DrakaFic: Operation Noah's Hammer

[MKSheppard]

DrakaFic: Operation Noah's Hammer

Chapter One: The Wheels Start Turning, But The Hamster Is Dead

Note: Thanks to Keevan Colton and Sir Nitram for their input on how a Brit talks.

[2000 hours, June 13th, 1940 - Biggin Hill Aerodrome, London, United Kingdom]

The RAF transport came to a stop on the runway, the air around it's engines shimmering
from the heat that had built up around the cylinder heads during the long 2,400 kilometer
(3,862 mile) flight over Europe.

Even before the propellors had stopped spinning, a long black limousine bearing official
HMG plates pulled up. The door at the rear of the transport was opened, and several
heavy cases were handed out the door by the RAF aircrew to the waiting MI6 officials,
who wasted no time in putting them into their limousine. When the last case had been
transferred, the MI6 agents jumped into the car, and took off in a cloud of dust.

[St. James's Street, London, 2130 Hours]

The limousine pulled to a stop outside MI6's headquarters, and men were already
waiting to carry the cases in with a speed that impressed even the MGB men who
were watching MI6 from an opposite building that the MGB had purchased years
ago for precisely this purpose.

As he took the photographs of the MI6 men to add to the MGB's voluminous file
of every foreign agent in the world that they knew about, Kapitan Arkady Renko
couldn't help but shake his head at the sheer amateurishness by which the British
went about the deadly serious business of international espionage.

Having people come out onto the street! If this was in the Soviet Union, there would
have been an underground garage out of sight for such transfers as this.

Putting away his camera, Arkady was already planning his next trip to the stores in London
to buy goods for his wife. Being assigned abroad was the luckiest thing that could happen
to an MGB operative; for even in the Soviet Union, certain things were in short supply.

[Top Secret-Level Darkroom inside St. James' Street; 2145 Hours]

"Right. Hear about those bloody wogs down in Liverpool? The blokes managed to lose
against the Polish, for God's sake." muttered the photographic specialist as he removed
the film from it's padded container and began to sort it out for development.

"Aye, I lost five bob on those bastards," replied his assistant as he prepared the chemicals.

It was well past midnight when the last roll of film had been developed completely, and
the man and his assistant stared at them. "Seems like a waste, all this money to
take pictures of a desert."

"Not my job to worry about that; come on, lets go down the pub; I hear that mick is
having a special on Guinness tonight."

[0800 Hours, June 14th, 1940 - Director General's Office, St. James' Street, London]

MI6 Director General Stewart Menzies sat down in his richly padded chair, and pulled
out a vital document that had to be completed in record time to preserve the Empire.

Taking out a well-worn pencil, he began to work on the paper. After several minutes,
frustration set in, and he picked up the secure phone on his desk. "Richardson, any
luck with Seven Across?"

"No such luck, Stewie."

"Damn."

Putting the phone down, Menzies stared at the bloody crossword puzzle, tapping his
pencil in a stattico beat against the blotter.

[0900 Hours]

Sighing contentedly, Menzies put away the completed puzzle, and pushed the intercom
button on his desk. "Director General here; I'm done with my morning papers, would you
please give Mister Ritchie a ring?"

Several minutes later, a well dressed man in a tweed jacket stepped into Menzies' office
holding a thick manila folder.

"Whats the latest on the Quattara Depression plant, Bob?"

Ritchie opened the manila folder and took out several large 5 x 7 glossies,
placing them onto the Director-General's desk.

"See those lines and buildings that they go to?" he asked.

"Yeah, what about them?"

"They weren't there three years ago, which was when we managed to get
the last photographs of this installation."

"How much more capacity did they put in?"

"Our boffins estimate three hundred more megawatts."

Menzies whistled softly. "That's an awful lot of power. Any idea what it's going
to?"

"No idea. One of the ideas being floated around Technical section is that
the Draka are expanding their aluminum plant there, probably for wartime
orders now that they're fighting the Soviet Union."

"That's probably the best bet, I'll have our boys write up a report on that,
with graphs showing how much more aluminum they'll be able to produce
each month with that expansion for the Prime Minister."

"Right. How's Susie and the kids?" asked Menzies as he gathered up the
photographs and handed them back to Ritchie.

"Doing smashingly well, Stewie. John's already prancing around saying
he wants to be a RAF pilot; I never should have got him that model of
a Spitfire."

[1200 Hours, June 15th, 1940 - Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant]

"Halt, Suh!" shouted the green-uniformed Security Directorate tetrarch
as he drew his 10mm pistol and pointed it at the head of the intruder.

"At ease, tetrarch, I'm here on the Archona's orders, to inspect the plant,
and to report back to her on the program's progress." replied the man,
who was dressed in what amounted to civilian dress in the Domination.

"I'll have to see your orders, suh!" replied the tetrarch, not budging a
centimeter."

The man sighed.

"Very well, here you are." With that, he drew a paper from the briefcase he
was carrying and gave it to the guard, who scanned it for several moments,
before he was sure it was genuine.

"Thank you, suh, you can pas' now, Legate Dwyer."

Nodding, Dwyer walked past the guard and into the entrance to the vast
underground complex buried in the desert sands near Quattara.

[1300 Hours - Level Red]

Dwyer walked the seemingly endless lines of electrolyte cells, which stretched
down the tunnels dug out of the sandstone, which bubbled silently, burning the
hydrogen out of water, while the man in charge of the program here pointed out
and explained each detail of the new installation that had begun producing two
months ago.

"So, as you can see, production of the heavy water is proceeding at a rapid
clip, the new expansion allowing us to provide a little over two more tons of
Deuterium Oxide each year for Tech Section to use for their experiments
in atom research."

"Good." replied Dwyer. "I'll see that you get a commendation and a Letter
of Value for your work here."

The scientist nodded, trying to hide his glee. Letters of Value were one of the
rarest honors handed out in the Domination, usually granting the recipent
an enormous estate in the Police Zone, and the serfs to run it; it was usually
used to reward military heroes or important inventors.

[0900 Hours, June 16th, 1940 - Office of the Prime Minister, Whitehall]

"So, what's this on this new plant that Winston is so eager for us to know
about?"asked Sir Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister of War, rose from his seat and cleared his
throat, before beginning to speak to the assembled cabinet.

"Recently, the Domination has expanded it's Quattara depression hydropower
plant, and at the bequest of MP Churchill, the Royal Air Force proceeded to
begin overflights of it from bases in Greece, through an agreement with the
Greek government."

"Analysts at MI6 have analysed the photographs from the overflights and have
concluded that the Domination has doubled the daily output of their Quattara
Aluminum plant from 272.7 tons of aluminum per day to a high of 545.4 tons
a day, for the increased needs of war industries now that the Domination is
at war with the Soviet Union."

"MP Churchill disagrees with that analysis, and contends that the Domination is
using the excess energy for heavy water production for their atom researchers."

Chamberlain sighed. Not Churchill again. The man had almost sabotaged the
crowning achievement of his tenure as PM, the Four Way Pact between Britain,
France, Germany, and Italy over removing numerous Versailles restrictions on
Germany, and here he was trying to provoke a war with the Domination with his
support for overflights over Domination territory.

"Is there any support for Winston's latest madcap idea?" asked Chamberlain
wearily.

"He points to the fact that the Draka have stopped buying heavy water on the
world market," came the rather weak reply.

"Mister Churchill is making a mountain out of a molehill," replied Chamberlain.
"For all we know, the Draka have abandoned that line of research, and have no
further need for this so-called 'heavy water'. In the future, I suggest you refrain
from indulging Mr. Churchill's flights of fantasies, and focus on running Whitehall."

[MKSheppard]

Chapter Two: Winston Is Back

[20 September, 1941 - 0700 hours - Downing Street - London, United Kingdom]

The guard outside the Prime Minister's residence watched as the rotund man with
the bulldog's face ambled up the street, a cane in hand, and a jovial expression on
his face.

As the man came to a stop outside the Prime Minister's door, the guard cleared his
throat.

"Mister Churchill, the signal's already been sent to the fleet and the diplomatic
missions around the world."

"What signal?"

The guard paused, before replying, an obvious grin on his face as he did so.

"Winston is back, sir."

At this, Winston Spencer Churchill threw his arms into the air and shouted
"And so he bloody well is!"

[0900 Hours, Office of the Prime Minister]

"I want an update on that damned plant I've been talking about for the last year,"
growled Churchill as his first cabinet meeting as PM of the United Kingdom
opened.

DG Menzies fought and managed to control himself from grinning like a loon.
He'd correctly predicted what Winston would demand, and this would only
make his agency look better, compared to MI5.

"Mister Churchill, the last overflights we had of the Quattara depression plant
were in September of last year; so our photographic intelligence is out of
date. However, MI6 is currently running a highly successful intelligence
gathering operation in Cairo. The Draka love to talk, especially in front of
Serfs."

Menzies pulled out a sheet of paper. "The Quattara depression operation is
producing roughly four tons of Deuterium Oxide and shipping it to an unspecified
point 'deep in the Police Zone'."

"So it isn't Aluminum like those fools said so last year?" asked Churchill.

"Most certainly not, sir."

"I was right all along!" shouted Churchill.

"Winston, enough about that plant. Italy. We need to talk about Italy." remarked
Anthony Eden, the new Secretary of State for War, who had replaced the late,
unlamented Leslie Hore-Belisha the moment Churchill had seized power.

"Yes, well, how are the wogs doing?" asked Churchill as he lit one of his cigars.

"Rome as you well know, has fallen. The reports coming from Rome are horrific,
sir. It's all we can do to keep the Irish from demanding war. Bloody Papists."

Standing up, Eden pulled down a map of Italy from a nearby map easel and began
to point at specific areas with a map pointer. "The Draka are slowly advancing down
Italy, in a two pronged attack along both coasts of Italy, after establishing a line
stretching from Rome in the west to Pescara in the east."



"The Italians are resisting bravely, but are finding out that their twenty-eight ton
tanks with 75s are no match for sixty-ton Honds with 102mm guns. The Italian
aeroplanes are roughly an equal match for the Drakan aeroplanes. Hence, the
Draka are having a devil of a time seizing control of the air from the Regia
Aeronautica."

Eden paused, to compose himself before continuing. "The Regia Marina
got caught flatfooted by the sudden invasion of Sicily; and they were just preparing
to leave port when the Draka stormed ashore near Anzio, throwing even more
confusion into their chain of command."

"However, they've started becoming effective, our ships in the Mediterranean are
reporting ever increasing numbers of Drakan cargo ships being sunk every day,
from listening to the distress signals over wireless."

"How much longer can the Draka sustain this?" asked someone.

"We don't know. Apparently the Domination has been planning a move into the
Mediterranean for quite a long time; they have cargo capacity well in excess of
what they actually need for moving materials along their North African coast."

Eden nodded towards a RAF officer who was standing by the doorway, holding
a very large manila case. The man nodded in return and got up, walking towards
the easel. Reaching into his manila case, he pulled out a series of very large
blow ups of what were obviously aerial reconnaisance photographs.

