Greenland Sea: April 28, 2022

Started by MengJiao, September 20, 2018, 01:59:07 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MengJiao

2022 – what can I tell you?  After Lyndon Baines Johnson and Mao-tse-tong died face down in the mud at the very moment they crushed Vietnam in 1969...things began to turn worse for the planet.  Eager to dwell in Asia, the US Airforce moved mostly to China, but in a tragic, accidental, nuclear war with itself, in 1972, the US Airforce "ironically" obliterated most of China and nearly all of South Dakota.
In the wake of an accidental thermonuclear "conflict"...half the world's population and 80% of its industry vanished overnight as catastrophic global cooling ensued.  Frantically mining coal day and night and burning it as fast as possible in vast pits, the planet's surviving population barely managed to keep food crops going.  Most non-aquatic animal species died and so, 50 years after the war, 2022 dawned bleak and minimal as a few alien entrepreneurs turned up to prospect for cobalt under the ever-growing margins of the icecap.
In terms of technology, the world is 20 or30 years behind where it would have been without an accidental thermonuclear "conflict"...
And so we find Captain Commie Pytor Phytosaurski emoting to himself on the bridge of an aging guided-missile destroyer approaching an inlet in Greenland.  The massive current of the Super Gulf Stream (Super-sized by the effects of global cooling) makes the approach over the ever-shallower Greenland Sea somewhat tricky even for a crew and captain as experienced as that of the Commie Smell'y...
Under the low, gray stratus of the endless showers of late April, Smell'y moves at a careful eight knots, pinging vigorously with her Improved Rubikon (stripped from an old submarine, but still potent) to make sure of the depth under her keel in the murky, whale-filled flood.
"Captain?  What's that?" murmurs the alien waving his tentacles.
"Something emotional happened to me a long time ago," sighs Commie Phytosaurski.
"Is the radar working?" mutters the alien.
"Hmmm?"
Loud voices erupt on the bridge.  The old air search radar has picked up something.  A whiff of something low and fast off to starboard coming in over the massive, fresh gray ice of Greenland.  "There!"   As the approaching aircraft comes down under the clouds, the cockpit shines for a second and the whole jet shows up dark gray with a haze of exhaust behind it.
"What is it?" asks Commie Phytosaurski.


MengJiao

#1
Quote from: MengJiao on September 20, 2018, 01:59:07 PM
2022 – what can I tell you? 

"Full alert! " Cries Commie Phytosaurski.  "All countermeasures active.  Guns and missiles released to fire!  Full speed!  Hard to port!"  He thinks the turn may mask the defensive guns and missiles from some angles, but it makes the Smell'y a smaller target and might offer some protection for everything except the helicopter and its hangar.
"Oh, no," groans the alien Entrepreneur as the crew of the Smell'y scrambles into action.  Phytosaurski is looking through his binoculars as the approaching aircraft launches two big missiles.  One misfires as the jet turns away.  The missile swerves off in a helix of smoke while the other missile heads right for Smell'y 
The Goa SAM's leave the ship, tracking the jet and the gatling guns start shooting at the jet also at extreme range as the aircraft turns away to the south.  The remaining antiship missile heads right on in at close to the speed of sound with nothing to steer it away from a direct hit on the Smell'y except clouds of chaff and lots of jamming.
Everyone on the bridge watches the missile heading for them.  They are too focused on it to notice a second aircraft launching two more antiship missiles from a little closer than the first after a slightly higher and slightly more steady run.
The first missile goes into the chaff behind the ship and explodes.  Everyone on the bridge is cautiously happy for a moment and then they notice those two more antiship missiles coming in one after the other as the jet that fired them turns away and another comes down into firing position – the third.
"How many are there?" wonders the alien.
"This doesn't look good," Phytosaurski notes as he lowers his binoculars and checks for a quick way off the bridge.  The plump, if streamlined, alien is definitely in the way and takes up a lot of room with all those tentacles and eyestalks. Phytosaurski looks back at the incoming missiles, now very low over the gray waves.  He figures he has nearly a minute before they hit.  Every second begins to mean something.  The missiles he decides are probably Sea Eagles – the warheads are only about 230 kilos.  If they hit low and aft the bridge should be as safe as anywhere on the ship.  So he takes a deep breath and suggests that somebody reset the gatling guns to search for a new target, using the distraction of this petulant command to put the fishy-smelling alien on his own personal starboard side.  Peeking to the port, Phytosaurski notes the location of a life-raft not too far off on that side.  He pretends to find something interesting on the engine telegraph even farther to the port side of the bridge as the two missiles get closer. 




besilarius

Been chatting with Rod Serling again, Meng?
"Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been playing with two queens all along".  Terry Pratchett.

