unfolded.
The Night Lords had detected all the tail plumes of the incoming missiles now according to real time intelligence on his helmet visor HUD, and they were fleeing out of their vehicles along with all the vehicle crews, running for cover as air to ground missiles screamed towards the doomed vehicles.
Seconds later the missiles scythed down and ripped vehicles apart, everything from tanks to armoured personnel carriers to supply trucks, all blown to smoking wreckage by the onslaught of missiles.
A warning beeping sounded in Blake's helmet, telling him that enemy aircraft were descending down from orbit to engage in battle, and Blake adjusted his F-888 Mad Goose electronic emissions and engine exhaust heat for maximum stealth, preselecting anti air missiles in compartments under the fuselage to be fired at a moment's notice.
The enemy aircraft were chasing after the Scapegoat decoy glide missiles, mistaking them for military aircraft, and Blake laughed as they wasted considerable ammunition shooting down these cheap expendable decoys.
The next to go were the Blind Bat radar jamming glide missiles, shot down by what ammunition the fools had left.
Suddenly the jamming cleared and they were suddenly aware of the less stealthy of the allied air fleet, tearing their swift death fighters around to face the true threat.
Blake didn't panic, his F-888 Mad Goose still invisible thanks to its stealth capabilities, and the enemy didn't even see him, moving to attack those inferior aircraft that lacked stealth capabilities.
Blake lazily selected enemy targets for his missiles and waited for the enemy swift death fighters to get into the most vulnerable positions.
Suddenly Blake fired, the hatches in his fuselage opening to disgorge long range air to air missiles in a huge salvo. The enemy aircraft scattered and dived and corkscrewed to escape, dropping flares and chaff that had minimal effect on his high precision active homing missiles.
Flaming aircraft soon fell out of the sky in pieces, ripped apart by his missiles.
Blake laughed as he headed home to rearm his F-888 Mad Goose fighter with fresh missiles. This was just too easy.
Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ might generally lack a lot of things and make nothing mainstream, but in the case of their air forces, being non mainstream had definite advantages.
The modern mainstream military aircraft of both the Imperium and the forces of Chaos all suffered from a serious problem, namely that they were more concerned with looking "cool" and doing way way WAY too close range dog fights than they were with actually being effective. The modern aircraft was absurdly blocky in shape, decorated with unnecessary spikes or carvings, was laughably non-aerodynamic and its long range weapons systems were far more showy than effective.
In short they were obsessed with LOOKING fearsome and awesome, whilst actually being neither.
The highly niche ancient NATO standard F-888 Mad Goose multi role stealth fighter was the exact opposite, it didn't look like much, a very generic looking aerodynamic fighter that LOOKED positively boring…
The name "Mad Goose" really summed up the F-888 quite well. From a distance it looked harmless, boring and easy prey for hungry predators, but get closer and suddenly "Oh by the Gods!, The goose is completely mad!, Agh it's pecking out eyeballs!, Oh sweet mercy this goose is going completely mental!, There is blood, so much blood!, It's hissing and completely berserk!, Run away before the goose kills us all!"
The fighter was a mad goose, it didn't look cool or fearsome at all but in reality it was a stark raving mad hissing honking pecking nightmare of berserk aggression that could chase off creatures much bigger than itself. In a more sensible time the Mad Goose would be a highly popular and widespread fighter aircraft, but in the current age of the Imperium where looking cool was the most important factor the Mad Goose was in surprisingly little demand.
The Mad Goose was an old NATO aircraft from the second half of the 21st century, designed and manufactured by the old nation of Merica. It was one of the last Merican aircrafts of the NATO period before Merica lost the second Cold War to China and disintegrated as a global power due to internal economic pressures. Ironically the same hugely expensive military industrial complex that had financially collapsed Merica had then become its largest remaining export based industry, like the USSR before them Merica had turned to selling its excessive military hardware to arms dealers just to keep their post-collapse economy afloat.