The first photograph showed scores of obviously very ancient looking ships
all lined up on a beach somewhere. "This photograph was taken by one of our
Mossies six months ago; it shows one of the Domination's so-called Reserve
Yards. As you can see, all of the ships here are old steam luggers from the
1890s. Well past any feasible point of operating at a profit; yet the Draka pulled
them from the water and kept them in operating condition for decades."

The officer pulled another photograph; obviously the same place, but with all
of the ships gone. "This photograph was taken four days ago. You can see that
all of the ships are gone." Reaching into his case again, the officer brought out
another photograph. It showed a beach somewhere, with dozens of hulks littering
it.

"This is an enlargement of a news photograph recently released by the Drakian
Propaganda Ministry; showing the beachhead at Anzio. We have enlarged it to
show the detail on the ships lying on the beach. You can see clearly that these
are the same ships of the type that used to be stored in their Reserve Yards
until weeks ago."

"Bloody hell, these blighters have been planning this for a long time," remarked
Churchill.

[1200 Hours - Prime Minister's Personal Study]

"Mister Churchill," said the young aide at the door to his study. "Professor Cowen
is here to see you."

"Ah, good! Send him in!" muttered Churchill as he rearranged the papers on his
study, taking careful note to preserve that letter from that German physicist,
what was his name, ah yes, Einstein, about the possibilities of an Atom Bomb,
and the implications of the Drakan purchases of Heavy Water for the free world.
Surely the historians would want that one.

In stepped a rather disheveled man in an academician's tweed coat, whose
eyes twinkled whenever Churchill looked at them. He looked just like old Saint
Nick in those American soda company commercials, but without the enormous
belly. "It's rather good of you to see me on such short notice, Mr. Churchill."

"Not a problem, Professor. I heard that you had a solution to that pesky Drakian
atom programme?"

An evil twinkle appeared in Cowen's eye. "Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, I do. I most
indeed do."

[1400 Hours - Prime Minister's Personal Study]

Scores of maps were spread all over Churchill's study, along with sheaf after
sheaf of papers full of calculations, along with a small sample of sandstone
that had been shattered by a rock hammer. Cowen was now making his
final summary of his idea to Churchill.

"So, Mr. Churchill, it's rather simple; the Draka have dug the tunnels for their
Quattara Depression hydroplant through sandstone. Sandstone is one of the
most brittle stones known to man; hit it hard enough and it shatters; as well as
being very porous."

"The best way to stop their programme is to put the entire place under water,
which is quite simple, shatter the sandstone, and let Mother Nature take over;
if we do it right; within a week, Africa will have a new inland sea roughly the size
of Wales."

Churchill nodded. "I think I know just the man who can help you with this endeavour."

[21 September, 1941 - Abbotsbury, England]

"Hello Professor, name's Wallis, Barnes Wallis. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Cowen looked at the white-haired man and considered him for a moment. He certainly
didn't look like the kind of person that could help him cause a natural disaster on an
unpreceedented scale.

[MKSheppard]

Chapter Three: Fun With Scale Models!

[21 September, 1941 - 0900 Hours - Pinsk, Poland]

The Polish peasants working in the fields looked up at the long train
chugging it's way towards the border with the Soviet Union, the soldiers
on the train not wearing the typical Polish uniform, but instead, wore
drab green-grey uniforms that were topped off by coal-scuttle helmets.

Behind the lead cars full of soldiers and anti-aircraft guns, came long
drags of flatcars, each one carrying a single tank on it's long journey
to the Soviet Union.

Some of the peasants had sons who studied military hardware, and
could recite the gun calibre of every tank in Europe, so they knew
that the olive drab shapes on the flatcars were Panzerkampfwagen IV
Panthers; the old Ausf A models with the old KwK 39 L/48 guns which
were to be retired shortly by the newer Ausf Bs with the new KwK 41
L/70 guns in the German Army. Still it was odd to see them with the
red star of the Red Army on them, instead of the balkenkreuz of
the Reichsheer.

Soon, the train disappeared around a curve, and the peasants went
back to working their fields.

[22 September, 1941 - 1100 Hours - Abbotsbury, England]

Cowen and Wallis were sitting in the Pub down the street from the weapons
establishment at Abbotsbury, quenching their thirst with Guiness, while listening
to the latest news over the Beeb from the radio that was playing in the corner.

"In the latest news, the Domination has issued a formal threat to the United
States of America over their so-called "interference" in internal Drakian affairs.
Meanwhile, reaction around the world is coming through about Pope Leo III's
declaration of a Holy Crusade against the Domination."

"Already, Ireland has formally expelled the Drakan ambassador and seized
their embassy, following a declaration of war by President De Valera."

At that, Wallis chuckled. "About time those damn micks did something right,
for once, rather than blowing each other up in Ulster."

"Anyway, Professor Cowen, I may have the solution to your problem. Several
years ago, I came up with a concept for a so-called 'earthquake bomb', that
would be capable of knocking down structures which would otherwise be lightly
damaged by ordinary bombs. The only problem was that the bomb had to be
of an immense weight, and had to be dropped from nearly twenty thousand
feet to have the desired effect. Since no bomber at the time was capable of
meeting the specifications needed, the RAF shelved that idea."

"Sounds like one big devil of a bomb," replied Cowen. "I must say, I can't quite
get my head around the idea of a Crusade for God's sake, in 1941!"

"Well, enough talk about religion, lets get back to shop talk."

"Right, right. To completely stop this Drakian project, we are going to have to
shatter rock on an immense scale in the space of a few hours. Luckily for us,
it's sandstone, but still..."

Cowen let his last words trail off, as a sign of the immense difficulty facing them.

Wallis pulled out a napkin and began scribbling calculations onto it, muttering to
himself as he did so for several minutes and many more napkins, before facing
Cowen. "I do believe it can be done, if we drop enough of my earthquake bombs
along the tunnel, the rock will be sufficiently fractured, even 200 meters down."

At this, Cowen spoke up. "It doesn't matter if we make big fractures, or little
fractures, the water will do the rest." A slow frown spread across Cowen's face,
"Of course, they can always shut off the flow of water at the Mediterannean entrance,
but they'll be depriving them of electricity for the period needed to send parties down
to reline the tunnels to make them watertight again. We win in the end, either way."

"So the problem isn't with the bombs; we just need something that can lift such a
load all the way to it's target above twenty thousand feet. But that's just the damned
problem, the RAF doesn't have a plane that could carry it. Oh, the Stirling could carry a
smaller version of what we need, but it wouldn't even be able to get up to the required altitude,
because the fools at higher command demanded that it fit into the existing RAF hangars,
so the wingspan had to be reduced; and that ruined any high altitude capabilities the Stirling
had."

Cowen looked into his mug. "Can't we make the bombs anyway? We can test smaller
versions to proof test your concept, while we wait for the necessary aircraft to come along.
After all, the hardest part is going to be shattering the hundreds of feet of cliff face at the
other end of the depression, and I don't think we have anything that'll do it."

[3 November 1941 - 0300 Hours - Abbotsbury, England]

The door to Cowen's room banged open in the middle of the night, and Wallis ran in,
in a pair of disheveled pyjamas. "Quick, Richard, turn on your radio!"

"What? What's happened?" asked Cowen as he fumbled for his glasses, putting
them on after the second try. Wallis merely reached over and turned on the radio
in Cowen's room, and after a minute or so of it warming up, the voice of the BBC's
announcer filled the room.

"This just in, unconfirmed reports are coming in from the Phillipines of a massive
Japanese attack, hundreds are feared to be dead. Reports are also coming in
of Japanese landings all over the Pacific. We will keep you updated on this breaking
story as more information comes in."

"The Americans, do you think they'll be strong enough to fight both the Domination
and the Japanese Empire?" asked Wallis.

"For our sakes, I hope so, I hope so."

[10 November, 1941 - 0900 Hours - Abbotsbury, England]

The blur flew through the sky and impacted into the huge concrete structure which had been
built in record time of a special mix of concrete that approximated sandstone's characteristics
whenever possible. Oddly enough, the bomb had not made a single sound during it's passage.
Once the sound of the explosion faded, they heard the supersonic crack of the bomb's passage
through the air.

Several more minutes passed before the all-clear sounded over the testing range. "Well, time to
see if your bomb idea has merit, Barnes," said Cowen as he climbed out of the bunker where
they'd observed the test from.

As they walked across the rolling plains, smoke was rising slowly from where the bomb had hit
the concrete monolith. Since it was impractical at this point to do full up testing of TALLBOY
(as it had been named by Churchill in one of his fits of whimsy) since no plane existed that could
carry it up to 20,000 feet, something else had to be found.

And of course, it was also quite impractical to build a concrete block 650 feet high to proof the
concept of cracking the tunnels in Quattara through shockwaves, they'd built this huge scale model
to 1/6 scale, which also allowed them to test the basic shape of TALLBOY.

As they came closer, they could see cracks in the side of the block. "Do they extend all the way
down?" asked Wallis. One of the RAF officers climbed into the pit that the block was half sunk into,
and began examining the sides. Several more minutes passed before a shout came forth; "Sir, it's
cracked up down here! The cracks aren't that big, but there's a lot of little ones!"

Both Wallis and Cowen shared knowing looks. One more little step closer to causing a natural
disaster of unpreceedented scale.

[MKSheppard]

Chapter Four: How can we help the Serfs if we....

[15 November, 1941 - 1100 Hours - Abbotsbury, England]

Cowen watched the newsreels begin spooling past the projector
in the darkened theater. The main piece was some hackneyed
propaganda film about the RAF. He really wasn't watching it for
the movie, once the newsreels were over, he'd be going back
to his flat to rest up for tomorrow's work with Wallis.

They were still figuring out how exactly to shatter the cliff face at
Quattara; it couldn't be done with high altitude bombers; you had
to get down close to toss whatever it was right into the cliff face,
so that left just carrier-borne aircraft. Now they had to design
something that would allow the aircraft to shatter hundreds
of feet of cliff face, yet be light enough for the aircraft to take
off from the pitching deck of a carrier.

His thoughts trailed off as the newsreels started, and he sighed
and settled back into his seat.

FIERCE FIGHTING IN ITALY! screamed the title before the screen
shifted to a bombed-out village, smoke and flames rising from the
shattered houses, while corpses littered the streets. The cameraman
zoomed in close onto a clump of bodies wearing Drakian uniforms.

Just as the camera was settling onto the bodies, and the winged dragon
emblem of the Domination became clear, jackboots filled the screen,
and the cameraman zoomed out to show a long line of troops marching
past the bodies, the fatigue of close combat evident in the faces buried
under the distinctive coal-scuttle helmets.

Damnation, who would have ever thought the Hun would be on the side
of Good one day? thought Cowen as he watched the Germans marching
through the town in the grainy newsreel.

"German troops under the command of Field Marshall Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
have been instrumental in halting the Domination's drive northwards into the Po
plain. The first Panzer divisions have begun detraining in Ferrara, and will
be going into action shortly."