During filming of Airplane, Leslie Nielsen used a whoopee cushion to keep the cast off-balance. Hays said that Nielsen "played that thing like a maestro"

Tallulah Bankhead: "I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me."

"When all other trusts fail, turn to Flashman." — Abraham Lincoln.

"I have enjoyed very warm relations with my two husbands."
"With your eyes closed?"
"That helped."  Lauren Bacall

Master Chiefs are sneaky, dastardly, and snarky miscreants who thrive on the tears of Ensigns and belly dancers.   Admiral Gerry Bogan.

MengJiao

#3
Quote from: besilarius on September 21, 2018, 06:00:03 AM
Been chatting with Rod Serling again, Meng?

  I think what happened in a nutshell, was that I stumbled across a pile of my old Harpoon stuff whilst sorting things in my all-new man cavern.

  So that must have gone something like this: I decide to look into some of the plastic bins that I have randomly removed from the barn and transported to the new cavern.  I'm guessing the box of harpoon stuff was under a box of old "computer stuff" (as in "You never know when you might need  a couple of hundred pounds of RCA plugs and cables.") and I'm guessing it was at first innocently disguised under a layer of Fear God and Dread Nought-type things.
And then...(cue twilight-zone-music "doodoodoodowa - doodoodoodowa") there's Harpoon4 and a lot of items back to the original 1987 game.

   The components I have only cover up to about 2002 so I need a "future" that is roughly 20-30 years behind the times and a reason for that and a reason for a war (aliens looking for Cobalt) and a locale (Greenland and the SuperSized Gulf stream and vast undersea coal deposits that are about to emerge due to the falling sea levels).  The opposing sides are Russia and Mediterranean powers versus the Atlantic Powers (France, UK, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands)

MengJiao

Quote from: MengJiao on September 20, 2018, 10:51:10 PM
  He pretends to find something interesting on the engine telegraph even farther to the port side of the bridge as the two missiles get closer.


While Phytosaurski was busy on the port side, chaff or jamming spoofed the first of the two remaining Sea Eagles that Phytosaurski had been watching into passing behind the Smell'y.  Phytosaurski was about to heave a sigh of relief, but instead held his breath wondering about missile number 2.  It hit without a flash – nothing but massive explosion, blowing out the port side of the hull abaft the hangar, wrecking the hangar and setting everything on fire.  Phytosaurski didn't see much but debris falling into the sea.  The engines were still running.  The ship was still turning.  The radars, jammers and missiles were all off line.  The gatling gun was tracking onto a new target: the first of a series of four fresh Sea Eagles coming in very fast.  At least it was doing something useful, maybe.  The missiles would start hitting in much less than a minute.  Not much time to assess the damage.  Maybe they would all miss.  Only one of the first 4 had hit the Smell'y ...
"They must really want to sink this ship," Phytosaurski noted as he worked on not standing on the starboard side.  He had gotten over there to look at the damage.  Except for huge fires and twisted missile launchers and radars, nothing looked too bad.
"Why?" squealed the alien as Phytosaurski got on his port side.


MengJiao

Quote from: MengJiao on September 21, 2018, 01:56:16 PM
Yikes


PhytoSaurski wasn't sure what happened next, but the alien told him later (the next morning in fact) that probably the gatling gun hit the first of four missiles, setting it off as an airburst very close to the ship. 
"Hmmm," Phytosaurski had said later.  "From my point of view, the bridge was a shambles and everyone was dead but me and then there were three more big blasts.  I guess the rest of the missiles all hit."
"Right," the alien would say later.  "and I got you off as the ship capsized and here we are about to be captured by German Space Marines."
"So you rescued me?  Why?" asked Phytosaurski watching the German Space Marines (who in this case had arrived by helicopter from a rather ordinary-looking guided missile frigate in an arctic region of their own home planet) cautiously approach the alien prospecting shelter on the shore of Greenland.
"We Entrepreneurs have a simple – even minimal – moral code, but one line of it goes – always rescue somebody even if their own species is trying to kill everybody," said the alien running up an eyestalk to peek at the German Space Marines.
"And why weren't you killed by all explosions and capsizing and so on?"
"I did lose a lot of tentacles and eyestalks – a four-eyestalk battle – sort of proverbial."
"And you are originally aquatic?"
"Yes.  And how do you say genetically engineered?"
Phytosaurski thought it over.  "I think I usually say genetically engineered."