Multimage Chronicles 2: Birth Of An Empire

by CSS Stravag

MMC Set 2. The end of the Planetary Revolution ushered in an era of peace, but 400 years after the fact the powers that tried to manipulate and control the world have resumed their machinations. Sparks of misunderstanding are about to light the inferno of global war once more, and no party will remain untouched in the coming conflagration. Rated T: V, L, SC.

4. Noisy Rescues

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 2: Birth of an Empire)
(Chapter 04: Noisy Rescues)

(8 August M.E. 428, 0340 Hours Lima (UTC8))
(Atrebas' Quarters, Amur River Mage Academy)

There can be no true expansion as you need, as your people desire, as long as others are allowed to make decisions for and against you.

Atrebas looked around his environment blearily. Something didn't feel right above and beyond the obvious unfamiliarity of the environment, but he didn't fight it. Truth to tell, he could not fight it; no part of his body was responding to any conscious thought, he was seeing something else and could not control or influence it. All he could do is observe.

Coming on the right, Star Colonel! You were right!

"This is a matter I do not wish to be correct on, simply to be done with it. Let us see what can be done about this annoyance!" Atrebas heard himself say, likely to a radio.

Whatever he was in was stationary on the ground but had a single-person cockpit that reminded him somewhat of a fighter's cockpit, except that he was enclosed in the structure of the craft to a greater degree than even most commercial airliners. He shifted his right foot a bit and his right arm, and with that the perspective changed quite a bit to the right and down. Wherever he was, Atrebas figured himself likely about four, five stories up in some kind of war machine hitherto unseen, and was now looking down toward the ground.

The sight outside the cockpit and on the far side of some magnified optics bewildered him to a degree. Under the gunsight of this unit (it had to be a combat unit of some kind), he could see some kind of variation of the traditional Multimage Infantry Armor on the far side of the battlefield, doing battle against other armored infantry of a type he did not recognize. Lasers were traded, missiles flew, the traditional 20mm and 30mm cannons were being fired from the opposing side, but the shocking part was the Armored Infantry were not wearing the unit or Empire symbols of the Multimage, the nearer ones had some kind of stormcloud on their shield and farther to the right was a group with a caduceus on their shield. Comparatively, the armor on his side of the battlefield had some form of feline face on it with maw agape; Atrebas had no real idea what any of those three symbols meant.

I will fire to support the infantry! Can you tag the runner, Star Colonel?

"I see him working this way, as soon as his position is optimal I shall fire," Atrebas heard himself say.

Almost there, you are angled right to take the shot, old friend, the voice that echoed inside his mind was clearly telepathic, not a radio transmission heard from his unit.

Do him, Atrebas heard himself inwardly telepathically tell himself. A moment thereafter, a blue flash of some kind emanated from around himself, Atrebas immediately recognized it as a wide-area magic disruption spell. Almost exactly in the center of his crosshairs, a person wearing old greek clothing and carrying a short sword in one hand and a caduceus in another stumbled to the ground, clearly stunned by his magic failing him. Before the trooper could stand, Atrebas could feel his trigger finger work four times, and with it eight crimson laser pulses bolted out onto the target, four pairs of coherent light transfixed the tango and obliterated the one man under his gunsight.

All he could see after the kinetic plasma-blast (lasers of sufficient power could cause a thermal bloom similar to an explosion, but was not a chemical explosion per se) was the helmet and the caduceus of the trooper, the body was long gone and likely spread over the area of several hundred meters, Atrebas figured.

"This stravag is eliminated. All forces my cluster, press the advantage while the shock of the matter grips them!"

Excellent shot, sir! No longer will they have blinding speed as their defense!

"They still have force of numbers and superiority of artillery. Do not allow complacency to cloud your judgment!" Atrebas barked back at the radio console.

That barked order broke whatever dream, echo, portent, or vision Atrebas had been subject to, and with it he realized he was staring at his bedside clock. Realizing what he had seen, Eric quickly set to a note tablet first the words he heard, second the emotions he had felt, then the visual, audible, and olfactory sensory cues he picked up on. The smell of heat, hot metal and electronics had been prevalent throughout the image, but right after the discharge of the four lasers the heat had risen markedly, the smell of it and the feel on his skin. And the constant thrum of equipment behind him brought to mind the sound of a fusion reactor, which made no sense to Atrebas. The smallest fusion reactors in military service were on Corvettes, specifically the Raiden-class super-fast corvettes that could reach roughly 75 knots straight-line speed.

All in all, Atrebas had a lot to record from what he could guess was maybe two minutes total of a vision, but since he seemed to have these or similar visions on a monthly basis and crossed mental paths with himself every few decades, Eric made sure that he recorded each for clues and intelligence. After all, given his coming endeavors, he figured he could use every advantage he could worm into his planning.

There can be no true expansion as you need, as your people desire, as long as others are allowed to make decisions for and against you.

Eric thought back to the opening line of the vision, and realized that the mental voice from that one line was not a match to any other voice he had heard. It was a prophetic line, regardless, and had no match to any of the tactical chatter. More to the point, it was also very much prophetic, and a message he could not disagree with in the here and now, even if it was more referenced to the vision.

-x-

(3 hours later)

Three knocks at the bedroom door caused Eric to look up from his desk. "Who goes?" he asked immediately.

"Megumi, sir," the voice on the far side of the door answered.

"Enter," Atrebas said immediately.

"Morning, sir — another vision?" she asked after she saw the notepad he used exclusively for recording such mental exercises.

"Hai, and a very clear one," Atrebas held up the notepad to her. The security officer only needed about 90 seconds to understand the gist of it.

"Oh, okay, but why would you see someone fire on Hermes?" She quickly extrapolated who the target was from her study of the Greek Gods in years past.

"Better question, why would I be embroiled in combat against clearly-Multimage Armored Infantry from the far side of the battlefield?" Atrebas asked.

"Dunno, but if this is a sign to come, sir, that just reinforces that our path lies with other pantheons of divinities," Colonel Nagohara returned the notepad to her protectee. "Still, ready for the day?"

"Hai. What news of the overnight hours?" Atrebas asked stoically. Even if his day had started abruptly with a possible-vision or portent of problems to come, he still had today to deal with.

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 0100 Hours UTC)

(Open ocean, roughly halfway between South America and Africa)
(Coords: 148'10.10"S, 2518'41.29"W)

Admiral Kargas sighed. "So this is how it ends."

"Yeah. Engine casualty, necessitating towing the ship by way of our escorts, maybe we get away, maybe we don't," the Captain of the Leopard voiced his thoughts.

"The loss of speed will cost us," Johann Kargas grumped. He was a definite descendant of the invasion of South America in the bad old days, but his family had remained in Brazil and naturalized to a strong degree. Nobody questioned his loyalty. "I want only two of our Cruisers towing us, everyone else needs to stay loose and stay mobile to provide screening."

"And the reports of submarines?" the Ops Officer asked. Commander Juliana Ferevon was the ship's 4-I-C, the Operations officer, and unlike some other officers in the South American Navy, she won her promotions on merit, being the best she could be and still having a reserve of 10 to 15 percent that she could tap in a crisis situation, or if she ever was stonewalled by another officer.

"If they are not shooting at us, there is little we can do," Kargas grumped. "Every time we think we see something, we investigate, nothing. The Africans don't have any subs worth mentioning, we heard their underwater clunkers coming a long ways away, and we still know where they are." Johann was referring to the African Zulu-class subs, which, while they were submarines and powered by older fission-style nuclear reactors, the Africans had put very little effort into stealth systems or sensors on the ship, instead working more on maneuverability and weapons systems. There were three of the Zulu-class subs in the vicinity, but apparently they were not too much in a rush to close with the fleet. Either they had orders to just track the flotilla, or they were afraid to close (each ship carried a good complement of torpedoes and were ready to use them), or something else was spooking them.

"Well, I guess we wait to see where the next paper cut is from," Captain Miguel Zastava grunted. He opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by the bridge door being opened rather loudly by incoming personnel. He wisely closed it and grimaced when he saw the chief engineer step in, holding a greasy rag with a chunk of metal in it.

"Souvenir, Captain," the Chief Engineer set the rag on the map table in front of Captain Zastava.

"Part of a gear?" the Captain asked.

"That's the main number one gear for the turbine, or at least part of it. The last time we goosed the engine, it fragged the transmission gearbox. We are well and truly dead in the water, Captain, Admiral. At least we're lucky that the alternator is on the driveshaft forward of the transmission, I had my troops cut the shaft short and weld a load onto it to keep it from over-revving."

"Meaning?" The Admiral asked. He came up in the weapons track, and was not versed in the finer points of the mechanical side of the ship.

"If we are smart on the throttle, sir, we can keep the ship powered by running the engine at idle or slightly above it. Moving under our own power is a deep-sixed dream, and I'm betting it will take at least a year, maybe as much as 20 months to fab and install a replacement," the Chief Engineer said. He was technically a Commander, and roughly 7th in line of command, but he readily admitted to anyone who listened that he liked it where he was.

"Recommendations?" Captain Zastava asked.

"Set the throttle to 35 percent and weld it into place, that way we don't goose the engine and shred it while we're at it."

"Authorized," the Captain said.

The Chief Engineer looked to the port-side door. "Manny! Get in here with the welding set and pin the throttle at 35!"

"Aye sir!" someone outside the door answered.

"Anything else?"

"I might have an idea to get you an extra few knots underway, reduce drag on the ship by way of removing the now-hindering propellers," he continued smoothly. The propellers, now lacking a drivetrain to actually propel the ship, became a net drag on the ship when towed by another vessel.

"What are you thinking for a gain?" Johann asked.

"Five, six knots tops. It won't be much, but right now every little bit helps."

"I can't justify that, given how much they weigh we can't recover them once we cut them off," Johann said. "We'll just have to do what we can with what we have, sorry." Nobody on the bridge would know that the extra 7 knots speed they could get would have saved the fleet in hours to come — that little bit of distance would have made the difference between being found and escaping detection by African patrol craft.

"Understood, sir. That's all I have."

"Thanks for the memento," the Admiral tapped on the chunk of gear. "Dismissed, Commander."

"Sir." the Chief Engineer was out the door shortly, and in a couple minutes the welder had pinned the throttle at 35 percent and was off the bridge as well.

"We'll make for Recife and get a tow down to Sao Paulo after we're safe. Draft a radio message for air cover, we will need it."

The Captain started writing up a communique for fleet command. He would not know that it would be his last radio transmission on this mortal coil.

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 0100 Hours Eastern (UTC-5))
(Nova Chemical Corporation Headquarters, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, North American Union)
(Coords: 4356'4.98"N, 7852'5.10"W)

Brittany Lakely scrubbed at her face as a way to stimulate herself awake somewhat, and was exceedingly thankful she had not put any makeup on. This was a 'crisis' situation, and only a peacock would try to look their best in the face of an unfolding disaster. And, as these things happened, she didn't want to look her best, she didn't want to draw any attention to herself if possible; the more she was ignored, the more she could learn and feed over to the Mages before they extracted her.

"This damage is insane," the Legal Counsel declared. "If I didn't know better, I would have thought the blast was a small tactical nuke."

"Thousands of tons of explosives will look like that," the Chief Operating Officer noted. "It's even worse in quantity, most of the blasting agent was contained in blast-containing magazines, meaning a huge amount of the blast was directed down into the ground, not outward or upward."

"God almighty," the Director of Research gaped, looking over the satellite pictures taken of the facility.

