none of this fits into the unofficial literary challenges. Hell, for that matter, I couldn't figure out how to phrase the idea in a pithy way that would actually get interest...
so here goes.
disclaimer: I'm playing fast and loose with the canon to make a somewhat hard-science-fiction version of Klingon history, mostly because I don't buy the repainted Kzinti history people who think they're cavemen-with-a-napoleon-complex would push-it doesn't work, cavemen don't beat interstellar empires, period, and our own history shows what USUALLY happens when a low-development society meets one with higher technology on less than friendly terms...
The bullshitting done, hope you enjoy the story...
”...in legend, we find Truth. The Truth of Kahless, the explanations for why we do as we do, the definitions of honor. That is the purpose of Legend. But while Legend is inspired by history, it is not History. It is Tradition, it is the soul.
In Legend there is truth, but if you want to understand the Legend, you must seek out the History from which it grew. And History is not always as ennobling,or as simple, as Legends would have it-because History is soulless Fact...”
K’Ragh, son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions.”
1343, CE Earth reckoning, The homeworld of the Klingon Empire…
“We picked it up the same time the University’s people did, it’s decelerating.” Academician L’sala said, “whatever the object is, it’s not a meteor or comet.”
The Empire’s senior General of Air Defense studied the photographs from the observatory, and looked at the plots from the radiotelescopes. “Aliens.” he said, “They’re real...have your people tried to contact them?”
“Of course not!” she spat, “I may be a woman, General, but I am no fool to defy the policy of the Emperor. ‘Look before you speak’, after all, we have no way to know what their intent is…though I have heard that there are factions on the far continent…”
“We will deal with them when we are ready.” he told her, “The new atomic bombs are barely into production…”
“New to us.” she noted, then gestured at the imagery again, “How new to them, should they ally with the enemy?”
He grunted, “The Emperor is well aware of that threat, Academician.” he told her, “But we are going to pursue a policy of watchful waiting. How long before the object is in orbit?”
“A few days, based on its rate of deceleration.” She said, “no more than a week, no less than thirty six hours. Based on its trajectory, it is going to come in close to the equator, on the far side of the planet, roughly where the false-emperor’s ‘search for other life’ beacon was built.”
“HOw big do your estimates make the strange arrival?” he asked.
“No less than five thousand kellikams across-to come in at those speeds, and based on the spectra of their exhaust, I would say the bulk of it is fuel.” she recited, “It’s really very exciting, Konath’s equations predicted near-luminal velocity can be reached using the power of nuclear fusion, using hydrogen collected across interstellar space, compressed in strong magnetic fields-a fusion torch to light the way to the stars... To build it, they must be very advanced.”
“MM..so it would appear…” the General noted, then looked out the window at the air force base-the new Jet-Turbine interceptors, the turbine-propellor hybrid bombers, and waiting in patient silos, the ballistic missile corps. The experiments with attempted nuclear fusion had rendered some quite effective bombs, but little else. Power generation, and propulsion, were pipe-dreams according to many on the Emperor’s staff... “Let us hope then, that these strangers from the stars are not here on a mission of conquest.” He noted, “Though I will have to brief the Emperor on that possibility, as well as any likely technologies we might be able to use to fight back.”
She looked doubtful, “The presence of an external foe, or so both the Emperor, and his false challenger, have said, could be the key to uniting the Klingon people.”
The first strikes came at dawn, on the far side of the world. Kinetic devices on ballistic trajectory from the sky itself. While the ship that unleashed them had been slowing, the objects released continued at relativistic speeds-annihilating cities, dams, power stations, and military bases. The rains of fire continued in pulses, timed to land as land masses rotated into range.
This gave the people of the area near what would later be called ‘first city’ time to evacuate from likely strikes, and the Emperor made absolutely certain that they did-jets were scrambled from airbases, military forces from their cantonments, civilians sometimes dragged from their homes.
The enemy, was hostile, coming on a fusion torch to attack and conquer.