Merica had mass produced Mad Goose fighters by the thousands to sell to other third world countries and the fighter had once been found in the arsenal of every third world despot in the world, with countless variants and modifications that improved the design but were still little more than a nuisance to the far superior Chinese fighter aircraft engaged in third world peace keeping missions at the time. The Mad Goose might have been obsolete junk by the dawn of the 22nd century, but compared to the utter crap that the Imperium and others fielded today it was surprisingly fearsome.
The Mad Goose had been so widespread and so iconic and symbolic of military unrest in the third world that examples of the design had been found even on other planets as museum exhibits, typically used as a historical parade aircraft or as a training aircraft when still operational. The schematics had been easily reverse engineered by hobbyists during the dark age of technology with an interest in history, and all sorts of people had built these things for fun in hangars all over the galaxy as a hobby during the dark age of technology.
The design had been reverse engineered yet again after the loss of technology during the age of strife, but it had been shunned because of the artificial intelligence systems that it contained, viewed as tech heresy by the Martians. The forces of Chaos had less scruples about tech heresy but they didn't like the aircraft because most chaos lords and human warlords were giant immature children who expected everything to look cool and exciting, hating the fact that they couldn't put spikes on it without compromising stealth…
Blake shook his head at this absurdity and landed his F-888 Mad Goose on a flat ice field that functioned as an airfield, rolling up to waiting ground supply trucks to resupply his aircraft.
Other aircraft were also parked around on the ice around the trucks, and ground crews were walking around and loading fresh missiles into the fuselage cavities of the aircraft. Monks of Nurgle walked around in circles praying to their god to hide this airfield from Tzeentch, the trucks and aircraft all painted snow white to camouflage them from above.
Aircrew on the ground waved to Blake and shook their heads, pointing at the fuel trucks.
"No fuel?", the Nurgle monk in the copilot seat said curiously.
"This isn't good, we only have half a tank left.", Blake informed him apprehensively.
"Your despair is pleasing to Nurgle Flight Lieutenant Wang.", the Nurgle monk burbled contentedly.
"This is serious your holiness, without fuel we cannot launch further air strikes. We have wounded the enemy but not destroyed them, they could recover if we don't finish this!", Blake exclaimed angrily.
"Then our allied nations must find some more fuel.", the monk stated the obvious.
***…
Tank crewman Private Maynard Langley swayed slightly in his holding straps as he stood in the moving WT-88 "Weddell Seal" armoured snow car, basically a light winter tank but with multiple rows of snow tires rather than tracks for added mobility and fuel efficiency.
Private Langley fed yet another rectangular aluminium ingot into the feed slot of the electric grinder, the ingot being noisily ground down into aluminium powder that dropped into the aluminium powder fuel tank, feeding another ingot into the grinder several times a minute to keep the tank fuelled. Beside him was a huge storage rack of aluminium ingots that acted as additional armour when stored like this, the other ingots sliding forward as the ones in front were lifted away so that the ingots were always in easy reach.
Beside him the fellow tank crewman Private Josh Gaillad was manning the moveable rear dragging snow scoop, internal conveyor belts inside the short hollow rectangular arm of the snow scoop pumping fresh snow into the onboard water tank that formed the second fuel tank of the WT-88 Weddell Seal. The snow in the water tank was melted down by the engine radiator, the radiator literally snow cooled, and the liquid water was then pumped into the engine furnace chamber alongside the aluminium powder.
Aluminium powder well mixed with water created Al-H2O thermite, a substance that underwent a very potent exothermic redox reaction hot enough to melt some metals. Chemically the powdered aluminium stripped the oxygen atoms out of the water to create aluminium oxide and hydrogen gas as a byproduct. The hydrogen gas generally subsequently ignited with free air in the furnace chamber to create even more heat as it oxidised back to water, the steam then vented out of an exhaust pipe.
