The Great Deception (2 page)

Mike broadcasted to all fighters this urgent
message: "Don't wait for them to open up fire...pursue and destroy.
Every last one of

'em. Hawk, over."

Each one of the colonels over all the groups
in the three wings that made up the coalition force checked in, one
at a time, acknowledging transmission received.

The luminous orb-shaped station that floated
within missile range of the coalition force of
Operation
Switchblade
came to a full stop. It had many levels with
orifices every two decks or so. To the naked eye it looked like a
giant mothership with aircraft bays all throughout the platform.
This observation wouldn't be too far off the mark either.

Suddenly little green balls of energy
without any apparent shape or form came shooting out from the
porous vessel from every conceivable direction. The alien bogies
cut through the air no problem with a quickness that went against
the laws of physics. If that wasn't terrifying enough, what came
next would be. At the center of the mothership was what appeared to
be an energy core of some kind. It turned red. Next, the top
section of the sphere began to part in corkscrew fashion. A large
canon emerged from the beast and fired two missiles that went
straight up.

--

Due to the clandestine objective of the war
council coming together at Vandenberg, the base's underwater
entrance in the Pacific would receive the leaders of the world's
remaining empires instead of its space pad on land. In such an
event, the leaders were flown to a secure location in Tokyo where
they boarded a flight that would take them over the Pacific towards
the west coast of S6.

However, it wasn't all that simple. The Free
Republic of North America flew squadrons out of Hawaii looking for
such activity in the region. The FRN knew that Scorpion was holding
these summits, yet they were unsuccessful thus far in intercepting
any of the foreign diplomats on their trek to the war room at
Vandenberg.

The flight manifest for the leaders of the
world's last great remaining empires was quite different from any
other. Departing from Tokyo--nothing too out of the ordinary there.
Landing in the...Pacific Ocean? No typo, no joke. The why has
already been explained: FRN's dragnet security could only be beat
one way--underwater, not over it.

Scorpion's hypersonic jet with its scramjet
engine would fly the diplomats out of Japan's largest city at Mach
10: the closest thing to mastering Einstein's famous relativity
theory, e=mc2, while still flying through earth's atmosphere. The
brief joy ride would then terminate with the jet slowing to
subsonic speeds and ejecting a capsule from its underbelly, two
hundred miles out from S6's shoreline.

The escape pod is in fact specifically
designed to sink. As soon as the several ton submersible hits the
waves of the North Pacific Ocean, its ballast tanks fill with the
salty water that drowns the vehicle to a depth of a thousand
meters, safely within its crush depth limits. From there another
submarine that has quietly lurked around the outer edge of the
continental shelf off the coast of North America for weeks,
possibly even months, links up with the vessel and begins the crew
transfer.

Scorpion's sub would stick to the
lesstraveled ocean trenches, away from all the sonar traps the FRN
had littered across the ocean floor.

Its Harpoon-class nuclear submarine with a
super cavitation drive could plow through the viscous waters at an
astonishing rate of a hundred knots.

That Wednesday morning it would need the
speed: the council at Vandenberg's War Room would convene at 03:30
hours.

--

Since the revolution of aviation in the
aerospace sector, anyone could book a flight with the
hypersonic-flight monopoly, Orbital Flyer, for a quarterly stipend
of four thousand DigiCoin (equivalent to $1000 USD). For that
membership one could fly four times in the three month pay period
anywhere around the globe. Once the four credits are used up,
before renewal comes calling, an agent would automatically dial the
paying customer and make an offer for additional credits at a
discounted rate.

For everyone else looking to fly on the
cheap, there were plenty of names in the industry that flew
supersonic jumbo jets for very low fares. And unlike Orbital Flyer,
they charged per flight. However you got what you paid for:
economy-class seating, lack of infotainment options, and perhaps a
bag of peanuts if the flight attendant remembered.

Thus went the airline industry in the modern
times of this story.

