Maybe it's just me, but this doesn't sound like growth. This sounds like they're moving in definite directions. Slowly, sure, but still moving. Then again, I could be wrong.
It might just be you. To me, it sounds crystal clear that the initial breaches are getting bigger as humanity is losing ground surrounding the areas, with the convergence happening when/if the two forces have eliminated any meaningful enemy resistance between them.
Actually to me it is them moving together. After all they are not the only minor breaches and since they are a concern because they are getting closer to each other that means that the actions is unique only to them. So it is probably them moving.
OK, that's it! You've been drowning for at least a hundred pages now! Either die and start bloating, or grow some darn gills, ya damn kobold! (Thats right, I see through your disguise!)
Well, as a kobold sorcerer I've been repeatedly casting waterbreathing spells, that just happen to run out whenever I post.
I can't just leave because...uh...um...I...have to take care of some baby alligators. Yeah. Right. They must be endangered, since most of their range was wiped off of the map.
It might just be you. To me, it sounds crystal clear that the initial breaches are getting bigger as humanity is losing ground surrounding the areas, with the convergence happening when/if the two forces have eliminated any meaningful enemy resistance between them.
Made this chart for estimated combat ratings if one doesn't already exist. At the top end (rank 20+?) its probably inaccurate due to those genius level aces that can solo Type-0s
Because the breaches consist of Antagonist forces that are moving towards each other while killing the humans between them? Or because Avalanche just happened to use a word that sounded right-ish to him without thinking too much about it?
That, or my english is failing me, which is possible considering it isn't my first language.
I think we've had this conversation before. Anna is well and truly legendary by any metric you care to use.
Honestly, if this were an LP, it would be one where the player has abused a bug to try and get ahead early. I mean, Anna is obviously the crutch character who joins the party at the start of the final act, where the difficulty jumps up and you can't go back, to make sure that the endgame sequence isn't impossible to complete if you didn't grind hard enough before triggering it.
Except this cheating sod took advantage of an exploit, and suddenly he's got a near-max-level Super Valk in the tutorial stage, and not just as a one-off "this is the kind of stuff your actual characters will be able to do eventually if you keep on playing" teaser. It's fortunate that the devs didn't remove the bits of her story arc that they'd already coded when it was decided that she wouldn't appear right at the beginning.
Actually to me it is them moving together. After all they are not the only minor breaches and since they are a concern because they are getting closer to each other that means that the actions is unique only to them. So it is probably them moving.
Because the breaches consist of Antagonist forces that are moving towards each other while killing the humans between them? Or because Avalanche just happened to use a word that sounded right-ish to him without thinking too much about it?
That, or my english is failing me, which is possible considering it isn't my first language.
There's a bunch of WoGs on this that are accessible from the front page, just not one that tells us if they are growing or moving. In any case, my original conception of a breach was of a giant self-contained military complex, and therefore when I read about the double breaches I assumed that new construction was bringing them closer and closer together.
However, that is not what a breach is.
It's basically a giant fucking tornado.
Yet, that still doesn't mean that they aren't growing towards each other rather than moving.
On the map, the double breaches appear to be at least tens of kilometers from each other. But it is important to consider that overlapping those breach indicators might just have been a thing Avalanche was averse to doing. They could be hundreds of meters apart, not tens of kilometers. Certainly the California breach is not exactly in a place that would earn it the name "Los Angeles" on the map, yet that is what it is called, implying that its position is not exact on the map.
The omake is completed at 7.1k words. Anybody want to beta? This is still a race so I need somebody who can do it right here right now. Otherwise, I'll be posting it at ~6:00 CST... plus or minus time to fix the formatting issues caused by copy-pasting from word.
edit: although I don't know how fixing formatting could cause it to be minus time rather than plus...
double edit: for the record, the race is completely one-sided because I never actually issued a challenge lol
There's a bunch of WoGs on this that are accessible from the front page, just not one that tells us if they are growing or moving. In any case, my original conception of a breach was of a giant self-contained military complex, and therefore when I read about the double breaches I assumed that new construction was bringing them closer and closer together.
However, that is not what a breach is.
It's basically a giant fucking tornado.
Yet, that still doesn't mean that they aren't growing towards each other rather than moving.
On the map, the double breaches appear to be at least tens of kilometers from each other. But it is important to consider that overlapping those breach indicators might just have been a thing Avalanche was averse to doing. They could be hundreds of meters apart, not tens of kilometers. Certainly the California breach is not exactly in a place that would earn it the name "Los Angeles" on the map, yet that is what it is called, implying that its position is not exact on the map.
The omake is completed at 7.1k words. Anybody want to beta? This is still a race so I need somebody who can do it right here right now. Otherwise, I'll be posting it at ~6:00 CST... plus or minus time to fix the formatting issues caused by copy-pasting from word.
edit: although I don't know how fixing formatting could cause it to be minus time rather than plus...
double edit: for the record, the race is completely one-sided because I never actually issued a challenge lol
There's a bunch of WoGs on this that are accessible from the front page, just not one that tells us if they are growing or moving. In any case, my original conception of a breach was of a giant self-contained military complex, and therefore when I read about the double breaches I assumed that new construction was bringing them closer and closer together.
However, that is not what a breach is.
It's basically a giant fucking tornado.
Yet, that still doesn't mean that they aren't growing towards each other rather than moving.
On the map, the double breaches appear to be at least tens of kilometers from each other. But it is important to consider that overlapping those breach indicators might just have been a thing Avalanche was averse to doing. They could be hundreds of meters apart, not tens of kilometers. Certainly the California breach is not exactly in a place that would earn it the name "Los Angeles" on the map, yet that is what it is called, implying that its position is not exact on the map.
From what I remember, the top 20 ranks can just barely solo Class E type-0s without a 300 frame. With a 300 frame, they can solidly solo a class D, while around 600 people can solo class Es in a 300 frame. Its from one of the links in the first page.
From what I remember, the top 20 ranks can just barely solo Class E type-0s without a 300 frame. With a 300 frame, they can solidly solo a class D, while around 600 people can solo class Es in a 300 frame. Its from one of the links in the first page.
And Anna solo'd a Class C (who may or may not have been handicapped). As an encore, she then solo'd a minor breach, which had a cascade effect that crippled the Antagonist's defences, costing them another type zero, and possibly another breach.
There is a reason that Anna has been informally ranked as peerless. And that reason is they haven't finished inventing the paperwork to MAKE it official.
The following contains a LOT of death, often in a depressive setting. Violence. Also... there's no Anna. I think that's worth a trigger warning.
March 18, 45 PI, 5:00 PM, Uralsk Basecamp
The room was quiet, but for the hum of the computer and the low drone of the construction equipment outsi—
A fist smashed into a desk, and the slightly obese man behind that desk shouted his frustration to the world. "DAMN them!"
Across the hall, a head, hair close-cut but face unshaven, expression a mixture of annoyance and curiosity, poked itself out of a door and questioned "Wassup, boss?"
With a sigh and a hand dragged down a face, the reply was almost unnecessary. "Damn clankers are late with the goddamn shipment."
"They're always late, boss, you know that."
"Yeah, well, I told 'em yesterday that we needed today's on time because of the E.N.C. deal, and I told the lazy bastards to get up early if they had to and I'd pay 'em overtime. What happens? They go in early and they're late anyway."
The head from across the hall gained a full body, and the man shrugged. "Nothing for it, boss, 'less you want to go in there and tell 'em to move it along. Not like we can just ring 'em from the other side."
A shake of the head. "Nah, I'll give the slackers an hour."
A long, suffering sigh accompanied the hand that picked up the phone. "HR. Who that calling?"
"And?"
"Why don't you call them? That's standard company procedure."
"Well, I'll send your complaint over to finance. They're in charge of that stuff."
"No, that's finance."
"I'm sorry, but that's outside our purview."
The phone clicked as it disconnected, which was followed by a yawn as the person responsible for answering it leaned back, leaving the phone off the hook and smacking their lips.
The head across the hall peaked into view again. "Wait, did you seriously call HR boss?"
"… Yes."
"Why the hell would you even bother with that?"
The only response was a sigh.
"Heh. Yeah, I figured. Why don'chu hit up Donny? He'll get this sorted out."
March 18, 45 PI, 6:05 PM, UN Supervisor's Office, Uralsk Basecamp.
Brr—
"Donny speaking. Problem, Akkers?"
"Heh, yeah, just gotta keep it formal with the greetings 'case it's somebody from Central."
"Yeah, sure man. And they've been in there since five this morn, right? 'Cause of the E.N.C. deal?"
"Shit, yeah, I'll send Gunther in. Ain't nobody wants t'see that thing fall through."
"No prob." Click.
"Yo, Gunther! Job!"
March 18, 45 PI, 7:20 PM, Uralsk Basecamp.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrring. Brrrrr—
"Foreman speaking."
"Oh. Well, fuck. And he went in an hour ago?"
"Eh, must be some kind of massive screwery. Like that time that fatso snuck a pallet of twelve packs into the site. Your guy probably just joined in."
"Yeah, well, what else could it be? This is the real world, man, there aren't aliens hiding around the corner waiting to blow our brains out."
"Look, we're clearly fucked for today, so let's just give it twelve hours and send somebody in to clean up the party tomorrow. Worst case scenario your man is tied up and the clankers are too shitfaced to realize they're getting their pay docked."
Madeleine hung up the phone, set down her pencil and stretched. Then she hit the button to buzz the Colonel.
"Sir, I've got a report from Uralsk. You probably want to see this."
The response, as always, was prompt and practical. "Bring it in."
March 19, 45 PI, 12:00 PM, Jura Household, New Delhi
The TV, a luxury afforded to his family as one of many benefits that came with his job, blared the Moderate news channel at a volume high enough to reach across the sitting room and into his study. He knew the anchors primarily by voice, since actually seeing them onscreen was an event that only occurred preceding a lecture aimed at his son for forgetting to turn on the news in the morning. He could have made do with a radio, but he was a VP at Energy Now, the foremost utility of its field in the world. A radio was below him. "… and this just in, reports of a widespread Higgs miners' strike have provoked commentary from United Nations Energy Commissioner Gerald You--."
