AUTHOR'S NOTES: Sorry about the delay on this chapter...I hit a bad patch of writers' block, where I knew where I wanted to take the story, just not how I wanted to get there. I finally figured it out.
This is very much a bridge chapter, along with some world-building. It's also leading into the "final act" of this story arc.
Visiting Officers' Quarters, Luke Air Force Base
Glendale, Arizona, United States of Canada
1 May 2002
"So that's our situation," Rissa Arashikaze said. "The Kobolds are controlled through piggybacking their signal on satellites, just like the other GRIMM." She shook her head in wonder. "Watts was a bastard, but it's a brilliant scheme. We can't just shut down our satellites without ruining our nation, so Salem can control GRIMM around the world…and there's not a damn thing we can do about it."
"Isn't there a way to jam the signal?" Ruby asked. They were all sitting in Pyrrha's room, on the floor and the beds; Arashikaze had the only chair, which made her look like a teacher addressing preschoolers. It was Ruby Flight, Pyrrha and Raven; Ren and Nora were still enjoying their honeymoon. Ruby hoped Ren would survive it.
"Not without taking out our own satellites at the same time, no."
"Didn't Watts escape in Poland?" Weiss asked, then instantly regretted it. She remembered that Watts had been under the personal custody of Arashikaze at the time.
"Yes," the CIA woman admitted, "but he didn't get far. We found his body in the woods not too far from Sagan. Since that was near where the Hound landed the second Night Raven, we assume that Cinder Fall shot him, possibly on the orders of Salem herself." She shrugged. "No loss to the world, I suppose."
"Wait a second." Raven Branwen was sitting cross-legged on the bed. "Second Night Raven? There's more than just mine?" Arashikaze gave another shrug and nodded. "Oh fuck. When were you going to tell me this?"
"Never?" Arashikaze countered. "I don't particularly like you, Raven. I thought we established that when I made you slice off your little finger. Just because we're working together out of mutual convenience doesn't mean that we're suddenly friends."
Pyrrha cleared her throat before the two of them could renew their rivalry. "So how do we find the ground station?"
"Yeah," Yang added. "Seems to me there's got to be a way to backtrack the signal, like Pietro Polendina did with the GRIMM in Poland."
"I've already asked NASA and Air Force Space Command," Arashikaze said. "It will take some time—probably a few days." She got up. "In any case, you're welcome to stay here at Luke until I have further orders for you. Raven, you're allowed to stay as well, or you can head back to California. I don't care."
Raven smirked. "Oh, you're not getting the last word here, Arashikaze." She stood as well, forcing Arashikaze to look up at her; the other woman's short stature made her about level with Raven's shoulders.
Arashikaze sighed, even as Yang got to her feet as well; she was closest to get between the two older women if a fight broke out. "Is there a reason why you're acting like this is a schoolyard, Branwen?"
"Oh, did you get bullied when you were a wee lass?" Raven grinned. "It would explain a lot."
"The last person to bully me in school got stabbed in the leg," Arashikaze said evenly. "If you have something important to contribute to the conversation, say it."
"Fuck NASA and Space Command. I can backtrack the satellite transmissions in a day," Raven said, still wearing that maddening smirk.
"How so? With your amazing new superpowers of magic and bullshit?"
If Raven could look any more smug, Ruby thought, her face would shatter. She even patted Arashikaze on the head. "Y'know, I'd think that the DDI of the CIA would remember that the Branwen Tribe ended up with the surviving staff of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We had that conversation in your car, remember? Before you made me slice off my finger?"
"I should've had you slice offf your tongue," Arashikaze snarled. "So you have the JPL scientists, but you don't have a ground station—" She stopped herself. "Of course. I should've known. Vandenberg. The Branwens must have secured it."
Raven took a step back and nodded, looking at Yang rather than Arashikaze. "Your grandpapa was pretty sharp, Yang. When things went to shit in California, he immediately snapped up as much as he could so we could defend ourselves." She glanced at Arashikaze. "Not like the government was going to come and save us. So when those JPL nerds were trapped, he got them out and took Vandenberg—wasn't hard, since it had been abandoned. Whoever gave the order to bug out left the place damn near intact, and what we didn't have, we scavenged out of Pasadena and the JPL. And boom, just like that, we have the means to track satellites—"
"And hijack them, in the case of the Spring Maiden," Pyrrha interjected.
"You got it." Raven stuck out her hand to Arashikaze—the maimed one. "What do you say, Rissa? Want to let my boys cut through the bureaucratic bullshit and finish it?"