"Nothing we're seeing from the overheads suggests that this was an external strike," Corp Security noted. "This looks like it is entirely internal, and entirely consistent with an industrial accident."

"A freaking huge industrial accident," COO answered. "Still, a major fuckup like this has to be blamed."

A knock at the conference room brought their attention to a couple of the IT personnel. "We have it, sir. Line worker on the plastic explosives line caused a short with a power plug and created a chain reaction blast."

"Video?" The Chief Ops Officer asked.

"Yeah," the IT troop plugged a storage device into the monitor in the room and used the controls on the monitor to run it.

"Look at that," the Director of Safety said. "Those cords are too long, that's asking for a cut cord — erp," he grunted when the line worker on the security camera did exactly that, he ran the electric knife blade through the cord of the device and created a quick electrical fault. The plastic explosive didn't immediately explode, the spark caused it to start burning, but once on fire the plastic explosive eventually reached critical energy and started super-combusting (equivalent to white phosphorous or magnesium burns), then went wildcat and touched off other heat-sensitive explosives. The whole affair lasted maybe 20 seconds, not even long enough to raise an alarm in the facility before the blast started.

"That's some serious shit," Research noted.

Brittany could feel the link with her 'comrade' in mainland China go 'active', meaning she was again paying active attention. Did you hear? Industrial accident is confirmed, Brittany pointed out.

There was something of a telepathic grunt-snort from Corine. We weren't expecting anything different, but confirmation is good. Still, this presents an opportunity. How willing are you to piss in the cauldron? The question took Brittany by surprise, but after a moment she figured she was in prime location to inflict some sabotage.

I can cause some chaos on the way out, what's on your mind? Brittany asked after the second replay of the disaster started.

How about blaming the Mages? Corine asked plainly.

Wait, what? Brittany asked.

Hear me out, ma'am, Corine said. Brittany considered it rather endearing that anyone would refer to her as 'ma'am' in the here and now, given her past several years was nothing but kissing ass and calling those above her 'sir / ma'am' as appropriate. The Global Conspiracy wants to get into a state of war with us. The NAU is not anywhere near ready enough to prosecute such a war, and we Mages have been preparing for it for decades. Nova Chemical is somewhat ready for this, but not truly blood-and-bayonets ready for this to kick off.

Oh, Brittany answered as the third replay, this one a frame-by-frame examination of what went wrong, began in earnest. Oh, yes! If we force them to move, now, they are screwed! They won't be ready for this fight even in part!

Exactly. Do you think you can play the good little corporate stooge and needle them into kicking the party off quarter-cocked and under-primed? Corine asked flatly.

I think I can, after this replay I'll front it. Brittany considered her tack carefully, and realized that Nova Chemical already held all the cards necessary to do just exactly what the Mages intended them to do.

The third replay stopped and the Chief Operating Officer (Operations) leaned back from the table. "So, what do we tell the world?" he asked.

"Sammy, how far has this video gone?" Brittany asked.

"Couple guys in my department, nothing more," the IT technician noted.

"Can they be sworn to secrecy?" Brittany asked in following with her first question.

"I think so, one of them may not play ball but the others should. Why?"

"Yesterday, I offered my assistance to Rafael however I could. Sucks that this blast took his life, completely coincidentally to anything else, but now that we look at it, if this video footage is the only evidence of what went wrong, well, we don't have to tell anyone the truth in pursuit of our goals."

"Oh," the IT operator grunted. "We use this as an excuse to hammer down our opposition."

"We have the budget and the personnel to do it, and we have the moxie to try," the Operations Officer noted. He was also in on the conspiracy, but was not the 'retainer' to Rafael.

"I like this plan," Legal Counsel said. He was the 'Retainer' for Nova Chemical, and would now become the 'Lead' in the conspiracy. There was little doubt that he would fleet up to CEO, as that was the established chain of succession for Nova Chemical.

"Damn good plan, Brittany," the COO noted. "Do you want to be in on the planning?"

Duck out, Corine said quickly to her by telepathy.

"I decline," Brittany said. "I'll leave that to you, so that if I am ever captured, I can deny everything with plausibility and not be forced to blow a plan — erm, mission? Something like that."

"Fair enough," Legal Counsel noted with a nod. "You've done enough for the day, Miss Lakely. Take tomorrow off, we'll see you in the office the day after tomorrow with a good bonus check waiting for you for your services."

"I'll be here," she lied smoothly. "Good luck, ladies and gentlemen," she said to the largely-male room with a few ladies smattered in for good measure.

Brittany deliberately did not take anything out of her office except the one picture of herself and her sister, the latter of which was locked in a secure facility because she was a known telepath. At the time that Emilea had become aware of her talent, Brittany had also been tested and was not identified because her telepathic onset was late puberty, which allowed her to fly under the radar for almost two decades. On the way out the door, she smiled in anticipation of some delayed sleep and the thought of being truly free some time later in the day.

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 1000 Hours Moscow time (UTC3))
(Residential Apartment Block, Strakhovaniye, Moscow, Soviet Union)
(Coords: 41'48.38"N, 38 0'31.80"E)

Oleg closed the door to his flat behind himself and sighed. "Man, that's a drag. If they wouldn't assign so much homework, it wouldn't eat into the weekend."

"Same shit over here, man," Piotr said as he approached from down the yard. Both kids were fast friends from school and neighbors in the same row house. "You done with yours?"

"No, got the history homework to do still," Oleg grumped.

"Same. We'll hit that after we get some bike time. Where to?"

"Need to hit the corner store, mother wants a loaf of black bread and I could go for one of the Jinxo Sodas that they sell." The corner store was owned by a retired veteran of the Spetsnaz Armored Infantry, who himself had grown a taste for Jinxo during his tour abroad with the Mages, and when he opened up his own little corner grocer, he made sure to import it for sale around the town and some other interesting finds from the most secretive nation.

"Sure. Grab Banya on the way there?" Piotr didn't wait for a response, he headed back to his place to grab his bike. The answer would likely be 'no', given that Banya's house was beyond their destination.

Oleg and Piotr did not follow to the roads for their bike adventure, they went south into the forest and cut across behind several fences that demarcated some residences in the forest but kept to public land areas. The kids in the neighborhood loved to bike through the unclaimed birch and pine forests of the area, and there was a network of criss-crossing bike trails in the area for them to follow. Today was no different, they started out southbound, went west for about half a block, then south again, crossed the old dirt road into the largest forest preserve, and started following trails from one end to the other with an end goal of coming out on Motyakovo Road just short of the corner grocer.

A good ten minutes of biking the variably-uphill path and the two friends came out of the edge of the forest area within shouting distance of the store. Both were wise enough to stop and check for traffic before they crossed over the road and continued down to the store, and for good measure: five seconds after they stopped, they were buffeted by a passing box truck headed northbound on the road at a fairly dangerous speed. "Asshole driver," Oleg grunted as the truck rounded the bend and went out of sight.

"It happens, come," Piotr waved them across the road and down the slight incline to the store.

At the front entrance, the two schoolkids (middle school, grade eight) parked their bikes in a bike rack the shop owner had set up for the local kids and went inside. As they entered, they passed by a classmate of theirs, the ever-cheerful Anya as she exited the store. "Bonjour!" She said in an almost overly-cheery fashion, and in French, which she was studying but Oleg and Piotr were not. (Piotr was not enrolled in any 'extra' language courses, Oleg was studying Thai as an elective. All three were already proficient in Russian as their native language, and English and Japanese as the primary international languages.)

"S̄wạs̄dī, how goes?" Oleg asked in Thai, then English.

"Privet," Piotr greeted her in Russian, which garnered a scowl from both Anya and Oleg.

"Combo breaker," Oleg grumped.

"Ohayo?" Piotr asked / greeted in Japanese.

"That works, if lazy. Have to go, later!" Anya mussed his hair up, briefly, before she darted off toward the southeast with a bag of groceries.

Neither said a word as she bolted, both simply watched her go. After they entered the store, though, Piotr smiled. "That ass," he said simply.

"Always worth watching," Oleg agreed.

"And always worth being cautious about, you know her father has a reputation," the owner said from behind the sales counter.

"Da, Ruvim," Oleg nodded to the clerk. "I don't know if her father truly is Mafiya, and I'm not in a hurry to learn either way."

"Good answer," the store owner (Ruvim Borissovich Erlenko) nodded to the students. "Jinxo and chips, like normal?"

"That and a loaf of black bread, sir," Oleg said.

"Chicken sandwich and Jinxo, please," Piotr noted.

"None of the good chicken today, boy," Ruvim grunted. "If you're in for a hot sandwich, a steak patty is your best bet."

Piotr grunted. "You wouldn't happen to have any of those American Hoagie patties like you did last month, would you?"

"Actually, da, I do, just got a shipping unit of patties and buns yesterday. One moment."

"Make one for me as well, please," Oleg requested. "Probably the best thing to come out of America in the last century, aside from Kailey Kriss's nude pictures." In the freezer closet, the students could hear the proprietor bark a laugh at his comment.

"Funny as hell, but I'll pretend you didn't say that. You don't need to be rotting your brain on digital porno pics," Ruvim said as he returned with two hoagie sandwiches and put them on the slow-roll grill to heat up. Like a pizza oven but slightly faster, the rolling grill would properly heat and cook the patties and buns as they rolled through, until they were done when they rolled out the opposite side. After that, Ruvim only had to add condiments and dressings to the sandwiches and they were good to go.

While the sandwiches were heating up, the two students went about chasing down their chips and Oleg picked a suitable black bread loaf for the next couple days. By the time they returned to the counter, Ruvim was finished assembling their sandwiches and he wrapped them up for easy transport, then started ringing up their orders. While they were standing there, the television behind the counter blared a tone and a news chiron popped on, highlighting the ongoing situation between Russia and Europe. "How serious is this shit, sir?" Piotr asked.

"Pretty serious, boy," Ruvim noted. "I expect I'll get a call tomorrow to report back to Anadyr to take up the armor once again. So you'll have to start shopping at the Scuzz-hole in towards the city." The store he had disparaged was a large international retail store chain on the order of K-Mart of United States fame, but scummier by a wide margin. Most sane persons did not shop at such stores when better quality and equivalent prices were available much closer to home, and few bothered with the hard-to-pronounce name.

"Hell with that, I'll shop at Gork's first before I shop at the Scuzz-Hole," Oleg said.

"Again, good answer, young one," Ruvim said. "Good afternoon to you both."

"If you do get called up, good luck!" Piotr and Oleg were out of the store in the moments thereafter.

Neither Oleg or Piotr knew they would not see him alive again.

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 1100 Hours UTC)
(Landing Zone Alpha, Primary Colony Point, New Terra)

"Is this for real?" Melanie Forster asked.

"This is very real," General Rudelt noted. "As of right now, you five are fugitives from the Global Order. They will not stop until you are captured and killed, so the best thing we can do to prevent them slaying you is to put you in the next group here."

"This is insane," Sanna De Leon noted. "We'd always been told that the Mages didn't want people to leave the world, that you wanted to take control of the world from on high. I never believed it, but seeing it," she cut off her sentence early.

"Projection," Shrine Maiden Sako Horten said simply. "If this global conspiracy is true, they have to force us into a narrow box where they can take control and keep control. And the easy way to take control is to make the one group that is trying to free the world look like the bad guys."

"Nova Chemical is one of them," Melanie said. "And to think I wanted to work my way through college on their dime."