The furnace chamber full of carefully controlled amounts of burning thermite heated up a low pressure Stirling Engine, which spun an electric generator which powered the tank. A combination of snow in the water tank and the lethally cold outer air provided the cold source heat differential that let the Stirling Engine produce work.
The WT-88 Weddell Seal was an incredibly niche vehicle that only worked in perpetually cold snowy environments, literally a thermite powered tank that relied on huge heat differentials to run extremely energy efficiently but only in lethally cold conditions. As long as you had aluminium on hand and snow the Weddell Seal would never ever run out of fuel, making it extremely handy during a crippling fuel shortage.
"Dump the ash out of the furnace again Gay-Lad!", the tank commander ordered, Private Gaillad's humorous last name being an inside joke for the entire crew.
"It's pronounced 'Gaillad' Sir.", Private Gaillad corrected yet again, unable to help taking the bait.
"That's what I said, Gay-Lad. Just empty the ash before the furnace clogs up Gay-Lad.", the tank commander said to the laughter of all except Private Gaillad.
Private Gaillad was a small skinny guy even before the food shortages, and right now during these lean times he looked positively anorexic. He wasn't the smartest man alive either and easily baited, endlessly entertaining for the rest of the crew.
Gay-Lad grumpily pulled a lever for a few seconds to open the bottom of the furnace chamber to the snow below, all the accumulated red hot aluminium oxide ash dropping out to melt into the ice, clearing the chamber.
"Close it before we lose the heat Gay-Lad!", the tank commander shouted from inside the turret.
Gay-Lad closed the lever and the chamber bottom slammed shut, and more aluminium powder and water was sprayed inside the chamber with copious compressed air from the onboard air compressor bottles of the tank to hyper oxygenate the chamber. The aluminium powder and water had barely touched before they burst into white hot thermite flames. The Weddell Seal lurched with extra speed, the power output of this sort of engine incredible in such a cold environment.
Aluminium was a little bit expensive here to initially buy from local asteroid miners but it was also a renewable fuel once purchased, the tank crew documented the map coordinates of every ash drop, letting other soldiers find and collect the aluminium oxide slag nuggets in the ice. The ash nuggets could then be taken to a local settlement with an aluminium smelting mill and turned back into pure ingots using electricity from local wind turbines. It was power intensive but local wind was renewable and free, certainly affordable when you had a military budget to pay the power bills of the aluminium smelters.
The Weddell Seal was extremely agile on its snow tires, Private Langley needed straps just to keep standing without falling over, the Weddell was zipping and darting around with surprising speed for an armoured vehicle.
"Commander!, Burning wreckage on the thermal sights dead ahead!", the tank gunner loudly yelled.
"Langley!, Gay-Lad!, I need full power to that furnace chamber!, Gunner scan for hostiles!, Loader stand ready for loading!, Driver give me combat speed and evasive manoeuvres!", the tank commander bellowed.
Private Langley fed aluminium ingots into the grinder with maximum speed, going so fast that the grinder couldn't go any faster. The Weddell Seal moved faster than ever as the furnace chamber roared with heat.
The Weddell Seal crew were anxious as they searched for enemies, moving around burning wrecked rhinos and other vehicles, searching for anything alive.
"Night Lords!", the gunner suddenly bellowed.
"Where?!", The tank commander demanded.
"Right ahead!, In a trench!"
"Loader!, High explosive round!", the tank commander bellowed.
The tank loader scrambled to pull out a round and a charge from the armoured turret shell locker, loading the gun in seconds. The gunner already had an aim and the gun fired with a boom.
"Keep firing!, Driver reverse fast!"
The Weddell Seal main gun kept firing high explosive rounds at the Night Lord trench, the commander was voxing for immediate support and artillery strikes.
The Weddell Seal suddenly shook!
"Auto cannon!, Night Lord infantry holding!, It hit our ERA!", the driver shouted.
"Return fire…"
The Weddell Seal was shaking violently, extremely high caliber auto cannon rapid fire detonating the explosive reactive armour plates!