The scene cut to a German officer in a leather overcoat watching the tanks of his
division being rolled off their railcars under his personal supervision. The officer
turned around to talk with one of his subordinates, and the camera caught a brief
glimpse of a decoration hanging from the officer's neck. Hmm. Whoever that man
was, he was bound to be good; only the best got the Pour le Mérite.

The screen then went blank, and a well-dressed man who was an announcer for the
BBC appeared on the screen.

"What you are about to see is the harsh, unexpurguiated truth; Drakian newsreels that
they show to their own people back home on how the war goes; If you have little ones
with you, now would be a good time to take them outside the theater and wait for the
chime that indicates this section is over. The projectionist will now halt the newsreel
until any little ones are safely out of the theater."

With that, the newsreel came to a sudden halt, and disappeared from the screen as
the projectionist turned off the bulb in the projector to avoid a burnthrough, while the
lights came on.

After several minutes of people shuffling out of the theater, the lights dimmed again
and the screen filled with the distinctive logo of an antenna in the center of Africa
beaming out radio waves, which was the logo of the DNS, Drakian News Service.

"THE RACE TEACHES THE ITALIAN PEOPLE THEIR PROPER PLACE."
flashed onto the screen, before an announcer began intoning in that goddamned
guttural abortion that the Draka called "English".

"Th' people' of a villah called Latina, thou't they co' kill an' Cit'zen o' the Race
an' get away wit' it."

The scene faded into focus, and they saw naked men, women, and children,
their nakedness being covered up with strategically placed black bars being
herded into what appeared to be a church pockmarked with bullet holes, before
the doors were boarded up, and Drakian soldiers wearing what looked like
flamethrowers marched up and filled the inside of the church with liquid fire
through the shattered stained glass windows.

Horrid screams enamated forth from within the church, and the cameraman
went in for a close up of a woman, her entire body on fire, frantically trying to
escape the church through one of the windows, and being beaten back inside
the inferno by rifle butts.

As the screams died out, the camera shifted to show a close up of Drakian soldiers
smiling and laughing as they fed more liquid fire into the charnelhouse that was now
the church. "Beatin' do' th' unconqered is a hard an' thankless task, but our men an'
women are up to' it, like they are everythin' else."

The scene then went blank, and another title card filled the screen. "THE RUSSIANS
LEARN THAT RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

A burning village filled the screen, as people ran between the houses frantically, before
being cut down by the sharp cracks of rifle-fire. "Our armies are advancin' in th' Ukrain',
and it's dam' har'd, espec'ly with tha' butcha Krasnov exhortin' 'em to resist to th' las' man
and woma'. We had'ta kill for'y villag' so fa', and they jus' don' learn." said one of the officers
who stood by, supervising the entire operation, his diamond earrings glittering in the reflected
light of the flames.

The screen faded to black; an announcer's voice droning in the background. "Hea' you realiz'
the madness o' Krasnov the butcha'. Instea' of allowin' a nice orderly tran'stion from Sov't rule
to Drakia rul', he forces us to figh' the partisans. Such wast'. Such sheer senseless wast'."

The screen faded to black, and a chime followed shortly. As the women and children began
to file back into the theater, the main picture credits began to roll. Well, time to leave,
thought Cowen.

As he stepped out of the theater into the cold drizzle of an English night, he thought about
what he and Wallis were working towards. It would involve killing scores of innocent serf
workers at the Quattara depression plant, and would kill indirectly thousands more when
the power went out in the areas that the plant still provided electricity to.

Cowen hadn't believed in evil until he had seen that footage. Now, he believed that there
was pure evil marching afoot on the Earth's surface, and it had to be stopped, no matter
what the cost. For once, a natural catastrophe would be acting as a force for good in
the world; perhaps for the first time in a long time, ever since Moses had led his people
across the Red Sea and the Pharoah of Egypt had tried to pursue, and drowned for his folly.

Appendix: Soviet Note on Drakian atrocities in occupied Soviet territory.

The following note was issued by Alexander Shlyapnikov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., to all
ambassadors and ministers of countries with which the Soviet Union maintains diplomatic relations. The note
was made public in Leningrad on November 10, 1941.

ON INSTRUCTIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST
REPUBLICS I HAVE THE HONOUR TO INFORM YOU OF THE FOLLOWING:

The liberation by the Red Army, in the course of its continuing successful counter-offensive, of a
number of towns and rural localities which had been temporarily in the hands of the Drakan invaders
has revealed and continues to reveal increasingly every day an unheard-of picture of pillage, general
devastation, abominable violence, outrage and massacre, perpetrated by the Drakan slaver occupants
upon the non combatant population during the Draka offensive, occupation and retreat.

Abundant documentary material at the disposal of the Soviet Government testifies to the fact that the
plunder and ruination of the population, accompanied by bestial enslavement, outrage and massacre,
are universal in all districts which have fallen under the Drakan heel. Irrefutable facts, not least of which
is the words of the Drakan imperialist beasts themselves, as they make no attempts at hiding their
depravity from their own domestic population or from the world. This regime of plunder and enslavement
against the entire population of the occupied territories is simply an extension of the slavery and terror
that the Drakan vermin has previously extended onto the territories of Africa and the Middle-East. This
monstrous system, devised and maintained over decades represents the most chilling development
in human degradation and devolution into the beastial, supported by the culture and overlords of the
Domination, who has released upon the Soviet Union an army of dandified sadistic aristocrats and
their brute beastly janissaries motivated by the lust for rape and plunder.

Every step of the Drakan citizenry and their brutish Janissary hordes on captured Soviet territories of
the Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Russian districts and regions, involves
the devastation and destruction of innumerable material and cultural values of our people, loss by the
entire population of their property accumulated by persistent labour, institution of a regime of slavery,
rape, forced hard labour, famine and bloody massacres, before the horrors of which the most terrible
crimes ever known in human history fade into insignificance.

The Soviet Government and its organs keep detailed records of all the villainous crimes of the Drakan army,
for which an indignant Soviet people justly demands retribution and will attain it.

The Soviet Government deems it its duty to bring to the knowledge of all civilized humanity, of all honest
people in the world, its statement of facts illustrating the monstrous crimes committed by the Drakan army
against the peaceful population in the captured territories of the Soviet Union.

Wherever the Drakan invaders have set foot on Soviet territory they have brought destruction and devastation
to our towns and villages. They have devastated and even burned to the ground scores of towns and thousands
of villages in temporarily occupied districts of the U.S.S.R.

Many instances have been registered of bandit devastation and destruction by Drakan troops of city buildings,
factories and other structures, including whole city blocks. A number of small towns have been reduced to ruins.

The Drakan invaders erased hundreds of villages in the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, and in the
Groznyi, Sochi, and other regions of our country. When they emptied the towns of Tageloni, Okumi, Gali and
Dzhvari in the Abhkazkaya Region, to ship the population into slavery, the Draka detailed Janissaries to pour
gasoline over residencies and houses and set them on fire. When residents tried to put out the fires, the
Janissaries shot at them with rifles and sub-machineguns and turned flamethrowers on them, for the crime
of "resisting relocation".

A 77-year-old peasant named Tsitsishvili was shot because he said, "Don't burn my house!" The locals were
told "You have no houses, you have nothing, you are nothing, you are serfs, you are our property now."

This base and criminal destruction of our towns and villages gives expression to the dark Drakan hatred of
our country, of the labour and achievements of the Soviet people, and of what has already been done to
improve the life of peasants, workers and intellectuals in the U.S.S.R. These villainous crimes are everywhere
perpetrated by the invaders in accordance with the standards of their beastial culture and the standing orders
of their military.

An order-of-the-day of the 128th Citizen Infantry merarchy, signed by Merarch Lowell and recently captured
near the town of Bechik, of the Groznyi Region, says with unbounded cynicism: "The zone which, depending
on circumstances, should be evacuated, must be a desert after the withdrawal of our troops. In places where
full destruction is to be effected, all houses must be burned. For this purpose all houses should be filled with
straw beforehand, especially those made of stone. Stone buildings must be blown up. In particular, all cellars
should be destroyed. Measures for the creation of a devastated zone should be prepared and carried out
ruthlessly and in full."

Devastating our towns and villages, the Drakan Command orders its troops to create "desert zones" in all
Soviet territories from which Red Army troops succeed in ousting the invaders, and wherever the occupants
remain on our territory they continue committing their vile banditry, converting populated localities into "desert
zones." They blow up and burn public buildings, factories, mills, schools, libraries, hospitals and churches.

In villages occupied by the Drakan authorities, the peaceful peasant population is subjected to unrestrained
pillage and violence. The peasants are deprived of their property, accumulated by decades of persistent labour.
They are robbed of their houses, cattle, grain, clothing and everything down to the last baby's shirt and handful
of grain. Finally and most importantly they are deprived of their freedom, tattooed like cattle and turned into serfs.

Often the rural population, including old folk, women and children, are evicted from its houses immediately after
the Drakan occupation and compelled to seek shelter in dugouts and trenches in the forest, or simply in the
open. The occupants strip anyone they meet on the roads, including children, of clothing and footwear, and cruelly
suppress all those who attempt to protest or offer any resistance to plunder.

In villages of the Donetsk and Tukhachevskigrad Regions of the Ukraine, later liberated by the Red Army, peasants
were repeatedly plundered by the occupants. As various Drakan military units passed through a given locality, each of
them began anew the searches, violence, arson and executions for failure to surrender food. The same thing happened
in all the other regions, from which Red Army troops are now driving the remnants of the Drakan invaders.

Everywhere in the villages, the Drakan invaders take away all stocks of food, slaughter the cattle and poultry, carry
off the grain and other produce and, like petty thieves, steal all domestic utensils, clothing, underwear, footwear,
furniture and children's toys.

However the greatest outrages are found in areas where the Drakan invader has, for the time being, managed to
halt the inevitable Red Army counter-offensives. The Draka have two policies, when their armies of conquest advance
quickly, as they did in the initial period after their unprovoked attack, the peasants are abused and robbed, but generally
left to work the land for a time, until the slave traders and Security Directorate can arrive. However if the defensive forces
manage to hold them at bay, and stabilize the front, as occurred in dozens of areas during even the initial period of
fighting, the able bodied are rounded up and forced to work on entrenchments and other military projects, while the rest
are culled, that is butchered, for the sake of saving the cost of feeding them! This is not some new outrage, but a standard
part of the Drakan tactical handbook, as any veteran of the fighting in Central Asia or in Anatolia might tell you!

Drakan officers and Citizen soldiers, and their Janissary soldiers engage in orgies of plunder in all captured Soviet
districts. The Drakan authorities have long since legalized looting by their army and encourage pillage, raping and
violence. The Drakan Government regards this as a realization of the bandit "principle" it once enunciated, according
to which every Drakan warrior must have a "personal, material interest in the war." A principle especially apt for their
Janissary slave soldiers who are recruited exclusively with the promise of plunder, liquor and rape!

The general order of the Drakan armies in the Caucasus dated July 17, 1941, addressed to the commanders of
all propaganda companies of the Drakan Army and found by Red Army troops when they routed the 68th Citizen
Infantry Legion, directly order: "Grain, large and small horned animals, and poultry should be confiscated from the
population for the use of the army. Thorough searches should be carried out in every house, and everything must
be taken away without leaving anything. In case of the slightest resistance, the people are to be shot on the spot
and the house burned."


