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This message Premiere #41: The Air War was posted by on Thursday, January 9, 2003 at 15:33.
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Falcon, by Dancer
Premiere #41: The Air War
The Technopolis defense grids rose up from the silver-spired city and oriented their cannons on the incoming raiders. Hampered by recent computer control problems in the futuristic sprawl they were only operating at 40% efficiency, but they still inflicted a massive toll on the outer envelope of fighter planes leading the attack wing.
The remaining element of the Technopolitan air force rose up to hammer home the advantage. A mere four hundred reserve grav-platforms, robot drones, and one-man atmospheric spinners they still outnumbered the incoming forces three to one.
On the command deck of the SPUD helicarrier Drury pulled his cigar from his teeth and spoke into his radio link. The signal was magnified by Exile, routed through Ziles’ space-craft comms array, and it punched through the Technopolitan jamming field to link with a man three thousand miles away. “Wilton, it’s time. Put up or shut up.”
“Right you are, Colonel,” Sir Mumphrey responded, then frowned with the effort of concentrating time on a planetary scale. Asil caught him as he toppled to his knees.
Alarms rang out across the Technopolitan command centers as they sensed the massive temporal anomalies bracketing the city. In the White Room where the Science Council had met to monitor the final snuffing of Earth’s resistance, Dr Zalas glared at the monitors in disbelief. “They can’t do this! They don’t have chronal manipulation technology!”
But just beyond the temporal protection grid thousands of soldiers from all over the world were appearing from dozens of time conduits. Some of them had been traveling for relative weeks in that strange special time-zone created for them by the power of the Chronometer of Infinity that Mumphrey guarded. They arrived rested and disciplined and formed up according to pre-planned tactical programs to join the assault on Technopolis. Another shimmer of time spewed forth a squadron of fighter aircraft from the free nations of the Earth, then two, then three. And with a final time-twist, a full aircraft carrier appeared wedged in the mountains over the city, high and dry but completely functional, ready to launch its fighters and already deploying its compliment of missiles.
“Tactical assessment!” screamed Dr Zalas.
“They outnumber us now, but we still outgun them,” Security Chief Vaagen answered promptly. “Even with the Sov-Blok tech they’re using they can’t get through the force screen over the city. They’re still using conventional nukes as their biggest weapon here.”
Other monitor screens showed simultaneous attacks on Technopolitan forces across the planet, pinning down potential reinforcements. Metahuman activity on the West coast. Stealth attacks in the Far East. Technical difficulties in Southern Africa. Rodentiform attack in Asia.
“One might almost think these backward cretins had planned this,” Zalas spat. “Well, I suppose we’ll have to remind them that they’re playing with the big boys.” He gestured to the world map that showed the main Technopolitan combat force on the East Coast converging on Parodiopolis and Gothametropolis York. “Destroy those places,” he commanded.
_____________________
“Terrorzoid to Base, come in, over.”
“Terrorzoid, this is base. Prepare for final attack run. You are ordered to execute a scorched earth level 8 destruction. Confirm, over.”
“Yeah, I know the command. But I thought we were supposed to be wiping a couple of cities?”
“That’s right. Check your identifaxes. The whole run’s locked right into your battle computers.”
“Base, our battle computer is singing to us right now. Something about an egg that fell off a wall.”
“Terrorzoid, repeat. I say again, what the hell?”
“I said we can’t find the damned cities. All we see are endless forests of giant mushrooms. Wait, the scope’s picking up movement. We have incoming fire.”
“Terrorzoid, confirm you are under fire. And not taking hallucinogens.”
“Computer confirms, base. We have an incoming… stone hut? A thirty ton construction on an interest parabola! What’s wrong with this stupid sensor array? And where has Parodiopolis gone?”
“Terrorzoid, something is scrambling our long-range comms and diagnostics. All we’re getting is a website for a plumbers shop and a clock repair center. What’s happening there?”
“We’re under attack! Fleet is taking damage from some kind of massive impact generator. Kinetic force off the scale, hitting us from the rear and knocking us from the…”
“Terrorzoid? Terrorzoid! This is base. Launch the metahuman resources. Terrorzoid?”
“We’re going down, base! That stone hut thing has smashed through out hull. It’s moving. It’s just pulled the head off Psychoscrapper and it’s trodden on Micro Mauler.”
“Terrorzoid? Base to any fleet vessel! Come in!”
“Nooo! The mushrooms!!”
_____________________
Dr Zalas was not amused. “We can’t afford to have our main force wrongfooted like that. Turn command over the deputy commander and get things under control again. I authorize a level ten holocaust within two hundred miles of Parodiopolis. Launch the tectonic plate-busters. I don’t care what’s out there doing that, I want it killed.”