Six months into the war…
The enemy had landed in the fertile plains of every landmass, they were burrowers, building their bases under the dirt as their forces swept the land before them, consuming everything in their path and leaving almost nothing alive.
“WHY???” Academician L’Sala, now safely hidden in a deep rocky mine, in the mountains near the primary military base, “Why did they attack us?”
“To colonize?” Student Konra asked, “Their fortified landing areas resemble burrowing insect colonies, and long-range camera images indicate they are either insects, or wearing armor made to resemble them.”
“Like a plague of devouring insects?” B’Nala, a biologist speculated, “Seeking out fertile ground-yes, homing in on signals to bring their colonies to inhabitable worlds...it fits.”
“The Search for Otherlife brought them here…” L’Sala nodded, “it fits-their first strike was on the Kelora continent, where the ‘big voice’ transmitter was erected by Krolor’s followers, their foolish belief that advanced societies would have given up war-”
“Not much of a war, we were fortunate, a little less warning and we would have been annihilated along with those people.” Konra commented, “it does explain the mysterious silence in the heavens though-if these aliens...these ‘H’urq’ attack every world that puts out a search signal…”
“Hammer the planet, colonize, consume, build...they’re a disease…”
B’nala scoffed, “ANY intelligent alien is going to be aggressive-Evolution shows that only predatory species can even become intelligent. The competitive pressures to create a species with interstellar capability and the patience to endure relativistic time dilation equates to hyper predatory behaviours...I’ve already briefed the General Staff and the Emperor about this-we have to beat them, or it’s extinction.”
General Staff chamber…
“...we can’t just beat them here-they came from elsewhere.” the Emperor said, “Came in on our late cousin’s signal to the stars, his foolish idealistic dream of advanced, peaceful societies lured them here, but it lured them here from somewhere else...somewhere close, if the ladies in the Science department are right.”
“How close?” a Naval general asked.
“No more than forty light years, based on the velocity they predict the aliens were traveling when we first discovered their approach.” the Emperor noted, “Assuming twenty years to accelerate, and twenty to decelerate, and my cousin’s broadcast and the probes he launched with maps back to our world? No more than twenty years away.”
“We still have to beat them here.” a Ground General pointed out, “Before we can pursue them to their nest.”
“Yes...how is that going?”
“They have what my wife calls a ‘coherent light’ weapon, Majesty-it slices through armored vehicles like rotten meat, and makes a no-fly-zone over the valleys they have occupied, while their orbiting ship has stopped all attempts at using ballistic missile weapons.”
“We’ve lost the surface fleets in their entire-but the Submarines are still capable of occasionally launching sorties.” the Naval General helpfully suggested, “And, when the mothership is over the horizon, their air-defense and antimissile defenses are degraded somewhat.”
The airforce general cleared his throat, “The Air Force may have a chance to contribute more than conscripts to the infantry...research into stealth systems and materials has gotten a few practical boosts recently...but it will be expensive and take time, and the technology-”
“Is a waste of resources if we can’t get it into the field-your ‘bent magnetic bubble’ concept strains credibility!” the Naval General scoffed.
“What would you suggest then? My soldiers fight them whenever and however we can-but there are so many and their weapons are so powerful!”
The Emperor frowned, “Build it.” he decreed. “Build your stealth aircraft, drop a fusion bomb on one of their bases. Prove it can work!” He rounded on his advisors, “This is no time for the comfort of doubt, gentlemen-we are facing an enemy that seeks to make our race extinct and take our world for their own! Anything that can hurt them, that even has a chance, must be built, and placed in the hands of warriors to fight them!”
”...Histories are often purged by successive generations, this is not only among our culture, it is a common thread across all Klingonoid and nearly-Klingonoid cultures throughout the quadrant and beyond. In the words of the Humans (the race that most closely resembles our own in nature, if not politics), ‘He who controls the past, controls the future, he who controls the present, controls the past.’ an effort was made more than half a millenia ago, during the internal strife that saw the end of the First Dynasty, to conceal, obfuscate, and destroy our past, to bring about a new ‘year zero’. Recordings, documents and images of the early Empire, including much of the war against the H’urq, were destroyed by one faction or another, each in order to ‘win’ the claim on the leadership of the Klingon people. What we have, remaining, are fragments that were overlooked, or hidden, or forgotten…the outcome is often stagnation and a loss of progress, and of course the triumph of verbal histories over factual accounts...”
