Reichlands Burning
FredericksBurg, Reichland
There were many of them, the smartest of cruise missiles, screaming
through the air, but not so fast as their smaller cousin, the
Airspike. They were ACIM-130M Banshee Hypersonic Land Attack Cruise
Missiles. Essentially the big brother of the Airspike that had
haunted the Reichens since the start of the war, this would be the
first time the Germanic people would face the larger, meaner
version of the things they had come to fear and hate. For many it
would be their last.
Over three times the size of the Airspike at six meters long, the
Banshee missile had all the features found in the Xing Shiana ACIM
family, stealth technology, advanced artifical intelligence and
navigation systems and a hypersonic speed of over six times the
speed of sound, all this to get the 1,000 or so odd pounds of
payload to its target.
They were cruising at 50,000 feet now, their scramjet engines
catching the supersonic slipstream, ramming the gas to incandesce,
and spraying slush cryogenic hydrogen along with to create the
trust necessary to maintain their hellacious speed. They were fast
approaching their target, data from their onboard navigation
systems and their uplink to the elint data network told them where
they are the map coordinates the altitude, the speed and
direction of their targets, and against that the computer in the
missiles had compared their location. Now approaching fast at over
two kilometers a second, they were connecting the invisible dots in
three-dimensional space, and they were most unlikely to miss, Has
the missiles a brain, they would have felt satisfaction as they
scream towards their target, selecting a point in space and time
where they would meet
Crossing one of the invisible aerial points
in their flight which was significant to them as the waypoint to
the final, terminal approach, they nosed down and swooped to the
ground, staying just three hundred feet above.
They were low over FredericksBurg.
At hypersonic speed.
The thicker atmosphere at the lower altitude had generated more
friction, slowing the missiles down to just over Mach 5. The carbon
carbon insulation on their leading edges started to glow dull red
as the kinetic energy transferred to them from the thousands of
moles of air per second molecules slipping past their own was
transformed to the most easily convertible form of energy;
heat.
But not all of the energies of the Banshees missiles were converted
in such a way. The hypersonic shock cones generated by the missiles
left a large footprint of sonic devastation in their wake as the
hyper-compressed air snapped back with many times the power
normally generated by a supersonic aircraft, powerful enough to
explode a large swathe of windows in their wake and leave anybody
caught within their footprint stunned and deafened. The missiles
on their own part, were relatively unaffected by the devastation
they were already causing with their speed even before they hit
their targets, using their specially shaped waverider fuselages
to ride on the shockwave, using it to supplement their own
propulsion and lift.
One of the many persons caught in the devastation was Mr. Kent Nar
Siah, a 52 year old Singabolean, one of the many interned at one
of the many concentration camps for his people in Reichland. Life
in the camps directly contradicted what the Reichen government had
said it was; it was brutal and inhumane, with the Singaboleans
being forced to work as slave labor to support the Reichen war
machine. They received little food and water for their efforts, as
with all the other necessities of life. Many died under such brutal
conditions, but their captors did not care, they believed it was
their rightful place as the Germanic race to lord over the
inferior races of the world, and they had shown the mentality all
too well in this camp. But tonight would be different, Mr. Siah
knew, even has he was deafened and rattled by flying glass caused
by the swarms of Banshees as they streaked past his camp. While the
Richens cowered and found nothing but fear and death in those
missiles, every single Singabolen inmate who was aware of the
missiles knew that their salvation and hope was heralded in by
these technological constructs. The free people of the world were
coming, they had not been forgotten.