Later that evening, Trump addressed the nation from the oval office. It was a rather late address, due to needing to delay it in order for the initial airstrikes to proceed uncontested. He could have held the address earlier, but General Mattis had convinced him that giving a nuclear power advance warning would be a terrible idea.After the traditional opening statement, Trump said, “Due to the unprovoked and cowardly terrorist attack on our allies in South Korea perpetrated by the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un, I approved an immediate armed retaliation consisting of a huge bombing mission to remove their nuclear capability. As of thirty minutes ago, North Korea is no longer a nuclear power.” He gave the camera in front of him a smug smile, thinking it would reassure the citizens that there would be no chance of a nuclear war.After that, he continued his address, vilifying North Korea and branding them terrorists. He swore that he would chase the perpetrators responsible for the
The entire Edenian fleet came to a halt a couple hundred miles southeast of Taiwan and all of the ships came to general quarters. Red lights flashed in every compartment and passageway as an alert message sounded on repeat for every Poseidon sailor to go belowdecks and prepare for vertical launches.Less than two minutes later, the alert message ceased as all departments in the fleet reported ready, leaving only the flashing lights. Following that, the launch tubes of the Vertical Launch Systems on the Thor class missile cruisers opened their top hatches, revealing row after row of forbidden pencils.Another automated announcement rang out from the loudspeakers. “VLS firing in three... two... one.”“Firing.”With a thud, the waterline of all the missile boats raised by two feet from the compressed gas pushing tens of cruise missiles out of each ship. Then, with a mighty roar, the rocket engines on each missile ignited and guidance fins activated, shifting the missiles from vertical to
Although wars had always been unpredictable, and there were always a chance of things going wrong—Just ask the Australians, who had managed to lose more than one “war” against large flightless birds—the situation between China and Taiwan had gone completely counter to everyone’s expectations thanks to the overwhelming destruction that Eden had laid upon China. And not only that, it had happened so suddenly that observers didn’t even have a chance to figure out what was going on before it, well, went on.Soon after the barrage ended, a video someone had managed to capture of the thousands of cruise missiles passing over Taiwan appeared online. It didn’t stir up much discussion or make any waves at first, but as time went on it began gaining traction. Especially after the thousands of people that witnessed the giant explosions, or the passing ocean wave, reported what they had seen. In particular, one Taiwanese fisherman who had been in his boat attempting to flee the oncoming chaos had
An hour after Nova started her attack on the Chinese internet, the government shut it down. Not only did they hit their “kill switch”, they even went so far as to physically cut the cables that connected their data centers.Despite all of the havoc she had caused, Nova didn’t attempt to go after the civilian infrastructure systems. She knew it would cause massive casualties if she disabled the power grid, transportation system, emergency services, utilities, or even the financial market. Though there was some collateral damage done to the marketplace, as a system freeze was still costly, it was as limited as she could manage to make it.So even though the cyberattack was definitely savage, it was specifically aimed at the Chinese government and normal people basically only had the minor inconvenience that any interruption of their internet service would cause.Thus, Nova had singlehandedly brought down a country that boasted the world’s second largest economy, the highest population,
“Will the falling satellites hit anything on their way down?” President Zi asked once he had calmed down after his outburst. “Based on their trajectory,” the man opened his laptop and typed furiously, bringing up an orbital model of the satellites in orbit from the confidential servers at the ITU, “they’re headed directly for some American and Russian satellites.” He turned the laptop around and showed the labeled orbital map to the president. “That assumes that the Americans and Russians don’t adjust their satellites to avoid the collision. “How long until the earliest collision?” the president followed up. “An hour or so, sir. Are you going to inform them so they can avoid it?” “Why would I do that?” Zi Jinping chuckled. “We can use it to our benefit,” he finished with a sinister smile on his face. All of his anger had dissipated when he realized that he didn’t have to do anything and the Edenians would walk into a trap on their own. “What benefit, sir?” asked the minister. “Ho
Still floating above the world, watching the satellites fall, Aron turned to Nova and said, “Activate the replacement protocol.”{Are you sure, sir?}“Yes. It’s time for Vladimir to be put into place.”......Somewhere in Ukraine, near the Russian border.Vladimir had been operating as part of the forward forces, clearing the way for Russia’s troops to march on Kyiv. His orders from Russia were clear: sabotage whatever needed to be sabotaged and assassinate whoever needed to be killed to ensure that the Russian troops would have an easy time in their “special military operation.”He was in an outhouse, standing over the bloody corpse of his latest target, a militia commander of a hastily built force consisting of three squads of infantry with a few RPGs and a pile of explosives. The commander wouldn’t have had to die except that he woke up and stumbled out to the latrine in the middle of the night and happened to catch Vladimir in the act of setting demolition charges to take out the
Velyka Doblon, Ukraine, November 3, 2017.A gentle snow was falling on the small village of Velyka Doblon. The winter crops lay dormant under the white blanket that Mother Nature had pulled up to cover the sleepy town and its residents were still yet to wake up for the day. Their livestock was still slumbering in their sheds, dogs and cats lay near warm fireplaces inside the houses, and the roosters were just beginning to stir in preparation for their daily jobs of yelling at the sun and chasing the hens. Everything was the same as the day before, and the day before that, and the people living there thought things would remain the same tomorrow, and all of the tomorrows to come. They were simple folk, and, being far away from the hustle and bustle of city life, they thought they would remain safe from the conflict on the border with Russia.Today, they would learn that their thinking was wrong.The villagers were awoken, not by the sound of roosters, but of barking dogs and boots cru
The moment the first Chinese satellite crashed into another, America invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty and called for an immediate emergency meeting. At that meeting, they planned to push for using Article 5 to declare Eden a belligerent nation that attacked a NATO member, thus allowing them to invade without an issue. At the meeting, the American representative presented a video recording of their interrogation of the recently captured Kim Jong-Un, in which he denied responsibility for the initial round of bombardment that targeted Seoul and blamed the entire thing on Eden. Once they saw that, the invocation of Article 5 was unanimously approved, and NATO began working on an invasion plan. But there was still work to be done on the home front for both America and Russia. “I’m sure most of you are already aware that something’s wrong with many of the things we’ve become reliant on,” Trump said in a speech after being briefed on the result of the NATO meeting. “Things like air tra