Xander’s defenders, Space Ghost, the Yurt, and Mad Wendy were holding the line in Parodiopolis; but despite their best efforts the line was about to become a smudge glowing with radioactive fire.
“Tactical, what’s happening on our doorstep?” Zalas demanded. “I don’t like the way this is shaping up.”
“We have an absolute advantage, sir,” Security Chief Vaagen promised. “We’re taking heavy casualties but so are they. And ultimately they can’t get through the defense screens to harm us but we can keep fragging away until every last one of them is toast.”
Zalas turned his hate-filled face to the monitor screen where the smoking helicarrier listed to the side under a withering hail of Technopolis fire. “Make it so!”
Then the computers across Technopolis crashed again as the virus left by the Dark Knight activated, bringing down the force field for just a few moments until the Red Watchman extended his control to force it up again.
That was long enough.
_____________________
“They’re down!” Al B. Harper reported from the scorch-blackened tactics console on the helicarrier command deck. “Go! Go! Go!”
“Gone!” Nats reported back, pressing the pedal to the metal in Aunt Sally’s cockpit and sending the bizarre vehicle screaming out of the hangar bay in a corkscrew spiral.
“Aaagh!” screamed Hacker 9 from behind him as his breakfast found its way back for a second try. “I shouldn’t be here!”
“What, you have a girlfriend then?” Knifey asked skeptically.
“Er, you mean a non-virtual one?”
“Welcome to the No-Girls Club,” the sentient blade snickered.
Recognizing that the new aircraft was heading through the sundered energy barrier around the city, the Science Police began concentrating their ordinance on Aunt Sally.
“Clearing the path!” Falcon noted, unslinging the weapons enhancements on his flight harness and threading a dangerously close trajectory between incoming grav-wagons. A spray of fireballs burst behind him as the enemy targets exploded.
“Cannons deploying!” called ManMan, occupying the bucket seat next to Nats and operating the massive guns that unfolded all around the vehicle. “Firing cycle one!”
“Science villains at one o’ clock,” Chronic warned, standing up on the rear seat and unslinging his demonic guitar. “Time for some rock n’ roll!”
Aunt Sally, enhanced by Nats’ own telekinetic abilities, jinked down to avoid a neon trail of anti-matter nodules and dropped captured phased quantum charges down onto the nearest battery tower. The shining column crumpled very satisfyingly in a blossom of fire.
“Watch out!” Hacker 9 gasped. “They’ve locked on to us. They’re launching Mark IV EMP scrambler to…”
Then the missiles thundered into Aunt Sally, swatting her from the sky.
_____________________
Simultaneously, Exile cranked up the revs on the old red London double decker bus that the Lair Legion had used for their World Tour. “Ready?” he called back to the interior, where his cousin Goldeneyed was wrapped in yards of trailing wires that led into Miss Framlicker’s dimensional converter.
“No,” G-Eyed admitted. “Do it!”
With a shriek of sundered realities the bus raced forward on the helicarrier’s launch deck but vanished into the transdimensional void before it reached the edge of the platform…
…and appeared to screech to a halt inside the main Science Control Building in Central Technopolis where Dr Zalas watched in the White Room. The bus crumpled through a half dozen walls before slewing to a full halt on its side within the very core of the Science Council’s domain, mere dozens of years from the White Room itself. Even as the energy screens falteringly came back up to cut the city off from its attackers once more the Lair Legion was swarming from the unlikely attack vehicle. They moved with practiced ease to set up a perimeter in the vast antechamber they had breached.
The defending science police turned in consternation as Fin Fang Foom at once assumed his full draconic size and smashed through the top of the building. The dragon’s literal covering fire allowed the others to deploy. Donar and NTU-150 took to the skies, engaging the first of the Science Villains to emerge from the Metahuman Projects Building. CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Ziles, Messenger, Hatman, Sorceress, Phase Shift, Amazing Guy, Dancer, Exile, Trickshot, Yo, dull thud, Xanadelle, spiffy, Visionary, the Manga Shoggoth, De Brown Streak, and the Dark Knight deployed across the ground, setting up and securing a perimeter.
“No!” Dr Zalas screamed in the White Room. “Kill them! Send in the elite forces! Destroy them!”
“My pleasure,” admitted Vaagen. He flicked a red button. “Biohazard, Blast Zone, Brokenface, Cheesewire, Detonator, Dimensionweaver, Dreamripper, Flashfry, Fleshcrawler, Genetwist, Moodswing, Night Terror, Pain Hook, Quake, Random Access, Razorbarb, Rimshooter, Spinoid, Ultraninja, Yellow Fever… engage!”
The air war was over. Now the ground battle began.
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