… Ah. Something important.
Majahar Jura rose from his desk and strode out of his study, bringing the television set into his line of sight in all of six footfalls. His wife, who had been sitting on a stool in the kitchen, unpaused the program as soon as she knew he could see the screen. He had no idea who the people sitting at the desk were, but the scruffy, grey-haired man who shortly appeared on the screen was very familiar to him, and the words that came next had him clenching his fists and smiling grimly.
"Akh-hem. Over the past twenty four hours the UN Energy Commission has received one or more reports from every active Higgs mining zone detailing a cessation of communications by the miners. It is the position of the United Nations that Higgs miners are employed directly by the UN and that unionizing, striking, and similar activities when perpetrated by Higgs miners are therefore illegal under Article Seventeen. The UNPKC will be suppressing these activities by this time tomorrow and production will resume. These are the details as they currently exist. There is nothing more of interest to discuss at the present time."
The camera caught the Commissioner turning and walking away before it swapped back to the anchors' desk, but Majahar had turned away from the TV even before that. There was a short pause in the audio as his wife set the program to fast-forward, erasing the minimal time-gap that the earlier use of the pause function had created.
Majahar smiled ever so slightly. Just like his household, Energy Now Corporation was a well-oiled machined. And if some of the oil happened to grease the wheels of the UN, then that served their shareholders – and their executives – well.
Their stock had taken a hit of several percent, yes, but it would blow over soon enough. It always did.
But not this time. This time would be different.
March 20, 45 PI, 0145 Hours, Uralsk Base Camp Outskirts
Pack secured tightly to her back, Ji Li shook herself from her wandering thoughts as a mutter started up at the front of the column, becoming slightly more intelligible with every second as it traveled towards her position near the back. She pulled her eyes from the cracked ground, drawn by the sudden departure from the hours-long silence that had enveloped her fellow soldiers. As part of the People's Liberation Army, she was only attached to the UN unit rather than a part of it – which meant that she shit in the same latrines, wore the same uniforms, and shot at the same targets. Followed the same orders, too.
Ahead, a towering edifice of swirling winds rose from the desolate landscape, the source of the great clouds of dust that kept its surroundings bereft of light and life. Great for travel, shitty to look at, and pretty damn annoying because you had to wear goggles all the damn time.
Not that anybody was complaining. No deployment was worth complaining about when it wasn't Tibet, and they all knew it.
They thought they knew. They were wrong.
March 20, 45 PI, 0222 Hours, Clanker Supply, Uralsk Base Camp
A couple of wrong turns and some jostling had moved Ji from the back of the column closer to the front by the time the unit found their way to their destination – a combination of a warehouse and an office building used to store the gear that kept the Higgs miners from getting themselves killed while they were working in the site. The "miners" didn't really do anything resembling traditional "mining," rather they were responsible for constantly maintaining Higgs processing equipment and for operating the vehicles used to cross through the walls of the site. This often meant clambering around on metal structures inside of a giant tornado while wearing a full-body protective suit and a pair of weighted boots with built-in electromagnets, from which the slang "clanker" originated. Anyone who went into the site had to wear such a suit, and Ji was not looking forward to it – not that she had a choice, of course.
But what if you didn't come in from outside?
March 20, 45 PI, 0349 Hours, Uralsk Higgs Site, Uralsk
It had taken them the better part an hour and a half, but Ji's unit had gotten themselves into the cumbersome suits and then into the Higgs Heavy Transports, vehicles that resembled APCs more than anything else. They were rolling down the lone road that was the sole access point of the site due to the need to bridge the chasm which had been carved into the dead ground by the unceasing winds; she was in the fourth vehicle of ten. Peering through the reinforced glass, she watched as the first transport disappeared into the wall of airborne dirt, then the second, the third. She watched as the window was consumed by the storm and she watched as she waited for the window to clear.
And because Ji Li was watching that window when it cleared, she got a glimpse of the remains of what had been one, two, three Higgs Heavy Transports: scattered across the ground, flying through the air, every piece charred or pierced or buckled or smashed, some a combination thereof.
Then Ji Li wasn't watching anymore, because Ji Li didn't have eyes anymore, because Ji Li's Higgs Heavy Transport was number four: scattered across the ground, flying through the air, every piece charred or pierced or buckled or smashed, some a combination thereof.
If Ji Li had had time to think thoughts, she might have compared her unit's journey into the Higgs Site to that of a group of cows, put on trucks to go to slaughter. She might have lamented her pointless death. She might have wished she could warn those behind her.
But Ji Li did not get any time to think any thoughts, any time to compare or lament or wish, no time for any last words, no time to panic or worry. One moment she was a person with a name and a life and a family. The next, there was not even a corpse.
Behind, number five lumbered through the storm, bringing its passengers closer and closer, delivering them unto Death.
It was a fate more would share. It was a fate the world would share.
March 20, 45 PI, About 0500 Hours, Uralsk Base Camp
Every depiction of alien invasion ever created in human history has been one of pain and terror, of drama written to appeal to an audience. Why? Simple: because quiet annihilation is boring. In reality, however, the instant, unwitnessed, unreported annihilation of an enemy target is an ideal opening phase for any surprise attack, simply because it maintains the element of surprise. Pain and terror in the enemy are signs of failure in this case, not of success.
And in their first strikes, the Antagonists were nothing if not successful.
The first reports from the suppression units sent to the various Higgs sites were expected soon, the Colonel knew. In fact, they really should have started coming in something like fifteen minutes ago, unless everyone had been delayed by more than the expected two hours. He was debating whether or not to buzz his new secretary – the old one had left on a plane to… somewhere… yesterday – and tell them to send an inquiry down the chain of command when his computer registered an urgent call from Astana International Airport.
The conversation lasted all of fifteen seconds before the Colonel hung up and dialed the regional UNAF wing, which, thanks to a shortfall of military bases and a shorter fall of passenger aircraft traffic through Astana, was based at Astana International Airport. Thoughts of the inefficiency of their dialing him first were thrown to the wayside in favor of focusing on ordering the wing commander to get his paltry force of jets "IN THE AIR RIGHT THIS INSTANT!"
In the time it took for the wing commander to pick up, the Colonel pulled open his upper-left desk drawer and slapped a fairly thick, unbound book down beside his computer. He flopped it open to the index, scanned his way down the page, and then tossed half of the pages from the right side of the book to the left before thumbing down to page three-hundred and seventy one, "Codes: Unidentified Aircraft." He had just started searching for his objective when the wing commander picked up. That occupied his focus for about ten seconds, and then he skimmed down the page to "No response – High speed – Multiple – ACG22" and then swiveled around to the safe in the wall behind his chair. Nearly throwing the spin-lock back and forth, he entered the combination, swung the safe open, and pulled out a one-time pad and a machine that looked like a modernized typewriter.
The planes never got into the air, but the Colonel managed to encrypt and send the "A," "C," and "G" before he was incinerated by plasma-based ordnance. It was the war's first report of the enemy, and the UN would later release the Colonel's message, calling it "Astana's last words." Perhaps it is therefore fitting that he did not finish the message, because "Unidentified Aircraft No Response" sounds a lot better as last words than the same plus "High Speed Multiple."
Most people didn't get the chance to have any words at all.
March 20, 45 PI, 8:25 AM, Energy Now Corporate HQ, New Delhi
Majahar Jura had never heard an explosion in his entire life. So when, on the morning of March Twentieth, all of the windows blew in and a sound beyond his wildest dreams left him deafened, he could not figure out why he was suddenly sprawled on the floor. Disoriented, he managed to work his body into a position slumped against the wall, and then tried to take in the sight of…
Majahar Jura did not know what he was seeing, and he was too confused to process it anyways, but if someone more versed in medicine – or war – had looked through his eyes, they would have seen seven people who were almost surely dead of burns, given that their clothing was alternately melted into their skin or incinerated entirely. A moan from his side indicated that the vice president of marketing was still alive, but not his chances of being that way by the day's end. Through the window, he could see that the building across the street was engulfed in reds and oranges, and Majahar was suddenly sprayed with water that was coming out of a pipe instead of the sprinkler that the pipe went to.
Water… water? Why was there water? Oh. The sprinkler system.
It took Majahar a solid half-minute to make the jump from the sprinklers being on to there being a fire, despite the scene visible through the window. He never really remembered getting out of the building, but he did remember going back inside and moving to the basement after he paid witness to the collapse of the skyscraper two buildings over.
He got lucky. But how many didn't?
March 20, 45 PI, 6:00 PM, San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco
Madeleine pulled her carryon-sized suitcase along behind her as she hurried towards the baggage claim. Her flight had landed, oh, fifteen minutes ago and they had a dinner reservation at six thirty, local time. She had had to put her stomach through a lot in order to be ready to eat dinner at what would have been seven thirty in the morning back in Astana… but even if she was probably going to pass out afterwards, it was going to be worth it. So, so worth it.
The moment Madeleine got through security, a squeal of delight ripped through the airport and something like a hundred pounds of little sister slammed into her at several miles per hour yelling "Maddie!"
Nothing had ever felt so good as that impact.
"Eva!"
The sisters embraced each other for the first time in six years, giggling happily and chattering about appearances, experiences, and sisterly love as they exited the airport and took Eva's car towards what was quite frankly the most expensive restaurant either of them had ever heard of.
They never made it there. But, then again, those who remained at SFO never made it anywhere.
March 20, 45 PI, 10:23 AM, Downtown, New Delhi
Sitting against the wall of the basement, Majahar Jura finally pulled himself far enough into cohesive thought to try to call his house with his phone.
By the time he figured out that there was no signal, he had tried to place the call four times.
He stared at the four empty bars in the corner of the screen for a solid minute before deciding that it was his location that was to blame. He would have more luck if he left the basement. He used the wall to pull himself to his feet, strode forwards and, against his will, collapsed back into a seated position.
Why had he collapsed like that? He was perfectly capable of walking. He always had been and he was now.