-B’Sanos, Son of R’yll, member of the Klingon High Council (2403 CE)
1344 CE (earth time)
The Target was the colony infestation in the Ketha region-a zone of rolling hills and gentle, coastal plain, the enemy had landed there early in the invasion, and dug in deep.
K’rlag watched the insectoid H’urq as their forces consolidated in the remains of another village. The pattern was gruesome in it’s efficiency-their leading forces would overrun and overwhelm an area, the follow-on forces from the hive would arrive and dismantle. Animals were either killed and consumed, or penned up and moved like cattle.
This included any Klingon civilians that had failed to escape the initial wave.
“How long?” he asked his second officer, as he peered down into the valley from a hidden point.
“The strike is soon, sir, they’re waiting on our report.”
“Inform the Air Force that the enemy is consolidating at yatlhlaHbogh vengHom, they have already begun assembling perimeter defenses and I can see commandeered vehicles carrying civilians back to their landing zone for processing.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” the younger officer-from one of the island chains that did not suffer landings yet, nor suffered the horrific bombardment of the first wave, asked.
“No.” K’rlag said softly, “THe only thing we can do for them, is to stop what is happening to them-the strike is the only way.” he rolled over to look at the other man, “But maybe some will survive to be rescued once it’s done, or even escape-it’s what we can do.”
wa' mup, flying near treetop level…
‘...target confirmed, enemy forces are in consolidation mode. Observatory reports enemy mothership has dropped below the horizon.”
“Are we confirmed?”
”Wa’Mup, this is the Emperor, you are a go. Make them pay with fire from Gre’thor!!”
D’usa closed his eyes for a moment, then, he reached down, and pushed the throttles forward, the six big, twenty-bank rotary engines on the wings increased their rumble as the bomber accelerated and fought to gain altitude.
“Weapons officer, watch the scopes for enemy drones and missiles, they shouldn’t be a problem with the sea-launched ballistics coming over the horizon, but we can’t be certain…”
The plane was an older model-from the cross-continental wars of the last generation, six internal-combustion, turbocharged engines driving contrarotating propellors in pusher configuration along each main wing, which was mounted low on the bulky, blended aft -hull, the command deck set forward, and the ‘neck’ of the craft housing the bomb-bays. Turrets on the aft hull had remained, and engineering students had added turbine engines to the tips of the main wings. She was meant for high-altitude bombing runs across the pole, striking deep into the False-Emperor’s rebellious province-but that was gone now, and the mission had changed.
The twenty tonne thermonuclear bomb in the main bay was the largest ever built so far-and it required the heavy bomber to carry it. That bomber, in turn, had to carry it at far lower altitudes than she had been originally designed to fly in order to screen along behind the terrain and be difficult for the H’urq’s air-defense batteries to engage...but the women of the engineering department had tackled this challenge, modifying the strategic bomber to become a tactical weapons platform.
And there was the experimental electro-plasma device, theoretically, it could perhaps make the bomber invisible to the invaders’ sensors until they were over the target.
“Engage the Stealth Device.” he ordered, “Switch to visual navigation-our radar will not work here.”
They passed the last ridge, and were over the Ketha plain.
In the distance, lines of infrared tracer and blue ionization scattering showed the enemy’s air-defense nets were, indeed, still operational, destroying ballistic missiles launched from submarines at sea.
The bombardier announced, “Target ahead!”
“Start your calculations, bombardier, the helm is yours.”
They passed within less than a tenth of a kellikam over a convoy of vehicles taking captured civilians to the plae where the invaders would turn them to meat rations.