The Drakan Army is more and more turning into an army of predatory robbers and marauders, who devastate and
ransack the flourishing towns and villages of the Soviet Union, and pillage and destroy the property and all the belongings
accumulated by the working population of our villages and towns. The facts testify to the utter moral degradation and
corruption of the Drakan society, which by plundering, stealing and marauding, has deserved the wrathful curse and scorn
of the whole Soviet people.

Wherever Drakan troops and Drakan authorities have appeared on Soviet territory they have immediately instituted a
regime of the cruellest exploitation and most arbitrary deprivation of rights against the defenceless civilian population.
The occupants have instituted a regime of slavery and forced hard labour for the peaceful population, which is ruined
and deprived of all means of subsistence.

Disregarding their age and the state of their health, the Draka throw many Soviet citizens into concentration camps,
after occupying or destroying their houses, and force them under pain of torture, shooting and starvation to perform
without pay various hard tasks, including work of a military nature. On many occasions, after civilians have been used
for some kind of work of a military nature, all of them have been shot in order to preserve secrecy.

Residents of a number of districts liberated by the Red Army and situated far apart, state unanimously that the Draka
used the civilian population for the particularly dangerous work of extracting mines from areas and objectives in front
of the advancing Drakan troops. This is generally done by the method of forcing the peasants to drive their tractors
through the minefields.

Posing as representatives of an allegedly "superior race," and demanding submissiveness and slave labour from the
freedom-loving peoples of the Soviet Union, the Draka, by their whole base and oppressive behaviour, have aroused
the indescribable indignation and hatred of all peoples and all strata of society in the Soviet Union. The Drakan occupants,
who, under the flag of a "superior race," want not only to oppress their own people but also to enslave other peoples,
bring to the occupied Soviet districts not only forced labor, devastation and famine, but also outrage of human dignity
and national sentiments.

The Drakan Army invaded our territory in order to destroy the free life and culture of the peoples of the Soviet Union, to
break and enslave these peoples. For this very reason the peoples of the Soviet Union rallied into an inflexible and
impregnable force against the hateful Drakan Army of oppressors. There is no limit to the popular wrath and indignation
called forth from the whole Soviet population and the Red Army by the innumerable instances of base violence, abominable
outrage of the honour of women, and mass murder of Soviet men and women committed by the Drakan slaver officers
and soldiers.

The outrages of the Drakan occupiers are often so foul that they are unspeakable, in all the areas that they enter they
ban all education, and punish with death illegal education. The method for this is very simple, they open up the door, throw
in a grenade and close the door, killing all within, and killing any that attempt to leave. However often this will not satisfy their
beastly urges, on many occasions schoolboys and girls found in co-operatives where they would take part in the harvest
have been rounded up and the prettiest or most handsome girls and boys have been taken to the rear for use by the Draka,
while the remainder are used to sate the beastial urges of the Janissaries.

This urge for rapine is seemingly unquenchable in the Draka, who are all like simple beasts in the rutting season, seeking to
mount and violate all that they see, their men and their women are alike in that regard too. The families of party officials,
officers, sergeants are all rounded up and sent either to destructive labour, or sold into the most base slavery. In many
cases the wives of priests, and the nuns of the convents, are torn from their peaceful lives and either executed or else
also forced into the most base slavery.

In Kiev several nunneries were emptied out, a Mother Superior protested the treatment of her nuns, and for her efforts
she was taken into the Church of her convent and nailed up upon the crucifix. Whereupon several of the nuns were placed
upon the altar and violated in the most bestial fashion as the Janissaries broke upon the supplies of communion wine and
drank themselves into a stupor. When an old priest named Romaznev, holding a cross in his hands, tried to prevent the
rape of girls, the Janissaries beat him, tore off his cassock, burned his beard and bayoneted him to death.

Base outrage of women and girls occurs everywhere in the occupied districts. In the Ukrainian village of Borodayevka,
in the Dniepropetrovsk Region, the Draka and Janissaries raped all women and girls without exception. In the village of
Berezovka, in the Odessa Region, drunken Janissaries raped and carried away all women and girls aged 16 to 30. In
Kiev the Drakan Command opened a brothel for officers in a hotel, to which they drove hundreds of girls and women.
These women were mercilessly dragged over the pavement by the hands or hair.

Drakan occupation of a town or village usually begins with the erectionof a field of stakes outside of it, where the Drakan
Janissaries impale anyone who attempts resistance, and let the bodies decay for days or weeks as an example to the
villagers. Often mass executions are conducted on busy thoroughfares, between Odessa and Kiev the Draka raised a
line of impaled corpses that claimed over 30 000 lives, and on the route between Baku to Tbilisi to Sochi the Draka impaled
a total of 112 000.

A horrible massacre and pogrom were perpetrated by the Drakan invaders in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Within a few days
the Drakan bandits killed and tortured to death 52 000 men, women, old folk and children, dealing mercilessly with all
Ukrainians and Russians who in any way displayed their fidelity to the Soviet Government. Soviet citizens who escaped
from Kiev gave an agonizing account of one of these mass executions:

A large number of party members, university professors, priests and retired officers, as well as members of their family, were
gathered outside a field in Kiev. Before they were shot they were forced to dig long trenches, where upon they were forced
to line up along the ditch before they were gunned down. Others who offered up any sign of resistance were not so lucky,
a woman Nanita Kosova defending her ten year old daughter from violation was, after she killed a Drakan officer by hitting
him over the head with a heavy blunt object, first raped and then impaled. Thousands others were impaled alongside the
streets of Kiev, any city block from which gunfire or resistance was offered was either destroyed, or every third resident impaled.

In addition to all the above, the Soviet Government possesses documentary material concerning a frequently repeated,
fiendish crime of the Drakan slaver command-the use of peaceful Soviet citizens as a shield for Drakan troops fighting
the Red Army.

On August 28, 1941, while crossing the River Rastavitsa, Drakan slaver troops, unable to overcome the staunch
resistance of the Red Army, gathered the population of the Ukrainian town of Skvira, in the Kiev Region, and, under
pain of execution, drove women, children and old men in front of them while they deployed their forces for an
attack. The same base crime against the civilian population has been repeated countless times though at a lesser
scale, often civilians and children are tied to the Drakan vehicles as they advance against the Red Army.

There is no limit to the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the Drakan slaver army which has broken into our territory.
The Drakan army wages not an ordinary war, but a bandit war to exterminate the peace-loving peoples standing
in the way of the Drakan slaver criminals' aspiration for domination over other peoples and over the whole world.
The Drakan Government, which treacherously attacked the Soviet Union, ignores all provisions of international
law in making war, and all requirements of human morality. It wages war, in the first place, against the peaceful,
unarmed population-women, children and old folk-thus revealing its wild, bandit nature. This bandit government,
which recognizes only force and banditry, must be broken by the all-crushing strength of the freedom-loving
peoples, in the ranks of which the Soviet peoples will fulfill to the end their great task of liberation.

Not only the Red Army, but the whole of our multi-millioned people is filled with burning hatred and craves
merciless revenge for the blood and shattered lives of Soviet citizens. The Soviet people will never forget the
brutalities, violence, devastation and humiliation which the bestial bands of the Drakan invaders inflicted and
continue to inflict on the peaceful population of our country. They will not forget and pardon.

Informing all governments with which the U.S.S.R. maintains diplomatic relations of all these brutalities
perpetuated by the Drakan invaders, the Soviet Government declares that it places the whole
responsibility for these inhuman, bandit actions of the Drakan troops upon the criminal Government of
the Domination of the Draka. At the same time, theGovernment of the U.S.S.R. declares with unshakable
confidence that the struggle of the Soviet nation for liberation is a struggle not only for the rights and liberty
of the peoples of the Soviet Union, but for the rights and liberty of all freedom-loving peoples of the world,
and that this war can end only in utter defeat of the Drakan armies and complete victory over Drakan slaver
tyranny, and the utter destruction of the Drakan culture and nation.

Signed: Shlyapin
Moscow, November 9, 1941

[MKSheppard]

Chapter Five: Fun with Play-Doh!

[20 November, 1941 - 1200 Hours - Abbotsbury, England]

"So this is your idea to collapse the cliff face, Barnes?" Cowen
said a mite suspiciously as he drew eyes across the odd shaped
bomb that sprouted cylinders along it's sides.

"Take your bog standard five hundred pounder, and add some extra
RATO packs you have lying around, and you've got something that
can be fired and will hit it's target with a minimal amount of piloting
skill needed, rather than trying to toss the bombs by inertia alone."

"How much explosive in these things?" asked Cowen as he scratched
the back of his head absentmindedly.

"Standard AP bomb, so only a hundred twenty five pounds per bomb."

"That's awfully low. Can't we boost it?"

"Can't. The bomb has to penetrate the sandstone before it detonates,
remember? So the casing has to be thick enough so that it doesn't
break apart."

"Isn't there a better way?"

"No."

[27 November, 1941 - 1030 Hours - London, England]

Wallis sat at the dinner table at one of his friends' flat in London, listening to
the people around the table talk about how the fighting was going in Italy,
everyone was talking about it and Churchill's refusal to declare war.

"What does that bloody fool at Whitehall think he's doing? Those nuns may have
been bloody papists, but you don't do that kind of stuff to nuns for god's sake."
declared Wallis' friend, a veteran of the Great War who had fought at the Somme.

"Bloody Hell, we didn't get rid of Chamberlain just so we could go down the bloody
public directory from C-H to C-U."

Inwardly, Wallis wanted to scream outloud to them that it was all a masterful piece
of poker by Churchill; about the Drakan Note to the United Kingdom threatening
to invade India, but that would compromise everything they were working towards
at Abbotsbury, so he kept his mouth shut.

"So Barnes, what do those blokes have you up to at Abbotsbury?"

"Oh, nothing much, I'm trying to interest them in continuing the development of my
geodetic system for constructing bombers."

Which was true, he'd been trying to get the Air Ministry interested in funding further
development of his geodetic construction system for a true four engined heavy
bomber, rather than further refinement of the twin-engined Wellington.

Now if he could only crack the puzzle of how to get maximum destructive force
out of those bombs...

"Get back here, Tommy!" came a shout from the kitchen. As he watched, a young
boy ran out of the kitchen holding a pile of what looked like dough in his hands. As
the boy giggled like a madman, he began throwing the dough all over the place, and
it stuck to the walls with a wet splaaat.

As he watched the dough slowly slip down the wall, gears began to turn in his head;
and then it all suddenly clicked. How to shatter the cliff face.

Leaping to his feet, he shouted "EUREKA!", startling everyone, including the boy who
had started that train of thought.

"Are you okay, Barnes?"

"I'm perfectly bloody fine! Thanks for the idea, I must be going now!"

"Idea? What idea?" asked the man of the house in confusion as he watched
Wallis leave.

[28 November, 1941 - 1300 Hours - London, England]

Wallis and Cowen looked uneasily at each other. Churchill had summoned them to
his office out of the blue that morning, just as they were working out the details and
physics of Wallis' new 'dough' bomb.