If Majahar had understood his situation, he would have agreed with himself, and then he would have diagnosed himself with shock. But while Majahar had heard of shock before, he had never experienced it. His ignorance drove him to a second attempt to rise, and he couldn't even get his straight when he tried it.
This was not ideal, but he needed to make certain that he was in contact with his peers and acquaintances. Something big had happened! Majahar would need to be available for consultation, for… well, he had to be available. But first he needed to get out of the basement, and he couldn't figure out how to do that without standing—
Ah, but the staircase had rails. He could hoist himself with his arms up the steps to the ground floor, where he would have a signal.
On his knees, Majahar shuffled over to and then up the staircase, catching himself with his hands the half-dozen times he lost his balance. He didn't so much push open the door out of the stairwell as he fell into it, but he held onto the push-bar with his hands and so even though he was leaning rather far forwards and his eyes saw nothing but the floor, he did not end up falling down. Pushing the door all the way open and leaning his back against it, he fished his phone from its place in his right-hand pocket and turned it on, then called his house.
Beeep. Service is not
He pulled the phone away from his ear. No bars. Why?
Suddenly a man was pulling him towards the front door. He tried to resist, but it was futile. The man dragged him outside and levered him into the back of a flatbed truck. There were several others there, and then another man was being raised into the truck and Majahar was pushed further inwards, ending up squished between the new man and a teenage boy.
Well… if he was outside…
He raised the phone from his side. No bars. Da—
The boy grabbed the phone from him and stuffed it in a pocket. Majahar ineffectually reached out to try to take the phone out of the boy's pocket, and as he did so the boy smashed an uppercut into his face and started rifling through Majahar's clothes.
No longer would a knowledgeable person have described Majahar as being in shock – the fist had knocked him out completely.
He had never been knocked out before. Then again, many others had never died before.
March 20, 45 PI, 6:20 PM, Route 101, San Francisco
Madeleine and Eva were twenty minutes out of SFO when the bombs hit.
Whether it was luck or fate, their car was just far enough from the overpass that they were able to brake in response to its sudden change from normalcy to on-fire-turned-to-rubble-fallen-down.
The two women stared at their narrowly-avoided doom, stunned, but their reactions differed. Where Madeleine sat frozen, Eva pulled something closely resembling a radio out of her hand, shoved it into her pocket, then materialized a headset over her ears and plugged the dangling cord into the radio.
Madeleine had known that Eva had an Engine, but she had never gotten to see her use it – Eva had synced with it about a year into their late separation. As she looked on, a visor emerged over Eva's eyes and the younger of the sisters reached up to tap the left earpiece of the headset.
"Eva. I'm two… four, I'm four minutes south of downtown, where do you want me?"
Madeleine wasn't used to being the helpless one. She'd always looked out for her younger sister. But here she was, paralyzed and staring as Eva just… calmly reacted.
Presumably Eva got a response from whoever she was talking to, because she nodded slightly and turned to Madeleine. "Maddie, I've got to go. But, I told them four minutes, so, I'll drop you at my place first, okay? Or if it's not safe, we'll figure something out. Yeah?"
The words didn't really help with Madeleine's confusion, but she managed a stutter. "Uh, um, o-okay?"
The next thing she knew Eva had a jetpack and they were in the air, leaving the car behind, and she got a stunning view of the jewel of the West Coast.
It looked like God had smote it from on high. Of course, it was worse than that.
March 21, 45 PI, 7:00 AM, The Lodge, Canberra
It was a beautiful morning when General Alexander Rushfield arrived at the PM's official residence. The grass was green, the sun was out, and the carefully-manicured setting was undeniably… nice. He didn't give a goddamn, because he had never been so afraid as he was on that morning.
The news… the general clenched his fists for what must have been the thousandth time since the reports started coming in yesterday, nails biting into his palms. Thinking could wait until after the cabinet meeting.
It didn't take five minutes to get into the room where the PM and the various lesser ministers were gathered – education, health, social services, and small businesses were conspicuously absent. That was partially at the general's request. Those areas would need to get used to being sidelined for a while.
He'd had everyone who was here spend part of last night on reading over a quick summary of what was going on. It had basically read, "alien Nazis from Higgs sites have too many tanks too many planes too many guns too many bombs fight or die," complete with images from the few satellites they had access to.
That wasn't what he was here to talk about. Not yet.
So instead of opening with the aliens, he opened by throwing a folder marked "Top Secret" onto the table and enunciating very, very carefully.
"The goddamn Chinese are going to make us lose India and everything west of it."
Oh, the looks he got. Disbelief, confusion… well, he supposed, he was the only military man in the room. Still…
"They're pulling everything from everywhere and they're sending it to their own borders. All those units attached to the UN? They're gonna be gone. To protect some fucking mountain ranges four times further away from the closest Higgs. They're gonna let everything else burn, and we're gonna be completely fucked when they do, because that" he pointed at a picture from last night's summary, "is a main battle tank with four guns, each twice as big as anything we have, and it's got armor eight times as thick as ours. And there're more of them."
The silence did not abate during the pause he took, but for some stuttering from agriculture, so he continued. "You know how the allies won World War Two? They bought enough time to build enough shit to beat the Germans. That is exactly what we are going to be trying to do here, folks, and if we want to have anything resembling a hope that means we need to keep India. Because there's too many fucking Indians for us to be able to afford losing them all. And China is going to fuck them over."
He paused again, and that time, the PM recovered.
"So what the bloody hell do we do about it?"
Rushfield smiled. It was not a happy thing, it was not a warm thing. It was dark and it was cold. Then he shoved his right index finger at the folder on the table.
"I took the liberty of drafting this between ten last night, when I got the news about the Chinese, and four this morning. There's a copy for each of you in there. Take one. And before you ask, I do believe it is possible to pull off."
Everyone took a copy, and one by one jaws either dropped or clenched, fists went slack or tightened, and eventually the PM brought his eyes up to meet Rushfield's.
"There's no other way? No time for diplomacy?"
"Land speed estimates give us six hours to have the PLA's orders countermanded before the troops get so far out of position that they won't be able to get back in time. We can abort this thing at any moment right up until they're in the fucking building. Call up the Chinese and try to talk some sense into them if you want, but approve this right now."
The PM shook his head and looked down at the table.
"And you're sure that the potential consequences…?"
It did not need to be stated that China was a nuclear power.
"Aliens certainly don't seem interested in our continued existence. If it doesn't work, we're dead anyway."
There was a moment of silence in the room.
"Do it."
He didn't fear for his life. But then, he was dying anyway. The others weren't… yet. And that, that filled him with terror.
March 21, 45 PI, 7:15 AM, RAAF Darwin Base, Darwin
Lieutenant Katie West was a loyal, patriotic Australian. She was also illegal under international law – an engine-user under military authority. When she received her orders the morning of March 21, she read them carefully and then stored them in her engine.
Some soldiers may be loyal and patriotic yet steadfastly refuse to carry out orders on the grounds of morality, honor, or common sense. In 1983 CE, one such man named Stanislav Petrov judged a glitch in the Soviet nuclear early warning system to be what it was – a glitch – rather than the launch of five missiles by the USA. His actions may or may not have saved the world, but regardless of possible fates he is worthy of respect for his cool head and willingness to ignore orders to preserve the world as we know it.
Lieutenant Katie West was not such a person, and when she received orders detailing that she was to commit an act that would certainly provoke nuclear war if she was discovered, she did not question them.
1) Proceed immediately to airspace between Uralsk and New Delphi,
2) Intercept Alien bombing aircraft,
3) Capture Alien plasma device,
4) Proceed to airspace 160km above Beijing,
5) At maximum speed, perform vertical descent to deliver plasma device to the Zhongnanhai, General Secretary's wing.
6) Abort mission only on receipt of code Alpha-Delta-Tango-Five-Niner.
Gen. Alexander Rushfield, ADF
Terror leads the greatest of men to the poorest of choices. Let us give thanks that this madness never bore the fruit it was intended to, for if it had, we would surely have all perished.
March 21, 45 PI, 6:35 PM, Fire Department Station 13, San Francisco
Well, Eva thought, it could be worse, right? The fire chief could be dead too.
Alongside the mayor, the police chief, their immediate successors, and everyone else they had tried to contact.
Eva liked her job, most of the time. As an engine-user she really, truly was able to help people. Generators were breaking down? She could fix that. Building was on fire? She had a firehose and a reservoir in her personal hammerspace. Car crash? She could fly people to the hospital far faster than any medevac.
But right now, it felt like the world was ending, and it didn't matter that Maddie had just gotten into town, she had had to leave her at the house and try to salvage… something; anything, really, from the hell on earth that her city had been turned into. She didn't regret that she was there and doing so, but…
Oh, who was she even making excuses to? She was completely overwhelmed, because for every person she pulled out of the disaster zone it seemed like she left twenty behind.
Her reservoir refilled, she exited the fire station and took off towards downtown for a fourth rescue mission. She hadn't made it a hundred meters when an inhuman screeching noise prompted her to search for its source.
She found it, and she understood what had happened to her city, because the screeching noise was the sound of aircraft moving very, very quickly and bombing San Francisco's harbors into rubble.
That… was catastrophic. But, Eva knew, it could get even worse. Those planes had already come twice, and that meant they would be back again. If they weren't stopped, it wouldn't matter how many people were pulled out of downtown.
They'd all just die to the bombs a little later rather than immediately.
So Eva tapped the button on her headset, and the words she spoke into it were words of war.
Really, though, was it war if one side could do nothing but accept their inevitable deaths?
March 20, 45 PI, 5:00 PM, Refugee Camp, Outskirts of New Delhi
Majahar Jura awoke to the sound of gunfire. He had never heard a gunshot before, but he couldn't imagine anything else that would make the noises that his ears informed him of. He groggily rubbed his eyes, disregarding any fear for his life – him, be murdered? What a ridiculous thought, he had never even been the victim of a crime. He fumbled for his phone, but it wasn't there, so he allowed himself to lay back down on what he now realized was… a cot. In a tent.
