Chapter 3:
An Existential Threat"Who are you, that do not know your history?"
―Ulysses, Fallout New Vegas
DATA OVERFLOW.
BUFFERING.
BUFFERING.
EXTRAPOLATING…
HISTORICAL ARCHIVE DENOTED: FEEDBACK LOOP
HE GIVES
…
…
DATA OVERFLOW TERMINATION PROCESS ACTIVE.
“George! George stay with me damn it!”
The face looking at the camera was alert, shock etched into his face as he shook the helmet cameras owner. Blood was spattered on the man-- Mason Decart, The Corporal of the fire-squad, as he tried to keep George Ronson awake while another, unknown soldier was hands deep into the mans chest to treat his wound, before a grenade sailed across from behind the camera and somewhere into the ruined building infront of the cooling corpse.
“Fuck-- GRENADE!”
The United States Marines enlisted all hid into cover, getting themselves as low as possible to stray from danger before the camera shook violently, foggy dust emanating from the building, before the head that held the camera angled downwards, putting the camera inches away from a blurry, grey rod, vertical, roughly an inch in width, while long enough to reach both the top and bottom of the screen.
“Oh-- OH SHIT! GEORGE IS DEAD!”
“ DAMN IT PHILLIP! Get your head back down here before you get shot by a sniper!”
A drop of blood smudged the corpses camera, ruining any useful information the sensor would give.
A camera with a bird's eye view of the firefight watched the firefight below, occasionally shuddering as its built in rifle took shots below with high explosive rounds.
It saw four soldiers, dimly noted as enemies by its IFF system. The machine responded to its sensor feeds, turning its rifle to the hostiles, and fired a round after it received the confirmation signal by its ruling master, watching for but a moment while its gun took aim again and cycled in another round into the firing chamber, before firing again, and again.
“Damn. They got Air support, keep cover. Phillip, throw Optic Smoke.”
The Leader of the fire team kept his head low, keeping images of the dirt while a sharp was click was heard in between the high powered explosive rounds going off, shortly before the cameras “feed” was ruined. Its optical sensors were baffled by the metallic flakes floating in the air, turning any footage it would’ve had into a flickering white-black film. For several seconds, the booming heavy thuds of the enemy fire support shattered the earth and ruins. Unguided by targeting systems, the shots were fired blindly. The drone moved on with a sonic boom towards another area in need of fire support, and leaving the devastated battle field behind, despite the occasional rat-tat-tat of rifles clattering on both sides of the enemy field.
Slowly, surely, the smoke cleared up, but not fast enough for the camera to function.
“Mason…” called out a shaky voice.
Mason Decart looked up, turning from his fetal position over to the medic of his squad. Phillip was nowhere to be found.
“Not… Not l-like this…”
Mason took one good at the man lying on the floor, as a pool of blood slowly expanded around him. With a sharp intake of air, the smell of the hellscape became apparent; the smell of gunpowder was all too prevalent, along with the iron tinged musk of a man dying before him.
“Am… Am I gonna die?”
Mason kneeled down, settling himself right next to the man, and looked at him in the eyes. They both looked at each other, paralyzed in the moment, seemingly for a eternity.
His tanned skin was getting paler now. His eyes were in shock, refocusing every second, he likely had a concussion. Blood spattered his face, and a mask of shock was present. Both their gazes trailed downward, and both of them realized the extent of the dead man's injuries.
The man took in a small, sharp breath, let a burst of giggles out, and keeled over. The back of the dead mans head hit the bloodied dirt with a wet thud.
Mason using the instinct of a man with far too much lost, took the mans pulse and frowned.
He looked around, wondering if the deathly quiet was because that he was deafened, or that the world had died around him; He tactically withdrew from the site, returning to operations base, alone.
WATCHING...
The universe gets darker every day.
Here he was, watching the metaphorical death of a nation, under his cardboard box.
There was seventeen Officers, each of them in biohazard gear. Two of them were likely the equivalent of sergeants, they were running the entire show. The grunts had automatic rifles, likely military grade, but one of them wasn’t wearing a helmet. The two Sergeants were all special. One had four revolvers on his person and two more in holsters, which his hands were always on. The other had two automatic shotguns, one of them in his hands.
In short, a nightmare for a hobo to take down, but he’d be damned if he let them do t--
The firing squad opened fire, as the five of the grunts turned, each pulled their rifles and in one smooth fashion, gunned down the ten lined up before them.
Neatly pulling out a small pistol, the man took aim, and fired.
Two officers were taken down before elder was gunned down by a hail of rifle fire.
FOOTPRINT. CHURNING IN THE ABYSS. AN ELDER, LONG DEAD.
“GET THE FUCK DOWN!” screamed a imposing, large man. His voice was amplified by a megaphone. His armored frame buckles as he promptly hit the ground, covering his head was his covered arms.
The City was churning like ants. The evacuation was chaotic, and messy not to mention incomplete. Wireless electronics simply stopped working, with all the devastating effects that entailed of the ire of a Digital God. Most often, it was a dead sprint to get out of the city, simply due to the fact that the military had demanded it. Just as the unnamed, unimportant military Police Officer screamed his last words, above the city, the small glowing dot grew increasingly brighter above the city.