"Chances are you would not have been on the black side of Nova," Maximilian noted. "You would have been another office worker in another office building, nowhere near that deplorable side of the business. It takes a hard soul to live in the world of black operations, and Nova has had a spec ops outfit for hundreds of years, they are exceptional at vetting their inductees."

"The Mages?" Sanna asked, then immediately covered her mouth. "Gomenasai, sensei! Not my place to ask, sir!"

"It is a legitimate question, but one I cannot answer," General Rudelt noted. "Any other questions before we continue?"

"Yes sir, where do you want us?" Chidori asked.

"First, you will need to see to your children, Specialist. Creche and school is over on 3rd street, quonset with a yellow stripe and a transplanted apple tree. Once they are situated, come back here to the LZ and I will place you."

"Sir," she bowed curtly, took up her daughters, and was on her way toward the school in question.

"As for the rest of the crew, Leene, Sanna, Sako, and Melanie, I shall place the four of you to work with Qin Family Construction, they are hurting for manpower and this is as good a day as any for it."

"Understood, sensei," Leene said with a short bow. "Where to?"

"I'm not sure where they need manpower, so," Maximilian flipped her a radio. "Qin Lu is on channel 6-2."

Leene took a few moments to dial it in. "Thank you, sir!" The Shrine Maiden started walking toward the center of town while she called forward to find the location to work.

-x-

(5 minutes later)

Chidori knocked on the door to the creche and waited. The proprietress opened the door within 30 seconds. "Hello," she said.

"Good morning," Chidori said with a bow. "Mokose Chidori. I just arrived from the Empire."

"Ah, welcome," the owner/operator said. "Onikase Kaitlyn," she bowed as well. "I take it the Field Marshall has already assigned you to a section?"

"Not yet, he told me to bring my daughters over for daycare before I take a role," Chidori noted. "What is the day's going rate for two in kindergarten and year 1?"

"No payment," Miss Onikase said. "We don't have an established financial system yet, no charge for basic caretaking services. You do what you have to do, we'll keep the kids safe during work hours. Do you have a radio?"

"No, am I supposed to?" Chidori did not remember any mention of needing a radio, but…

"Everyone that has children here has a radio, just for safety purposes," Kaitlyn ducked into the doorway briefly and came back with a radio — Chidori could distinctly hear the scrape of the battery pack against the charging base that was probably right next to the door. "Here, you can return this one when they issue you a new one. Everyone gets a radio, cell and mobile service is not anticipated for six months at best."

"Arigatou," Chidori turned the volume knob to activate it. "What station are you on?"

"3-3 is the schoolhouse. When you know what station you're on, give me a call so I can write it down in case of emergency."

"Will do." Chidori patted her daughters on their shoulders. "Come on, introduce yourselves to your new teacher, girls," she said.

Yuna was first to bow. "Mokose Yuna," she said.

"Hello, Yuna," Kaitlyn said after she crouched down to look the two daughters in the eye.

Xion was not far behind in her bow. "Mokose Xion, Kindergarten! Ohayo!"

"Ohayo, Xion, and welcome to the New Terra Early School!" Kaitlyn said with some cheer. "Come in so we can introduce you to the class and the other teachers!" After she stood up and took the two girls by the hand, Kaitlyn gave Chidori a knowing nod and was in the door a moment thereafter. The Shrine Maiden had a quick glance inside to make sure everything looked proper, and she was impressed with how bright and cheery a converted quonset hut could be made out as. With that one brief reassurance, Chidori started back for the arrival field so she could get to work.

The trip back to the landing field was some five minutes at Chidori's present pace. She was not overlong about it, but she was still recovering from a rifle wound that would have killed her if she had not been as fast as she was when action needed to be taken. Thankfully to her way of thinking, Maximilian also recognized the lapse in pace: "All is well?" he prompted her, which was something of an ongoing military indirect question when someone expected trouble.

"Still recovering from being shot, sir," Chidori answered truthfully.

"Alice Springs Shinto Shrine, I take it?" The Shrine Maiden in charge of that facility nodded twice. "Read," and the Field Marshall handed her a folder.

Reading it only took 20 seconds. "Lousy bastards torched the place."

"Roughly half the Shinto Shrines in Oceania are burned out or are in the process of burning right now. Petty vandalism against the roadside shrines is better than 60 percent. We evacuated whoever and whatever we could, but five Shrine Maidens were killed outright overnight, three captured, and at least two were gang-raped and slain. Our Ambassador has issued a statement against the savagery involved, but the response from the Oceania Government amounts to someone in their government telling us to get fucked with a pine tree."

"Which corporation is their branch of the conspiracy?" Chidori asked.

Maximilian was silent for a few moments, though he did answer: "Smith-Leine Commercial. Their major trade is in industrial buildings and footprint, and they look to take control of all commercial and industrial buildings around the world after they take full control of the planet."

"I hope we have a plan to wreck their commercial fantasy?" Chidori asked somewhat archly, then realized she had been very imprudent in so saying. "Sir," she tacked on after a long moment of considering it.

"Oh, rest assured," Maximilian said with a savage smile. "Emperor Atrebas has not suffered their machinations for 400 years without a binder full of plans to burn down these trumped-up business ventures into foul smoke and memories."

"What can I do to help?" Chidori asked. The Field Marshall (freshly promoted) would put her to work inducting personnel, so he could manage freight. This put the Shrine Maiden behind a desk, which she welcomed for the time being.

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 1010 Hours Lima (UTC-4))

(Residence of Brittany Lakely, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, North American Union)
(Coords: 4353'24.72"N, 7851'0.85"W)

Brittany Lakely had not slept one bit since she arrived home, due partially to adrenaline and due in large part to excitement for the prospect of getting out of harm's way and making the scum in Nova Chemical and the NAU hurt for the injustices against her family. That, and caffeine. She had consumed far more than the recommended daily allowance of caffeine, and was suppressing the shakes courtesy of it, but she had stopped short of the point of heart palpitations by knowing when to cut herself off.

Shortly after 10A Eastern time, she felt the telepathic link to China reactivate, and immediately she could sense nervousness from Corine. Something wrong? Brittany asked after a moment with no prompt from the intelligence officer.

The response still took a few seconds. Yes, very wrong. The Nova Chemical leadership has dispatched a kill team to your location, I was issuing orders to have you evacuated, Corine said.

Well, that's a problem. What's the timings look like? Lakely asked. The consideration of death did not bother her so much as it was just another obstacle to overcome, she had a lifetime of thinking about her family's deaths at the hands of faceless incompetent public 'servants' and was largely immune to such worries.

30 seconds to gate spell, roughly ten minutes to the arrival of the kill team. You'll be out of there well ahead of them.

Brittany picked up her prepared go-bag and her small briefcase in anticipation of the gate appearing on the one open wall in her front room. She squared up to the wall, ready to jump through as soon as she saw it, but thirty seconds came and went with nothing. It was only a few seconds after that realization that she heard a television downstairs fall off the wall and a muttered curse for effect. Brittany looked to the right and down the stairs. "Hello down there!"

"Ohayo! Sorry about the noisy entry!" a guy shouted up the stairs in an obviously and horribly fake Chinese-ish accent. "Sergeant Junko, Multimage Special Ops! Gate's down here!"

Brittany looked back to the blank wall and saw the Gate spell had formed in front of her, and through the gate she saw both an Armored Infantryman and the lady she had been telepathically speaking to, Corine. The telepath on the far side of the world signaled her to be quiet and hop through, which Brittany gladly took the opportunity to do so. Once past the rim of the portal, Brittany quickly realized that she was in a military ready room and there were multiple Armored Infantry in attendance as well as some other uniformed personnel.

"Do it," one of the unidentified personnel nodded to the Armored Infantryman that was defending the gate.

"Cluster Charge out," the trooper said quietly before a large parcel was tossed through the gate. "Close it!"

"Stang Baklukan," Corine and the unidentified unarmored soldier said after Brittany saw the Cluster Charge land on her couch. The Gate snapped shut in an instant with a pop and a change of air pressure in the area. "Done," she said with a smile.

"What was that?" Brittany asked after a moment and after the Armored Infantryman uncoiled from a braced and shielded position.

"Cluster Demolition Charge," the Armored Infantryman answered. After the voice and the trooper turned to face their new arrival, Brittany realized she was looking at a lady in Infantry Armor. "Each charge is a primary of five kilos of blast brick and twelve sub-charges of three kilos each. It will do your entire house, easily, and probably damage or demolish your neighbors' houses as well."

"Meh, don't care, the house east of mine was the HOA President, a royal asshole if ever one, and the other house to the west was vacant, former meth lab that nobody wanted to rebuild," Brittany noted.

"So, we just engaged in some urban renewal while eliminating an enemy covert ops kill team," Corine shrugged. "Easy enough to sign off on."

"And I won't lose sleep over it," (Former) Director Lakely said with a smile.

"Welcome to Mainland China, Brittany." Corine, surprisingly, embraced the Director warmly, and that embrace immediately invoked a memory of her long-jailed sister.

Reflexively, Brittany embraced the slightly shorter Strategic Psionic. "Thank you for getting me out. I know I'm not much in the grand scheme of — "

" — Say no more," Corine said. "It's not about any political points or values or espionage, girl. We telepaths look out for each other, because we have to survive to see the future. The only way we'll make a future that is not outright hostile to us is to make sure we defend each other and defend truly honorable parties like the Emperor."

"Can we liberate some of the Telepath Jails?" Brittany asked. More than just the NAU jailed their telepaths, and a couple of the nations around the world outright executed them when found, same as with rogue wizards.

"You will be there when your sister is freed from her cage, of this I swear," Corine said, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

Brittany nodded twice. "What do you need from me?"

Corine smiled. "We're going to watch something in an office elsewhere on base, something you might like, and then we'll crash for the day — you'll work with me, and my team works the day shift, so you'll be primarily a day operator until or unless someone poaches you to a different team. We'll do introductions at that time, everyone else is asleep. And we'll go through debrief and swearing in at that time, if you're still game to make a difference."

"Oh yeah, forgot, China is like almost completely inverse in day/night cycle from North America. Duh," Brittany said as she passed a window and realized it was dark outside.

-x-

(5 minutes later)
(Satellite Recon Office, Silent Mountain facility)

Corine waved the Gate Mage and Brittany into a conference room, where two other uniformed Mage personnel were already sitting. "Yoshi, Chen, this is Brittany Lakely."

"Ah, that explains our interest in a very nondescript suburb house," Chen said. "Welcome to the spy agency that doesn't exist."

"Very glad to be here," Brittany took an offered seat.

"Do we have a good real-time cut to the event?" Corine asked after she took her seat.

"Hell yes, three degrees off true, no notable cloud cover or atmospheric distortion," Yoshi noted. "You'll like this one." The senior Satellite Imagery Technician waved a pen at a wall-mounted monitor, which came alive with a satellite image of what Brittany quickly realized was her street, and the camera was centered on her house.

"Do it," she heard on the playback.

"Cluster Charge out," they all heard the echo of the Armored Infantry trooper's declaration, then: "Close it!"

"Stang Baklukan," Brittany could not easily pick Corine's voice out from the Gate Mage's voice on the recording, but she figured if this was soon to become her life and career, she would learn quickly to make such distinctions.

Three seconds later, the roof of the house jettisoned on a flash and puff of smoke, while the walls of the house separated and shredded into kindling that reached the road two blocks south of her residence. Smaller detonations also tore the sides out of the houses to either side of hers, and the separate garage northeast of her house was demolished by a similar smaller blast.