"What do you want in return, Raven?" Arashikaze didn't shake the proferred hand. "Governor of California, perhaps?"
"Nah, I feel generous today. This one's a freebee."
Arashikaze gave her a cold stare. "Thank you ever so much. Fine, use the JPL. I'll get on NASA if they fail." She turned back to the others. "Major Nikos, you're in command of this lash-up. If you need anything from Luke or any additional personnel, you have authority. I'll let the base commander know. Report back to me at the usual number. If I don't hear from you in 48 hours, I'll assume Raven's turned on us again and react accordingly."
"Airstrike from the carriers?" Raven smiled. "That could be costly."
"Or the Spring Maiden," Arashikaze replied. "Orbits can be changed." With one last look at Raven that promised the bandit queen a painful, slow death, Arashikaze stalked from the room and slammed the door.
Raven watched the door for a moment and sat on the bed. "She was an abused child."
"You'd know," Yang quipped, which got her a nasty look of Raven's own.
"When do we leave?" Ruby asked.
Pyrrha opened her suitcase and pulled out her flight suit. "No time like the present."
Two hours later, they were flying over the Mojave Desert—not that Ruby could see it, because there were clouds below them. She felt a little nervous flying over a cloud base, which was something most fighter pilots were wary of: clouds couldn't hide fighters from radar, but they could hide surface-to-air missiles. SAMs could pop out of clouds and give pilots only seconds to try and evade. Luckily, according to Raven, nobody lived down there, at least no one with any technology above the Middle Ages. According to Ruby's navigational display, they were near Palm Springs, where the Branwen Tribe's latest hideout was, or had been, but Raven was taking them directly to Vandenberg.
Ruby willed herself to relax, but as usual kept her head moving around her. This was Raven's home ground, and though she didn't think Raven planned on betraying them, there were probably plenty of people buried out in the Mojave that had trusted her. There were also air pirate gangs in northern California and northern Mexico—the cartels had their own air units. They also were unlikely to jump a well-armed force of fighters, but one never knew.
She checked Raven's position—about five miles ahead, the Night Raven stark against the blue sky—then her own flight. Weiss was a mile to the right and behind, while three miles away, Ruby picked out Yang's F-15 and Blake's F-18. Behind and above them flew Pyrrha's F-22 and Marrow, in his borrowed F-16. Weiss had insisted that Marrow come along, to give Pyrrha a wingman, but Ruby knew there were other reasons she wanted him along. In negotiations that would have shamed the NFL and some hasty temporary duty orders, Marrow was allowed to accompany Ruby Flight, but not in a F-35; no one was risking that kind of top secret equipment falling into Raven's hands. The F-22 was already pushing it, and probably no one but Pyrrha could have convinced the USAF to allow her to take it into California.
Ren and Nora were still in Phoenix: when Pyrrha had contacted them, both had insisted they would come along, but Pyrrha had ordered them to enjoy themselves. And she's right, Ruby thought. Ren and Nora have earned it. She smiled beneath her mask. I wonder what Oscar's going to do when I tell him I want to marry him after all? Then Ruby laughed. Tear my clothes off, more than likely. Home is the sailor and all that good stuff. I suppose we'll have to figure all that out too…it's going to be tough on us if he's always at sea, but I don't want him to give up his career. Well…that's the future, if we get there. Still, the thought of spending the rest of her life, however short or long that might be, with Oscar Pine made Ruby feel warm inside, and her smile only widened.
Then the end of the clouds drifted past below them, revealing the ground below. Forested mountains gave way to a vast city—what was left of one. Ruby's smile faded, as she saw what had once been Los Angeles. She had never flown over a ruined metropolis like this; she had flown over the ruins of Minneapolis-St. Paul more times than she wanted to remember, but Los Angeles dwarfed those, or even those of Detroit. Only New York City's remains would only be larger, and she wasn't sure about even that.
From 15,000 feet, parts of the city looked intact: the highways were clear, and she could even still see cars on them. Ruby knew, however, that the highways were actually overgrown with grass and weeds, and whatever cars were down there were rusted junk, the tires long since deflated. In some areas, the highways and streets simply disappeared under a carpet of trees, had filled with water that reflected the blue sky above, or were blackened ruins where fires sweeping out of the mountains had burned everything in their path, with no humans to stop them, leaving nothing but ashes and the foundations of buildings and houses. What had been the central part of the city slid under her left wingtip and the Sidewinder loaded there: Ruby could see where the buildings once stood, and possibly the center spire of the old city hall, but other buildings had noticeably collapsed in the various earthquakes California had sustained over the decades. She wondered if anyone still lived down there, or it was a city of the dead. In her mind's eye, she could see vast acres of skeletons, where people had been killed by the blast, shockwave, radiation, or heat pulse, or died trying to flee the city. She'd heard of the infamous Last Traffic Jam, where miles of abandoned cars were left on the highways out of California into Arizona, but it had been covered in clouds, so Ruby hadn't seen it.