--

Tel Aviv, Israel

It is lunch hour in the central business
district of Israel's largest city. The glass pocket door of La Shuk
restaurant opened and closed to the influx of a population seeking
a good bite to eat. Good eats La Shuk had. The grill served up veal
schnitzel with the popular side of creamy mashed potatoes all day.
Fresh garden salads with baskets full of pitas hot from the oven
made it around the floor to every table. On the second story in the
non-smoking section, Azriel Markov sat at a booth all by himself.
The neighborhood school in the Florentine neighborhood on the south
side of town was where he should have been; Azriel in fact still
had three years left in his middle school education as required in
Israel's overarching compulsory education system (k-

12).

Azriel was a man unto himself though. His
dad was away on business always and mom died of pregnancy
complications when Azriel was very young. Or so that was the story
they fed him. The stillborn baby would have been a girl--her name,
Keila.

The pain from these losses mixed in with his
iced tea like a bitter lemon peel. Azriel slouched. This was one of
many places he went to for perspective. No other restaurant in the
area quite did it for him like La Shuk. Fist-fulls of broken pita
bread dipped in tasty humus were of more comfort to him than a
cerebral walk through the vineyards he would frequent southeast of
Tel Aviv near Beit Shemesh.

The young soul often thought about what he'd
do with his life. School didn't hold much for him, the arts were
out...Azriel wasn't a handyman either, nor was he bent that way. So
what? There were a lot of tech companies always hiring in the area,
and he even thought about stopping in one day at such a place.
Azriel lacked ambition though. Life didn't seem fair to him, so why
try? Instead of rising from the ashes, the thirteen-year-old boy
chose to sit in them and marinade.

From his table the boy had a view of anyone
who ascended the stairs. Besides a few attractive girls he had
guessed to be a few years too old for him, there hadn't been any
persons of interest that had made the walk up to the second floor.
Right as the breaded piece of meat got in between his teeth,
touched his tongue...that's when he was forced to break from the
flavor works going on his mouth to the current problem at hand. And
it was walking towards his table. Uncle Markov was in the building,
and he was on a mission. Ephraim took it upon himself to be his
nephew's surrogate father whether the boy desired it or not.
Ephraim knew Azriel was floundering in life and that he needed an
elderly, sage voice of wisdom to show him the path.

Azriel slouched so low in his booth that his
spine protested against him. The Jewish boy's persistent uncle now
loomed large at his side. He was talking in Hebrew; most of the
whole contained scathing reproofs.

At thirteen years of age the young man
thought he knew it all. Not only was he officially an upstanding
man in Jewish society, he was now an active participant in the
daily prayer services at the synagogue. Good ol' Uncle Markov
though...he was at it again.
When is he gonna leave me be,
Azriel thought.

"Are you even listening to me?" his uncle
sharply demanded while seating himself across from his nephew.
"What have you been into boy?"

Azriel understood the last question to mean
what kind of trouble are you into this time?

He slowly chewed in order to make his uncle
wait even longer for an answer. Ephraim's scowl grew larger. "How's
your dad been?"

Azriel spoke for the first time. "Fine."

"Oh really? What kind of business has he
been away on, do you even know?" This wasn't a question the boy
could answer, actually. His father's line of work hadn't ever been
communicated very clearly to him. Ever. All he knew was his dad had
frequent flier miles up the ying-yang. When he had asked his father
point blank on one of the rare occasions he had opportunity to, all
he got was a vague "it's for the country, son. I help save lives."
That was usually code for
it's confidential, I'm sworn to
secrecy.
But Azriel wasn't one to assume. "I don't know,"
Azriel admitted. He immediately wished he had lied instead of
opting for honesty for he knew his transparency only invited more
questions from his nosy uncle.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" It was a good
question. Not too provoking either. The boy's expression softened.
He actually wasn't gonna fight it. Maybe a conversation with
Ephraim wasn't so bad after all. "I really wish I could see more of
him...know that he cares. He never says 'I love you son,'

nothing."

Ephraim's eyes grew sad. His larger hands
enveloped his nephew's in a clasp of affection.

Azriel looked into his uncle's dark eyes,
noticing love there instead of hatred-kindness instead of
disapproval. "Can you tell

me something?" "Anything."