"Well, that's that," Corine said. "Sorry about your pad."

"I'm not," Brittany said diffidently. "That whole neighborhood may have looked good and was well-kempt in centuries past, but nowadays?" She picked up a laser pointer and put it at the end of the block opposite her house. "Crack-house, crack-house, meth factory that burned down, prostitute dispatch for the area, another meth house, serial killer in potentia, another meth factory, pimp's house for the aforementioned brothel, yet another crack house, when I said you were engaging in urban renewal with a side benefit of blasting a Nova Chemical kill team, I wasn't joking."

"Gods damn, and here I thought there was some modicum of urban decency in the NAU," Chen said sheepishly.

"Three blocks north of my house, the property value is triple and the standards are much higher. I lived in cracktown because I was saving up to move to the better part of town and retire early, but after this past week, retirement's off the table. I want asses and I want to end this conspiracy in its entirety. Where do I sign up?" Brittany asked in a dead-serious tone of voice and mental presence.

"You just did," a voice from the door answered. Everyone looked in that direction at the newcomer. "Like Corine said, crash for the night and get ready for a busy day tomorrow. After we debrief you for anything usable out of Nova, we're going to put you straight to work because the shit around the world is getting very deep and it's piling higher faster by the hour."

"Anything special needed, Master Daniel?" Corine asked.

"Follow the standard procedures as best as you can on a short timeline," Strategic Analyst Commander Daniel Porom ordered. "After that, start poking the Africans, they are getting busy — "

"Whoa, what do we have here?" Yoshi asked the monitor, which drew eyes back to it.

"This is the blast site?" Daniel asked.

"Yes sir," Yoshi said. "This is about 90 seconds after the blast, so about ten minutes ago give or take."

'This' was a view of a guy emerging from the blast wreckage of the house relatively unscathed, clearly visible even from satellite imagery to be in tactical clothing though he did not appear to have a weapon with him. He had to climb out of the debris to get out of the basement and do some more climbing to get up to ground level, where he splayed out on the ground behind what had been Brittany's house. On the video, he was reasonably still for 30 seconds, then clearly reached for a radio to call something in.

"Son of a bitch, whoever that kid is, he has a reactive relic that prevented the blast from killing him," Chen noted.

"That means he's not Nova," Brittany said. As soon as she said it, every eye in the room was on her, so she explained: "Rafael couldn't afford the asking price of freelance combat mages, he had enough trouble keeping the black ops budget under wraps from internal auditing, much less the Department of the Treasury. That means the team that gated into my basement was someone else."

"Corine?" Daniel asked the senior Strategic Psionic.

An answer did not take long to come from her. "Michael Wentworth, 31, North American Union Department of Justice Special Response Team. His team sparked the riot outside of Minneapolis and then turned some light machine guns on the crowd. And we just killed all of them except the team leader," Corine said after she did a quick-read on the tango who was still laying on the ground with a severe concussion.

"Black Ops shithead posing as law enforcement," Brittany guessed (not incorrectly). "If they have one team like that, there will be more."

"Well, at the risk of countermanding what I just said, that is your new assignment for tomorrow," Daniel Porom said. "After you're debriefed, sworn in, and read in, you are to start digging into the NAU Department of Justice SRTs and get us a full read on them, numbers, names, locations, training, skills, dick sizes, the works. If we intend to put a permanent end to this, we need to know as much as possible about our foes."

"Yes sir!" Brittany said immediately, and in so doing, took the final step out of the Nova Chemical corporate world and into her new life of telepathic espionage, intelligence analysis, and covert operations.

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 2030 Hours Lima (UTC4.5))
(Private Residence of Isa Saqqaf, Herat, Afghanistan, Disputed Mideast Territories)
(Coords: 3420'11.55"N, 6214'14.79"E)

Golshan could somewhat see the new entrant to Isa's house, but was more surprised to hear the voice of someone he recognized. "Blessings upon this house," he recognized the voice of an old family friend, Miss Yairi as he knew her from years past.

"Please come in, Golshan is here and in good health," Isa waved her into the main room of his house. Golshan came to his feet quickly in respect for an old family friend, though he quickly realized that she was not alone.

"Golshan!" Miss Yairi spared no pretense, she closed the two steps and embraced the younger man. "I heard how and where you were found. You are unharmed?"

"Better than I rightfully should be, Miss Yairi," Golshan said. Some small part of his mind knew that his mother's friend was a friend from her time as a Mage Cadet, he had overheard some of the stories of those days past, and that small part of his mind was rebelling against it in following with the terrorist teachings. That small part of his mind was quickly quashed; he had long missed his mother, he now knew his mother was slain by his father, and he had long missed the visits by Miss Yairi.

"Last I did — or could — embrace you was a week before your mother was slain by your father's agents. I am sorry I could not be there to help — " she said, but stopped short when Golshan shook his head.

"Do not blame yourself, Miss Yairi. After living with my father for years, I can only conclude you would have been killed just the same. If not that night, sometime thereafter." Golshan found it hard to say at an intellectual level, but after he said it, a weight was lifted off his conscience to a significant degree.

Miss Yairi stepped back a pace and nodded. "You are likely right, but we graduates of the Mage Academy, we always believe we can make a difference. Even if temporary, we always believe. And speaking thereof, you are no longer pursuing the elimination of Mages, correct? You told Isa as much, but before we continue I wish to be completely clear."

"I am done with that," Golshan said definitively. "I will follow in my mother's footsteps, because following my father's path is too…" he hesitated when he could not come up with the proper word to describe what he felt.

"Sociopathic?" Miss Yairi offered.

"Destructive?" The other lady with Miss Yairi offered next.

"Try damnable," Isa said. "Come, we should take a seat and discuss this further." Isa waved the three younger persons over to some seat cushions he kept in his main room for a traditional sit-down gathering in his house.

-x-

(3 hours later)

Two bottles of Orange Juice had come and gone, no alcohol as was custom of the region, and Golshan had learned a lot in the intervening hours.

"Zhaleh, Isa, Yairi, and Konoka," Golshan had flipped over the picture and written the names of the four on the picture, to make sure he would always know their names.

"Isa was the best of the four of us with elemental magic," Yairi said. "Probably still is."

"Questionable," Isa Saqqaf grunted. "I don't practice nearly as much as I should any more. Cooking an APC is about as well as I can do with Lightning."

Yairi rolled her eyes at Isa's characteristic attempt at minimizing his own glory. "Zhaleh was a true natural with healing magic, but she could still sling the damage spells when needed. If you get to speak to Instructor Daly at length, ask him about the Raccoon fight outside Zhaleh's quarters. She earned herself some KP duty for that one."

"Don't tell anyone, but Konoka helped her with the cans," Isa said. Golshan could not offhand remember seeing his mother do something as plebian as scrub a trashcan, but from what he could remember of her, he felt as if she would not have shied away from it.

"I helped as well, at least until I found a can so disgusting that I puked for ten minutes straight. Zhaleh cleaned me up with her spellcraft and kicked me out of the sanitation bay after that," Yairi admitted easily.

"And Konoka?" Cadet Umae asked. Golshan had been properly introduced after the first bottle of Orange Juice had been opened, and found out that Yairi was her instructor as well as one of the instructors for an underground Mage Academy in the Tora Bora mountains.

"Konoka is a very special case," Yairi noted. "99 percent of Mages can use 99 percent of spells. There is a single discipline of the Magic Arts that cannot be used by everyone, it requires a special affinity to use and defend against. You may have seen historical footage of the cobalt blue glow?"

Golshan nodded silently. "I think every respectable schoolkid on planet has seen that cobalt glow, the Force magic so known and dreaded when wielded by the Emperor."

"Yeah. Konoka was identified early on to have an affinity for it. She trained with the rest of us like a normal cadet, and was really good with normal spellcraft, day-to-day tasks and such. She also had an extra three hours of training a day in Force Wizardry."

"She is also very good with Time Magic, she used Time Compression a lot to keep up with the study and homework loads," Isa noted gravely. "It added years to her body in so doing, some of the later pictures with her you can see a notable time differential between Yairi, Zhaleh and Konoka, I am a bad comparison because I was always a bit older than the rest of our group."

Golshan picked up the picture and looked at it again. "Huh. Didn't notice that before, you do look markedly older than the others."

"I started at 27, Zhaleh started at 15 in the academy, Yairi was 17 and Konoka was 18 at her beginning," Isa said. "My entry to the Academy was pure luck, I was engaged in guerilla fighting in northern Pakistan against I flat forget who, names don't matter after a hundred skirmishes with a hundred different groups. We were holed up in a border town when a wandering Mage came through the town and immediately recognized my affinity for the art when he was healing some of my wounded comrades. It did not take much in the way to convince me I was misusing my aptitudes, so he forwarded me to the Academy forthwith. As in, teleported me straight to the Academy with a letter of recommendation and didn't even give me time to strip out of my battle harness and rifle. I thought for sure I would be shot dead by the famed Armored Infantry when I landed, but apparently not. They just told me to put my gear in my locker until needed. Turns out the Academy also has a training course for small arms and infantry tactics, and I took all of their infantry and insurgency courses offered."

"They have insurgency courses?" Golshan asked in clear shock.

"They do," Isa nodded before he stubbed out a cigar. "I graduated those classes with honors, but I also learned a lot of interesting tactics and theories that I later put to use for a few good reasons."

The chime of a clock in the house told the occupants it was midnight. "That late already?" Yairi asked.

"Hai, it is," Isa nodded toward an old grandfather clock he had in the room.

"Best we get to sleep if we are to leave tomorrow in the morning," Miss Yairi said. "If you wish to walk away, Golshan, now is the time to say so."

"I will not!" Golshan said quickly and excitedly. "This has been truly enlightening, Miss Yairi. I now more than ever want to follow in my mother's footsteps!"

"You realize if you take this road, Golshan, you will be forever estranged from your father?" Isa Saqqaf asked for clarification.

"Good," Golshan Karimi said. "In fact, let us make this complete. I will go as Golshan Barak from now on, not my father's name. His line no longer leads to me."

-x-x-x-

(8 August M.E. 428, 1800 Hours UTC)
(Transport Sub Deoghar, Open ocean due north of South American fleet, nearer to South America than Africa)
(Coords: 4 1'9.22"S, 2935'53.31"W)

"Conn, Sonar, I show the Mumbai at 1-6-5, 7200 meters, Luanda at 1-7-5, 8100 meters, and the Nairobi at 1-8-3, 8800 meters."

"They've formed a battle line," Captain Gulskii said. "A crude battle line if I'm reading these points properly, but it counts."

"And with the addition of two of the newer Python-class submarines, they have enough firepower to finish the battle they started a couple days ago," XO Yance noted. "Surface or air assets?" She asked the ESM troops.

"The Africans have the usual patrol aircraft shadowing the fleet, and SSIX reports show that one of our Murasame-class Cruisers has been seeing staging of refueling assets headed outbound from Liberia and Sierra Leone."

"How many?" Virgo Gulskii asked.

"At least a dozen tankers in three stations, sir," the ESM officer said.

Virgo's eyes darted around the oceanic map for a moment, then came the fateful conclusion. "Fuck, the party is about to kick off."

"Yeah, that's my read," XO Helena Yance noted. "If they have tankers in play, that means they expect a pitched air battle for small fighters well away from their bases. And that means they intend to clear the skies for the heavy hitters to take out what is left of the fleet."