"Any idea why Winston wants us?"

"No."

A well-dressed secretary came up to them and cleared her throat. "Mr. Churchill will
see you now."

Opening the door to Winston's office, they saw a bespectacled Churchill peering over
a tablefull of maps and diagrams.

Churchill tapped a section of the map, and bending over, Cowen and Wallis saw that it
was a map of the Quattara tunnels. "I've been thinking about this lately. What stops the
Draka from simply closing the valves at the very entrance of the tunnel when we attack?"

Cowen was silent for several moments. Damnit, why didn't I bloody think of that?.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing, Mr. Churchill."

Instead of a despaired look on Winston's face, there was instead an evil gleam in his
eye. Uh oh, thought Cowen.

"There's a program underway right now by the Royal Marines to create a special group
of divers to help clear the beaches for a Royal Marine landing and conduct all sorts of
roguish things against our enemies, whoever they may be."

Churchill paused to light one of his ever present cigars. "Called the Special Boat Squadron,
and is training up north. Mr Wallis, could you design something that our boys could emplace
against the intake pipe to destroy it, or insert into the tunnel itself?"

"I believe so, Mr. Churchill."

"Excellent. Professor, if it isn't too much trouble, could you please calculate if it's possible
to block off the intake pipe entrance with a salvo of torpedoes, in case our rogues fail?"

"It'll take time to do the exact calculations, but I believe it's possible."

"Bloody excellent!"

[30 November, 1941 - 1300 Hours - Abbotsbury, England]

The prototype 'dough' rockets were ready for testing, and a steam catapult had been rigged
to throw the prototype to 400 miles an hour on it's sled before the rocket motor in the back
fired, to simulate the force of a rocket being launched from a diving aircraft against the
cliff face, which was like the Tallboy test before it, a batch of concrete mixed to simulate
sandstone.

As the final preparations were underway, Cowen walked up to Wallis and looked at the
rather flimsy weapon on the steam sled and looked at it uneasily. "How is this going to
work again?"

"Well, you see, instead of driving a bomb deep into the sandstone before it explodes, we'll
use the shock waves of an explosion that adheres directly to it's surface to shatter the
sandstone instead."

Wallis pointed at the nose of the rocket. "The rocket contains a hundred pounds of
plastique explosive, and when it hits the cliff face, it will splatter over the cliff face
before detonating, fracturing the sandstone. With this method, we might be able to
dispense with unnecessarily heavy armour piercing bombs and use much lighter
rockets."

"Ah, I see." replied Cowen uneasily.

"Let's go get in the bunker and see how this test goes."

[15 minutes later]

Inside the bunker, everyone watched the steam sled disappear in a blur, followed shortly
by the smoke and flame of a rocket launch down the track, before it crashed into the
faux sandstone wall and detonated with a low crump which reverberated through
the thick walls of the bunker.

[10 minutes later]

Everyone stood and looked at the black greasy smear on the faux sandstone wall where
the rocket had impacted, and couldn't help but notice the tiny spiderwebbed cracks
radiating away from the impact point. Wallis walked up and ran his fingers over the
surface of the slab.

"Not as good as I'd hoped. But we still have time to refine what we have here."

As Wallis continued poking away at the sandstone cliff, a official car screeched to a halt
outside the testing range and disgorged several officers in RAF blues who walked up
to Wallis.

"Sir, a message from A.V. Roe & Company for you, Mr Wallis. They might have what
you've been looking for."

"Excellent. Most excellent."

[MKSheppard]

Chapter Six: The Calm Before the Storm

[2 December 1941, Chadderton, England - A.V. Roe Plant, 1000 hours]

Before the visitors, row after row of forward fuselage sections for a heavy
bomber of an unknown type stretched forward as far as they could see,
the plexiglass noses gleaming under the factory lights.

"Why, hello there. Admiring the factory?" came a voice from behind one
of the fuselages. Moments later, the source of the voice stepped out, and
everyone could see it was a grey-haired man in a suit.

"Largest one in the British Empire, although I hear that Ford fellow is building
an even larger one over in America; shame he didn't build one here instead
of all those truck factories for the Reds."

Wallis shook the man's hand. "Wallis, Barnes Wallis, at your service."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wallis. I recall you were asking something about
our new Manchester replacement."

"Yes, more specifically, can it carry a twelve thousand pound load to at least
twenty thousand feet?"

"Hmm..."

"For at least seventeen hundred miles?"

"Now that's a tricky one. But I do believe so. May I ask why?"

"Can't tell you."

"Bugger."

"When will the first ones be delivered?" asked Wallis, as he ran his
hand down the plexiglass nose of one of the bombers.

"They're already being delivered; No. 460 Squadron, a bunch of Australians,
already has 'em, and is working them up at Molesworth."

"Hmm."

"Any problems?"

"They're always drunk half the time; no time with them for training
on the Lancaster, they're always in the pub. Bloody Colonials."

[1400 Hours - Office of the Prime Minister, Whitehall]

"You're not taking my newest bombers away from me! I need
those bombers to train my crews on those new Lancasters coming
off the line!"

Churchill watched with feigned interest as Sir Richard Peirse, head
of RAF Bomber Command, objected to this latest intrusion on his
personal fiefdom by His Majesty's Government.

"It's not enough that you had to go and give those new Lancasters
to those bloody Australians, but now you want to take them away
from Bomber Command for a crackpot scheme!"

Churchill let Peirse go on for several more moments before he cleared
his throat.

"Sir Richard, I am taking those bombers from you for a momumental
undertaking; one that may determine the future course of the war yet
to come with the Draka. Your office will give Wallis and his scientists
all the support they need."

"Yes, Mister Prime Minister." muttered Peirse as he saluted and left
the Prime Minister's office.

[4 December 1941, RAF Molesworth, England - 0800 hours]

"Damn it, what the hell are we doing, hauling thirteen thousand
pounds of water around?" muttered Flight Lieutenant Anders
Russell of the Royal Australianic Air Force.

"Damned if I know, mate," replied his flight engineer, Flight Sergeant
Mark Rusbridge, who was from New Zealand, which had been absorbed,
along with Australia, into the Australianic Dominions a long time ago.

"Right, let's do it."

"Gotcha."

Rusbridge slowly coaxed the four Merlins which powered the Lancaster
into howling life one by one, until all four engines were roaring, their
propellors clawing at the air faster and faster.

All around them, the frame of the bomber rumbled as more and more fuel
was fed into the ravenous maws of the four engines, and slowly, the bomber
began to move forward, the thrust of the four huge propellors overcoming
the aircraft's brakes.

Slowly, Russell let off the brakes, and the bomber leapt forward,
slowly gaining speed, despite the heavy load in her belly, the wheels
bumping against the grooves in the concrete with ever increasing
regularity, until takeoff speed was reached, and then with the deftest
of touches, Russell pulled the bomber into the air, and slowly the ground
fell away from the landing gear, until there was enough space for it
to retract safely.

"How much space did we have left?" came a voice from behind Russell.

"More than enough, mate." replied Anders to the white-haired gentleman
who looked out of place on this instrument of death and destruction.

"Good. Can we reach twenty thousand?" asked Wallis.

"With plenty of room to spare. Hope you brought something to read,
it's going to take a mighty long time."

[Fifty Minutes later]

"We're there!" shouted Anders over the drone of the Merlins.

"Are you sure?"

"We've been at twenty five thousand for the last ten minutes!"

Wallis smiled. At last, his dream had a bomber capable of carrying
it to the heights needed. It was only a matter of time now, the crews
had to be trained, and the bombs made.

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant - Provinca Egypta - 2000 hours]

Cohortarch Walter Görtlizer watched as the latest load of heavy water was
manhandled onto the train bound for the Congo by sweating serfs under
the white hot glare of kleig lights on towers, and row after row of Hollbar
rifle-toting Citizens to ensure nothing foolish took place. This was one of
the most important projects in the entire Dominion, that much he knew at
least.

Rumor was it took the entire plant working full blast, with enough power to
light up the entire North African coast to produce just ten kilos of this stuff
a day. Since the stuff was so precious, it was placed in heavily armored
containers so that none could escape, even in the rare occurence of a
train accident; it was that precious.

Finally, the torturous process of loading and measurement was finished;
Tech Sec demanded that every single gram of this crap be accounted
for, and woe be to the Cohortarch who fucked up reading the dial on the
weighing scale.

"Righ', we don' fo' th' day," shouted Görtlizer towards Jean LeMaine, a
fellow Cohortarch who had gone with him to the same boarding school
years ago, when they were just youth, sweating it out with antique T-4 bolt
action rifles on the firing range at five.

Walking into the barracks where the Citizens assigned to the plant security
detail slept, they heard a voice on the radio talking about the war, and how
it was going; out of curiosity, they gathered around the radio, which was
at the end of the barracks, in the central mess hall.

"Toda' is a day which shall be remembr'd as lon' as there ar' Draka," intoned
the commentator. "Our submarns' san' fifteen ships o' America,
repor' say yo' coul' rea' a papa' by th' light o' the burnin' ships."

At this, everyone crowded around the radio burst into cheers. "We shoin' those
gutta' trash how rea' men figh'!" shouted someone whose name escaped Görtlizer
at the moment.

When everyone finally had quieted down, the commentator was talking about how
Drakan troops had seized the rather insignificant town of Pryluky, some distance
east of Kiev. About damned time some progress was being made with the Ivans,
thought Görtlizer. The Russian campaign had been a mess, a big fuckin' mess
from the start, but it looked like Tarleton was finally getting their shit together.

The announcer's voice faded from the radio, to be replaced by a cheery jingle,
which every Citizen in the Domination knew by heart, and every Serf feared,
followed by a clipped British-accented voice that was the voice of Stevenson
and de Veere.

"Stevenson & de Verre, Labor Agents, is pleased to announce that we now have
what you all have been requesting ever since we took Rumania, the finest Rumanian
stock, Clergy, Nobility, all ready for you to break. And just now, the latest stock
from Ukraine is arriving, ready to fill your demands. However we unfortunately cannot fill
your demand for Italian stock, due to circumstances beyond our control."

As he walked away from the mess hall, Görtlizer couldn't help but think about
how little apparent progress had been made against the Soviets in almost
a year of war. So little for so much thrown away. He was privy to the reports
coming in from the Soviet Union, how there was a net loss of serfs.

The amount of new serfs coming from the conquered territories was far far less
than the amount of Janissaries which had been spent to take them in the first place;
approaching Ankara levels; something the Domination had only seen once before,
and that was right before the biggest Janissary revolts of them all.

Despite the warm air of the North African coast, Görtlizer shuddered inwardly. He
could see the signs, and he hoped the muckity mucks at Tarleton could too.

[MKSheppard]

Chapter Seven: Antedeluvium

[28 February 1942, RAF Molesworth, England, 1800 hours]

The crews of 460 Squadron walked into the briefing room semi-despondently.
It was kind of hard to get worked up over another night training mission with
those massive 'pumpkin' bombs, when you had been doing that for almost
two months.