In the far distance, where Long Beach had once been, was nothing but a long streak of charred ruins, showing where three nuclear bombs had detonated; even the ocean there was an odd color of brown, where ruins still fell into the sea. The charcoal streak went on for miles, where the fires had burned out of control for weeks and only stopped when it ran out of fuel, or improvised firebreaks made by the survivors. Los Angeles International Airport was still visible, the runways still there, but Ruby knew what her eyes told her were intact aircraft were probably wrecks, destroyed by the shockwave of nuclear detonations only ten miles to the south. She dipped her wing and looked to her right, where Hollywood once was. She wondered if the movie studios were still there, or the Walk of Fame. She wouldn't be able to see the latter, but maybe the former.
"Ruby Lead, Two. Are you all right?" Weiss radioed, seeing the F-16's movements.
"I'm fine, Two. Just sightseeing," Ruby replied.
"Nothing to see down there, Ruby Lead." Raven broke into the conversation. "Just ruins for 500 square miles. The only people that live down there are scavengers. Go down in LA and you might as well put a bullet in yourself, because some of those gangs are cannibals. Some of the 'burbs are settled again, but damn few, and those that are were turned into fortresses, like old Roman farms."
"I was just looking for the Hollywood sign, Raven Lead," Ruby replied.
"Not there anymore, Ruby. Collapsed back in '94."
"Prince Lead to all aircraft. Judy, judy." Ruby didn't argue with Pyrrha's call for radio silence, mainly because she was right. Jamming up the radio with chitchat like this might cause an important call to be missed, like a warning of GRIMM. GRIMM were not known to make it this far south into California, but they weren't supposed to make it to Phoenix, either. She heard the line click open, then closed as Raven decided not to argue either.
The Night Raven did make a slight turn to the northwest, and the others followed. Ruby was glad to leave the corpse of Los Angeles behind.
They landed at Vandenberg a few minutes later, and Ruby noticed that the runway looked cracked and overgrown from the air, but was perfectly intact when they reached the ground; the damage was painted on. Like Hector Field up in Fargo that time. That seemed a lifetime ago, but it had barely been a year. As Ruby taxied under a gigantic camouflage tarp—itself painted to look like the scrubland that had overrun most of the former airbase—she followed the ground crew's signals to stop next to Weiss' Typhoon. Besides their aircraft, she spotted several others, older types, a smattering of A-4 Skyhawks, A-7 Corsair IIs, F-8 Crusaders, and F-86 Sabres. Normally Ruby would love to go check the old aircraft out, but there were a few armed guards standing around, and Ruby tapped her Beretta reassuringly. She didn't think Raven would take them prisoner, but…
She powered down the F-16, waited until it was chocked, then opened the canopy and began to unstrap. Air laden with salt drifted into the cockpit, which was refreshing after the stale oxygen. She noted that the ground crew was professional, covering the seeker heads of the Sidewinders before placing the ladder; one of them came up and helped Ruby unstrap, and safetied the ejection seat. Then she climbed down and joined the rest in an uneasy formation behind Raven.
"Good afternoon, Chieftess," one of the armed men said. "We finished the move from Palm Springs two days ago."
"Good. That place was getting just a little too hot." She motioned behind her. "These six ladies and the gentleman there are my guests. They aren't to be messed with. They can retain their sidearms."
The guard nodded. "Very well, ma'am." He looked at Ruby Flight, Pyrrha and Marrow with the same amount of suspicion and wariness as they regarded him. "They're government, ma'am."
"Guests," Raven repeated with an edge on her voice. Her sword was loose in her hands, carried with her in the cockpit of the Night Raven, and her left hand noticeably tightened on the sheath.
Another nod. "I understand, ma'am." He motioned to the other guards, and they returned to their posts. Raven threw the guard a warning glance, and began walking, leaving Ruby and the others to catch up. She noticed the older woman had a bit of a swagger to her step, a self-confident look on her face—not smug, merely confident. It was the look of someone who knew that, here, they ruled.
They walked past some decaying hangars—though Ruby suspected that they weren't quite as bad off as they looked—and she noticed that Weiss was nervous. "You okay?" she whispered to her friend.