The stealth flickered off as the bomb bay opened, and their bomb was released, to glide in at a shallow angle before dropping it’s wing-segment and plunging into hive itself...at least, that was the theory.
The hull rang as enemy fire lanced through structure, he took the control again, and shoved the engines to full, hauling up on the twin-sticks to point the nose skyward.
The instrumentation failed with the first electromagnetic pulse, and the gamma lanced through the crew, a light shining a thousand times brighter than the sun, invisible, the aircraft transparent to it’s savagery.
Below, unseen to the crew of wa' mup, the coastal plain shuddered-nuclear fire lanced through underground corridors cut by the H’urq, shock and heat confined and propagated, the valley collapsed inward as the power source of the lander that formed the core of the hive, was pressurized into sympathetic detonation.
The enemy defense faltered and stopped as their systems overloaded and shut down explosively.
“Signal the ground attack.” the pilot wheezed, “Bomb was on target…”
As the struggling heavy bomber limped to a landing base they’d been unsure they could even reach, the land continued to collapse in the Ketha region, creating a lowland of steep hills and filthy swamps.
Over the next few weeks, the ten man crew assigned to fly the bombing mission died of radiation sickness, and the hull of the bomber was analyzed to find out what could be done to keep a crew alive after a successful mission.
There were no shortages of volunteers for follow-on missions to hit the other enemy landing sites, and the Emperor deemed all who died in those bombings to be a death in combat-and the loresingers agreed…
They died for their world, and their people.
”...many of the legends from the first war placed the Emperors in the key positions-leading the charges, battling the enemy in hand combat, defeating them with blade and muscle. The memorials to the bombers were erased along with much of the records, but even the Second Dynasty was unable to completely expunge the wa' mup’s mission, and records recovered from the Gamma Quadrant show that the enemy, at least, kept knowledge until they were themselves exterminated by the Dominion… it is very interesting that the form-factor of the heavy bomber type used, would be repeated in spirit, if not exacting detail, with the development of the D-12 class Bird of Prey...by engineers who never even knew the first successful strike happened using craft of similar layout and styling...”
-K’Ragh Son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions”
so here goes.
disclaimer: I'm playing fast and loose with the canon to make a somewhat hard-science-fiction version of Klingon history, mostly because I don't buy the repainted Kzinti history people who think they're cavemen-with-a-napoleon-complex would push-it doesn't work, cavemen don't beat interstellar empires, period, and our own history shows what USUALLY happens when a low-development society meets one with higher technology on less than friendly terms...
The bullshitting done, hope you enjoy the story...
Part 1:The Desperate Hours
”...in legend, we find Truth. The Truth of Kahless, the explanations for why we do as we do, the definitions of honor. That is the purpose of Legend. But while Legend is inspired by history, it is not History. It is Tradition, it is the soul.
In Legend there is truth, but if you want to understand the Legend, you must seek out the History from which it grew. And History is not always as ennobling,or as simple, as Legends would have it-because History is soulless Fact...”
K’Ragh, son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions.”
1343, CE Earth reckoning, The homeworld of the Klingon Empire…
“We picked it up the same time the University’s people did, it’s decelerating.” Academician L’sala said, “whatever the object is, it’s not a meteor or comet.”
The Empire’s senior General of Air Defense studied the photographs from the observatory, and looked at the plots from the radiotelescopes. “Aliens.” he said, “They’re real...have your people tried to contact them?”
“Of course not!” she spat, “I may be a woman, General, but I am no fool to defy the policy of the Emperor. ‘Look before you speak’, after all, we have no way to know what their intent is…though I have heard that there are factions on the far continent…”
“We will deal with them when we are ready.” he told her, “The new atomic bombs are barely into production…”
“New to us.” she noted, then gestured at the imagery again, “How new to them, should they ally with the enemy?”
He grunted, “The Emperor is well aware of that threat, Academician.” he told her, “But we are going to pursue a policy of watchful waiting. How long before the object is in orbit?”