"Can Africa do it? Weps?" the Captain asked his weapons and intelligence officer.

Commander Jeffrey Tonohama sniffed derisively. "Can they do it? Yes sir. Is it going to cost them a bitch and a leg? Also yes sir."

"South American response?" Gulskii followed up.

"Not enough to talk about, Cap'n. Their best airbase on the northeast shore is Canto Grande, less than 200 aircraft. The South American airpower is a joke, they definitely didn't learn the lessons from the Nazi occupation or the intervening years. They don't have enough aircraft here and they don't have aircraft that can over-match the Africans, double-slash against them."

"So, the South Americans are about to have their asses beat in the air, and thereafter anything on the waves in the area is about to be sunk. How much will the Africans have left?"

"Best guess? 40-50 total fighters and maritime patrol aircraft," Helena said after she calculated the optimum striking distance for their fighters with refueling both directions, versus what the South Americans could loft against them. "There will be some play for the ships scoring kills, but for the most part the ships will be busy busting ass to beat the missiles down and dodge torpedoes. It won't make enough of a difference to count."

"Concur, Cap'n. 30 on the thin side, 60 on the thick, betting money is 40 to 50," the Weps officer said.

"All right, issue a wake-it-and-shake-it message to the rest of the fleet. Party time in the next couple hours. We already have clearance to fire if we are fired upon, so once the ships are downed we will surface to conduct rescues, and Gods have mercy on the Africans if they shoot at us even once."

-x-

(Control Room, Transport submarine Kiliko)
(5 minutes later)

"XO, got some traffic on SSIX, it's a party warning from the Deoghar."

The XO was out of the Conning chair and over to the radio room door in three steps. "Talk to me," XO Uli Hannen said quickly.

"Message reads: 'Multiple assets identified refueling aircraft coming out of mainland Africa and setting up station outside South American reach. Subs in area of Deoghar confirmed formed up and have ceased drilling. Present location of SA fleet not optimal for air cover from mainland SA. Expectation of battle in 2 hours or less. Recommend all ships Task Force HOT SCYLLA prepare for imminent engagement within authorized ROE.' End message, boss," Commander Junko Mokose (elder sister to Chidori Mokose) read out the message.

"Captain Gulskii's not wrong," XO Hannen noted, then ducked his head out of the radio room. "Weps, Sonar! Wake it and shake it! Party time in the next couple hours!"

"Yes sir!" the Weps officer answered immediately. "Running full diagnostic now on all systems, ready in 5 minutes!"

XO Uli Hannen looked back to the radio officer. "Draft a message to HOT SCYLLA, copy in SubCom reporting Kiliko as ready for ops as of 2115 UTC."

"Aye, boss," Commander Mokose started typing it up immediately. Every other sub in the operation would report the same status within five minutes of each other.

-x-

(Bridge, Battlecruiser Leopard)
(45 minutes later, roughly 1900 UTC)

"Conn, sensors, we have a fourth formation of aircraft, type match consistent with fighters and vector consistent with deployment from the Ivory Coast."

"Fighter-bombers, if that's the case. The base at Abidjan has the 403rd Air Regiment, mostly the Swallowtail multirole craft with a small stack of the Peregrine ASF to go with," Ops Officer Juliana Ferevon noted. "Call it 60 Swallowtail and 20 Peregrine."

"We're fucked," the Captain of the Leopard noted. "We might have survived if it was just the first three formations, but with this fourth and likely a few more to come in, they'll bury us in raw numbers."

"This is a practice run, and attrition for South America's forces overall," the Weapons Officer for the Leopard noted coldly. "They knock out several regiments of our air forces in a pitched battle, they knock out our fleet, and they get a good idea how much they'll have to expend to do the next fleet." Leonard Gillemon stroked his mustache, clear sign that he was nervous and thinking hard about options to get out of this mess.

"What options do we have?" XO Oren San Cristos asked.

"None," Admiral Kargas said. "We stand, we die. We run, we die. We fight, we die. Unless someone can cough up a miracle in the next few minutes, we have nothing." Johann Kargas looked down to the surface of the map table and sighed. "I am sorry. If we had torched the propellers off and run faster east, we would be under the cover of three other air bases and thus impune to attack."

"That call's in hindsight, sir. We did what we thought was right, we didn't know the Africans would have this much of a hard-on for us," Juliana said.

"Speaking of hard-ons…" the XO said…

"I have already refused evacuation," the Operations Officer said archly. "I know what to expect if the Africans capture me. I'll take my chances."

"Conn, sensors! Enemy aircraft formations have turned in toward us!" The understandably-excitable radar officer shouted. "We have incoming from now six enemy battle groups! Fighters from Canto Grande are breaking formation to begin engagement!"

"Gods help us," Johann Kargas said with reverence.

-x-

(Same time as above)
(Murasame-class guided missile cruiser Leanne St. Fukuoka)

"Looks like it is time to throw down, Captain," XO Ami Chene said.

"Looks that way," Captain Eiko Yamakata acknowledged. "Battle stations! Rig ship for combat survivability! We are not authorized to participate as of right now, but we are to support Operation HOT SCYLLA if needed. For now, we are observing the unfolding situation, nothing more or less!"

"HAI!" The bridge crew of the Leanne answered readily.

"Conn, radio, we have an open hail on the GUARD frequency," Lieutenant Michel Kates noted from the radio room adjacent to the bridge.

"On the Squawk," Eiko ordered.

The radio transmission broke in partway into a hail: "...Is Colonel Mwondo of the African National Air Force, hailing Mage Cruiser group, please respond."

"This is Captain Eiko Yamakata of the Cruiser Leanne St. Fukuoka, I read you Colonel. Send your traffic," she responded.

"Captain Yamakata, this area is about to become a battlefield. Please state your intentions," the Colonel requested.

"Our orders are to observe the ongoing situation and ensure that no Mage interests are jeopardized or harmed. We have no official position for or against either belligerent at this time, we do not have any hostile intention and are simply watching the blossoming battle, how copy?"

"Solid copy, Captain Yamakata. Recommend you maintain distance from the engagement area to prevent any anti-ship missiles targeting your ships. Colonel Robert Mwondo, out." The radio link cut out abruptly and noisily.

"Considerate, I'll give him that," Ami grunted.

"Considerate but blunt. They know they're about to massacre the South Americans and they don't want us as collateral casualties. Radio, send by laser to the Kenichi Yamagata to prepare her railgun for anti-air warfare, as soon as the Africans slip up and fire on us, I want to start terminating their maritime patrol craft formations with extreme prejudice."

"Aye, Captain, writing it up now."

-x-

(2 minutes later)
(Murasame II-class cruiser Kenichi Yamagata)

"Conn, Radio Room, Leanne advises arm the railgun for ADA work, expectation is things are about to get busy in the unfriendly skies."

"She's not wrong," the XO shrugged at the obvious move.

The Captain chuckled grimly. "Weps, Conn, bring the power in Bahamut up slow, load her with 200-kilo anti-air shrapnel rounds. And Monty, if we have to start shooting, use the big gun on their slow-movers first, let the missiles do their small and nimble shits so the enemy doesn't learn that we can ice their aircraft with our railguns right off the bat."

"Copy, sir!" Commander Kimball 'Monty' Montague acknowledged the orders from the Captain. "Mister Parker, wake up Bahamut, slowly, and feed him some air-burst rounds," the Commander ordered, referencing the name of the railgun at the bow of the ship.

The Murasame-class Cruiser (CG) Guided Missile (CG) was one of the Mages' older still-active ship classes, with some 85 years in service to point, and with the present refit schedule was still planned to be in service as late as ME 510 (an expected lifespan of 167 years for the oldest hulls). This was part of the selling point of the class: by looking old and feeble to the other nations, the Mage naval officers planned to capitalize on the much more powerful technologies on their ships even if the other nations thought that warship hulls from four wars ago were outdated and easily defeated. The fact that the Mages had not fired a shot in anger against anything other than pirates meant that no other naval superpower on planet had a proper understanding of what the Mages had in their capabilities, and that included their erstwhile allies in the Soviet Union. For that reason, the newest hulls in the Mage surface fleet were 44 years old, and those ships were entirely Corvettes as a class, used for short and intermediate range defensive work around the Empire's territory. Power Projection, inasfar as the Mages engaged in such wanton dick-measuring contests, was provided by older and larger ships.

Though old, the 12,000 ton Murasame-class ships brought very hefty combat capability to the field nonetheless. Each ship had as its main armament three sets of Vertical Launch Silos (VLS) for various missile munitions, and in the case of the Murasame Block II, those silos were 65-cell and 65-cell VLS arrays built into the bow foredeck of the ship, and a 40-cell array built into the stern topdeck forward of the helicopter landing pad, for a grand total of 170 missiles per ship. The closest competitor for VLS silos carried was the Soviet Kuznetsov-class Destroyer at 115. Each chamber of the VLS arrays could carry land-attack cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, anti-air missiles, anti-submarine rocket-deployed depth charges, or anti-missile missiles designed to intercept anti-ship missiles at distance. On the sides of the ship, she carried six-cell anti-ship missile launchers (two cells per side), electronic countermeasure launchers, three-tube torpedo launchers for dealing with submarines at a distance, and four High-Energy Free Electron Laser Cannons that replaced older CIWS guns for close-in defense.

Even with the prolific use of missiles, the Murasame-class retained ballistic cannons for multiple applications and for the sheer economy of the cannon as a problem-solver compared to a hellishly-expensive guided missile. The Murasame used an improved 204mm forward gun (roughly an 8-inch bore, bigger and harder-hitting than most navies' 5-inch guns) as well as four 25mm autocannons on the broadsides to deal with smaller ships that tried to run in under the bigger forward gun. The Murasame II-class ship traded the 204mm forward for a 200mm Naval Rail Gun, which hit far harder than the chemical cannon used on older ships and could deploy specialty rounds far away from the ship, several hundred kilometers was the rated range but everyone knew the gun could do better than a paltry 300km shot, and it wasn't uncommon for each Weps officer to have their own modifications to the gun control code to allow for longer-range shots with the railgun.

And, with the order to deploy Anti-air shrapnel railgun slugs, the Captain had condemned several wings of bombers and maritime patrol craft to complete elimination in coming minutes, though nobody involved on the ships or in the skies would know that until the shooting began in earnest from the Mages.

-x-

The first shots fired came from the South Americans, who while they had one of the smallest air force contingents on planet (only the Mideast nations had a smaller combined air force), they did have a few good innovations to their name. The D71 Dart Interceptor was their main air defense tool, and the small but fast interceptor carried three types of Air-to-Air missiles, though not in the larger quantities of the mid-size fighters of the African Nation. The first missiles fired were the long-range G-71 Lance AAM, long-range radar-guided missiles with a 330 kilometer range; they completely outranged the Africans by a factor of three on their best AAM, and with some 96 missiles lofted, they scored 88 kills against both enemy multirole fighters and some 4 kills against some of the leading enemy heavy bombers. Unfortunately, despite the effectiveness of the missile, each Dart could carry only one missile underslung the centerline of the craft, as the Dart was simply too small to carry a larger amount of ordnance.

The next wave of weapons in the sky were missiles from the Leopard and her escorts, and herein the Africans showed their first advantages: the older SAM missiles in use by the South Americans were a known quantity to the rest of the world and thus could be jammed more often than not. African Electronic Warfare craft turned on their latest jammer pods in several locations throughout their formation, blanketing large swaths of the combined fighters and bombers with electronic noise that confused the missiles. Of the first salvo (24 missiles), only two contacted on aircraft that were too far out from the jammers, and one of those aircraft thus struck was a nonfatal blow and it turned back to head toward the mainland.