"Yes," Weiss replied. "Just remembering the last time I was a guest of the Branwens." Raven glanced over her shoulder at that, but said nothing.
After a few minutes of walking, they reached a battered school bus that looked like it had been produced in the late 1950s; Ruby realized that it probably had been. It had been repainted—badly—in a nauseating mix of green and pink. The doors creaked open, revealing an Asian man in the drivers' seat. He looked to be about Raven's age, in his late forties, wearing clothes that were dyed weird colors in odd patterns. "Ladies and gentleman, Lei Fong."
Lei Fong grinned at them. "Doctor Lei Fong, if you don't mind, Miss Branwen. Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Sorbonne, magna cum laude, and current head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory…such as it exists today."
Raven bowed her head with a sardonic smile. "I apologize, Doctor." She boarded the bus and the rest followed her.
"The Sorbonne?" Weiss asked as she sat, behind the driver's seat. "You're a long way from home."
"Not that far," Fong said as he put the bus into gear; it coughed to life and began chugging forward. "I was born in Vancouver, before the GRIMM came. After Canada evacuated the west coast, we lived in France. I graduated from the Sorbonne back in 1980, came back to the United States, and worked with NASA on Voyager. After Voyager 6 was launched in 1983, I got bored with the whole thing and moved out here."
"Wait," Marrow said, "you came to California voluntarily?"
Raven laughed. "He sure did. We caught him trying to escape from a scavenger gang in what's left of Pasadena, after he was poking around in the old JPL facilities there. Our chief scientist had died of rad poisoning by then, and Lei Fong here just slid right in."
"Well, they very much needed me. I was destined to come out here, obviously." Fong glanced back at them as they drove down a road—one in remarkably good condition, Ruby noted. "I see you brought some guests, Miss Branwen, and they're clearly not pirates."
"Depends on who you ask," Yang grinned.
Fong nodded. "You must be Raven's daughter, Yang. She's talked about you. I must say, you look just like her." Yang wasn't grinning after that. He regarded Ruby in the oversized rearview mirror. "You're clearly Summer Rose's daughter. I never met her, but silver eyes isn't exactly a common thing." A look towards Weiss. "And you're a Schnee, with that hair color. I went to a talk given by your grandfather, shortly before he died. Fascinating man. And we have a Faunus—pleasure to meet you, young man; we don't get many Faunus around here. I'm guessing you're Canadian, like me, given the accent. And you—" he addressed Pyrrha "—I had you pegged as Irish, with that red hair and fair complexion, but your accent is Greek."
"Now you're just showing off," Raven snickered. The two were clearly friends, which surprised them a little; Raven didn't seem the type to have friends, only underlings.
"Well, I have to. It's not like we get visitors here."
They drove a bit further into what was the old Vandenberg base administration area and barracks. Once more, a few of the buildings were overgrown with foilage and some had even collapsed, but others were clearly maintained and clean. There were several people around, and a small number of cars—none, Ruby noticed, made after 1962. She wondered where they found gasoline. They pulled up in front of a building that still bore the faded block letters 392ND STRATEGIC MISSILE WING BASE OPERATIONS over the entrance. He stopped the bus and put it in park. "Here we are. From what Miss Branwen radioed in on final approach, the United States has a problem that we can help with. Well, I'm not too keen on that, but anything to show up those fat-bottomed morons at NASA!" Ruby got the feeling that Fong's departure from NASA had not been voluntary. "I sure hope you know what you're doing, Miss Branwen. You know how the Tribe feels about working for the government."
"Trust me, Doctor," Raven said, getting up from her seat. "They're going to owe us one. I've already gotten Las Vegas for us on this trip; we might just get the bastards to take care of the Duke of San Fran after this."
Fong sighed. "We might need that. They hit San Luis Obispo the other day."
"Fuck," Raven said, brushing past Yang. "Did they break through? What did that cocksucker want?"
"No, and the usual—food, gas, women." Fong sighed. "That man must have read too many bad postapocalyptic novels or something. Or saw The Road Warrior and took it as an instruction manual rather than a documentary." They followed him off the bus. He pointed across the street to a hotel-like building, probably the former VOQ. "You'll be staying over there. You'll have to double-up, I'm afraid—again, we don't have many guests around here. Dinner will be served around six."
"Oh no, we have to double up," Weiss said with mock horror, with a smoldering glance at Marrow. He just smiled and his tail began to wag.
"We brought our own food," Pyrrha said. She had insisted on each pilot bringing three MRE packs with them.
