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Chapter 388 A Foot-Long Pole in the Ass

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 the enemies were not. In other words, troops destined to fight in the jungles of South America would have training missions in the jungle, while troops headed for urban areas would undergo simulated missions in the cities they would drop into.

Though things were more exciting and varied for the troops in the transport decks, it was still just another Tuesday for the elite ARES troopers.

As the Beowulf sped toward its destination, her enormous rotors propelling her at close to the speed of sound, work inside her transport decks proceeded apace as the printers continued working. The troops would require resupply, so spare weapons, ammunition stockpiles, replacement armor, and so on were printed as well. In addition to those were helicopters and large transport drones that would be responsible for actually delivering the equipment to the troops in the field, as well as hot meals.

It had been said before that armies march on their stomachs, and that had held true throughout the history of mankind. All a soldier in the field needed to remain content with their lot and perhaps even happy was a hot meal that didn’t come from a can or bag and clean socks and underwear. No matter how dire or harsh the conditions of the battlefield were, any army that had those three things was a content and happy one with high morale.

……

White House, inside the situation room.

A secret service member standing behind the president raised his hand to his ear, listening to a report as the deputy undersecretary of defense burst into the room and headed directly to the newly appointed interim Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan. General Mattis had been forced to resign as a result of the destruction of the USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group.

The secret service member and acting secretary Shanahan simultaneously paled after hearing the latest news.

“Mr. President, we need to evacuate as fast as possible,” the secret service agent said, grabbing Trump’s arm and hauling him bodily out of his chair. Luckily, there was a secure bunker beneath the situation room and the elevator that led to it wasn’t more than a few steps away.

The rest of the joint chiefs, their aides, and acting secretary Shanahan followed.

President Trump understood that asking questions now would be pointless. He would be briefed once they reached the bunker. But until then, all he had to do was cooperate with the secret service and not add to the incipient chaos. Left to himself, he began thinking of some very frightening possibilities; evacuating to the bunker beneath the situation room was very much a “last resort” defensive option, after all.

As the elevator doors closed, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“Apologies, sir, we needed to move as fast as possible. Missiles are on the way to Washington,” the head of the on-duty secret service team informed Trump. They were now officially cut off from the outside world for the duration of the elevator trip to the bunker, roughly 2500 feet below ground level. The elevator ride would take a few minutes to travel that nearly half a mile.

“What do we know right now?” Trump asked acting secretary Shanahan.

He turned to his deputy undersecretary and nodded for him to explain the situation. He himself was still not entirely up to speed, as the most important information would always be transmitted first. In this case, that information was simply “missiles are on their way to Washington.”

“Sir, operation radiant dawn failed. And moments after its failure, we detected a retaliatory strike from Eden and, of all places, Mexico. We suspect there were more, but we can’t be certain. Our subs that participated in the operation have already been sunk, sir. They knew where we were and were just waiting.”

“What are their targets?” Trump asked.

“Cheyenne Mountain is tracking them as best they could. Based on their initial trajectory and numbers, we estimate that they’re targeting THAAD, but we can’t be certain until the missiles reenter the atmosphere and we can pick them up on radar. That is, if we can detect them at all...” the undersecretary reported.

The elevator ride continued in silence, each person within musing on the possible repercussions of the retaliation and what would be targeted. Everyone in the elevator, save perhaps Trump himself, knew what it meant for their air and missile defense systems to be targeted.

Eden was about to move.

A few minutes later, the elevator doors opened to a bunker that had become a hive of activity.

“Status report,” General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff snapped as he strode out of the elevator.

“Sir!” A defense intelligence agency analyst snapped to attention. “THAAD is down by 98% overall, 100% in populated areas and around our silos. Our OCONUS installations all report heavy losses. Former and current nuclear stockpile sites are confirmed down, all missile silos are down, and Cheyenne reports a second incoming wave of attacks. Estimated target is our nuclear stockpile sites, silos, centrifuges, and manufacturing sites. No sign of any other targets now, but sir... we’re having trouble tracking the incoming birds. They’re ghosts, sir.”

“Shit,” General Dunford cursed.

“What happened?” Trump asked.

“Sir, if they only took out our stockpiles and silos, it’d mean they’re just removing our nuclear capability. But taking out THAAD means they’re definitely planning an invasion,” the general said.

“Did anything we launched have any effect at all?” Trump asked, as if he hadn’t heard the general’s response to his earlier question. He had looked at his watch and realized they should have heard something by then, but he might have missed it during the minutes-long elevator ride to the bunker.

“Radionuclide monitoring discovered radiation in the atmosphere, so odds of a successful detonation are high. If they did hit, it would explain the retaliation strike. But we can’t be a hundred percent sure, so we dispatched a dragon lady—quite a few of them, actually—to give us a visual on site since satellite monitoring is either down or unreliable.”

(Ed note: Dragon Lady is the name of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane. Adam Savage took a flight on one in season 15 of Mythbusters. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0bwlQMch3s )

“Options?” Trump asked. He felt like his head was being cooked in a pot of boiling water and everything was going wrong for him.

“We’ve already begun the government continuity program, sir. Congress is being evacuated to the nearest shelter as we speak, Vice President Pence is on his way to Camp David, and Nightwatch is in the air and on patrol. We’ve called up the standby reserves, retired reserves, individual ready reserves, selected reserves, and the national guard, inactive and active. Hell... we even called up the civil air patrol, sir.

“The coalition fleet is headed back toward Eden to confront the Edenian Navy, for all the good that’ll do, and our submarine fleet is en route back to the coast for submarine warfare. The four carrier groups we didn’t send with the coalition fleet are patrolling the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and we’re prepared to lose our assets in Guam, the Philippines, Alaska, the Dominican Republic, and Hawaii.

“We activated the national emergency broadcast system and implemented a strict curfew. State and local police have begun implementing it and the national guard is being deployed along with FEMA to aid in enforcing it.

“We’ve also—” the analyst continued, but was interrupted by the sound of a toppling chair and a loud curse.

“Repeat that! Are you fucking positive!?” someone shouted.

“Control yourself!” General Dunford snapped. “Report!”

Instead of responding, the man pushed a few buttons on his console and pointed at the large screen on the wall in the front of the bunker. “See for yourself,” he said.

The screen showed a visual taken from one of their high-orbit spy satellites. The video showed the takeoff procedure of the Edenian carriers from start to finish.

“The video is backed by our beyond-the-horizon radar. Ten of those... whatever they are... just took flight and headed in different directions. One of them is headed our way and will likely arrive off the west coast in about two hours,” he dolefully announced, then fell on his ass when he tried sitting back down, as he forgot his chair had fallen.

A pindrop silence engulfed the room. It felt like, just when they thought they knew everything about their enemy, a foot-long pole was shoved up their ass to prove them wrong.