Take off before dark, spend some time milling around the North Sea, and then
go in low over Scotland, before dropping your bombs on the target range by
radar. The first few times had been exciting. By the 20th or so time, it was
boring as hell, something to be done so that you could go on the town at
at the end of it all.

As they stepped into the crowded Operations building, Flight Lieutenant
Russell noticed that several high ranking people were standing by the briefing
map, along with that guy they'd taken up into the air a couple of months before.

"This could be it, Mark," he muttered to his flight engineer, who only nodded
back as he prepared his engineer's sheet for the upcoming mission.

As his men milled about talking to each other in the excited tones of men
about to be shown a Big Secret, Squadron Leader John "Crocodile" Hayes
walked onto the stage, and pulled a velvet cord, revealing the mission map,
which showed a dark red string reaching out from Britain to somewhere in
the Balkans.

"Gentlemen, I give you Operation Veritable, a test of how well the Royal
Air Force can extend it's powers overseas at a moment's orders. Your planes
have been repainted in Italian colours, because at the end of this mission,
they are to be turned over to the Italian Air Force, who paid for them several
months prior. That little fact, by the way chaps, is considered to be Most
Secret by His Majesty's government until well after the handover. I hope
no one wants to enjoy the hospitality of the Tower. You leave at dark, and
your destination is Mannock field in Albania, a field the Italians have agreed
to use as the handover point."

The crews continued to listen to the details of the mission in the bored manner
of men who knew what to filter out as being unnecessary, writing from time to
time in their flight journals and making markings on their maps. The briefing
continued for forty more minutes before Hayes finished up and bade everyone
a good voyage.

As the aircrews left for their bombers which waited outside under the harsh glare of
floodlights, Cowen walked over to Hayes, who was conversing with some relatively
high ranking officers from Bomber Command, and tapped his shoulder lightly.

"Yes?"

"Why didn't you tell them the truth?"

Hayes shrugged. "No need to tell them. Compartmentalization and all that.
They'll learn the truth later, much later."

[29 February 1942, Somwhere in the skies over Germany, 0100 hours]

"Never thought we'd be doing this," muttered Russell as he looked out the cockpit
onto the ground below, which was lit up with a vertitable forest of lights.

"Doing what?" replied Rusbridge as he listened to the pitch of the four Merlins throbbing
in the airstream outside the fuselage. So far, no problems, other than some slight overheating,
which had been solved by throttling back slightly.

"Flying over bloody Berlin without a shot being fired."

"Well, there is that. But what about the mission? You heard what Croc said..."

Russell snorted. "That bullshit? We didn't train for two bloody months just to act
as bleeding ferry pilots."

[29 February 1942, Somewhere over the Balkans, 0400 hours]

"Will you look at that?"

Rusbridge turned to look out the cockpit windows towards where Russell was pointing
at. Then he saw it.

"My God..."

A dull glow was on the western horizon, flickering irregularly as guns of all types fired
throughout the night on the Italian penisula.

"Sure glad I'm not there," replied Russell.

"Aye."

[29 February 1942, Kuwait City, British Araby Protectorate, 2200 hours]

Brigadier Basil Liddell Hart walked through one of the many warehouses
next to the railyards in Kuwait City, and watched with contentment as his
men swarmed over the latest batch of Comets to arrive from France under
the glare of spotlights from the ceiling.

The men were repainting the Comets from Olive Drab to Desert tan, and
were installing the necessary desertification equipment to allow them to
function in the desert.

One of his Majors walked up to him and saluted. "Brigadier, we should have
this last batch ready to go by H-Hour, sahr."

"Excellent, excellent, Major Philby. Keep me appraised of your progress."

As he left the warehouse and emerged into the hot dusty night of Kuwait,
Hart smiled. Soon, in just under four days, he would lead his Long-Range
Desert Group into battle, and prove once and for all to those old fogies in
the Army establishment that manouevre, won wars, not sheer firepower.

Inwardly, he still chafed over them forcing that Motorised Battalion down
his throats. Infantry would just slow down his entire force. Speed was
of the essence, not stopping to fight every little threat that popped up,
which was what the infantry would do, of course.

[29 February 1942, Near Reims, France 0900 hours]

Pierre Devincour watched as the British tanks rumbled across farmers'
fields in the early light of the morning, on one of their many exercises,
which was mostly to prove to the French people that the British hadn't
deserted them, but was still there, ready to defend France if the Hun
crossed the border once again.

When France had gone to war against the Domination, large tracts of
the countryside had been declared off limits to the civilian population,
and the population in them had been evacuated; for use as military
training grounds. Most of them were in southern France, but this one,
near Reims, had apparently been created for security reasons and to
allow British troops to get training that they couldn't get in the British
Isles, with it's dense population.

Devincour was on the edge of the Reims Training Area, where it
was still legal for civilians to live. Only a single strand of barbed wire
on fenceposts separated the training area from the rest of the French
countryside, but no one from the village who had crossed that almost
invisible boundary had never been seen again; so no one, not even
teenaged lovers, were willing to violate the premises of the training area.

So, like everyone else, he had to observe the maneouvers from
a distance. The tanks participitating in this exercise had a rounded
turret, and the roadwheels were fairly large. There were only a few
British tanks that had those features, and one of them was the
A34 Comet, the latest, and most modern British Cruiser tank.

Sighing, Devincour put down the pair of binoculars he had been
observing the tanks with, and closed the shutters of the small loft
he had rented in this small town near Reims. It was time to send
another report to his superiors back at Tarleton. From what he'd
observed in person and in newsreels, the British were continuing
to reinforce the BEF in France.

[29 February 1942, Near Turbat, India 1900 hours]

Field Marshal Richard O'Connor, CINC of the British Army in India,
watched as his command car sped down the paved road, past miles
and miles of ammunition all stockpiled for the offensive out of Baluchistan
and into Draka-held Persia. The British Army in India had been called up,
all of it; right down to the Martini-Henry carrying police units, in response
to the Japanese advance in Burma.

Officially, but I know otherwise., thought O'Connor. In just a few days,
or whenever old Winston gave the word, Hell would be unleashed onto
the Drakian border outposts in Persia, courtesy of several thousand modern
artillery pieces that the British had built in Indian factories as part of their
efforts to build up an indigenious military base there in the twenties and
thirties, to ease the strain on British industry. As his headquarters, a grand
old building built during the 1880s, came into view, O'Connor turned to the
man he was counting on to lead the assault that would break through the
Drakian defense lines.

"Bill, do you think your Indians are up to it? You're asking an awful lot
from them."

Lieutenant-General William Gott clucked. "I can assure you that my men
will take their objectives on H-Hour. They just have to be competently led,
if their commander loses his nerve, so do they. I assure you that will not
happen with me."

[30 February 1942, Mannock Airfield, Albania 0700 hours]

The airfield (if it could be called that), was nothing more than a strip somwhere
in Albania, just barely long enough to take a Lancaster. Inside the tents that had
been set up for the aircrew, Russell and his crew were snoring away. Since
they'd arrived in Albania a day ago, they'd been kept on the airfield by armed
guards. The turnover of the planes hadn't happened, and as Russell noted
acidly over dinner last night, wasn't damn likely to happen, as the only Italians
around were members of the old-men's unit which patrolled this area.

[31 February 1942, Cyrenaican RCC, near Banghazi - 1145 hours]

“Well, what have we here,” muttered Centurion James T. Leyland as he stared
at the latest aerial reconnaisance photographs of the Italian airfields in Albania.

Looking through the magnifying scope on his light table, Leyland paid close
attention to the large planes shown on the airfield that had previously been
bare a few days before.

“What does it look like Jim?” asked his aide, Tetrarch Carl Lindbergh, who formed
the other half of the Photo-Reconnaisance analysis unit attached to the Cyrenaican
Regional Command Center.

“Planes,” came the sarcastic reply from Leyland as he peered closer at the insigna
on the aircraft.

“I know that, Jim. What kind?”

“Big fuckin' ones. This could be those new Piaggos that Intel said the Eyeties
were building. Didn't think they'd be so close to fielding them, though.”

“Give me that,” snapped Lindbergh as he reached for the scope and viewed
the mystery planes in question himself.

“I'll be damned, they're four engine jobs, Look Italian too.”

Pulling away from the light table, both men looked at each other, and then
stared at the clock on the wall. “It's your turn to write up the recon report,
Carl, but lunchtime first.”

“Got you, I hear that the Golden Calf has some new serf dancers this
week,” added Carl, with an obvious leer.

[2 March 1942, Archona NCC, near Archona - 0850 hours]

Arch-Strategos Karl von Shrakenberg stared at the ceiling, noticing the lovely
water stain patterns, as the Junior Strategos in charge of detailing what had happened
in the Italian theater of operations over the last few days droned on about the latest
additions to the enemy forces in the region; most of it was the usual stuff about more
and more German and French reinforcements, with the odd tidbit of an Irish unit entering
the fighting in the San Marino area.

“Irish?” asked one of the men in the meeting room disbeleivingly, a Senior Merarch
whose name Shrakenburg couldn't recall at the moment. “All the Irish are good for
is drinking!”

Strategos Vincent deVeers, who was currently commanding the San Marino front,
as commanding officer of XXII Army, snorted at that. “The Irish from what I hear
from my officers, are hard fighters, they grant no quarter, nor ask for any; they're
almost as bad as the Italians.”

Shrakenburg sighed as the meeting dissolved into a childish comparison of the fighting
qualities of the forces opposing them; with some arguing that the Russians were the
better fighters, while others said the Germans, et cetera, until with some annoyance, he
broke up the tittering by clearing his throat out loud.

“Gentlemen, as much as we would like to talk about various things, we are here
on business, is there anything new of note to report?”

One of the junior officers in the meeting, someone's assisant, spoke up uncertainly.

“There are reports from the photo-reconnaisance boys up by Cyrenaica that the
Italians have deployed those new P.108Bs we've been hearing about for some time
now in Albania.”

“What does this mean?” asked deVeers, who was showing some interest; Albania was
just across the Aegan Sea, these bombers could strike deep behind his lines.

“Well, from our reports, the P.108B has a little over twice the bombload of the
current S.M. 79, and can fly it a bit higher and faster than the '79.”

“Shit, that means twice as much crap will be landing on my forces every night,
in spite of our glorious night fighters,” muttered deVeers rather sarcastically.

The interception rate of night bombers by the Drakian night fighter corps was
one of the Domination's badly kept secrets. Oh sure, the propaganda all said
that Drakian night fighters were the world's best, and that enemy bombers
were being shot down by the score every night over Italy, but the truth was,
Drakian airborne radar was simply too far behind everyone else.

“We could try bombing the fields that they're being based from,” suggested a
Cohortarch.

“Good idea,” replied deVeers, slowly breaking out of his morose mood. “Shoot
that up to LVI Air Command up in Rome, when's the latest we can bomb those
damned airfields?

“The third, sir.”

“Make it so.”