“A few days, based on its rate of deceleration.” She said, “no more than a week, no less than thirty six hours. Based on its trajectory, it is going to come in close to the equator, on the far side of the planet, roughly where the false-emperor’s ‘search for other life’ beacon was built.”
“HOw big do your estimates make the strange arrival?” he asked.
“No less than five thousand kellikams across-to come in at those speeds, and based on the spectra of their exhaust, I would say the bulk of it is fuel.” she recited, “It’s really very exciting, Konath’s equations predicted near-luminal velocity can be reached using the power of nuclear fusion, using hydrogen collected across interstellar space, compressed in strong magnetic fields-a fusion torch to light the way to the stars... To build it, they must be very advanced.”
“MM..so it would appear…” the General noted, then looked out the window at the air force base-the new Jet-Turbine interceptors, the turbine-propellor hybrid bombers, and waiting in patient silos, the ballistic missile corps. The experiments with attempted nuclear fusion had rendered some quite effective bombs, but little else. Power generation, and propulsion, were pipe-dreams according to many on the Emperor’s staff... “Let us hope then, that these strangers from the stars are not here on a mission of conquest.” He noted, “Though I will have to brief the Emperor on that possibility, as well as any likely technologies we might be able to use to fight back.”
She looked doubtful, “The presence of an external foe, or so both the Emperor, and his false challenger, have said, could be the key to uniting the Klingon people.”
The first strikes came at dawn, on the far side of the world. Kinetic devices on ballistic trajectory from the sky itself. While the ship that unleashed them had been slowing, the objects released continued at relativistic speeds-annihilating cities, dams, power stations, and military bases. The rains of fire continued in pulses, timed to land as land masses rotated into range.
This gave the people of the area near what would later be called ‘first city’ time to evacuate from likely strikes, and the Emperor made absolutely certain that they did-jets were scrambled from airbases, military forces from their cantonments, civilians sometimes dragged from their homes.
The enemy, was hostile, coming on a fusion torch to attack and conquer.
Six months into the war…
The enemy had landed in the fertile plains of every landmass, they were burrowers, building their bases under the dirt as their forces swept the land before them, consuming everything in their path and leaving almost nothing alive.
“WHY???” Academician L’Sala, now safely hidden in a deep rocky mine, in the mountains near the primary military base, “Why did they attack us?”
“To colonize?” Student Konra asked, “Their fortified landing areas resemble burrowing insect colonies, and long-range camera images indicate they are either insects, or wearing armor made to resemble them.”
“Like a plague of devouring insects?” B’Nala, a biologist speculated, “Seeking out fertile ground-yes, homing in on signals to bring their colonies to inhabitable worlds...it fits.”
“The Search for Otherlife brought them here…” L’Sala nodded, “it fits-their first strike was on the Kelora continent, where the ‘big voice’ transmitter was erected by Krolor’s followers, their foolish belief that advanced societies would have given up war-”
“Not much of a war, we were fortunate, a little less warning and we would have been annihilated along with those people.” Konra commented, “it does explain the mysterious silence in the heavens though-if these aliens...these ‘H’urq’ attack every world that puts out a search signal…”
“Hammer the planet, colonize, consume, build...they’re a disease…”
B’nala scoffed, “ANY intelligent alien is going to be aggressive-Evolution shows that only predatory species can even become intelligent. The competitive pressures to create a species with interstellar capability and the patience to endure relativistic time dilation equates to hyper predatory behaviours...I’ve already briefed the General Staff and the Emperor about this-we have to beat them, or it’s extinction.”
General Staff chamber…
“...we can’t just beat them here-they came from elsewhere.” the Emperor said, “Came in on our late cousin’s signal to the stars, his foolish idealistic dream of advanced, peaceful societies lured them here, but it lured them here from somewhere else...somewhere close, if the ladies in the Science department are right.”
“How close?” a Naval general asked.
“No more than forty light years, based on the velocity they predict the aliens were traveling when we first discovered their approach.” the Emperor noted, “Assuming twenty years to accelerate, and twenty to decelerate, and my cousin’s broadcast and the probes he launched with maps back to our world? No more than twenty years away.”