A tent with five other identical cots and five other non-identical people in it. And none of them looked particularly respectable.
Majahar was halfway through deciding that he would have words with someone over the condition of his lodging when he was interrupted by a stream of lead turning most of the tent into swiss cheese and four of the five other people into little chunks of flesh.
Majahar Jura, VP of Sales at Energy Now Corporation, could do nothing but gape at the display of brutality in front of him.
A moment later, that nonreaction saved his life when the space on the side of his cot that had not been occupied by bullets was also flooded with the zooming pinpoints of death.
Something outside the tent exploded, or at least he was pretty sure that that had been an explosion, and then he was flying. In the air, held aloft by a suit of armor with a jetpack on it.
And it was speaking to him.
Unable to process what was going on, Majahar turned his gaze away from the suit of armor and instead bore witness to a giant plane streaking in and figures dropping out of it. Little pricks of light began to originate from the figures, and a much larger shape fell from the plane before the aircraft executed a one-eighty and shot away from the city. A professional soldier would have told Majahar that he had just witnessed a drop of paratroops complete with a tank. Someone from the future would have told him that he had just become a primary source for the events of the Battle of New Delhi. His instincts told him nothing more than to run, because even though Majahar Jura had no experience with violence, the millions of years of human evolution that had come before him had infused his body with certain instincts.
He couldn't run, of course, being held aloft as he was. But when the suit of armor wheeled about and shot off in the direction of his house, he was extremely relieved, if a little puzzled.
Had he told the figure where to go?
Running didn't work for anyone anyways. The land speed of a human being was inferior.
March 21, 45 PI, 7:45 PM, The Front Line, San Francisco
It was much, much worse than Eva had thought back when she had first broadcast her sighting of the airplanes. She – they – hadn't known that until about ten minutes ago, when one of her fellow engine-holders had opened his mic to ask if anyone else could see all the trucks that were coming in down Route One.
The trucks hadn't been trucks. So they had fought, tried to hold them off.
Then more of them had emerged from beneath the fucking Bay and rolled right into downtown.
San Francisco was doomed, and nobody was going to be able to do a goddamn thing about it. SFO had been bombed in the first run; the harbors in the second.
Nobody without an engine was going to live through the night. Some of those with engines had already died.
So they were going to run. Run away, live to fight another day.
And Eva wasn't about to leave alone.
March 21, 45 PI, 7:48 PM, Eva's House, San Francisco
A figure in armor smashed through the roof. Madeleine flinched, then relaxed when Eva spoke.
"Maddie, quick! We've got to get out of here! We'll go to Hawaii, I'm faster than them."
"What? Who? What's going on Eva?"
Eva floated down to stand in front of Madeleine, and interlaced their hands, neither of them paying any attention to the fact that Eva's were gauntleted. "They're killing everybody and we can't stop them. But I can get us both out; I just need to go empty the gas station down the block first. C'mon, quick!"
Madeleine nodded, and they dashed out the front door. Eva was… so strong. She'd been there for Eva, and now Eva was there for her. She had no idea how bad the situation was, but Eva had taken that overpass in stride. They'd be okay, she told herself.
They'd be okay.
They'd be okay.
Madeleine repeated it over and over in her head, down the sidewalk, up to the pump, while she was waiting for Eva to be done.
It was a distraction from the fears that reality tried to inflict on her mind, and it shattered when the grocery store across the street collapsed into a million pieces around a behemoth of alien technology.
In its place came terror, and only Eva's flying tackle kept her from being killed instantly.
They were not going to be okay.
Because Eva's flying tackle had saved Madeleine… but not Eva.
Madeleine's little sister was dead.
Eva had given her life for her big sister, and now Maddie was going to die too.
But – Eva's engine was lying on the ground.
Time slowed down. Whether it was the sudden isolation or the shock of her sister's death Madeleine had no idea, but suddenly she was calmer than she had been at any point in the past several months. Madeleine had one chance to get out of here. If she was compatible with the engine, then she could just fly away. Eva would not have died in vain. And, a corner of her brain whispered, you could avenge her death.
The machine gun on the tank, that vile, evil tank, rotated towards her.
She threw herself at the tiny white sphere, at her salvation, at her vengeance.
The silent storm of metal that erupted from the gun turned her into a cloud of blood and gore before she even got halfway to the object that would soon be known as a Valkyrie Core.
They weren't called that because their bearers were powerful, although that was a factor. They were called that because everything they touched seemed to die violently, whether friend or foe.
March 21, 45 PI, 5:17 PM, Jura Household, New Delhi
Majahar had no idea what was going on. He couldn't understand why the… the flying suit of armor was taking him to his house, and he couldn't seem to get himself to ask.
In fact, all he could seem to do was cast his eyes about and take in the devastation around him.
He reached for his phone again. He'd heard about the supposed definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results – and he had always disdained people who committed such fallacies. He was aware that that wasn't the whole quote, but… he had always felt that there was a great deal of truth to it, nonetheless. And what… what did that make him, at that moment?
His musings were interrupted when he realized that his house had come into view, and he recoiled as much as he could (the armor's grip on him was fairly restrictive) at the sight.
It was ash and rubble. Why was it ash and rubble!?
The figure came to a landing where the west wing had previously stood. It sat down, and it held him close to its chest. He couldn't have escaped its grip if he had had the will to try – which, of course, he did not.
Something seemed wrong with the suit of armor, Majahar thought. He squinted hard and gradually came to see that it was missing a leg.
It was also breathing heavily.
And… bleeding.
Where was the blood coming from? It was a… machine… thing.
The armor began to dissolve. In its place, skin and fabric came into view.
A voice entered his ear. It was choked and the words it spoke were broken apart by coughs. "Our… son… is dead. I… am d–dead. You are alive, Majahar. Live. Live."
Majahar Jura sat in the arms of his wife as she expired atop the pile of debris that had been his house.
My son is dead, he thought.
My wife is dead.
My wallet is gone.
My phone is gone.
My house is gone.
And I can't fucking get myself to stand up.
His wife had wanted him to live.
Majahar Jura sat there, amidst the ruins, and for the first time since his long-forgotten early childhood, he cried a river of tears. He giggled in short, choking bursts.
He had been the vice president of sales at Energy Now Corporation not two days ago.
This was so unfair! He was successful he was rich he was powerful WHY WAS HIS HOUSE A PILE OF SMOKING RUBBLE?
When the small white sphere fell from his wife's dead body into the mess of nooks and crannies formed by the remains of his house, he didn't see it happen, nor did he hear the noise it made as it bounced off of wood and metal on its way down. In fact, Majahar Jura didn't really do anything at all for a while. And when that while was over, he started up another while of doing nothing.
He was about a third of the way into the third while when an AG paratrooper detected him and gave him a very, very long while to be very, very dead for.
He would not be lonely. There was going to be plenty of company in the afterlife. Some would be friendly and optimistic. Others, like him, would have been broken by the Antagonists.
What you have read contains merely a fraction of the tragedies that played out on March 20 and March 21 of 45 Post-Impact. If, when we have the Antagonists at our mercy, they suddenly weep and cry and beg for their lives, we will remember their actions and we will cut them down without hesitation and without second thoughts, just as they have done to us. But one story that you have heard has yet to be concluded, and those dark days were not without some measure of human triumph, as little-known and poorly understood as it was at the time.
On March 21, 45 PI, Lieutenant Katie West of the ADF flew into a titanic mass of AG fighters and bombers, blew up half of them, and escaped with a plasma munition.
Her original orders had been to use that munition to assassinate the majority of the high-ranking members of the Communist Party of China. This was intended to enable members of the Party CMC, the body in charge of the PLA, to take over the government. They would then have committed China's military to the protection of India and its neighbor nation-states, reversing the decision made a mere ten or so hours earlier. Fortunately, cooler heads quickly prevailed and Katie's original orders were abrogated only an hour and a half into her mission. Instead, she was to use the plasma bomb in an assault on Uralsk Breach.
The captured plasma weapon was virtually irrelevant. Ji Li, whose tale you have heard and who died a day earlier, could have foreseen Katie's fate with ease: Katie died without inflicting any damage on the breach. But no one at all could have anticipated that the AG fighters and bombers Katie destroyed had been headed for UN GHQ in Seoul, nor could anyone have known that the aircraft she did not destroy had been aimed for the Secretariat Building in New Delphi.
It has been theorized that the AGs had tapped into human comms and determined the identities of who they thought to be humanity's decision-makers. Certainly March 21 was a coordinated strike against human leadership. In one fell swoop, all five founding nations of the UN lost their respective heads of state and the majority of their high officials.
And in one fell swoop, the UN rose to power as a powerful, unifying, global government.
It was largely an act of tyranny. It would also prove to have been the salvation of the human race.
Okay, so, there's a whole ton of reasons this didn't come out like... a while ago. And I have a bunch of rambling stuff in my word doc, so lets spoiler that and put it here... some of it is pretty outdated, if still true, because I wrote the first like 1.5k of this thing like three weeks ago.
God timezones are such a PAIN for these timestamps. Really I just said "screw it" and stopped worrying about it lol…
Wow, when you think about it Australia is probably the least corrupt of the UN founding nations. That's kinda… bad.
Sorry to everyone who didn't get to read this a week a few weeks before now, as I've been I was mumbling to myself I "got caught up in the Teh-empest." AKA Tempest, by Kaiserklee over on FF.net. This is a shameless plug for that because frankly it's god *censored* incredible. A masterpiece. I could gush all day.
Other stuff...
Zhongnanhai – seat of PRC govt
When I wrote Vae I criticized myself for not making Rushfield's big exposition speech thing a conversation… I didn't intend to revisit that here but it happened and it really does work better this way lol.
My thoughts atm:
Some of Mors is a little rough. The Rushfield / Katie stuff in particular I don't like as much as the rest, except for how Katie's stuff ends -- I really liked being able to cover the UN's rise to power. Part of that was that I originally intended to actually go through with the coup in China, and then... honestly it was breaking my own SoD, so I scrapped it and wrote what's here. Also the last Madeleine scene is a little rough and thats because I wrote part of it three weeks ago. Idk if it'll end up being changed or not. Probably not?