Liquid metal suddenly sprayed inside the tank, hitting the loader and the gunner!
The loader had his arm burned half off and the gunner was hit in the face and dead!
"Krak missile just hit us through the ERA gap!", the driver screamed.
"We can't use the main gun!, Front facing retreat!", the tank commander shouted.
Friendly artillery fire was now pounding down on the Night Lord trenches, suppressing them!
The Weddell Seal reversed frantically.
"Sir I can't scoop up snow driving backwards!, Water tank half empty!", Gay-Lad warned.
"Piss in it for Khorne's sake!, Empty your canteen in it, anything!"
"Yes Sir, emptying my canteen into the water tank… It didn't help much…"
"Driver!, Go forward just enough to scoop up more snow!", the commander bellowed.
"Snow is entering the water tank Sir!"
"How much Gay-Lad for fuck's sake!"
A blinding blue white beam of laser light suddenly pierced right through the front of the tank and out the other side, going straight through the furnace chamber!
Super hot thermite smoke filled the tank at an alarming rate!
"Las-cannon hit!", the driver bellowed
"Commander?", Private Langley asked when he was silent.
"Commander got hit in the chest, he's dead!", the badly wounded loader screamed!
"Fuck this!", the driver yelled and turned the tank around with the rear facing the enemy and floored the acceleration.
The tank interior was hellish with thermite steam and great heat through the holed furnace chamber!
The snow scoop at the back was pulling in so much snow that the water tank overflowed and snow started filling up the crew compartment with wonderful snow.
Private Langley desperately grabbed handfuls of snow and rubbed it all over his face to cool down, still stuffing aluminium ingots into the grinder.
He clumsily dropped a handful of snow into the grinder hole as he reached for a new ingot…
"FUCK…"
The aluminium powder filled grinder erupted into a thermite fireball as the snow combined with the powder to make thermite!
Private Maynard Langley stuffed an ingot into the flaming slot but the grinder machinery was now molten slag!
"The grinder melted!, We're losing power!", Private Langley screamed in a panic!
Auto cannon rounds then punched right through the rear armour, hitting what was left of the furnace chamber and completely destroying it with holes!
"Abandon tank!", the driver shouted.
Private Langley and Gay-Lad scrambled to remove their safety straps and threw open the escape hatches, climbing out into the lethally cold air outside and covering their faces with goggles and air heating masks. They pulled the wounded loader out of the turret as the driver climbed out of another hatch, then they ran away from the smoking Weddell Seal tank.
Other friendly Weddell Seal tanks and infantry were arriving to engage the Night Lords, and the survivors from the wrecked tank moved desperately towards the friendly forces, screaming for a medic.
Bombs suddenly screamed down from overhead, obliterating several Weddell Seal tanks and entire companies of friendly infantry!
Private Langley looked up and just made out black dots of extremely high altitude doom fire bombers in the UV intense slightly reddish white light of the morning sun, they were dropping high altitude precision bombs on the good guys!
"Where the fuck is our air support gone!", Private Langley exclaimed.
"We are running out of aviation fuel for the fighters.", the driver shouted, sounding as stressed as Langley felt.
"Fuck!"
"We gotta get out of here before we get bombed to bits!"
"I fucking KNOW that!"
The little group fled as fast as the wounded loader could keep up, his wounded half severed arm already frozen solid in the cold, certain to get gangrene.
The friendly infantry survivors were tending to their own wounded, and the group joined them looking for a medic and safety.
"The fuck are you?", the leader of the platoon they joined asked.
"Weddell crew, our Weddell got Las-cannoned.", The driver explained, being the highest ranking survivor and acting as the leader of the little group.
"Dig a trench or grab a gun, we need all the hands we can get. Anti-air is on its way, SAM system, but not before the Night Lords will rip us apart if we don't hold them back.", the platoon leader ordered.