Fong looked at Raven, who gave a nod of assent. "No need, miss. We're entirely self-sufficient here. We grow our own food, so it's fresh from farm to table. We even make our own wine." He winked at them. "That's what happens when you gather nearly every surviving scientist in California in one spot. They either kill each other over algorithms or they form a colony."
All of them went into the former operations building, which had been restored on the inside as well, though it was certainly 1950s-vintage armed forces chic; Ruby had been to a few older bases to recognize the architecture, and there were still some official USAF furniture in use. "Raven, was the base abandoned in a hurry?" Ruby asked, not sure if she would get an answer.
"Yes," Raven said, her voice a bit distant, remembering. "Vandenberg had a strategic missile wing here, with Atlas missiles. After they launched on Russia, they thought there was going to be a counterforce strike, which the Russians were never able to really do—I guess the missiles they had aimed at the West Coast, aside from the submarine-launched ones, got hit before they finished fueling. So a lot of people just fled. Then LA and San Diego got nuked and most of those people just kept going and didn't stop until they got to Arizona. The Air Force bailed out of here a few weeks later, because the base commander didn't want to start shooting refugees. They wrecked anything that was classified and just abandoned the rest. After the refugees looted the food and gas and moved on, Dad came in and took over the place." She paused. "You know, I might just have to tell you about him. He is your grandfather, Yang." Yang made a noncommittal grunt.
They came to what had been a briefing room, which the scientists had turned into a classroom, complete with chalkboard. There were a pile of old textbooks, some of which looked much newer than 1962 vintage; Ruby guessed the scientists had either salvaged or built a printing press. The pilots sat down, and Fong took up position at the front of the room. "So, tell me what you need."
Pyrrha stood and told him about the Kobolds, what they had discovered—she left out that it had been at Area 51—and how the GRIMM were controlled by signals piggybacking on satellites. Her briefing was short and to the point, but it told Fong what he needed to know, and no more. He listened attentively and waited until Pyrrha sat. "So that's how the GRIMM are controlled. Of course, that makes perfect sense! I'm surprised we didn't think about it before."
"Sometimes we miss the most obvious," Weiss said.
"Quite so, Miss Schnee. I suspect this Salem counted on that, eh? Yes, I saw her broadcast. We were able to pick it up—which I suspect was also her intention." He rubbed his chin in thought and leaned against the blackboard. "Who discovered this?"
"Dr. Pietro Polendina," Ruby told him.
Fong's eyebrows rose. "Pietro? Why, I know him! He taught at the Sorbonne for a semester as a guest lecturer! I was mildly interested in cybernetics, so I took a class from him. Wonderful man—a lovely wife, too." He smiled. "Pietro…he'd be worth going back to talk to again. A brilliant, brilliant man."
"He died a few months ago." Ruby almost didn't want to tell him; it felt like giving out a family secret. "Heart attack. He died in his sleep."
Fong sighed. "Ah, too bad. Please give my condolences to his wife and any children. I know they were trying to have them."
"His wife died a few years ago. Daughters, too." This from Yang. They didn't want to mention both Pennies had been clones-but they had been Pietro's daughters in all but blood.
"Personal Deity!" Fong shook his head. "This damned war. It takes so much."
"If you can help us," Blake said, "we might just be able to end it."
Fong was silent for a moment, then spoke. "What can we do to help?"
AUTHOR'S ADDITIONAL NOTES: Lei Fong is based on a Battletech character created by a friend of mine, though I ended up writing him as something of a cross between Richard Attenborough, Dr. Oobleck, and a hippie. (I realized that the hippie movement probably never existed in this world; the 1960s were a much different time in ORW than they were in real life.) Star Trek fans might recognize Fong's reference to a Voyager 6 (uh oh).
The ruins of Los Angeles were fun to write; yes, I got a lot of inspiration from Life After People. Raven has already explained a lot of what happened to LA in the chapter where she meets with Cinder at Disneyland's ruins. Part of me wants to have Ruby Flight really get into the urban exploration of a ruined city, but it wouldn't really contribute to the story...not yet, anyway.
Vandenberg today is a major launch facility and Space Force base; Space X launches from there, and it's also the only place where ICBMs are actually test fired. In 1962, the base was really home to the 392nd SMW, which would have launched its Atlas missiles in case of war. The old Atlas "field" is now where the satellite launching facilities are.
I should be back to my normal update schedule next week, now that I'm over the hump of writers' block here. I've been pushing this back for three chapters, but I think it's time Blake and Yang have a talk...and is Raven as secure as she thinks she is at Vandenberg?