It's worth noting that every named character in the omake (except for the UN energy commissioner, who I forgot to kill) explicitly dies except rushfield, who is said to be "dying anyway."
It's also worth noting that Mors Innocentia is intended to be either canon or extremely close to it. I've followed every WoG I could find and the omake is literally written to cover a part of canon's implied history.
Unfortunately, that meant NO ANNA.
Right now I'm seriously having withdrawal because I wrote this 7.1k thing, and I mean why do you think I'm here? It's because Anna is an incredible character and she's paired with a great quest. But if you replace Anna with, well, no Anna, things get kinda... Anna-less. @Avalanche, I'm gonna need that update from you, because, like, withdrawal kinda sucks. A lot.
There could be one more scene. I... Oh yeah, there could totally be one more scene, because I didn't write the fucking epilogue. I used a scene as an ending scene. Hm. We'll see if it happens or not. Probably shouldn't, what with the tone-change I used at the last scene.
Because the breaches consist of Antagonist forces that are moving towards each other while killing the humans between them? Or because Avalanche just happened to use a word that sounded right-ish to him without thinking too much about it?
That, or my english is failing me, which is possible considering it isn't my first language.
Think of it like this: breaches are dips/pockets in spacetime with a hive at the bottom, like a rock on a sheet of rubber. When two breaches get together, the hives can afford to be exponentially larger, and support type zeros, because the "weight" of both breaches is concentrated in one place, so they have more space to work with. They're not getting heavier by themselves, the "rock" is just slowly rolling towards another "rock".
I always thought the breeches that were "approaching" each other were actually moving, not just expanding towards each other. If they could grow, then they wouldn't need to merge to become major breeches, they'd just naturally get there eventually.
I think we've had this conversation before. Anna is well and truly legendary by any metric you care to use.
Honestly, if this were an LP, it would be one where the player has abused a bug to try and get ahead early. I mean, Anna is obviously the crutch character who joins the party at the start of the final act, where the difficulty jumps up and you can't go back, to make sure that the endgame sequence isn't impossible to complete if you didn't grind hard enough before triggering it.
Except this cheating sod took advantage of an exploit, and suddenly he's got a near-max-level Super Valk in the tutorial stage, and not just as a one-off "this is the kind of stuff your actual characters will be able to do eventually if you keep on playing" teaser. It's fortunate that the devs didn't remove the bits of her story arc that they'd already coded when it was decided that she wouldn't appear right at the beginning.
Nonono. This isn't *that* Let's Play. This is the Lets Play where the player had gained absolute mastery of the exp and crafting system, and was going for a challenge game - you know, the "close a breach before the first day of school" one. They took the "Middle of Nowhere" start, minmaxed the merit/flaw system, and then absolutely abused the fact that the plot clock proper doesn't start until you get to school. Before that, on the Middle of Nowhere start, the effects of spending time are limited to your starter area. Now, normally the idea is that you're supposed to go for help at some point, there's a little quest tree about evacuating your village, and you start game with a nice little block of good karma and a bit of rep if you pull it off. Normally. Instead, they *worked* that leveling treadmill - started out by building their engineering skills (in order to improve gear aug speeds) and did everything they could to keep that one town around far, far longer than it had any right to exist without being evacuated (because once the town goes away, you *have* to go to school, because that starting area doesn't have any other way to heal psych damage).
Nonono. This isn't *that* Let's Play. This is the Lets Play where the player had gained absolute mastery of the exp and crafting system, and was going for a challenge game - you know, the "close a breach before the first day of school" one. They took the "Middle of Nowhere" start, minmaxed the merit/flaw system, and then absolutely abused the fact that the plot clock proper doesn't start until you get to school. Before that, on the Middle of Nowhere start, the effects of spending time are limited to your starter area. Now, normally the idea is that you're supposed to go for help at some point, there's a little quest tree about evacuating your village, and you start game with a nice little block of good karma and a bit of rep if you pull it off. Normally. Instead, they *worked* that leveling treadmill - started out by building their engineering skills (in order to improve gear aug speeds) and did everything they could to keep that one town around far, far longer than it had any right to exist without being evacuated (because once the town goes away, you *have* to go to school, because that starting area doesn't have any other way to heal psych damage).
And then it turned out that the devs had planned for that, and once he took down the breach and got all of the goodies from that the town was destroyed. Had a full cinematic and everything.
The following contains a LOT of death, often in a depressive setting. Violence. Also... there's no Anna. I think that's worth a trigger warning.
March 18, 55 PI, 5:00 PM, Uralsk Basecamp
The room was quiet, but for the hum of the computer and the low drone of the construction equipment outsi—
A fist smashed into a desk, and the slightly obese man behind that desk shouted his frustration to the world. "DAMN them!"
Across the hall, a head, hair close-cut but face unshaven, expression a mixture of annoyance and curiosity, poked itself out of a door and questioned "Wassup, boss?"
With a sigh and a hand dragged down a face, the reply was almost unnecessary. "Damn clankers are late with the goddamn shipment."
"They're always late, boss, you know that."
"Yeah, well, I told 'em yesterday that we needed today's on time because of the E.N.C. deal, and I told the lazy bastards to get up early if they had to and I'd pay 'em overtime. What happens? They go in early and they're late anyway."
The head from across the hall gained a full body, and the man shrugged. "Nothing for it, boss, 'less you want to go in there and tell 'em to move it along. Not like we can just ring 'em from the other side."
A shake of the head. "Nah, I'll give the slackers an hour."
A long, suffering sigh accompanied the hand that picked up the phone. "HR. Who that calling?"
"And?"
"Why don't you call them? That's standard company procedure."
"Well, I'll send your complaint over to finance. They're in charge of that stuff."
"No, that's finance."
"I'm sorry, but that's outside our purview."
The phone clicked as it disconnected, which was followed by a yawn as the person responsible for answering it leaned back, leaving the phone off the hook and smacking their lips.
The head across the hall peaked into view again. "Wait, did you seriously call HR boss?"
"… Yes."
"Why the hell would you even bother with that?"
The only response was a sigh.
"Heh. Yeah, I figured. Why don'chu hit up Donny? He'll get this sorted out."
March 18, 55 PI, 6:05 PM, UN Supervisor's Office, Uralsk Basecamp.
Brr—
"Donny speaking. Problem, Akkers?"
"Heh, yeah, just gotta keep it formal with the greetings 'case it's somebody from Central."
"Yeah, sure man. And they've been in there since five this morn, right? 'Cause of the E.N.C. deal?"
"Shit, yeah, I'll send Gunther in. Ain't nobody wants t'see that thing fall through."
"No prob." Click.
"Yo, Gunther! Job!"
March 18, 55 PI, 7:20 PM, Uralsk Basecamp.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrring. Brrrrr—
"Foreman speaking."
"Oh. Well, fuck. And he went in an hour ago?"
"Eh, must be some kind of massive screwery. Like that time that fatso snuck a pallet of twelve packs into the site. Your guy probably just joined in."
"Yeah, well, what else could it be? This is the real world, man, there aren't aliens hiding around the corner waiting to blow our brains out."
"Look, we're clearly fucked for today, so let's just give it twelve hours and send somebody in to clean up the party tomorrow. Worst case scenario your man is tied up and the clankers are too shitfaced to realize they're getting their pay docked."
Madeleine hung up the phone, set down her pencil and stretched. Then she hit the button to buzz the Colonel.
"Sir, I've got a report from Uralsk. You probably want to see this."
The response, as always, was prompt and practical. "Bring it in."
March 19, 55 PI, 12:00 PM, Jura Household, New Delphi
The TV, a luxury afforded to his family as one of many benefits that came with his job, blared the Moderate news channel at a volume high enough to reach across the sitting room and into his study. He knew the anchors primarily by voice, since actually seeing them onscreen was an event that only occurred preceding a lecture aimed at his son for forgetting to turn on the news in the morning. He could have made do with a radio, but he was a VP at Energy Now, the foremost utility of its field in the world. A radio was below him. "… and this just in, reports of a widespread Higgs miners' strike have provoked commentary from United Nations Energy Commissioner Gerald You--."
… Ah. Something important.
Majahar Jura rose from his desk and strode out of his study, bringing the television set into his line of sight in all of six footfalls. His wife, who had been sitting on a stool in the kitchen, unpaused the program as soon as she knew he could see the screen. He had no idea who the people sitting at the desk were, but the scruffy, grey-haired man who shortly appeared on the screen was very familiar to him, and the words that came next had him clenching his fists and smiling grimly.
"Akh-hem. Over the past twenty four hours the UN Energy Commission has received one or more reports from every active Higgs mining zone detailing a cessation of communications by the miners. It is the position of the United Nations that Higgs miners are employed directly by the UN and that unionizing, striking, and similar activities when perpetrated by Higgs miners are therefore illegal under Article Seventeen. The UNPKC will be suppressing these activities by this time tomorrow and production will resume. These are the details as they currently exist. There is nothing more of interest to discuss at the present time."
The camera caught the Commissioner turning and walking away before it swapped back to the anchors' desk, but Majahar had turned away from the TV even before that. There was a short pause in the audio as his wife set the program to fast-forward, erasing the minimal time-gap that the earlier use of the pause function had created.
Majahar smiled ever so slightly. Just like his household, Energy Now Corporation was a well-oiled machined. And if some of the oil happened to grease the wheels of the UN, then that served their shareholders – and their executives – well.
Their stock had taken a hit of several percent, yes, but it would blow over soon enough. It always did.
But not this time. This time would be different.
March 20, 55 PI, 0145 Hours, Uralsk Base Camp Outskirts
Pack secured tightly to her back, Ji Li shook herself from her wandering thoughts as a mutter started up at the front of the column, becoming slightly more intelligible with every second as it traveled towards her position near the back. She pulled her eyes from the cracked ground, drawn by the sudden departure from the hours-long silence that had enveloped her fellow soldiers. As part of the People's Liberation Army, she was only attached to the UN unit rather than a part of it – which meant that she shit in the same latrines, wore the same uniforms, and shot at the same targets. Followed the same orders, too.