[2 March 1942, Mannock Airfield, Albania 1700 hours]

As the bomber crews sat down in the cheap folding seats provided for them,
the chatter in the briefing tent rose to a crescendo, before Squadron Leader
Hayes walked in, and raised his hand, signalling for the men to shut up, it
was time to go to work.

"Thank you for all being here tonight. Our mission, as you have already
guessed, is not to turn these aircraft over to the Italians...”

Laughter rippled through the tent; everyone had figured that out long ago.

“...instead at midnight our time, you have the great honour of sending twelve
thousand pounds by airmail to the Domination of Draka. Tonight, the Empire
strikes back!”

Boisterous cheers suddenly erupted from everyone, along with a variety
of comments, the most numerous being “About bloody time!”

“As you well know, the Domination long ago harnessed the power of
nature to create the Al-Quattarah hydropower plant. This plant supplies
power to a large part of the North African coast, as well as to a radar
research laboratory in the depression itself.

“Our mission tonight is to destroy the Al-Quattara complex, no matter
what the cost. If we don't do it tonight, we will come back tomorrow and
do it again, and so on until we do the job right.”

“Your target is not the hydropower structure itself in the depression; that
would be pointless, as it could be easily repaired with new equipment.
No, your targets are the tunnels leading from the Mediterranean to the
depression; once they are fractured, they must be rebored or expensively
repaired.”

A voice from the back rose up. “How are we going to find these tunnels?”

“The Royal Navy has been kind enough to establish a GEE network off the
coast of North Africa with several of their submarines to guide you chaps in.”

A low murmur passed through the room as assistants walked up and down the
aisles of the briefing room and passed out briefing packages to the bomber
crews.

"Ah, does everyone have their target package?"

When every plane captain had raised their hand to signify that they'd gotten it,
Hayes continued. "The Domination has helpfully provided you chaps with
above-ground visual clues of the tunnel locations by cheerfully placing brightly
lit pumping stations along the routes of the tunnels.

“How are we going to find them at night?” asked one of the navigators.

Hayes smiled evilly at this question. “Approximately three miles away from the
coastline, the pumping stations begin to be brightly lit, and are well patrolled
due to saboteurs in the night who like to spontaneously explode. If the Draka have
turned off their lights, just use your H2S to find them and bomb blind.”

"Accuracy is not a major concern; our engineers have calculated that a bomb
landing within five hundred yards of a station should be sufficient to cause
fracture to the underground tunnels under it.”

“What about the radar lab?” asked one of the pilots, an annoying fellow whose
name was Smith something.

“If you arrive and find that your assigned target has already been struck by
a preceeding bomber, you're to divert to the Quattarah depression and give
them twelve thousand pounds of love and happiness.”

“But destroying the radar lab is not your primary mission; that's No. 633
Squadron and their Mosquitoes' job.”

“Any further questions?”

“No? Then good luck and Godspeed to you all.”

[2 March 1942, Otranto LCC, Italy - 1900 hours]

The bored Draka who manned the 1242th Air Defense Cohort hadn't seen
much since they had been posted in the ass end of Italy, on the Otranto
penisula, which stuck out of the main mass of Italy like a diseased pustule.

Their job was to keep track of what small air activity there was in the Balkans
across the Adriatic sea and keep their immediate superiors at the Taranto SCC
advised of what was going on.

“Goddamn, I'm bored,” muttered one of the Tetrarchs who was manning the radar
scope to his companion, a Senior Decurion who had pissed off the wrong kind of
people to end up here, on what was considered the asshole of a country which
was also considered the asshole of Europe.

“What's that over Albania?” asked one of the new kids, a Monitor just fresh
out of radar school.

“Huh?” muttered the Tetrarch as he turned around in his seat to see the 'scope.

“Looks like we got a night raid forming up in Albania.”

“Yep, I'll phone Taranto and let them know.”

[2 March 1942, Taranto SCC, Italy - 1915 hours]

The Centurion in charge of the Sector Control Center in what had been the
former Italian port city of Taranto watched as one of the enlisted men down
below in the pit placed a little wooden block engraved with a red aircraft
outline over Albania.

“Looks like a raid is forming. Probably to hit XXII Army's supply depots.
I'll let their chief of staff know,” he said to no one in particular as he picked
up the phone and asked for XXII Army.

[30 minutes later – 1945 Hours]

The Centurion was now throrougly confused. The raid had indeed formed up,
along with another smaller raid which was hard to track with radar, but instead
of heading westwards for Italy, it was now headed south. There was nothing
south, except for Africa, surely this couldn't be a suicide mission by the Italians?

[15 minutes later – 2000 Hours]

“Sir, didn't we get a report that the Italians had emplaced a new four engined
heavy bomber in Albania a day or so ago?” asked the Centurion's young aide,
a fresh faced Tetrarch fresh out of finishing school and on his first military tour.

“Fuck...Fuck me dead!” shouted the Centurion as he realized what was
going on.

“Get me Cyrenaica!”

[Cyrenaican RCC, near Banghazi – 2015 hours]

The Junior Merarch in charge of the Regional Command Center listened patiently
as the Centurion on duty frantically explained that two raids were headed his way.

“Now, now, calm down dear Julius. We have five night interceptor merarchys near
Cyrenaica alone. They won't get far. I'll notify the roving SCC and tell them to be
on the lookout for them.”

[Roving SCC, 28,500 feet over Waddan, Libya – 2300 hours]

The huge airship was one of the twelve “Roving” Sector Command Centers that
the Domination fielded for commanding and controlling their vast borders; it was
in effect a standard commercial drigible modified to carry a very large radar set up
as high as possible, along with the sensor operators to man it, and the radios to link
into the integrated command system of the region it was operating over.

“Multiple contacts, large, approximately 800 kilometers out, bearing 035, speed,
380 kph, altitude estimated 6,700 meters..” came the voice of one of the female
radar controllers as she read out the new contacts on her scope.

“Right, send that information down to the 294th and 341th Night Interceptor Merarchies,”
muttered the commander of the airborne radar post. “We've got those Eyetie bastards
right where we want them.”

[Lancaster Mk. I (Special) “Tasmanian Devil” 22,234 feet over the Mediterranean – 2301 hours]

“Enemy radar emissions to starboard, fairly strong,” muttered Flight Sergeant
Charles Muldoon, as he picked up the energy radiating from the airship some
five hundred miles distant.

“Well, they know we're here now, boys; look alive.” replied Russell as he looked
out his window into the blackness of the night, lit only by the stars in the sky.

[Elephant III(N.1) Night Fighter 22,234 feet over the Mediterranean – 2345 hours]

“If you come to a bearing of 056, you will be on a course to intersect with the intruders,”
came the pleasant voice of the SCC controller in her airship.

“Right, Right. Warm up the radar,” growled the Senior Tetrarch who flew the converted
medium bomber, while his enlisted men searched the night skies with their electronic eyes.

[Lancaster Mk. I (Special) “Tasmanian Devil” 22,234 feet over the Mediterranean – 2410 hours]

Deedle Deedle Deedle went the annoying sound of the radar warning equipment
in Muldoon's domain behind the cockpit of the Lancaster. “Night Fighter radar, estimated
distance, 5 miles and closing.”

“Blind the bastard,” came the reply from the cockpit.

“With pleasure,” replied Muldoon as he toggled the switch on his panel which
was oddly enough, marked as Window.

[Elephant III(N.1) Night Fighter 22,234 feet over the Mediterranean – 2346 hours]

“The fuck is going on? The fuck is all this?” came the panicked shouts from the
radarmen in their closed off section, causing the pilot to scowl. What was it
now, those damned spark weenies were always complaining...

“What's the problem?” asked the pilot.

“Hundreds of targets! HUNDREDS!” came the shout.

“That's impossible,” was the pilot's flat reply.

“Fuck impossible, I'm seeing it right now on my scopes!”

“Well, which one is the enemy?” asked the pilot, by now
growing quite annoyed.

“How the fuck can I tell? They all look the same!”

[Roving SCC, 28,500 feet over Waddan, Libya – 0050 hours, 3 March 1942]

“You say you are picking up hundreds of contacts?” said
the female controller with skepticism in her voice. “My scope only
shows two targets in your sector, you and the intruder.”

“That's lovely, can you guide me to the bastard?”

“I can try.”

[Cyrenaican RCC, near Banghazi – 0130 hours]

“We have a problem.”

“What is it?” asked the Junior Merarch as he rubbed his eyelids. Damned
all night-shifts.

“Our night fighters are unable to intercept the intruders. When they get close
enough to the larger and slower targets, their radar scopes fill up with hundreds
of non-existent targets, while with the smaller intruders, they're simply being
outrun,” replied the Centurion whose unpleasant task was to break the bad
news to his boss.

“Is there any good news?”

“One of our night fighters managed to catch one of the larger intruders and down it,
apparently the pilot of the craft managed to catch a glimpse of the engine exhaust
glow and home in on it. He reported that the aircraft was a very large four engined
heavy bomber, of non-Italian manufacture.”

“Is the problem that's affecting our night fighters bothering our ground radars?”

“No sir.”

“Good. Order the entire regional command to full alert. Notify the anti-aircraft
batteries and searchlight crews. It looks like good old Ack Ack is going to have to
do the job this time.”

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant - Provinca Egypta - 0150 hours]

Piter Kanut woke up reluctantly. He had taken one of the scientists who worked at
the plant, a pretty redhead who went by the name of Erika to bed, and it had been
a pretty good night all in all; except now the damned air-raid sirens were going off.

“What's going on, honey?” asked Erika, stirring from the bed.

“Nothing, Nothing. I'll go see what's going on, you stay in bed.”

Putting on some pants and a shirt from the floor, he walked out the door, and into
a kaliedoscope of sound and light in the middle of the night. Searchlights were
sweeping the skies, while gun crews were running to their pieces.

Running over to the Security office, he almost ran over Cohortarch Walter Görtlizer,
who was running to his post.

“What the hell is going on Walter?”

“Don't know. Full scale air raid alarm, I think this is the real deal.”

“Shit, will this interrupt production?”

“I don't think so. You better get back inside, someone is bound to see something
where there's nothing and open fire, and then everyone else will open fire as well,
and all that steel is going to come down sooner or later.”

[Lancaster Mk. I (Special) “Tasmanian Devil” 22,234 feet over Egypt – 0200 hours]

Anders leaned down as low as he could in his seat, and then tried to lean down
even more; as the sky was full of exploding ack-ack bursts, as well as searchlights
that swept the sky.

Before his eyes, he saw a trio of searchlight beams suddenly converge on a Lancaster
several miles ahead of them, and moments later, the bomber was bracketed by a quick
series of ack-ack bursts which tore a wing off, and sent the flaming bomber in a dive
towards the ground.


“Fuck me...how much longer to target?” he shouted, his flying suit drenched in
sweat as the Tasmanian Devil continued to fly into the hailstorm of anti-aircraft
fire ahead of her.

“Twenty miles, boss. I got it on the scope.”

Beneath each bomber, was a magical device known only by it's designation: H2S;
it's beam could pierce the darkness of night and show a clear radar image of the ground
below to a trained operator.

Ten minutes later, it was their turn in Hell, as the searchlights bracketed them, and the
shells began to explode all around them.