“We still have to beat them here.” a Ground General pointed out, “Before we can pursue them to their nest.”
“Yes...how is that going?”
“They have what my wife calls a ‘coherent light’ weapon, Majesty-it slices through armored vehicles like rotten meat, and makes a no-fly-zone over the valleys they have occupied, while their orbiting ship has stopped all attempts at using ballistic missile weapons.”
“We’ve lost the surface fleets in their entire-but the Submarines are still capable of occasionally launching sorties.” the Naval General helpfully suggested, “And, when the mothership is over the horizon, their air-defense and antimissile defenses are degraded somewhat.”
The airforce general cleared his throat, “The Air Force may have a chance to contribute more than conscripts to the infantry...research into stealth systems and materials has gotten a few practical boosts recently...but it will be expensive and take time, and the technology-”
“Is a waste of resources if we can’t get it into the field-your ‘bent magnetic bubble’ concept strains credibility!” the Naval General scoffed.
“What would you suggest then? My soldiers fight them whenever and however we can-but there are so many and their weapons are so powerful!”
The Emperor frowned, “Build it.” he decreed. “Build your stealth aircraft, drop a fusion bomb on one of their bases. Prove it can work!” He rounded on his advisors, “This is no time for the comfort of doubt, gentlemen-we are facing an enemy that seeks to make our race extinct and take our world for their own! Anything that can hurt them, that even has a chance, must be built, and placed in the hands of warriors to fight them!”
”...Histories are often purged by successive generations, this is not only among our culture, it is a common thread across all Klingonoid and nearly-Klingonoid cultures throughout the quadrant and beyond. In the words of the Humans (the race that most closely resembles our own in nature, if not politics), ‘He who controls the past, controls the future, he who controls the present, controls the past.’ an effort was made more than half a millenia ago, during the internal strife that saw the end of the First Dynasty, to conceal, obfuscate, and destroy our past, to bring about a new ‘year zero’. Recordings, documents and images of the early Empire, including much of the war against the H’urq, were destroyed by one faction or another, each in order to ‘win’ the claim on the leadership of the Klingon people. What we have, remaining, are fragments that were overlooked, or hidden, or forgotten…the outcome is often stagnation and a loss of progress, and of course the triumph of verbal histories over factual accounts...”
-B’Sanos, Son of R’yll, member of the Klingon High Council (2403 CE)
1344 CE (earth time)
The Target was the colony infestation in the Ketha region-a zone of rolling hills and gentle, coastal plain, the enemy had landed there early in the invasion, and dug in deep.
K’rlag watched the insectoid H’urq as their forces consolidated in the remains of another village. The pattern was gruesome in it’s efficiency-their leading forces would overrun and overwhelm an area, the follow-on forces from the hive would arrive and dismantle. Animals were either killed and consumed, or penned up and moved like cattle.
This included any Klingon civilians that had failed to escape the initial wave.
“How long?” he asked his second officer, as he peered down into the valley from a hidden point.
“The strike is soon, sir, they’re waiting on our report.”
“Inform the Air Force that the enemy is consolidating at yatlhlaHbogh vengHom, they have already begun assembling perimeter defenses and I can see commandeered vehicles carrying civilians back to their landing zone for processing.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” the younger officer-from one of the island chains that did not suffer landings yet, nor suffered the horrific bombardment of the first wave, asked.
“No.” K’rlag said softly, “THe only thing we can do for them, is to stop what is happening to them-the strike is the only way.” he rolled over to look at the other man, “But maybe some will survive to be rescued once it’s done, or even escape-it’s what we can do.”
wa' mup, flying near treetop level…
‘...target confirmed, enemy forces are in consolidation mode. Observatory reports enemy mothership has dropped below the horizon.”
“Are we confirmed?”
”Wa’Mup, this is the Emperor, you are a go. Make them pay with fire from Gre’thor!!”