At 195 kilometers, the Africans fired their first shots of the engagement, but not all of the shots were aimed at the Leopard or her fighter guards. A separate bomber formation aimed toward the easternmost reaches of Brazil started firing cruise missiles at the enemy nation, one missile every five seconds from a dozen heavy bombers, each bomber carried some twelve cruise missiles to deploy, and those missiles were believed aimed at infrastructure targets but had been reprogrammed by an agent of the Conspiracy to target urban centers and the nuclear power plant southwest of Teresina. The second wave of launches at 178 kilometers were the main objective of the operation, anti-ship missiles fired at maximum range toward the Leopard and company; though the missiles were 'smarter' and could take some minor evasive action, the Leopard and her escorts were able to intercept them more often than not. Only two of the first salvo struck outlying ships, the fleet oiler Rose and the guided missile frigate Ponce De Leon. The former ship was a loss, the AS-48 Trident punched through into the midships fuel bunker on the fleet oiler and immediately lit the contents up; the Captain tried fighting the fire for five minutes before he declared it unsalvageable and ordered abandon ship. Ponce De Leon did not take kindly to being struck, even if the missile did not detonate and simply punched a half-meter hole in the side of the ship, and against orders started firing her missiles at anything that had the wrong IFF code; though briefly violent, it was largely ineffectual: the same problems that plagued the longer-range SAM missiles also hampered the medium-range SAMs from the frigate.

The Dart interceptors over the South American fleet were joined by the Hawk Multirole fighter that was the true mainstay of the South American Air Force, and both fell onto their midrange air-to-air missile, the G-88 Lightning AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile). Each Dart carried four of the Lightning missiles and each Hawk carried six, and as soon as the Africans crossed over 152 kilometers, the missiles started locking on and flying. Again, the Africans leaned into their electronic warfare equipment, but that white-noise bubble was far less effective against the G-88 missile and its more advanced radar system. Of the 366 missiles lofted by the South Americans, only 102 succumbed to the electronic noise and lost lock on terminal guidance; the remaining 264 missiles scored a grand total of 183 kills or cripples across the African formations.

Both formations of aircraft continued to close, the South Americans with a slight qualitative advantage and the Africans with a significant numerical advantage and far easier mission to execute. The next shots would decide the battle, and not strictly in the favor of either belligerent.

-x-

"Captain! Maritime patrol craft have closed to firing range for Narwhal missiles!" the radar officer shouted. "I'm seeing missiles in the air!"

"There it is," Admiral Kargas sighed. "We could beat the Trident missiles because they are old technology with long range. The Narwhal missiles are a Trident with an extra jammer pod built in, we're not going to be able to intercept those. We'll try anyways, but this is likely the end," Johann said as the first SAM missiles launched from the Leopard, followed quickly by missiles from the two cruisers towing the Leopard. "Signal the Boris Krenik and the Charlie Higren to turn due east, that presents the smallest profile for radar to the missiles and to go to max engine power. It's a forlorn hope at this point, but worth a shot."

"Aye, sir," the radio officer keyed up his microphone to send out revised orders.

"Now we wait. Not long, but we wait. Been a pleasure, Admiral," Captain Zastava saluted the Admiral quickly, who returned it just as quick.

"If we start going down, abandon ship. If we take the hits and stay afloat, we stay in on the hopes that we can get rescued by the rest of the fleet and air forces," Admiral Kargas ordered.

"Aye, sir," Miguel Zastava noted. "Weps, I don't want to go down with full magazines. Start rattling off missiles as fast as the system will launch them!"

"You read my mind!" Leonard flipped a safety cover up on a switch and flipped it to 'Special Auto', a weapons system override that unleashed the battle computer in the Leopard to do unto others as fast and violently as the system could throw up the ordnance. Elsewhere in the fleet, several other Captains did the same thing, now convinced that their end was nigh and in this affair they intended to 'have company in Hell when they arrived' or so the old apropos went.

With all the weapons systems on the Leopard online and firing by guidance of the battle computer, the Battlecruiser was able to achieve an outcome that exceeded what the Fates initially anticipated would come of the fleet and its personnel. The 5" automatic guns in the older dual-gun turrets did the most and best work against the incoming missiles; the airburst AA shells the battle computer selected as the optimal round to throw downrange shredded some 16 of the 28 missiles targeted directly on the battlecruiser. Dumb luck and kinetic kills from the SAMs knocked out a further three missiles, leaving only 9 in the air. The last layer of defense on the ship was the old 20mm CIWS guns, and the three guns on the port beam cut down five of the missiles at the last three kilometers of air travel. Four missiles survived to strike the Leopard in the span of 55 seconds: one in the fantail, one in the port forequarter that opened up a fuel bunker to the sea but did not ignite it, and two that struck the engine room of the ship and knocked out the oil-burning engines. Without the boilers to heat steam and turn the turbine, and with its largest compartment vented to the open skies, the Leopard was effectively disabled and completely combat ineffective.

"Well, that could have been worse," Captain Zastava noted after the ship finished rocking from the explosions. He had stood up from being knocked down, but only had a bare second to hold his footing before he was knocked off his feet by the deck bucking under him, and this time, he struck his head on the corner of the map table; Miguel Zastava, 38, Captain in the South American Navy, would never regain consciousness from the blow to his head from this second hit.

Below the formation, the African submarines had held their fire until they knew the battle was going on above the waves, so that their ministrations would go unseen and unheard until it was too late. The newer Python-class attack subs of the African Navy had taken the lead on the Battlecruiser and the two escorting Cruisers, since they had enough torpedo tubes between the two subs to do all three ships reliably. Their torpedoes were programmed to strike partway up the keel of the ship but well below the waterline, so that breaches would flood the compartments and hopefully disable or sink the ships outright. Three torpedoes were aimed at each of the Cruisers, and all six torpedoes fired contacted the ships in question, five detonations induced massive flooding in the ships, unrecoverable flooding that led the Captains to order abandon ship after damage control could not contain the flooding to survive. Of the six torpedoes fired at the Leopard, all six detonated as programmed but the first five were not enough, it was a failure in the placement of the sixth torpedo that did the job. Torp six detonated below the keel of the ship, not against it, and the blast cavity formed in the water caused an uneven pressure zone amidships under the engine room. Combined with the damage in the hull from the missile strikes above it, the ship started splitting down the center from the cavity upward, and with that split began the catastrophic flooding.

It would be some time still, but the Leopard was thoroughly condemned by the strikes of the torpedoes.

-x-

(90 seconds after the detonation under the Leopard)
(Multimage Empire ADATS Submarine Honshu)

"Conn, sonar, torpedo in the water! Starboard side, pitch is too high to be African!" The Sonar Tech shouted into the control room, forgoing the need to use the intercom.

"We have two South American hunter-killer subs in that direction, they're probably shooting at the Python-class subs," Commander Joel Grey noted from the secondary sonar panel. "Any sonar from the fish?"

"Negative, nothing yet sir," the Sonar Tech answered. "And there it is, sonar just lit off on the torpedoes after they passed us. Sonar has acquired and is tracking on the two Python-class subs. Estimate 30 seconds to contact."

"Sir, we've got a problem, active sonar from the African subs! We're being yankee-searched!" By which Commander Grey meant that the African Subs had dwelled in on the Honshu with active sonar, despite the fact that the Mage submarines were on a completely different angle from the shooting platform and theoretically outside the battle zone. "Shit! Torpedoes in the water! They went active immediately, two locked on us!"

"Shit," Captain Brion Laker groused. "Well, the rules are the rules and they shot first. Signal SSIX that we are under fire and pull in the buoy. Weps, countermeasures and gin up a solution to trash the rest of the Africans. Did they fire on the South Americans as well?"

"The Pythons did not, they're convinced we shot at them. The older Zulu ships did fire on the two South Americans, I can't make out what class they are because of all the noise in the water but their sonar is definitely SA. We have eleven torpedoes in the water, sir, and two of them are headed for us."

"Countermeasures armed, sir," Weapons Officer (Commander) Olivienne Zeros declared. "Launching countermeasures now."

"Helm, up on the bow and fairwater planes, set your depth to 50 meters, ahead full," which was a climb of some 550 meters at full speed.

"Going up at 30 degrees to 50 meters to keel, aye Captain," the Helmsman said and hauled back on the steering yoke.

Behind the Honshu, the torpedo took the bait of the countermeasures and homed in on the noisemaker countermeasures designed to simulate the hard 'stop' that sonar pulses would receive when they tried to 'hit' the air inside a submarine. The torpedo tried to kamikaze itself into the nonexistent submarine it found at the countermeasures, and once it passed through the simulated target, started searching for a new target. After four seconds of ping-and-listen, the torpedoes found the South American subs and added their weight to the coming massacre, completely oblivious to the fact that the submarine that launched them was already dead.

"Conn, sonar, hot noise in the water! Torpedo blast at Python-01, she's shut down and sounds like she's flooding. Torpedoes fifteen seconds to impact on the South Americans," the sonar tech said.

"Weps, do we have a solution on Python-02?" Captain Laker asked.

"Don't need it, just heard two blasts on it, she's clearly headed down right now," the Sonar Commander interjected. "I'm hearing what sounds like the Mallig over in that direction, she's hunting."

"The hunter-killer subs will do any underwater contacts remaining, time for us to surface and sweep the skies so the transports can surface and collect the SA victims," Brion Laker said. "Helm, bring us up to the surface, but slowly. We don't want to deep-six any life-rafts on our way up."

"Aye, Captain, five degrees up, rate of ascent one meter per second. 40 to breach, 50 to full surface, sir!"

-x-

(1 minutes after the destruction of the Python-class Great Boa)
(Captain Ulonzo "Sparky" Kembe, piloting African Nation F-46 Cheetah Multirole Craft)

Captain Kembe reversed his turn from a port hard bank to a starboard hard bank to get in behind the D-71 Dart interceptor for a good infrared lock, and once his missile guidance system confirmed a solid lock-on, he pickled the round off and reversed his turn again to look for any other hostiles. "Anybody see any remaining enemy craft?"

"No sir, I think we got 'em all!" One of the pilots from the Liberia contingent responded. "Do we go in guns on the life rafts?"

"It's what we were ordered to do," 'Sparky' said. "I'm out of gun rounds, so I can't participate. I'll hold a higher altitude as cover in case any other enemy fighters show up." He still had one radar-guided missile and two infrared missiles, meaning he had some utility in combat still.

"Copy, Captain, I'm going in," a different pilot answered. He could see a line of tracers walk across the surface of the ocean and bisect one of the liferafts, and it didn't take his superior fighter pilot vision to see the large splats of red against the yellow safety coloring of the raft.

As Captain Ulonzo Kembe made for higher altitudes, he saw several fighters dive down on the heavily-damaged formation of South American ships and more critically the blossoming collection of life rafts in the water. Every fighter craft since the invention of fighter craft could do a strafing run, there were precious few fighters that lacked a gun of some kind, and several craft over the years were designed specifically for the role of ground attack and support. Thus, when the fighters with still-functional guns dove down on the rapidly-decaying enemy ship formation, lines of tracers lanced out for the enemy sailors; defeated though they were, orders from on high were to send as many of them to the watery gravesite below them.