Ahead, a towering edifice of swirling winds rose from the desolate landscape, the source of the great clouds of dust that kept its surroundings bereft of light and life. Great for travel, shitty to look at, and pretty damn annoying because you had to wear goggles all the damn time.
Not that anybody was complaining. No deployment was worth complaining about when it wasn't Tibet, and they all knew it.
They thought they knew. They were wrong.
March 20, 55 PI, 0222 Hours, Clanker Supply, Uralsk Base Camp
A couple of wrong turns and some jostling had moved Ji from the back of the column closer to the front by the time the unit found their way to their destination – a combination of a warehouse and an office building used to store the gear that kept the Higgs miners from getting themselves killed while they were working in the site. The "miners" didn't really do anything resembling traditional "mining," rather they were responsible for constantly maintaining Higgs processing equipment and for operating the vehicles used to cross through the walls of the site. This often meant clambering around on metal structures inside of a giant tornado while wearing a full-body protective suit and a pair of weighted boots with built-in electromagnets, from which the slang "clanker" originated. Anyone who went into the site had to wear such a suit, and Ji was not looking forward to it – not that she had a choice, of course.
But what if you didn't come in from outside?
March 20, 55 PI, 0349 Hours, Uralsk Higgs Site, Uralsk
It had taken them the better part an hour and a half, but Ji's unit had gotten themselves into the cumbersome suits and then into the Higgs Heavy Transports, vehicles that resembled APCs more than anything else. They were rolling down the lone road that was the sole access point of the site due to the need to bridge the chasm which had been carved into the dead ground by the unceasing winds; she was in the fourth vehicle of ten. Peering through the reinforced glass, she watched as the first transport disappeared into the wall of airborne dirt, then the second, the third. She watched as the window was consumed by the storm and she watched as she waited for the window to clear.
And because Ji Li was watching that window when it cleared, she got a glimpse of the remains of what had been one, two, three Higgs Heavy Transports: scattered across the ground, flying through the air, every piece charred or pierced or buckled or smashed, some a combination thereof.
Then Ji Li wasn't watching anymore, because Ji Li didn't have eyes anymore, because Ji Li's Higgs Heavy Transport was number four: scattered across the ground, flying through the air, every piece charred or pierced or buckled or smashed, some a combination thereof.
If Ji Li had had time to think thoughts, she might have compared her unit's journey into the Higgs Site to that of a group of cows, put on trucks to go to slaughter. She might have lamented her pointless death. She might have wished she could warn those behind her.
But Ji Li did not get any time to think any thoughts, any time to compare or lament or wish, no time for any last words, no time to panic or worry. One moment she was a person with a name and a life and a family. The next, there was not even a corpse.
Behind, number five lumbered through the storm, bringing its passengers closer and closer, delivering them unto Death.
It was a fate more would share. It was a fate the world would share.
March 20, 55 PI, About 0500 Hours, Uralsk Base Camp
Every depiction of alien invasion ever created in human history has been one of pain and terror, of drama written to appeal to an audience. Why? Simple: because quiet annihilation is boring. In reality, however, the instant, unwitnessed, unreported annihilation of an enemy target is an ideal opening phase for any surprise attack, simply because it maintains the element of surprise. Pain and terror in the enemy are signs of failure in this case, not of success.
And in their first strikes, the Antagonists were nothing if not successful.
Pain and terror would come later.
March 20, 0554 Hours, UNPKC KZ Regional HQ, Astana.
The first reports from the suppression units sent to the various Higgs sites were expected soon, the Colonel knew. In fact, they really should have started coming in something like fifteen minutes ago, unless everyone had been delayed by more than the expected two hours. He was debating whether or not to buzz his new secretary – the old one had left on a plane to… somewhere… yesterday – and tell them to send an inquiry down the chain of command when his computer registered an urgent call from Astana International Airport.
The conversation lasted all of fifteen seconds before the Colonel hung up and dialed the regional UNAF wing, which, thanks to a shortfall of military bases and a shorter fall of passenger aircraft traffic through Astana, was based at Astana International Airport. Thoughts of the inefficiency of their dialing him first were thrown to the wayside in favor of focusing on ordering the wing commander to get his paltry force of jets "IN THE AIR RIGHT THIS INSTANT!"
In the time it took for the wing commander to pick up, the Colonel pulled open his upper-left desk drawer and slapped a fairly thick, unbound book down beside his computer. He flopped it open to the index, scanned his way down the page, and then tossed half of the pages from the right side of the book to the left before thumbing down to page three-hundred and seventy one, "Codes: Unidentified Aircraft." He had just started searching for his objective when the wing commander picked up. That occupied his focus for about ten seconds, and then he skimmed down the page to "No response – High speed – Multiple – ACG22" and then swiveled around to the safe in the wall behind his chair. Nearly throwing the spin-lock back and forth, he entered the combination, swung the safe open, and pulled out a one-time pad and a machine that looked like a modernized typewriter.
The planes never got into the air, but the Colonel managed to encrypt and send the "A," "C," and "G" before he was incinerated by plasma-based ordnance. It was the war's first report of the enemy, and the UN would later release the Colonel's message, calling it "Astana's last words." Perhaps it is therefore fitting that he did not finish the message, because "Unidentified Aircraft No Response" sounds a lot better as last words than the same plus "High Speed Multiple."
Most people didn't get the chance to have any words at all.
March 20, 55 PI, 8:25 AM, Energy Now Corporate HQ, New Delphi
Majahar Jura had never heard an explosion in his entire life. So when, on the morning of March Twentieth, all of the windows blew in and a sound beyond his wildest dreams left him deafened, he could not figure out why he was suddenly sprawled on the floor. Disoriented, he managed to work his body into a position slumped against the wall, and then tried to take in the sight of…
Majahar Jura did not know what he was seeing, and he was too confused to process it anyways, but if someone more versed in medicine – or war – had looked through his eyes, they would have seen seven people who were almost surely dead of burns, given that their clothing was alternately melted into their skin or incinerated entirely. A moan from his side indicated that the vice president of marketing was still alive, but not his chances of being that way by the day's end. Through the window, he could see that the building across the street was engulfed in reds and oranges, and Majahar was suddenly sprayed with water that was coming out of a pipe instead of the sprinkler that the pipe went to.
Water… water? Why was there water? Oh. The sprinkler system.
It took Majahar a solid half-minute to make the jump from the sprinklers being on to there being a fire, despite the scene visible through the window. He never really remembered getting out of the building, but he did remember going back inside and moving to the basement after he paid witness to the collapse of the skyscraper two buildings over.
He got lucky. But how many didn't?
March 20, 55 PI, 6:00 PM, San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco
Madeleine pulled her carryon-sized suitcase along behind her as she hurried towards the baggage claim. Her flight had landed, oh, fifteen minutes ago and they had a dinner reservation at six thirty, local time. She had had to put her stomach through a lot in order to be ready to eat dinner at what would have been seven thirty in the morning back in Astana… but even if she was probably going to pass out afterwards, it was going to be worth it. So, so worth it.
The moment Madeleine got through security, a squeal of delight ripped through the airport and something like a hundred pounds of little sister slammed into her at several miles per hour yelling "Maddie!"
Nothing had ever felt so good as that impact.
"Eva!"
The sisters embraced each other for the first time in six years, giggling happily and chattering about appearances, experiences, and sisterly love as they exited the airport and took Eva's car towards what was quite frankly the most expensive restaurant either of them had ever heard of.
They never made it there. But, then again, those who remained at SFO never made it anywhere.
March 20, 55 PI, 10:23 AM, Downtown, New Delphi
Sitting against the wall of the basement, Majahar Jura finally pulled himself far enough into cohesive thought to try to call his house with his phone.
By the time he figured out that there was no signal, he had tried to place the call four times.
He stared at the four empty bars in the corner of the screen for a solid minute before deciding that it was his location that was to blame. He would have more luck if he left the basement. He used the wall to pull himself to his feet, strode forwards and, against his will, collapsed back into a seated position.
Why had he collapsed like that? He was perfectly capable of walking. He always had been and he was now.
If Majahar had understood his situation, he would have agreed with himself, and then he would have diagnosed himself with shock. But while Majahar had heard of shock before, he had never experienced it. His ignorance drove him to a second attempt to rise, and he couldn't even get his straight when he tried it.
This was not ideal, but he needed to make certain that he was in contact with his peers and acquaintances. Something big had happened! Majahar would need to be available for consultation, for… well, he had to be available. But first he needed to get out of the basement, and he couldn't figure out how to do that without standing—
Ah, but the staircase had rails. He could hoist himself with his arms up the steps to the ground floor, where he would have a signal.
On his knees, Majahar shuffled over to and then up the staircase, catching himself with his hands the half-dozen times he lost his balance. He didn't so much push open the door out of the stairwell as he fell into it, but he held onto the push-bar with his hands and so even though he was leaning rather far forwards and his eyes saw nothing but the floor, he did not end up falling down. Pushing the door all the way open and leaning his back against it, he fished his phone from its place in his right-hand pocket and turned it on, then called his house.
Beeep. Service is not
He pulled the phone away from his ear. No bars. Why?
Suddenly a man was pulling him towards the front door. He tried to resist, but it was futile. The man dragged him outside and levered him into the back of a flatbed truck. There were several others there, and then another man was being raised into the truck and Majahar was pushed further inwards, ending up squished between the new man and a teenage boy.
Well… if he was outside…
He raised the phone from his side. No bars. Da—
The boy grabbed the phone from him and stuffed it in a pocket. Majahar ineffectually reached out to try to take the phone out of the boy's pocket, and as he did so the boy smashed an uppercut into his face and started rifling through Majahar's clothes.
No longer would a knowledgeable person have described Majahar as being in shock – the fist had knocked him out completely.
He had never been knocked out before. Then again, many others had never died before.