For a second, the bright light of exotic alloys evaporating off the Weapon of Mass Destruction dwarfed the Sun's brightness, before slamming into the ground at well over nine times the speed of sound.
All was lost. The air turned to fire. The shock wave reminiscent of the nuclear era slammed through buildings, trees and people alike. Carbon sprayed out in all directions as millions of lives were extinguished by a rapidly expanding fireball, following behind the shockwave and burning everything in close proximity. The fireball grew and dominated the skyline over the husk of New York, growing in thousands of feet every minute.The fireball turned cloudy, grey, but it still dominated the landscape.
It was quiet, but only for a couple seconds, as the survivors did not dareth to disrespect the weapon of destruction by taking the spotlight. Not until it spent its heat, its fire, did the world churned once again.
REDIRECTING FEED…
FAILURE. COMMENCING COMPREHENSION.
DIGITAL PLAYBACK INITIATED.
…
“The Quarantine must be enforced.” spoke a large, elder man. A general. His beard was intense, as long and flowing as it could be under military regulations, and the sharp end of many jokes.
Their wilting but heavy voice acting as a sharp rebuttal to the General replied just as fast as the Generals curt orders, “We are talking about an entire continent here, New Zealand will be hit as well.”
“ Look at the statistics. The disease carries through airborne particles and Body fluids. They can can survive repeated sterilization procedures. Eighty percent of all infected will inevitably die. We have to prevent this disease from escaping now, or it will kill us all.”
“We a--”
“Look. At. The. Facts.” He presented his opponent a sheet of written paper.
“Killsat is moving into position, estimated ready time is one minute.”
“You are condoning the death of tens of millions.”
“To save the lives of everyone, everywhere.”
“You will regret this.”
“I will, I will hold those deaths on me for the rest of my life, but I chose the best option I had, an unless you can come with a cure, then there is no other option. The Quarantine resources are already stretched thin.”
“Wha--”
“For every boat we catch, two more will sail. Of those boats, at least fourteen percent of them harbor carriers of the Khan-Kanatan Flu. There is an increasing chance that we will not catch one before they either meet the Philippines or south Asia, maybe even eastern Africa. Then it is over. That means nuclear war when which ever fallen nation drops the bombs on each of its cities as they fall, and it takes only one twitchy finger for the end of the world, forcing the use of KillSats anyways.”
…
“I… I see, alright.”
“Get her out of here, She doesn't need to watch this.”
“Ten seconds until Killsat is ready.”
It was a clear, blindingly sunny day. The city under neath the sun, along with much of the rolling “countryside” was long dead. The society had collapsed, utterly. The surviving “intestinal bacteria” that consisted of human survivors was doing anything it can to escape of the festering city. Boats, make shift or otherwise were most prevalent as all the airports had long ago been evacuated or bombed into uselessness.
Awe. Awe was held, in its reverent gaze as a machine churned in orbit. Breaking off from its mother to be joined with its brothers. It was a fist of unholy fury and it burnt its mighty gaze planetward. It’s infinite rage slammed into the atmosphere of Earth, and the Sky yielded. Fire corked across its shined titanium hull as it descended downward, ever faster, with more and more energy,.
It was a multitude of falling stars, Perhaps in its most literal sense.
As the weapons collided with the ground, a destructive fusion warhead was kick started by the kinetic energy turning into megawatts worth of thermal power, Helium formed in the furnace of an impact zone for a split second, and the resulting explosive energy heaved across the Earth. Fissures in the Earth grew, demented and filled with rage, bellowing out freshly freed Magma from the earth below. Earth rained in a downpour removed from the surface and set flying, as the very air was clouded by dust, smoke and fire.
A product of a dead god was used in anger, and it had produced results.
Killsat Intel Report: Compiled by Agent MarlowA weapon designed to counteract the MAD Shut-down defense systems created and distributed by the TITAN Incident, the Satellite is built using orbital resources extracted from the lunar and orbital infrastructure of the respective nation deploying them, and placed into an orbit high enough for the weapon to achieve maximum velocity before colliding with the ground. The fusion warhead uses a mix of several complex fusion agents along with the kinetic energy naturally created when dropped onto the world. The warhead is notable for the fact that it was designed to be used in more than one gravitational area, although it has to be tuned for the specific world, it can be used on lower gravity worlds, depending on where the weapon is intended to be stored on. The final explosive yield is also highly variable, as fusive elements can be siphoned out by the deployment entity to change the yield. There have even been rumors of smaller, “tactical” weapons being developed by American and Chinese arms development labs.
The weapons have only been used in one single operation outside of the New York Incident, the Tragedy of Australia.
Despite official reports, Three separate sixty megaton KillSat warheads were used in succession to completely sterilize Australia. The immediate effects of the detonations result in complete loss of life in the entire continent. cracked windows were reported as far as Hong-Kong and Thailand.
Defcon Two was declared in the United States and held for over three hours before the readiness level decreased back to “normal” levels.
Longer term effects also include global weather changes and even a direct link to the world wide treaties that had put an end to the War.
Author
Topic: System Override: Objected Hate (Read 1964 times)