"Why do you care so much?"

Uncle Ephraim straightened up a bit at the
directness of the inquiry. "Why, it's because you're family Azriel.
I never had any of my own, so I see you as the son I never got to
have."

The profundity that left the whiskered lips
of the middle-aged man left the young person speechless for a
spell. A sip from the halfempty glass of iced tea restored his
desire to pursue more conversation though. "I..." he looked away
out of shame, shame for how he had treated the man before him. At
long last he came to the bottom of Ephraim's heart only to be
overwhelmed by his uncle's true intentions for him.

"I went to morning prayers today,
uncle."

Ephraim poked a finger into the diminishing
mound of mashed potatoes with the enddestination being his open
mouth, ready to receive the delectable starchy goodness. He smacked
his lips and nodded at the lad before him.

"First time?"

"Yeah. It was..."

His uncle had raised eyebrows. "What?" He
had been expecting a simple yup, but the boy had more to say.

"Rabbi said some," Azriel paused and
blinked, "interesting things concerning Messiah."

"Oh?" Now it was his turn to be concerned
again. Ephraim was very traditional in his Jewish beliefs.
According to them, the Messiah was not the person Jesus Christ--he
had not yet come.

"Jesus is returning a second time," the
young man said out of the side of his mouth, as if he didn't like
the message's contents any more than the listener did. "Bah!" Uncle
Markov very indignantly knocked the salt and pepper shakers
over.

"Blasphemy!"

Azriel looked confused. "But uncle, I didn't
say who Jesus was. I didn't refer to Him as the Son of..."

"Don't speak that rubbish boy! I will not
have it!" Ephraim cursed. Azriel regretted he ever brought it up.
"You know I don't believe in it," he lied. "Good boy," Ephraim said
in a more collected, controlled manner. "Now, I will take you to
your new school."

"Say what?"

"You heard me. Get up. We don't have much
time. The bell rings soon for fourth period. Up, up!"

--

West LA, California

Two blue trails streaked upwards for a mile
before detonation. Then there was a boom, an intense flash of
light, and a shock wave that had an incomprehensibly large radius
that continued to grow with the passing seconds.

"EMP!" Mike Dumphree screamed over the radio
from his command and control chair in the AWACS plane. Suddenly his
faith in the air armada's electromagnetic shielding sharply
diminished as the shock wave continued to ripple, threatening to
envelop FRN's security forces in the sky.

…

A little bit earlier

Meanwhile in the
Basement,
FRN's
secure presidential bunker deep beneath Honolulu, President
Alexander Toporvsky and his National Security Council were
anxiously watching the events unfold in Operation Switchblade. Base
Commanders Bill Rescheck, Abraham Steffords and brigadier general
Thomas Harding all added their collective input on tactical air
tasking orders from their command and control centers located
throughout the Free Republic of North America...and Texas.

It was like a three ring circus...

Five minutes prior to the imminent
engagement with the enemy Commander Steffords was in direct
communication with the Air Boss giving the order to put down the
heavy-lift craft in the LZ at 2404 E El Segundo Blvd.

"Do it now or else there may never be
another chance," he said in context of the mission and setting up a
secure perimeter on-site.

Air Boss Mike Dumphree worriedly looked at
his screens fill up with enemy aircraft. Even though he had given
the directive to open fire on all bogies, they were absorbing the
damage. The enemy had superior shields that could take a missile or
two
and
laser cannon fire. This couldn't have been
happening. But it was.

Mike said into his headset, "
Mustafa
bubbas
(fellow squadron members), what's the skinny on your
ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), over."

"Nothing moving on the ground within five
clicks of the LZ. No heat signatures. Over," the Mustafa group
commander radioed in. Mike celebrated his good luck by taking off
his headphones for a minute to wipe his forehead.
God this
couldn't be anymore....
Before he could even finish
internalizing what he was experiencing Scorpion's mothership
launched her missiles. She hadn't targeted any of FRN's planes
though. Instead, their sights were set on detonating them a mile
above the action with the intent of creating a massive
electromagnetic pulse that would wipe out FRN's shielding.