D’usa closed his eyes for a moment, then, he reached down, and pushed the throttles forward, the six big, twenty-bank rotary engines on the wings increased their rumble as the bomber accelerated and fought to gain altitude.
“Weapons officer, watch the scopes for enemy drones and missiles, they shouldn’t be a problem with the sea-launched ballistics coming over the horizon, but we can’t be certain…”
The plane was an older model-from the cross-continental wars of the last generation, six internal-combustion, turbocharged engines driving contrarotating propellors in pusher configuration along each main wing, which was mounted low on the bulky, blended aft -hull, the command deck set forward, and the ‘neck’ of the craft housing the bomb-bays. Turrets on the aft hull had remained, and engineering students had added turbine engines to the tips of the main wings. She was meant for high-altitude bombing runs across the pole, striking deep into the False-Emperor’s rebellious province-but that was gone now, and the mission had changed.
The twenty tonne thermonuclear bomb in the main bay was the largest ever built so far-and it required the heavy bomber to carry it. That bomber, in turn, had to carry it at far lower altitudes than she had been originally designed to fly in order to screen along behind the terrain and be difficult for the H’urq’s air-defense batteries to engage...but the women of the engineering department had tackled this challenge, modifying the strategic bomber to become a tactical weapons platform.
And there was the experimental electro-plasma device, theoretically, it could perhaps make the bomber invisible to the invaders’ sensors until they were over the target.
“Engage the Stealth Device.” he ordered, “Switch to visual navigation-our radar will not work here.”
They passed the last ridge, and were over the Ketha plain.
In the distance, lines of infrared tracer and blue ionization scattering showed the enemy’s air-defense nets were, indeed, still operational, destroying ballistic missiles launched from submarines at sea.
The bombardier announced, “Target ahead!”
“Start your calculations, bombardier, the helm is yours.”
They passed within less than a tenth of a kellikam over a convoy of vehicles taking captured civilians to the plae where the invaders would turn them to meat rations.
The stealth flickered off as the bomb bay opened, and their bomb was released, to glide in at a shallow angle before dropping it’s wing-segment and plunging into hive itself...at least, that was the theory.
The hull rang as enemy fire lanced through structure, he took the control again, and shoved the engines to full, hauling up on the twin-sticks to point the nose skyward.
The instrumentation failed with the first electromagnetic pulse, and the gamma lanced through the crew, a light shining a thousand times brighter than the sun, invisible, the aircraft transparent to it’s savagery.
Below, unseen to the crew of wa' mup, the coastal plain shuddered-nuclear fire lanced through underground corridors cut by the H’urq, shock and heat confined and propagated, the valley collapsed inward as the power source of the lander that formed the core of the hive, was pressurized into sympathetic detonation.
The enemy defense faltered and stopped as their systems overloaded and shut down explosively.
“Signal the ground attack.” the pilot wheezed, “Bomb was on target…”
As the struggling heavy bomber limped to a landing base they’d been unsure they could even reach, the land continued to collapse in the Ketha region, creating a lowland of steep hills and filthy swamps.
Over the next few weeks, the ten man crew assigned to fly the bombing mission died of radiation sickness, and the hull of the bomber was analyzed to find out what could be done to keep a crew alive after a successful mission.
There were no shortages of volunteers for follow-on missions to hit the other enemy landing sites, and the Emperor deemed all who died in those bombings to be a death in combat-and the loresingers agreed…
They died for their world, and their people.
”...many of the legends from the first war placed the Emperors in the key positions-leading the charges, battling the enemy in hand combat, defeating them with blade and muscle. The memorials to the bombers were erased along with much of the records, but even the Second Dynasty was unable to completely expunge the wa' mup’s mission, and records recovered from the Gamma Quadrant show that the enemy, at least, kept knowledge until they were themselves exterminated by the Dominion… it is very interesting that the form-factor of the heavy bomber type used, would be repeated in spirit, if not exacting detail, with the development of the D-12 class Bird of Prey...by engineers who never even knew the first successful strike happened using craft of similar layout and styling...”
-K’Ragh Son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions”