Huff #5
The Skywheel [Mid-March 210]
Pandemonium. That’s the only word for what’s happening on this base. You can’t call this “consequence management,” because most of the base has been atomized, the coast has new geologic features, and thousands are dead. I’ll order the J4 to get reconstruction underway, on this same spot, because I’ll be damned if we concede this ground!
[Reviewer’s Note: Source document missing two pages, likely torn out deliberately; extant entry picks up four days later.]
Destroying Skywheel 3, from any material standpoint, makes little tactical or operational sense. We have two remaining skywheels to compensate for 3’s loss with little slippage in timetables or capacity. The attack itself had to have taken immense effort and resources. Strategically, the real pain for us is the near-total loss of Main Operating Base Unity and thousands of personnel: military, civserv, contractor, and NGO. Now, those useless NGO sacks of shit are bailing out of the whole system.
The survivors are severely traumatized; I haven’t escaped unscathed either. Regaining our footing, our momentum? That won’t happen overnight. Nothing—not even the worst carnage I saw on Mtali compares to watching a 400m-wide space tether slamming into an active runway at shift change. Clever bastards. The nightmares are awful. In one, I’m on the runway and the end of that tether, with that sickening sound of the filament approaching supersonic speeds, slams right into me. Sandeep suggested I see Behavioral Health twice before I told him to stuff it. A lesson I learned early in my career: never talk to those people, don’t take pills, don’t let anyone get a single damn data point they could sell to the administration. I’ll send others to them, but I can handle this.
It took a few days to reconstruct the events. I was staying in the DV quarters on Unity for a troop visit and to catch a shuttle up to Skywheel 3 that morning. Once the initial shock wave formed after the first end of the tether hit the water, Baldy snatched me out of my room. I learned later that he was awake outside when his emergency comms went off and saw “slivers of light” in the early morning sky. Since we were set to travel to the Skywheel in a few hours, he’d been listening in on traffic and security messages, doing his job. A shuttle broadcasted an emergency message on the open “guard” frequency while on approach, just as explosives detonated. That pilot will get a commendation very soon. The second he mentioned “debris from the station falling out of orbit,” Baldy moved out. He’s only required to protect me, but he helped Sandeep and some of the key staff make it as well. We reached the shelter at exactly 0440, just in time to see the tether unfold and fall. That’s when he tackled me into the bunker. The tsunami warning sounded soon enough and we stayed put until it passed. It was the most structurally sound building on the base, but even those thick walls could barely muffle the impact…or the screams. The worst sound, though, was the silence.
* * *
The recovered Skywheel crew don’t know anything, of course. I wouldn’t expect them to. This is as likely one of our busybodies’ screwup as theirs.
We had to wait a few days for the water to recede enough for me to get back to my office on Commerce Street in the “Green Zone.” The double hit from the attack caused notable damage even 40km away, and I wasn’t sure what to expect in Jefferson. Luckily, the damage on Commerce was mostly superficial and hard to notice above the battle damage from our initial strike. More windows blown out, more fire-suppression water and foam everywhere, bookcases knocked over. Nothing terribly important or irreplaceable, but one item caught my eye. On the wall behind my desk, I hung a family shadow box I received on my commissioning day. Among other heirlooms, it contained a flask handed down father to son for centuries. The box had fallen and the glass shattered, the flask lying on the ground. I noticed the light wear and tarnish, but the embossed lion emblem with the words “Pro Rege, Pro Patria, Pro Lege”—For King, For Country, For Law, remained bright and clean. I think I’ll keep it a bit closer for the time being.