The captain’s gig carrying Admiral McConnel reached the USS Lake Champlain and the admiral wasted no time in boarding the ship.“Action plan?” he asked the moment he reached the bridge.“We managed to get twenty jets in the air and have three missile cruisers plus whatever’s already armed on the Carl Vinson. That might convince them to cease their attack, but I doubt it. The best we can hope for is that it distracts them long enough to stage a rescue mission and pick up the crew of the Vinson and retreat. Absolute best case scenario, we might cause some damage, though I doubt it. Did you see what happened to our missile swarm? That was thousands of missiles all swatted out of the sky, so our launchers probably won’t even chip the paint on the fleet in front of us,” the captain reported.“Are you telling me that an entire carrier strike group is helpless against a frigate!? Just. One FRIGATE!?” the admiral spat, his face purpling in rage. “Our navy, the same navy that keeps the entire
“How much longer until the deadline?” the captain of the Heidrek asked as he gazed at the incoming attack.“Fifteen seconds, sir,” the comms officer replied.“If they don’t surrender by the—”The captain was interrupted by his comms officer. “Signal from the flag, sir. Admiral Gutierrez sends, ‘sink the USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group. God speed and good hunting, gentlemen.’”“Well, let’s not disappoint the admiral, shall we? Heidrek, please clean my sky,” the captain ordered.{Aye, sir. Sky cleaning in progress,} the ship’s AI replied, then sounded a brief maneuvering alert. {Brace for maneuvers in 3... 2... 1. Maneuvering.}The Heidrek rotated in place on the ocean like a spinning top, allowing her to bring both her fore and aft metalstorms to bear on the incoming jets and ordnance. While there were only two of them, compared to the hundreds of air defense options in the much bigger Edenian reaction fleet, they were also being targeted by far fewer attackers.In a matter of sec
Since Nova wanted to hide her repair of the Edenian internet and its reconnection to the rest of the world, she had thought up a devious idea. {Sir, how about we show the coalition forces exactly how we took out the Carl Vinson strike group?} she said with a sinister grin on her face.Aron, who was sitting in the virtual command center with Athena, Poseidon, Aeolus, Nova, and the human leaders of the ARES branches under them, thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you think it’ll work?”{Of course it will, sir,} Nova confidently replied.“Then let’s do it. Put up the live feed on all of the screens in their ships.”Soon, every monitor aboard every vessel in the coalition fleet showed the scene of the EV Heidrek singlehandedly taking down an entire carrier strike group. From the first hulk smashers that impacted the Carl Vinson all the way to the final round of widowmakers that put paid to the American flanking attempt. Then the feed cut off. The entire thing had been presented raw and
President Trump quickly collected himself; he couldn’t possibly allow a subordinate to see him as anything less than perfect, after all.He put aside the issue of Admiral McConnel for the moment and would deal with the intelligence failure first. Soon, the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats entered the Oval Office alongside the Secretary of Defense, General Mattis.Trump slammed both of his hands on the resolute desk and stood up, leaning over the surface of the historied piece of furniture. “How the fuck did you manage to fail this hard? I mean, really, how fucking dumb do you have to be to not notice a ship that’s a kilometer and a half long!? And there’s even TEN OF THEM!” he screamed. The man in front of him was absolutely useless... no, he was beyond useless. Everyone around him was useless! All they ever did was fail, fail, and fail some more, leaving him to take the blame! He was furious; how dare they taint his legacy with their idiocy!He forcibly calmed himself and
The moment the final Edenian satellite reached a higher orbit, Aeolus immediately got to work.Aboard the EV Beowulf.As Eden’s flagship aircraft carrier and the first one completed, although only older in terms of minutes or hours, rather than years, the Beowulf was naturally the first to be called to duty. A swarm of activity was in progress in one of the massive internal hangers as an entire carrier air wing (CAW) was being refitted for high-altitude operations.While the E/F-14 Icarus multirole interceptor jets were capable of reaching and operating near the Karman Line, that didn’t mean that they had the necessary fuel capacity to maintain operations for long. For intercepting missiles or shortening flight times from one place to another, they would be fine. But for the upcoming operation, where they would be spending an extended period in active maneuvers, they would need to undergo some hasty modular swaps. Thus, the flight crews were moving like a hive of worker bees, each en
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,