West Indies Federation
Seawell Military Airfield, Barbados
October 18th, 1939
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Kemar Alleyne grunted as he rolled out of bed, raid sirens blazing.
The lieutenant of the West Indies Air Command -
still a weird title to hold - wasn't really sure what to think of Earth's newest alien neighbours. The various religious preachers had evidently made up their collective minds that it was a sign of the rapture. Though he was at least nominally Anglican and went to church sometimes with his old ma, he wasn't sold it was divine retribution. Whatever they were, they currently were attacking the Federation's shipping, so it was now his job to try and protect their exports. As to the Federation itself, having been pushed by a global movement towards independence and international unionism the Caribbean isles had, swiftly after securing independence from the UK in the late 20s, moved to form a federation of the islands. Though discussion of minutiae extending the official formation for some time, particularly with concerns over individual financial contributions for member states and where precisely to hold the capital, amongst others, the treaty had finally been ratified on the 1st of January, 1934. The capital ended up on a rotational basis through each island, (absolute lunacy if you asked him) whilst the Houses of Parliament had permanent residence in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. The electoral system was problematic too, as if it was on a per-population ratio Jamaica could hold an absolute majority just through their own seats as just over half of the Federation's populace lived there.
Though a scaled system was eventually introduced, it was still contentious, and debates over external trade policy still raged both in the streets and across the floor. Kemar was no astute political savant, but he'd felt that the internal feudalism and pissing contests were going to break the Federation before it had a chance to bloom. Perhaps it would have scattered apart, if not for an external pressure forced upon the Federation to create an 'us vs. them' mentality, through by all things an extradimensional war.
Turns out the key to political unity is external war. Who knew?
Regardless, two months prior the first alien storms had been reported, and now he was part of a four-person rapid-response squadron as the lead pilot in his flight of two planes. The goal of this squadron was to intercept enemy air attacks on convoy before the cargo ships could be sunk. Local morale was fluctuating, primarily dependent on convoys bringing in manufactured goods to keep some level of quality in the infrastructure as local manufacturing industry was negligible. As such, the civilians noticed when water or electricity went out because of lack of maintenance, and because they then would bitch to their elected officials, convoy protection was now the nascent Air Command's first priority. There were hardly any attacks on the nominal mainland, perhaps due to an alien strategy of simply isolating the islands, but regardless any shipping carrying agricultural produce outside to their main trade partners of the USA, Canada and the UK or inbound trade had significant enemy attention. Overtures to South American states were summarily rebuffed, despite the evident geographic convenience to trade there. So the WIF would live or die on their naval trade routes.
Such is why he was rolling out of bed at
too-early-o'clock in the fucking morning, to respond to another attack reported. Freighters inbound from the UK carrying replacement parts and whole hulls of the Hawker Hurricanes MkI's that were the current aircraft of favour in the WIAC had last reported an unnatural storm moving close to their position off the eastern shores of Barbados, and so it was up to his squadron to protect the shipping and escort it in to the harbour, before it could be sunk.
His aircraft had been serviced from his patrol the afternoon before. In his head, she was nicknamed
'Sunburn' and he swore that no one would ever find out. Reaching his plane after the extremely short briefing, he scrambled inside and started his preflight checks, before a voice came over his headset.
"Osprey, you dropsy in there or nah? Bet you a bottle of rum I get more bogeys than you do."
He snorted. His wingman always knew how to release tension.
"Dolphin, your ass is jauntin to lose all your money. Deal, if you make it Mount Gay."
A bottle of rum? They'll never know what hit them.
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@open_sketchbook finally got around to write up that omake I've been harping about since the other thread. Would this go in apocrypha or is it good enough for sidestory canon?
Was planning on writing up the combat but suddenly discovered I suck at writing 3D combat so that'll be another day. Ended up being an alt-history infodump, but whatever. Criticism welcome.
Sorry about doubleposting. I can delete the roll post I did to check the roller.
And is that a real rum, you ask? Absolutely it is
Mount Gay Rum
Edit: fixed a redundancy. And I'd really appreciate text feedback. Not to sound desperate, but, well, please?