March 20, 55 PI, 6:20 PM, Route 101, San Francisco
Madeleine and Eva were twenty minutes out of SFO when the bombs hit.
Whether it was luck or fate, their car was just far enough from the overpass that they were able to brake in response to its sudden change from normalcy to on-fire-turned-to-rubble-fallen-down.
The two women stared at their narrowly-avoided doom, stunned, but their reactions differed. Where Madeleine sat frozen, Eva pulled something closely resembling a radio out of her hand, shoved it into her pocket, then materialized a headset over her ears and plugged the dangling cord into the radio.
Madeleine had known that Eva had an Engine, but she had never gotten to see her use it – Eva had synced with it about a year into their late separation. As she looked on, a visor emerged over Eva's eyes and the younger of the sisters reached up to tap the left earpiece of the headset.
"Eva. I'm two… four, I'm four minutes south of downtown, where do you want me?"
Madeleine wasn't used to being the helpless one. She'd always looked out for her younger sister. But here she was, paralyzed and staring as Eva just… calmly reacted.
Presumably Eva got a response from whoever she was talking to, because she nodded slightly and turned to Madeleine. "Maddie, I've got to go. But, I told them four minutes, so, I'll drop you at my place first, okay? Or if it's not safe, we'll figure something out. Yeah?"
The words didn't really help with Madeleine's confusion, but she managed a stutter. "Uh, um, o-okay?"
The next thing she knew Eva had a jetpack and they were in the air, leaving the car behind, and she got a stunning view of the jewel of the West Coast.
It looked like God had smote it from on high. Of course, it was worse than that.
March 21, 55 PI, 7:00 AM, The Lodge, Canberra
It was a beautiful morning when General Alexander Rushfield arrived at the PM's official residence. The grass was green, the sun was out, and the carefully-manicured setting was undeniably… nice. He didn't give a goddamn, because he had never been so afraid as he was on that morning.
The news… the general clenched his fists for what must have been the thousandth time since the reports started coming in yesterday, nails biting into his palms. Thinking could wait until after the cabinet meeting.
It didn't take five minutes to get into the room where the PM and the various lesser ministers were gathered – education, health, social services, and small businesses were conspicuously absent. That was partially at the general's request. Those areas would need to get used to being sidelined for a while.
He'd had everyone who was here spend part of last night on reading over a quick summary of what was going on. It had basically read, "alien Nazis from Higgs sites have too many tanks too many planes too many guns too many bombs fight or die," complete with images from the few satellites they had access to.
That wasn't what he was here to talk about. Not yet.
So instead of opening with the aliens, he opened by throwing a folder marked "Top Secret" onto the table and enunciating very, very carefully.
"The goddamn Chinese are going to make us lose India and everything west of it."
Oh, the looks he got. Disbelief, confusion… well, he supposed, he was the only military man in the room. Still…
"They're pulling everything from everywhere and they're sending it to their own borders. All those units attached to the UN? They're gonna be gone. To protect some fucking mountain ranges four times further away from the closest Higgs. They're gonna let everything else burn, and we're gonna be completely fucked when they do, because that" he pointed at a picture from last night's summary, "is a main battle tank with four guns, each twice as big as anything we have, and it's got armor eight times as thick as ours. And there're more of them."
The silence did not abate during the pause he took, but for some stuttering from agriculture, so he continued. "You know how the allies won World War Two? They bought enough time to build enough shit to beat the Germans. That is exactly what we are going to be trying to do here, folks, and if we want to have anything resembling a hope that means we need to keep India. Because there's too many fucking Indians for us to be able to afford losing them all. And China is going to fuck them over."
He paused again, and that time, the PM recovered.
"So what the bloody hell do we do about it?"
Rushfield smiled. It was not a happy thing, it was not a warm thing. It was dark and it was cold. Then he shoved his right index finger at the folder on the table.
"I took the liberty of drafting this between ten last night, when I got the news about the Chinese, and four this morning. There's a copy for each of you in there. Take one. And before you ask, I do believe it is possible to pull off."
Everyone took a copy, and one by one jaws either dropped or clenched, fists went slack or tightened, and eventually the PM brought his eyes up to meet Rushfield's.
"There's no other way? No time for diplomacy?"
"Land speed estimates give us six hours to have the PLA's orders countermanded before the troops get so far out of position that they won't be able to get back in time. We can abort this thing at any moment right up until they're in the fucking building. Call up the Chinese and try to talk some sense into them if you want, but approve this right now."
The PM shook his head and looked down at the table.
"And you're sure that the potential consequences…?"
It did not need to be stated that China was a nuclear power.
"Aliens certainly don't seem interested in our continued existence. If it doesn't work, we're dead anyway."
There was a moment of silence in the room.
"Do it."
He didn't fear for his life. But then, he was dying anyway. The others weren't… yet. And that, that filled him with terror.
March 21, 55 PI, 7:15 AM, RAAF Darwin Base, Darwin
Lieutenant Katie West was a loyal, patriotic Australian. She was also illegal under international law – an engine-user under military authority. When she received her orders the morning of March 21, she read them carefully and then stored them in her engine.
Some soldiers may be loyal and patriotic yet steadfastly refuse to carry out orders on the grounds of morality, honor, or common sense. In 1983 CE, one such man named Stanislav Petrov judged a glitch in the Soviet nuclear early warning system to be what it was – a glitch – rather than the launch of five missiles by the USA. His actions may or may not have saved the world, but regardless of possible fates he is worthy of respect for his cool head and willingness to ignore orders to preserve the world as we know it.
Lieutenant Katie West was not such a person, and when she received orders detailing that she was to commit an act that would certainly provoke nuclear war if she was discovered, she did not question them.
1) Proceed immediately to airspace between Uralsk and New Delphi,
2) Intercept Alien bombing aircraft,
3) Capture Alien plasma device,
4) Proceed to airspace 160km above Beijing,
5) At maximum speed, perform vertical descent to deliver plasma device to the Zhongnanhai, General Secretary's wing.
6) Abort mission only on receipt of code Alpha-Delta-Tango-Five-Niner.
Gen. Alexander Rushfield, ADF
Terror leads the greatest of men to the poorest of choices. Let us give thanks that this madness never bore the fruit it was intended to, for if it had, we would surely have all perished.
March 21, 55 PI, 6:35 PM, Fire Department Station 13, San Francisco
Well, Eva thought, it could be worse, right? The fire chief could be dead too.
Alongside the mayor, the police chief, their immediate successors, and everyone else they had tried to contact.
Eva liked her job, most of the time. As an engine-user she really, truly was able to help people. Generators were breaking down? She could fix that. Building was on fire? She had a firehose and a reservoir in her personal hammerspace. Car crash? She could fly people to the hospital far faster than any medevac.
But right now, it felt like the world was ending, and it didn't matter that Maddie had just gotten into town, she had had to leave her at the house and try to salvage… something; anything, really, from the hell on earth that her city had been turned into. She didn't regret that she was there and doing so, but…
Oh, who was she even making excuses to? She was completely overwhelmed, because for every person she pulled out of the disaster zone it seemed like she left twenty behind.
Her reservoir refilled, she exited the fire station and took off towards downtown for a fourth rescue mission. She hadn't made it a hundred meters when an inhuman screeching noise prompted her to search for its source.
She found it, and she understood what had happened to her city, because the screeching noise was the sound of aircraft moving very, very quickly and bombing San Francisco's harbors into rubble.
That… was catastrophic. But, Eva knew, it could get even worse. Those planes had already come twice, and that meant they would be back again. If they weren't stopped, it wouldn't matter how many people were pulled out of downtown.
They'd all just die to the bombs a little later rather than immediately.
So Eva tapped the button on her headset, and the words she spoke into it were words of war.
Really, though, was it war if one side could do nothing but accept their inevitable deaths?
March 20, 55 PI, 5:00 PM, Refugee Camp, Outskirts of New Delphi
Majahar Jura awoke to the sound of gunfire. He had never heard a gunshot before, but he couldn't imagine anything else that would make the noises that his ears informed him of. He groggily rubbed his eyes, disregarding any fear for his life – him, be murdered? What a ridiculous thought, he had never even been the victim of a crime. He fumbled for his phone, but it wasn't there, so he allowed himself to lay back down on what he now realized was… a cot. In a tent.
A tent with five other identical cots and five other non-identical people in it. And none of them looked particularly respectable.
Majahar was halfway through deciding that he would have words with someone over the condition of his lodging when he was interrupted by a stream of lead turning most of the tent into swiss cheese and four of the five other people into little chunks of flesh.
Majahar Jura, VP of Sales at Energy Now Corporation, could do nothing but gape at the display of brutality in front of him.
A moment later, that nonreaction saved his life when the space on the side of his cot that had not been occupied by bullets was also flooded with the zooming pinpoints of death.
Something outside the tent exploded, or at least he was pretty sure that that had been an explosion, and then he was flying. In the air, held aloft by a suit of armor with a jetpack on it.
And it was speaking to him.
Unable to process what was going on, Majahar turned his gaze away from the suit of armor and instead bore witness to a giant plane streaking in and figures dropping out of it. Little pricks of light began to originate from the figures, and a much larger shape fell from the plane before the aircraft executed a one-eighty and shot away from the city. A professional soldier would have told Majahar that he had just witnessed a drop of paratroops complete with a tank. Someone from the future would have told him that he had just become a primary source for the events of the Battle of New Delphi. His instincts told him nothing more than to run, because even though Majahar Jura had no experience with violence, the millions of years of human evolution that had come before him had infused his body with certain instincts.
He couldn't run, of course, being held aloft as he was. But when the suit of armor wheeled about and shot off in the direction of his house, he was extremely relieved, if a little puzzled.
Had he told the figure where to go?
Running didn't work for anyone anyways. The land speed of a human being was inferior.
March 21, 55 PI, 7:45 PM, The Front Line, San Francisco
It was much, much worse than Eva had thought back when she had first broadcast her sighting of the airplanes. She – they – hadn't known that until about ten minutes ago, when one of her fellow engine-holders had opened his mic to ask if anyone else could see all the trucks that were coming in down Route One.