"The Leopard's starting to go down! Her crew is bailing out!" Someone half-shouted on the radio. 'Sparky' missed the callsign of the speaker, he was looking up and not at his radio panel for the identifier of the speaker.

"I'm going to take a pass at their evacuation, standby," a different voice answered.

A few seconds of silence gave Ulonzo time to sigh and reflect. The battle had been bloody by the numbers, but not unexpected in results. The South Americans had forfeited their entire force on the field, only a few of their interceptors and fighters survived to limp home, and all of their ships were sunk or on the way down. The Africans had paid a price for the victory, roughly three-quarters of their fighters and ground-attack craft assigned to this mission were downed, which was inline with projections. And all bombing missions had been executed. Captain Kembe didn't know if the South Americans had really committed the gas attack or if that was some manner of opportunity-based bullshit, but he didn't really care. Orders were orders, and his orders were to bloody the SA air forces and sink these ships.

A panicked call on the radio snapped him out of his silent reverie: "Alert! This is Seagull-9! We're under fire from unknown vector! Seagull-9 needs support!"

"This is Seagull-4, Seagull Lead and Seagull-6 are down! Unknown catastrophic damage downed bot — " the radio staticked up loudly, presumably as Seagull-4 was shot down.

"MISSILE!" One of his wingmates shouted. "UNKNOWN MISSILE! NOTHING ON THE THREAT RECEIVERS!"

Ulonzo leveled off his climb and started to bank right, but partway into turning to the starboard his craft bucked from some kind of impact that immediately damaged or destroyed most of his major systems from the middle of his fighter back. One glance at the damage panel said enough, his fighter was dead in the air and probably a few seconds from breaking up, so he reached for the ejection handles above his command couch and yanked down on them.

Through a complex sequence of events, 'Sparky' was rocketed loose from his craft and up some 200 meters, where the chair itself fell free from his survival kit and parachute, and in the seconds thereafter the parachute itself deployed open with a tremendous jerk that gave him whiplash.

After fifteen seconds to regain his composure and recenter his mind, Ulonzo started looking around at what was going on. A missile streaked up from the surface of the ocean west of where the ships had been sunk, the contrail of the missile leading back to — of all things — a submarine with long, thin missile tube hatches that were far too small to carry nuclear missiles, but roughly large enough to handle naval SAMs or cruise missiles? As he watched, a missile leapt out of one of the silos built into the sub, then the door closed as the missile rocketed up and struck another Cheetah multirole fighter, and on this hit Kembe realized that he had been lucky: the fighter he just watched take the hit had immediately folded in half and started breaking up less than 50 meters from the impact point, the pilot almost assuredly dead.

As he looked down to the sub, more missile hatches were opening up, each hatch held some eight missiles abeam as it crossed from port to starboard or starboard to port on the sub. And he had only one question come to mind: "Whose sub is that?"

-x-

(Port side of the Leopard)

"Whose fucking sub is that?" Juliana Ferevon asked as she helped a crewmember down the side of the ship to the evacuation netting that led to the life raft. The sub superficially looked Russian by silhouette, but the Ops Officer could not type it as anything the Soviets had put in the water in the past 80 years. And she didn't want to outright call it a Mage sub, since nobody really had good intelligence on their hardware, but her gut was starting to lean in that direction.

"I don't know, but I'm not complaining with them shooting at the Africans," Admiral Kargas said.

"Shooting, nuts! They're massacring the Africans!" XO Cristos said with a smile as another missile jumped out of a launch tube and went for the sky, with an explosion in the distance only a few seconds later. "Jesus! From launch to hit at 20,000 feet in seconds! Whoever's ship it is, they mean business!"

Johann helped another crewmember down into the cargo netting that would lead to the life raft, but when he looked up, he saw one of the female engine mechanics look up at the sub and gasp, then covered her mouth. "Good Gods! It's a Mage sub!"

"What? How do you know?" Johann asked, then looked at the sub again.

"The writing on the sail! It's Traditional Chinese! It's hull 1832, named the Hunan!"

"You speak their language?" Ops Officer Ferevon asked.

"Aye, ma'am," the engine mechanic said. "My mother emigrated from the Mage mainland and married over here. I speak and can write Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, as well as English, Portuguese and Spanish."

"Huh, why aren't you in intelligence or signals or — well, fuck it, doesn't matter now," the XO said. "Stay close, you may be needed to help with translation. What's your name, seaman?" Oren asked.

"Olivia Gradas, sir. Engine Mechanic 2/c," she answered.

"Help us get the troops into the lifeboats, you'll ride with the senior officers and hopefully the Mages are feeling a bit merciful about this, more than just wanting to put every African craft out of the sky," Admiral Kargas said. "You, deckhand, you're relieved. She'll take over," he pointed to one of the deckhands that was manning the net to help crewmen down to the lifeboats.

"Sir!" Olivia was quick to take over his position and helped him to the net to begin the descent."

As Johann watched, a missile started out of one of the tubes on the sub but only made it a few meters out before it was struck by a tracer from one of the African fighter's cannons. The missile sheared in half from the round that struck it, but as far as he could tell the pressure hull of the sub was undamaged by multiple gun rounds striking it. The more horrifying part of the attack, however, was that as the fighter pulled up from the old-school strafing run, a small turreted assembly on top of the conning tower swiveled to the craft, tracked it for a moment, and belched a violet laser beam of the kind seen in science fiction shows — and the strike caused the near-side wing to shear off and the engine detonated before the pilot punched out.

"That's their air defense? Holy shit," Juliana gaped as the pilot's parachute opened up and she realized that he wasn't going to land too far away from the still-sinking guided missile destroyer Paracatu.

"Fire's stopped," Cristos pointed out. "There's five of these subs on the surface."

"Five, all equipped with enough firepower to trash fighters by the dozens," Johann said. "God help us if we have to go head-to-head against the Mages."

"Sir! Incoming!" Olivia pointed out to the open ocean area north of the missile sub that had shredded the fighters nearest the formations.

"What the actual fuck? That can't be Soviet, it has to be Mage," Juliana said in half-shock-half-disgust. "That thing is absolutely massive."

"Is that one of their Transport Subs?" Admiral Kargas asked. The sub in question was easily half larger than the Soviet Typhoon IV-class submarines, the largest known and documented submarine in the waters (at least until now).

-x-

(Transport Sub Nozin)

"Time to save a few lives," Captain Begrum said. "Let's go topside."

The Ship's XO was first to head up the ladder to the conning tower, and Lila was next behind her. Up top, they were behind the Operations Lookout for the conning tower but they were also the first Mage officers in open air anywhere in the South American formation.

"Looks like the Tumbes is about to go under, Captain," the lookout noted after the Captain was up top on the conning tower.

"That's a third ship going under so far," Lila noted with some dejection. "This is what we expected of this battle, but still…"

"This is going to repeat more than once before the world corrects in the coming storm," XO Lanklear noted. "How far the correction will reach is entirely up for debate."

"If what we think is happening is true, the correction will be global," Lila wagered her guess on the outcome before she picked up the conning tower growler phone and dialed in the bridge call. "Conn, Tower, bring her ten degrees to starboard, ahead 5 knots."

The approach for the Nozin to the Leopard's port side was fairly slow, but with the fleet effectively destroyed and most of the ships less than 30 minutes away from sinking, the evacuation of the ships was in full swing. The Deoghar was the next of the transport submarines to surface, with Captain Gulskii headed to the two cruisers that had been trying to tow the battlecruiser toward mainland South America, and the Kiliko came to the surface amongst the frigates and destroyers that had been trying to protect the heavier ships.

"Diego Garcia II just breached the surface over by that sinking Destroyer, Captain," the lookout said, indicating the fourth of their transport subs assigned to this mission.

"Good, that should be enough to handle the ship crews. Have the cruise missile subs follow back through the damage field to find any surviving downed pilots, and have the hunter-killer subs join them if there are no other underwater contacts," Captain Begrum ordered.

When she looked back up to the port broadside of the Leopard: "Ahoy there! Are you a Multimage Transport Sub?" one of the officers on deck of the Leopard asked.

Lila picked up a bullhorn from the topside equipment locker in the conning tower and quickly unsealed it. "Affirmative! Transport Sub Nozin, Multimage Empire! Do you have ships available to rescue or do you need a pickup?"

One of the deckhands handed off a bullhorn to the officer to make their shouting at each other less strenuous. "Nearest naval rescue for us is ten hours away, and that is not guaranteed — the Africans have been tracking us with subs for days, they may not come close to us because of it."

"Those subs that attacked your fleet also attacked our subs, so we sank them," Lila said with near-zero emotion on the subject. The Transport Subs had torpedo tubes of their own, but had not been involved in the shooting. "We are available to evacuate your crews. Permission to approach?"

"Permission granted!" the officer shouted back by way of his bullhorn.

Lila closed the bullhorn back into the water-tight storage locker, which immediately pressurized and sealed so it could withstand the immense diving forces it would be subject to. Her next action was to pick up the growler phone and click for the conn. "Conn, Tower, begin sideslip to the Leopard. Activate Deck Crews 1 and 2 to help bring in evacuees."

Forward of the conning tower in six locations and aft of it in two, eight sets of pressure doors opened up to allow lateral thrusters to begin moving water through special lateral water ducts built into the uppermost and lowermost decks of the transport sub. As tight and sharp maneuvering was always considered a needed function of the Transport Subs, in case they had to maneuver into tight confines to get in and deploy their carried assets or extract personnel as needed, all such subs were built with special maneuvering thrusters to make turns or sideslips without any kind of outside assistance. For that reason, the Transport Subs never needed a tugboat to enter dock, unless one was severely damaged and could not use their maneuvering thrusters.

In this case, the Transport Sub began sideslipping toward the Leopard at a notable rate, though still needed several minutes to completely close up abeam with the battlecruiser. This gave the deck crews time to get up on deck, place down special impact barriers to prevent collision damage to their sub from striking the hull of the dying ship, and this also gave time to the rest of the deckhands to secure the lifeboats and pull them up onto the deck of the Nozin so they would not be crushed between the two ships. The crew already within were directed to the hatches leading down into the sub and to start taking bunks on the lowest level of the ship unless wounded; injured persons were directed to the top transport deck of the sub where the Transport Subs would have medical personnel gate in to support each sub based on injury load.

When the sub finally arrived at the side of the battlecruiser, the deck crew used some catch poles to pull the cargo nets up onto the deck of the sub so descending evacuees could climb straight onto the rescue sub and head down into the depths of the ship.

-x-

(90 minutes later)

Admiral Kargas watched as the last of the antennas of the Leopard sunk below the waves from the conning tower of the Nozin.

"Well, that is the end of my ship and my career," the Admiral looked at the deck and shook his head. "God rest the men who are going down with it."

"She fought the hardest, but the eternal seas always win in the end," Captain Begrum sympathized. "We'll get your troops to safety, Admiral."

"You were anticipating this?" Johann Kargas asked, his curiosity finally overcoming his decorum now that his ship was officially and fully sunk. The fact that not one but four Transport Subs and escorts just happened to be in the area was beyond suspicious.

"I — we, no. I think we received intel that caused the command level to assign assets in case the Africans went hyper-aggressive, and here we are," Lila said half-truthfully.

"So what's next, ma'am?" Ops Officer Ferevon asked.

