One by one, satellites were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of sharp shrapnel bits flew chaotically through the space in orbit, furthering the mess with each satellite destroyed. The satellites broke apart into large chunks, and those chunks impacted each other, knocking off smaller and smaller fragments until they homogenized into a single swarm of tiny shrapnel moving around the planet at orbital velocity, completely uncontrolled.The destruction in orbit continued apace, finally creating a deadly blanket that covered the entire planet. The promise of space had, at least temporarily, been denied to the citizens on Earth’s surface.It was even visible to citizens, as anywhere night fell, a gorgeous meteor shower lit up the night sky. And the day seemed dim as the sun’s rays were scattered by the mostly metallic shrapnel speeding unimpeded around the planet. The equatorial areas of Earth, in particular, seemed especially gloomy and dim, a comparison only made more obvious by the norm
On the warfront in the Pacific Ocean, the battle had come to a stalemate. The coalition forces had stalled in their advance, shocked both by the effective missile defense put up by the Edenian fleet and the broadcast of the EV Heidrek crippling the Carl Vinson carrier group.The fleets that had come on strong and in high spirits were now at a complete loss. They had been ordered to sink all Edenian vessels and attack the mainland, disgorging thousands of troops from amphibious landers under the protection of naval missiles and coalition airstrikes. And due to the complicated situation in their chain of command, they had effectively become a complete nonissue for the time it took their leadership to discuss a countermeasure, all while under the added stress of facing the overwhelming Edenian ships.The stalemate didn’t last long, though, as new orders came down from high command. The new order was to retreat to a rally point and launch a retaliatory missile strike against Eden’s satell
While the coalition fleet was headed toward their launch coordinates, a secret meeting of eight global leaders was taking place via conference call. They were discussing a crucial matter that would change the global landscape, both literally and figuratively.“So you want to send everyone’s entire nuclear arsenal to deal with Eden? You know you’re risking nuclear winter by doing that. Plus, my science advisor says it’ll affect the tides and weather forever if we wipe out an island chain the total size of Australia. Besides, did you forget that just Russia and the US alone have more than enough nukes to use on them?” Putin asked, adjusting the reading glasses he had added to his wardrobe a few weeks earlier.“That won’t be a problem,” Trump replied. “We think they’ll take out more than 70% of anything we send them, if not more. And even if a third of our nukes get through, we can always activate the kill switch on some of them. Besides, even if we don’t kill most of what slips through,
The moment the conference call ended, work began on drafting the agreement proposed by the president of India. Since time was tight, they could only afford a few revisions to accommodate one demand from each of the leaders, making the process highly abbreviated and incredibly fast. From the end of the meeting to the agreement being signed by the ambassadors of each of the eight remaining nuclear powers.The signing itself was seen as of monumental importance, and as such, the Pakistani president’s demand had been the easiest to incorporate in the agreement. Unlike China, which wanted the technological blockade imposed by the west removed, or India, who wanted territorial concessions along the India-China border, the only thing Pakistan had requested was that the signing be held in Aiwan-i-Saddar, the house of their president. The United Kingdom wanted Brexit to be expedited and the negotiations to go in their favor, the United States wanted to place military bases in the other seven
Already knowing that the remaining satellites were currently unreliable due to all the jamming and other electronic warfare happening in orbit, the missiles had been programmed with strict courses. Thus, the accuracy should be decent enough to saturate such a large target; the total area they were aiming at was the size of Australia, after all. So the missiles were using initial position determination. The blanket of shrapnel orbiting the planet prevented most forms of celestial navigation from working, so the missiles had to rely on IPD, which was made possible by accelerometers and gyroscopes working together along with knowing the initial launch coordinates to determine where the missile isn’t, thus telling it where it is.(Ed note: See more on how missiles navigate without GPS here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ - it may seem confusing, but if you can grasp the logic, it makes more sense. Just watch it a few times and I’m sure you’ll figure it out... and if you do, p
Somewhere off the coast of Somalia, Edenian Forward Operating Base (FOB) Ganymede.The former terrorist-cum-pirate stronghold that had been repurposed into a hidden Edenian military base by Reaper Team Eight had been on high alert since the beginning of what Athena was calling the Unification War. The base’s primary purpose was to act as a “5R” base, or fiver for short. The five Rs were rally, resupply, rest, recuperate, and reinforce. But it was just as well-armed as any other Edenian installation, whether at home or abroad, thanks to atomic printers.The base was equipped with everything an entire ARES division could possibly need. Weapons, uniforms, shelf-stable meals, medical pods, and so on were hidden deep in underwater warehouse complexes the size of city blocks that were maintained by maintenance bots. After all, while atomic printers were capable of incredibly rapid printing, it wasn’t nearly as fast as simply handing something that had already been printed to someone that ne
As the retaliation strike was underway, huge troop movements were taking place back in Avalon Island and on each of the Edenian carriers in the fleet. The Aeolus Air Force had mobilized its entire transport fleet and was even printing more; massive ET-14 Argo transport jets, based on the Antonov An 126 airframe, were rolling out of the hangar one after another. They only stopped to load full complements of troops in each jet.After the jets were loaded, they immediately took off and headed toward the carriers in the distance, where they landed, disgorged their troops, and immediately returned to Avalon Island to pick up another load.At the same time, amphibious landing craft were also loading up and bringing full complements of troops to the enormous aircraft carriers. The fleet was still relatively close to Eden, at only roughly 500 kilometers away, so the trip was short enough that the landing craft were heavily overloaded for the trip.As the troops were being transported, a major
EV Beowulf, somewhere high above the Pacific Ocean.To the sailors crewing the enormous vessel, everything had returned to normal and it was no different to them than any other day. Whether on the surface of the sea or flying in the stratosphere made no difference to them. If anything, it was perhaps even more relaxed as there were no exterior operations while at altitude, so they were restricted to the areas inside the ship to perform their duties.Exterior duties, while flying, had been delegated to maintenance bots that were controlled by a subroutine of the AI, Beowulf.For the passengers, on the other hand, things were a bit more exciting. Once they had been loaded into their assigned drop vehicles, they had logged into VR and were conducting training missions in environments that simulated the areas they would soon be deployed to. Athena didn’t request a 100% accurate simulation, as that would be rather processor-intense, but for the simulated environments to be accurate while t