The trucks hadn't been trucks. So they had fought, tried to hold them off.
Then more of them had emerged from beneath the fucking Bay and rolled right into downtown.
San Francisco was doomed, and nobody was going to be able to do a goddamn thing about it. SFO had been bombed in the first run; the harbors in the second.
Nobody without an engine was going to live through the night. Some of those with engines had already died.
So they were going to run. Run away, live to fight another day.
And Eva wasn't about to leave alone.
March 21, 55 PI, 7:48 PM, Eva's House, San Francisco
A figure in armor smashed through the roof. Madeleine flinched, then relaxed when Eva spoke.
"Maddie, quick! We've got to get out of here! We'll go to Hawaii, I'm faster than them."
"What? Who? What's going on Eva?"
Eva floated down to stand in front of Madeleine, and interlaced their hands, neither of them paying any attention to the fact that Eva's were gauntleted. "They're killing everybody and we can't stop them. But I can get us both out; I just need to go empty the gas station down the block first. C'mon, quick!"
Madeleine nodded, and they dashed out the front door. Eva was… so strong. She'd been there for Eva, and now Eva was there for her. She had no idea how bad the situation was, but Eva had taken that overpass in stride. They'd be okay, she told herself.
They'd be okay.
They'd be okay.
Madeleine repeated it over and over in her head, down the sidewalk, up to the pump, while she was waiting for Eva to be done.
It was a distraction from the fears that reality tried to inflict on her mind, and it shattered when the grocery store across the street collapsed into a million pieces around a behemoth of alien technology.
In its place came terror, and only Eva's flying tackle kept her from being killed instantly.
They were not going to be okay.
Because Eva's flying tackle had saved Madeleine… but not Eva.
Madeleine's little sister was dead.
Eva had given her life for her big sister, and now Maddie was going to die too.
But – Eva's engine was lying on the ground.
Time slowed down. Whether it was the sudden isolation or the shock of her sister's death Madeleine had no idea, but suddenly she was calmer than she had been at any point in the past several months. Madeleine had one chance to get out of here. If she was compatible with the engine, then she could just fly away. Eva would not have died in vain. And, a corner of her brain whispered, you could avenge her death.
The machine gun on the tank, that vile, evil tank, rotated towards her.
She threw herself at the tiny white sphere, at her salvation, at her vengeance.
The silent storm of metal that erupted from the gun turned her into a cloud of blood and gore before she even got halfway to the object that would soon be known as a Valkyrie Core.
They weren't called that because their bearers were powerful, although that was a factor. They were called that because everything they touched seemed to die violently, whether friend or foe.
March 21, 55 PI, 5:17 PM, Jura Household, New Delhi
Majahar had no idea what was going on. He couldn't understand why the… the flying suit of armor was taking him to his house, and he couldn't seem to get himself to ask.
In fact, all he could seem to do was cast his eyes about and take in the devastation around him.
He reached for his phone again. He'd heard about the supposed definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results – and he had always disdained people who committed such fallacies. He was aware that that wasn't the whole quote, but… he had always felt that there was a great deal of truth to it, nonetheless. And what… what did that make him, at that moment?
His musings were interrupted when he realized that his house had come into view, and he recoiled as much as he could (the armor's grip on him was fairly restrictive) at the sight.
It was ash and rubble. Why was it ash and rubble!?
The figure came to a landing where the west wing had previously stood. It sat down, and it held him close to its chest. He couldn't have escaped its grip if he had had the will to try – which, of course, he did not.
Something seemed wrong with the suit of armor, Majahar thought. He squinted hard and gradually came to see that it was missing a leg.
It was also breathing heavily.
And… bleeding.
Where was the blood coming from? It was a… machine… thing.
The armor began to dissolve. In its place, skin and fabric came into view.
A voice entered his ear. It was choked and the words it spoke were broken apart by coughs. "Our… son… is dead. I… am d–dead. You are alive, Majahar. Live. Live."
Majahar Jura sat in the arms of his wife as she expired atop the pile of debris that had been his house.
My son is dead, he thought.
My wife is dead.
My wallet is gone.
My phone is gone.
My house is gone.
And I can't fucking get myself to stand up.
His wife had wanted him to live.
Majahar Jura sat there, amidst the ruins, and for the first time since his long-forgotten early childhood, he cried a river of tears. He giggled in short, choking bursts.
He had been the vice president of sales at Energy Now Corporation not two days ago.
This was so unfair! He was successful he was rich he was powerful WHY WAS HIS HOUSE A PILE OF SMOKING RUBBLE?
When the small white sphere fell from his wife's dead body into the mess of nooks and crannies formed by the remains of his house, he didn't see it happen, nor did he hear the noise it made as it bounced off of wood and metal on its way down. In fact, Majahar Jura didn't really do anything at all for a while. And when that while was over, he started up another while of doing nothing.
He was about a third of the way into the third while when an AG paratrooper detected him and gave him a very, very long while to be very, very dead for.
He would not be lonely. There was going to be plenty of company in the afterlife. Some would be friendly and optimistic. Others, like him, would have been broken by the Antagonists.
What you have read contains merely a fraction of the tragedies that played out on March 20 and March 21 of 55 Post-Impact. If, when we have the Antagonists at our mercy, they suddenly weep and cry and beg for their lives, we will remember their actions and we will cut them down without hesitation and without second thoughts, just as they have done to us. But one story that you have heard has yet to be concluded, and those dark days were not without some measure of human triumph, as little-known and poorly understood as it was at the time.
On March 21, 55 PI, Lieutenant Katie West of the ADF flew into a titanic mass of AG fighters and bombers, blew up half of them, and escaped with a plasma munition.
Her original orders had been to use that munition to assassinate the majority of the high-ranking members of the Communist Party of China. This was intended to enable members of the Party CMC, the body in charge of the PLA, to take over the government. They would then have committed China's military to the protection of India and its neighbor nation-states, reversing the decision made a mere ten or so hours earlier. Fortunately, cooler heads quickly prevailed and Katie's original orders were abrogated only an hour and a half into her mission. Instead, she was to use the plasma bomb in an assault on Uralsk Breach.
The captured plasma weapon was virtually irrelevant. Ji Li, whose tale you have heard and who died a day earlier, could have foreseen Katie's fate with ease: Katie died without inflicting any damage on the breach. But no one at all could have anticipated that the AG fighters and bombers Katie destroyed had been headed for UN GHQ in Seoul, nor could anyone have known that the aircraft she did not destroy had been aimed for the Secretariat Building in New Delphi.
It has been theorized that the AGs had tapped into human comms and determined the identities of who they thought to be humanity's decision-makers. Certainly March 21 was a coordinated strike against human leadership. In one fell swoop, all five founding nations of the UN lost their respective heads of state and the majority of their high officials.
And in one fell swoop, the UN rose to power as a powerful, unifying, global government.
It was largely an act of tyranny. It would also prove to have been the salvation of the human race.
Okay, so, there's a whole ton of reasons this didn't come out like... a while ago. And I have a bunch of rambling stuff in my word doc, so lets spoiler that and put it here... some of it is pretty outdated, if still true, because I wrote the first like 1.5k of this thing like three weeks ago.
God timezones are such a PAIN for these timestamps. Really I just said "screw it" and stopped worrying about it lol…
Wow, when you think about it Australia is probably the least corrupt of the UN founding nations. That's kinda… bad.
Sorry to everyone who didn't get to read this a week a few weeks before now, as I've been I was mumbling to myself I "got caught up in the Teh-empest." AKA Tempest, by Kaiserklee over on FF.net. This is a shameless plug for that because frankly it's god *censored* incredible. A masterpiece. I could gush all day.
Other stuff...
Zhongnanhai – seat of PRC govt
When I wrote Vae I criticized myself for not making Rushfield's big exposition speech thing a conversation… I didn't intend to revisit that here but it happened and it really does work better this way lol.
My thoughts atm:
Some of Mors is a little rough. The Rushfield / Katie stuff in particular I don't like as much as the rest, except for how Katie's stuff ends -- I really liked being able to cover the UN's rise to power. Part of that was that I originally intended to actually go through with the coup in China, and then... honestly it was breaking my own SoD, so I scrapped it and wrote what's here. Also the last Madeleine scene is a little rough and thats because I wrote part of it three weeks ago. Idk if it'll end up being changed or not. Probably not?
It's worth noting that every named character in the omake (except for the UN energy commissioner, who I forgot to kill) explicitly dies except rushfield, who is said to be "dying anyway."
It's also worth noting that Mors Innocentia is intended to be either canon or extremely close to it. I've followed every WoG I could find and the omake is literally written to cover a part of canon's implied history.
Unfortunately, that meant NO ANNA.
Right now I'm seriously having withdrawal because I wrote this 7.1k thing, and I mean why do you think I'm here? It's because Anna is an incredible character and she's paired with a great quest. But if you replace Anna with, well, no Anna, things get kinda... Anna-less. @Avalanche, I'm gonna need that update from you, because, like, withdrawal kinda sucks. A lot.
There could be one more scene. I... Oh yeah, there could totally be one more scene, because I didn't write the fucking epilogue. I used a scene as an ending scene. Hm. We'll see if it happens or not. Probably shouldn't, what with the tone-change I used at the last scene.
It's cool. I felt there was only one big problem, and that is that by WoG, after the Impact the world experienced a worldwide nuclear exchange, triggered by the activation of deadman's switch systems. That meant the annihilation of majorities of many populations and extreme change in many government structures. SF or LA or wherever would be, by default, very different than how they are today on account of being wrecked by nukes decades ago. The world you've portrayed feels very much like 'modern/near-future world invaded by aliens', in its own realistic way. It fails to feel like 'post-apocalyptic world where humanity spent several decades barely scraping by and has only recently recovered... now invaded by aliens'. Similarly, I feel the attitude to a mission that might trigger a nuclear war would be very different in a post-nuclear-war environment.
Don't get me wrong, I quite liked the piece. It just seems to miss a few implications.