Langley and Gay-Lad picked up spades and helped the platoon soldiers dig trenches in the snow, the loader being tended by a medic and the driver taking up a spare rifle from the platoon wounded and shooting at the distant Night Lords.
More bombs fell over the surrounding area, killing thickets of resistance and making everyone leap for cover in the snow, more men fell wounded in the platoon, caught by shrapnel.
Huge Night Lords with jump packs suddenly roared overhead!
The Night Lords landed in the middle of a platoon a hundred meters away!
The soldiers were being literally ripped apart by massive blades held by massive Astartes!
Surviving Weddell tanks aimed their cannons at the fight but couldn't fire without hitting their own soldiers!
The Night Lords with jump packs flew again without finishing off their victims, landing among another nearby platoon leaving terror in their wake.
Las-cannon beams suddenly burst from the distant Night Lord trenches and burned holes right through Weddell tanks. Few crew emerged alive from the wrecks.
Friendly artillery pounded the Night Lord trenches, and the giants dived down for cover from the fury of towed artillery pieces.
The enemy bombers were now flying towards the distant friendly artillery to bomb the guns.
Ground to air missiles suddenly tore skywards from the distance and shot some of the bombers down!
"Anti air support is here.", Private Langley noted.
The friendly artillery had ceased from the guns moving to avoid being bombed however, and Night Lords on foot were sprinting forwards towards the half dug trench!
The Night Lords mostly wore incredibly ancient designs of Mark IV power armour dating from prior to the Horus Heresy and they were absolutely huge men, holding vast blades and huge bolters like savage murderers. The armour was decorated with skinned human flesh and body parts and other horrific decorations, everything about them promising murder and horror!
Private Langley and Gay-Lad exchanged a glance and then ran for their lives, followed by most of the other soldiers including the driver and the wounded loader. No man wanted to take the charge of power armoured Night Lords and the entire line quickly routed, those few who stayed far too few now to have a hope of winning.
Bestial roars of aggression and screams of pain and terror soon followed as the Night Lords literally skinned men alive in the half dug trench, the terror of this act making men in adjacent positions also flee in horror. Entire companies were soon fleeing in terror, the entire front line completely broken in a huge section now.
Private Langley and his courageous companions just ran all the way to the nearest underground base, completely and utterly having had enough for one day.
***…
As the nations hostile to the Sevenson Empire were running out of aviation fuel, getting mauled on the ground, and generally starving and having a rotten time, the nations who had signed treaties with the Sevenson Empire were looking up at the sky as countless supply containers floated down on parachutes.
Containers slammed down on the snow, parachutes billowing in the wind, and locals began opening them with tools to find them full of sacks of grain and drums of high grade hydrocarbon fuels!
Skinny starving locals wept with joy as they opened the grain sacks to find wheat, corn, barley, rice and other edible grains, tears running out of their goggles to freeze solid on the outside surfaces of their breath heating masks.
Cheering multitudes carried the grain inside their buried ice cities, immediately getting to work boiling rice and making bread, food shared freely as all stopped working to just satisfy their ravenous hunger for the first time in years.
For hours the treaty holding citizens celebrated and ate and worshipped their gods in jubilation, every belly filled and every heart thankful to have made a treaty with these wonderful providers.
After half a day of celebration the citizens started to get organised, finding and carrying inside every single supply that had been dropped over their territories. They found grain of course, but they also found quite a surprising amount of aviation fuel…
The treaty nations were curious and vox contacted the Sevenson Empire ships in orbit who had dropped all this stuff.
"You wouldn't happen to have any F-888 Mad Goose fighters in need of fuel would you?", the Sevenson Empire ships replied to the queries.
The nations conceded that they did indeed have these aircraft and that they had been very low on fuel for them…
"Well now you have a literally endless supply of aviation fuel, fuel up those Mad Geese and come aid us in battle.", the Sevenson Empire replied with diabolical glee.
The rest of the nations overhearing this exchange all screamed. They were now completely and utterly screwed!
***…