Anders suddenly felt the control column push down, and he tried to fight it, but it was
like a great weight was on the controls. “Shit, Rusbridge, help me out here!”

No reply.

“Goddamnit you fucking Kiwi bastard, HELP ME!”

Still no reply. Anders turned around in rage, only to see Rusbridge's headless body
slumped against the controls, and a howling wind whistling through the jagged hole in
the bottom of the fuselage where the enemy shell had entered and taken off poor Mark's
head before leaving through the top of the fuselage without exploding.

“Fifteen Miles, Boss.”

“Get up here Muldoon, Rusbridge's bought the farm, and I have to fight to keep
his body off the damn controls!”

“But I'm on the bomb run, sir.”

“I don't give a fuck what you're on! If I fly this damn thing into the ground
we all die!”

“Right, boss.”

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant - Provinca Egypta - 0210 hours]

From his quarters, Pieter watched as the sky on the horizon lit up with shell flashes
and a low rumble enamated from the north. “I think it's getting closer,” Erika said
as she looked out the window as well.

“Definitely,” he replied.

[Lancaster Mk. I (Special) “Tasmanian Devil” 22,234 feet over Egypt – 0220 hours]

“Five Miles.”

“Right, bomb bay doors open.” Mechanically, Anders pulled the lever that opened the
bomb bay doors, trying to ignore the blood splattered all over the cockpit from Rusbridge,
he had a job to do.

Behind him, Muldoon stared into his radarscope, watching as the radar image of the
little shack that housed a set of valves for one of the tunnels slowly moved towards
the bomb-release point for the Tallboy.

Then it was right on top of them.

“Bomb away!” shouted Muldoon as he mashed the pickle.

The airframe of Tasmanian Devil gave a huge shudder as over twelve thousand
pounds of deadweight exited it

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant - Provinca Egypta - 0225 hours]

From the north, a deep low rumble, much deeper than the sound of exploding shells
came forth; and both Pieter and Erika wondered what it was.

“Ammo dump explosion?” she asked.

“No, no, if it was an ammo dump, we'd have seen it by now.”

[Archona NCC, near Archona - 0230 hours]

The scene inside the National Command Center was pandomeium, as junor
officers ran around like rabbits, trying to get what sketchy information was
coming out of Egypt on this attack by what seemed like the Italians.

Suddenly, a Centurion jumped up from the bank of Telexes at one end of the
room and ran towards the duty officer.

“Sir, our forces in Persia are reporting coming under intense artillery fire
from British Baluchistan!”

[The Persian Border]

The sun had begun it's slow climb up the sky, and already smoke from the artillery
strikes on Drakian frontier outposts by the 21st Army Group was stretching across
the lightening sky as Spitfire Mk XIIs and Tempest Vs roared across the formerly
inviolate border in wave after wave, the early morning sun gleaming off their skins
and the loads of bombs and rockets under their wings.

Beneath the protective wings of the Royal Air Force, the British Army of India was on
the march, backed up by the near inexhaustible manpower reserves of British India,
which showed in the endless lines of Indian-built Valentines and ex-British Army Matildas
trundling towards the front, while Indian troops marched alongside them
on the dusty roads as artillery thundered in the background.

The few Citizen forces on the border were quickly overwhelmed and destroyed by
the sheer weight of forces arrayed against them, and the Janissary Legions thrown
into the battle found that their Principes wheeled tanks and Peltast II APCs were
worthless against even the 2 pounders of the Matildas.

Slowly, inexorably, the British Army moved forward, like an elemental force,
sweeping all before it.

[Mosquito B.I (Special) “Howlin' Hell” 6,000 feet over Egypt – 0250 hours]

Squadron Leader Edward Halleck watched as the ground whipped by in a blur under
his Mosquito at speeds approaching 400 miles an hour, let the Snakes try and catch
him now; he was moving simply too fast and too low for all their searchlights and
ack-ack to catch like they had those poor blokes in the Lancs.

Ahead of him, he saw the glow of the Quattara complex. Right, time to get ready,
climb to 15,000 feet for the dive on the cliff face.

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant - Provinca Egypta - 0300 hours]

“HOLY SHIT!” shouted someone, Pieter wasn't sure who said it, but it perfectly summed
up his feelings as he saw the desert-camouflaged twin engined aircraft suddenly appear
in the skies outside his window, before rolling over into a dive.

[Mosquito B.I (Special) “Howlin' Hell”]

“Every bloody snake is shooting at me right now,” muttered Halleck as he rolled his
Mossie into a dive, and flipped the ARM switches for his rockets from SAFE to ARM.

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant]

”Get that bastard! Get him the fuck now!” shouted Görtlizer
as he kicked an unlucky light anti-aircraft crew chief on the head with his boot
as they spun around their light antiaircraft cannon far too slowly for his taste.

[Mosquito B.I (Special) “Howlin' Hell”]

“Haven't these bloody idiots heard of dousing lights?” muttered Halleck as
he lined up the cliff face in his gunsight. There was so much light from all the
lights still on even well into the attack that he didn't even need to use the huge
searchlight buried in his left wing.

“And bye bye,” he shouted as he pulled on his trigger, sending his rockets
rippling away from under his wings towards the cliff face in one massive
salvo.

And then a stream of 40mm tracer tore apart the Mossie before Halleck could
even see his rockets strike home.

As the odd rumbling noise of the rocket strikes on the cliff face reverberated
through the depresssion, Pieter ran out of his quarters, shouting
“No, No, No NO!” as he finally realized what the Italians (if that's
who they were, the damn Eyeties weren't this brave OR this smart) were trying
at.

Before his eyes, he watched as more and more aircraft tried to attack the cliff face,
even though the antiaircraft batteries in the depression had already been alerted.
Most of them were blown apart at the apex of their climb in preparation for their
diving attack, but a few survived long enough to launch their weapons, and at
each hollow thud of the rockets striking home, Pieter despaired.

When the skies overhead had been quiet for several minutes, Pieter ran into the
barracks building, banging on the doors of his engineers and scientists, shouting
for them to wake up.

“What's going on? Are we under attack?” shouted one of the more dim-witted
engineers under his command, and Pieter in return shot him in the right knee
with his service pistol.

“OF COURSE WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! Do you think this is
Domination Day?”

Running out of the barracks, Pieter looked at the cliff face, and with a sinking feeling
in his gut, realized that it wasn't going to hold much longer. Water was already trickling
down it's face in ever increasing amounts.

As he entered the control room set into the side of the cliff-face, Pieter looked at the
engineers running around chaotically and sighed. This was the best the Domination had
to offer?

“ATTENTION!” he shouted, drawing their attention and silence.

“Have you turned the up-stream valves off yet? If you don't we'll lose the whole plant.”

“Tried that,” came the laconic response from one of the engineers. “Valves B10
and B22 on tunnel B are closed, yet the water's still coming. Same for all tunnels
except D.”

“Shit. EVERYONE THE FUCK OUT NOW!” shouted Pieter. When nobody listened
to him, he simply shrugged and ran like hell out of the door; followed several moments
later by some of the more observant engineers.

Behind him, he could hear a loud groaning and cracking noise coming from the cliff
face, and just as he'd run almost half a kilometer in record time, all hell broke loose
as over two cubic kilometers of rock broke loose in a spray of foaming water, the
concussion of the collapsing rock almost knocking him over.

Turning around, he saw that where the control center had been was now buried under
quite a lot of rock. Shouting to one of the engineers who had followed him out the
door, he found out that Olaf and Ingolffson hadn't made it out. Damn shame
about them, but well...shit happens. He looked to the south and saw a vision out of
the bible-stories his grandmother had told him. The collapse of the cliff face into the
reservoir had displaced all of the water, and now a tidal wave over a hundred feet high
was racing across the depression, straight for the heavy water plant along the shoreline.
In twenty minutes there wasn't going to be a plant anymore, and the material stored there
would be scattered across the whole area.

Waving over Görtlizer, Pieter shouted into his ear, "GET THE DAMN MILITARY OUT
HERE! THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR US TO CONTAIN BY OURSELVES!"

“RIGHT, I GOT YOU!”

“AND GET SOMEONE OUT TO THE PUMPING SUBSTATIONS ALONG THE
TUNNELS! THE AUTOMATIC VALVES AREN'T CLOSING!”

[Quattara Depression Hydropower Plant – 0700 Hours]

Pieter watched from the top of what was left of the cliff face as the military fished
through what was left of the complex after the wall of water from the cliff collapse
had flattened everything in it's path. Every so often, one of the Serf Auxilaries being
used would come out of the wreckage of a building with a body in their arms.

Shit, such a damn waste...

Suddenly, he spotted water bubbling out of the fractures on the cliff face below him.

Oh shit, not again....

As he began to run away from the cliff edge as fast as he could, Pieter began screaming
at the top of his lungs

“GET OUT YOU FUCKERS, OLD MAN OCEAN IS COMING THROUGH!”

Below, in the depression, the troops and auxilaries looked up in puzzlement at the
strange man who had begun running along the ridge and screaming his head off,
when they spotted the rubble at the bottom of the cliff face beginning to move with a
deep groaning noise. Suddenly, a few jets of water appeared, streaming dozens of
meters through the air from the pile of rubble in all directions. The rumbling grew louder,
resonating from the soles of their shoes to the pits of their stomachs.

"Oh shit..." was the last word many of them managed to get off before the rubble
burst forth in a torrent of water, as the Mediterranean attempted to drain itself
through the shattered cliff face.

Above, Pieter ran on from the ever-widening chasm. He was exhausted from the
night's efforts but self-preservation compelled him to live as his domain was crushed
under the endless tidal wave of saltwater, he glanced to the side and saw tiny figures
running futilely away from the oncoming wall of water in a futile effort before they were
swallowed up like they were never there. He tripped, and fell, his hands and arms
tearing themselves on the gravel. He waited for the collapse to take him, but it didn't.
He raised himself to look over his shoulder and rolled to a sitting position. His feet
were less than a meter from the edge.

In morbid fascination, Piter watched as the depression slowly filled with water. Pieter
pulled out a crumpled cigarette from his pocket and lit it, while slowly muttering the
realization that Someone Was Going To Have To Explain All This.

And that it was probably going to be him.

"Ah, fuck it." He stood up and dusted off his hands, wiping blood on his pants.
He trudged numbly down the slope, wondering if this was what Noah had felt like
when his world was destroyed by God's anger.

[USS Pensacola (Part of TF 32.1) – 0800 Hours]

The sailors on the cruiser watched with interest from their railings and duty
stations as the survivors were plucked from the water by one of the P-Cola's
launches.

On the launch, a young Lt. (jg) had the unfortunate experience of asking one of
the men in leather flying gear if they were Italians, since it was reported that an
Italian bomber had gone down in the area an hour ago, only to be met by a string
of curses and a fist in the face.

“Call me a bloody Italian will you, you damned Yankee! I'm Australian, you
bloody fool!” shouted Anders Russell as he proceeded to beat the shit out of
the Lt (jg) before being subdued by the Marine guards on the launch.

THE END