"For us, we go deep and head home, Diego Garcia specifically, offload your personnel and arrange transport home. That will take a few days travel to effect, so for us it is a waiting game. Tomorrow morning, though, the African Union is going to have a deep, dark reckoning: no nation has fired a shot in anger at the Multimage Empire in centuries, and the reason why we swept the skies clear in response to this attack was because the Africans decided to fire torpedoes at one of our ADATS submarines that was not even within the engagement area. So, tomorrow afternoon at the latest, one of two things is going to happen: either the African union is going to break out the ceremonial kneepads and do some hard-and-fast apologizing, or they are going to declare war on the errant belief that they think they can take us in a one-on-one."

"After what we just saw, I wish them luck," the Admiral admitted.

"Ready to go under, Admiral?" Captain Begrum asked.

Johann looked over the sea where his flagship had been. "I think I am, Captain."

Lila picked up the growler phone and pressed for the control room. "Conn, Tower, four coming down." Below them, the hatch into the control room opened, then the hatch into the pressure tube opened, then the outer door atop the sail opened and the way down was open. "Seaman Xiao, you're first."

"Aye, Captain." The Tower lookout started down the ladder, followed by the Admiral, then the South American Ops officer, and finally the captain of the Nozin. As Lila descended back into the sub, she closed the hatches behind her and dogged them down for deep diving.

"Captain on deck!" the chief of the watch shouted after Lila landed from the climb down.

"As you were," Lila said. "XO, status of the task force?" She asked next, which put to rest any notion of them being 'just in the area'.

XO / Commander Heather Lanklear checked her notepad. "Hunter team reports no belligerents in the area, one Soviet sub holding distance at 20,000 meters to the north, apparently just listening to the party. ADATS subs and Cruise Missile Subs have collected flight personnel in the vicinity of the melee and are trailing east to find any that were shot down before the close-in engagement. Transport subs have collected all surviving South American crewmen, head count is underway, totals and names estimated ready in 30 minutes."

"Very well," Lila said by rote. "For the time being, we will execute 7 hours deep silent running and one hour shallow run with the electronics package up to communicate. The cycle begins at 2200 UTC, relay to the other transports that the ride to Diego is in effect. In all other regards, we operate as if this was a normal transport run. Any questions?" None were raised. "Make it happen, XO. You have the conn, I will be in quarters with the Admiral and Ops Officer."

"XO has the conn, aye," Heather answered as Lila waved the two South American officers toward her quarters.

"Damn, this sub is way more spacious than South America's Kinetic-class subs."

"These Transport Subs are better than average, but they're still horribly cramped compared to surface combatants," Lila led them into her quarters and pulled two folding chairs out of her room closet, and flipped them open for her guests.

"Thank you for the hospitality, Captain Begrum. So, the big question in my head: now what?" Juliana Ferevon asked.

"That depends solely on how far down the toilet the whole world has gone, we'll pull a data dump before we go deep so we can sift through the latest turd flingings and dispatches. Other than that, just a matter of clearing the area and getting to safe ports."

"And a slightly bigger question: do the Mages know who started this fracas in the diamond mine?" Johann asked.

"We don't have a 100% confirmation, but the intel rumors is that it is the Southern Africa branch of our old Nemesis, Juno Biotech," Lila answered. The intel rumor was supposition bouncing between boats, but Captain Begrum would find out after the war that the supposition was entirely accurate.

"A biotech company? Serious?" Juliana asked.

"Yes," Lila said. "As much as what I am about to tell you will sound like a Bollywood movie plot in terms of ham and cheese, the sad thing is, what I am about to say is a mildly-open secret amongst the officer corps of the Mages. It's horribly true, horribly disturbing that a handful of corporations have such power, and goes back hundreds of years."

Over the next thirty minutes, Lila would give a detailed briefing on the Ancient Conspiracy that had haunted the Empire and the world. As much as the two officers wanted to believe that it was fantastical bullshit, both Johann and Juliana had multiple run-ins with the South American branch of the Conspiracy, Prometheus Manufacturing, and both knew that Prometheus would be capable of a gas attack. When presented the video clip of the attack on the Monument to the Divine Mage in Sao Paulo, both had no trouble believing Prometheus the culprits and both had cheered for the archer Miko that had tried to stymie the attack.

Before they left the room, both South American officers were solidly converted. Within 36 hours, better than half of the South American sailors on the Mage ships would be convinced of the veracity of the conspiracy, and almost all of the South American personnel on the Nozin were converted before sunrise the next day.

-x-x-x-

(9 August ME 478, 0700 Hours Local (UTC8))
(Atrebas' Quarters, Amur River Mage Academy)

Three knocks at the door told Atrebas who was the likely culprit. "Enter, Megumi," Atrebas said by rote.

"Solid guess, sir, but only half points," the entrant said. "My sister's down in the medical station right now," Chirico noted.

"Routine, or something else?" Atrebas asked the elder sister of the pregnant Praetorian Officer.

"Precautionary. She thought she felt something that might have been a contraction, but it should be way too early for that," Praetorian officer Chirico noted.

"Hrm," the Emperor nodded understandingly. "Far better safe than sorry in such matters. She's off-duty today and tomorrow, my authority."

"Knowing my sister, she won't like that," Chirico shrugged. "And that is also why I'm here, dispatch predicted you would say so. Ready to start the day, sir?"

"Indeed. What news of the overnight?" Eric leaned back in his office chair and stretched a bit.

Chirico sighed. "Well, the big one is, the Africans made a power play for the wounded South American fleet and achieved their goal. The fleet is on the way to the bottom or already there as of an hour ago. Their results on target are within 2 percent of the strategic analysts' predictions, so that much of our intelligence arm is properly in shape."

"Very good," Atrebas noted. "Of course, I sense more to the story."

"During the fighting, African subs fired torpedoes at our boats. No hits, but that gave our ships the cause to get violent with the Africans. Full blowout, once we engaged no African asset made it out of the AO. Only witness to the proceedings besides the rescued pilots and sailors was one Soviet Murmansk-class Cruise Missile Sub."

"Good, I will want the reports for shots and hits by end of day; I doubt either party was even slightly prepared for our engagement but I do want to make sure our weapons and tactics are above the necessities of coming tasks," the Emperor said. He had long made a habit of analyzing real-world employment of arms to ensure that the Empire stayed ahead of the erstwhile foes, and this engagement would be no different from one of the naval vessels drilling a pirate ship.

"Silent Mountain is already crunching the numbers, they estimate a completed report before noon," Chirico checked that note off on her small notepad. "The Africans know something turbo-mulched their surviving forces, we don't think any enemies got off a clean radio transmission as to who or what, but there were some unrecognized telemetry signals from some of the aircraft that are still being analyzed by the signals troops. It is possible that one or more of those signals may have been real-time aircraft hardware monitoring or even a video stream."

"If they know, they know," Atrebas shrugged. "The past 48 hours have made it abundantly clear that someone has stripped the chain off the oldest dogs of war on this planet, and we're only starting to hear the inevitable cries of 'havoc' from the nascent nations. And with more than a few potential casus belli in the water, it is only a matter of time before those same self-important conspirators start barking at our heels. So, assuming they do know or are about to figure it out one way or the other, they will react as the Conspirators demand: they will declare war on us and come for us, nothing more or less."

"And we are already ready for the inevitable conflicts," Chirico pieced together the last remaining piece of the puzzle.

Atrebas nodded solemnly. "We have been ready for decades, centuries in all reality, and any mere corporation that thinks they run a risk of winning this fight has no idea what we are truly capable of. They will try, and they will fail. And I intend to fully decapitate this conspiracy when it opens wide, because so long as these megalomaniacs suppress the entire planet in their quest for control, this scenario will keep repeating."

Eric was brought to mind the portent from his vision the day prior: There can be no true expansion as you need, as your people desire, as long as others are allowed to make decisions for and against you.

"Still, if the Africans did not get a clear cut to their victor, we will let them sit as other conflicts inevitably inflame. What other news of the day so far?" Eric pushed past to the next issue.

---

Author's Chapter Afterword:

The world is rapidly degenerating to a state of multilateral war, and shortly will every nation be embroiled in one fashion or another. The reasons will strike you as horrific, but when the reason comes up in coming chapters, you will understand why.

A lot of small pieces moved around the table in this chapter, and some new persons enter the narrative. Rest assured, the other persons that were involved in prior chapters will make their appearances in the next chapter or two as well, that much is guaranteed. Each scene, each location, each person contributes to the overall picture in their own way as the matter moves forward. Such is the nature of the story and such is the nature of history.

Though the states of war have not yet been declared, you are starting to see the Mages play fast and loose with striking down the assets of the various nations around the world, primarily the SRT in Canada and the naval / air forces in the Atlantic. This may be counter to Eric's long-standing commission to preserve life and expand it, but this is also in furtherance of breaking the death-grip control the Conspiracy has over the world. In the next couple chapters, the states of war will start expanding officially between several nations, not just for or against the Mages, and this is in furtherance of the Conspiracy as they envisioned. Remember, their overarching goal is absolute control and there is a very good reason why an absolute and all-consuming state of war furthers that control.

The big demonstration in this chapter is the disparity of military power between the Mages and the rest. This is deliberate: the Mages started with some of the best (the former IJA personnel and researchers) and simply built on that success, staying deliberately ahead of the rest of the world. More appropriately, keeping the enemy intelligence services out of Magi lands means that the rest of the world has either an incomplete picture or no picture at all of Magi capabilities. By also fostering misinformation to fill the gaps that the Mage counterintelligence services have created, no one nation has a true idea of the capabilities of the Mages and what they are expected to be able to do or withstand in a battle. This is also married to an ongoing delusion that the Multimage 'Empire' is only 2-3 billion persons total, the Conspiracy is convinced that they have the 'rogue' state outnumbered and outmanned in the coming conflict. When the 6 Billion persons of the Mage Empire truly unwind their military capabilities, the aggressor parties and conspirators will very quickly learn that some mistakes carry a price tag up to and including national subsumption.

Other than that, not much else to write about in the afterword today. My next chapter is going to be the annual Christmas present for 2024, a chapter of AAA.

NEXT UP: The world goes sharply downhill with the next stage of the conflicts and conspiracies. And in that descent into chaos and casualties, Atrebas will have to issue orders that he does not like, but will be necessary for survival of a great many parties.

---

Review Replies: Grand total of 6 reviews over the last chapter, though a couple are repeat reviewers. Thank you all!

Alpha 12: Well, there are lines past which troops will not fight, but each nation and each army has different distances those lines go. The Mages will have to fight long and hard to drive some enemy forces past those lines, of this you can rest assured. In other cases, once the forces realize they were manipulated into an attempted war of extermination, the calculus of the campaign changes very rapidly. You'll start seeing the first vestiges of those changes in the next chapter, but most parties will not understand how horribly they have been manipulated for some time still — and a few nations will never fully understand that at all.

Pridefallen: Definitely, I will need to assemble some TROs for the next chapter when more direct engagements are had.

Pridefallen (R2): Command and Conquer is definitely on the list for Sigma, how much it will bleed into the other sections is yet to be determined.

Carey J: Apologies for the delay in chapters, I don't get as much writing time as I would normally like any more.

Carey J (R2): I have declared none of my stories as abandoned, it is simply a factor of time to write.

ZoyeZest: I decline the commission.

---

The Gripe Sheet:

Thanks to Takeshi Yamato for keeping my prose straight!

---

Footnotes:

No footnotes for this chapter.

---

Included Works:

No new included works at this time. NOTE: I will have TROs written up for some of the ships and units to be seen in the next couple chapters to be included with the next chapter.

---

Spell Registry:

No new spells registered at this time.