Number 878: The Farthest Man From Home: Batteries Release

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JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Posted by H.V.O.M at 2:55 AM Friday, July 22, 2011

The Ghost is out of the bag.

I wouldn't even make this kind of report normally and I have resisted for a few minutes the impulse to write about this but I just cannot shake the feeling that it is important to note. A short while after I made my last web log post, I had a brief moment of acid reflux from my lunch, which was some of those very cheap frozen chicken and beef pot pies you can get at the supermarket. I had the strongest sense that something dead was trying to get out of me. The experience was momentary and I quickly chewed a couple of peppermint flavored Tums that I have standing by at moments notice and the feeling has largely past. The reason I cannot shake the impulsive to write about such a detail is because I have the sense that is something to do with me being affected by whatever evil it is that permeates that region in Seattle Washington State. We all affected by it. I write this now because I thought about a few things, such as the girl on the agriculture ship

[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 22 July 2011 excerpt ends]

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2003 television miniseries "Battlestar Galactica" DVD video:

01:53:24

Cami: My parents are going to meet me at the spaceport in Caprica City.

Laura Roslin: The spaceport. I see.

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Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising

40 – The Killing Ground

He watched the cruiser Vincennes to the east, steaming in slow circles. Suddenly four smoke-trails erupted from her missile launchers, and the missile firing cycle began. Soon the northeastern sky was a solid mass of gray smoke. Through his binoculars he began to pick out the sudden black puffs of successful intercepts. They seemed to be coming closer, and he noticed that the missiles were, too. And the Aegis cruiser could not get them all. Vincennes emptied her magazines in four minutes, then bent on full speed to race between a pair of rocky islands. The captain was amazed to see it. Someone was taking a billion-dollar cruiser into a rock garden at twenty-five knots!

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Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising

20 – The Dance of the Vampires

Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The rockets exploded into the air, leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The load-and-fire time was under eight seconds. The cruiser would average one missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes later, her missile magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray arch of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.

The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of over two thousand miles per hour, directed in by the reflected waves of the ship's own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from their targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60 percent of the targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming missiles targeted on a total of eight ships.

Other missile-equipped ships joined the fray. In several cases two or three missiles were sent for the same target, usually killing it. The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but the number was not dropping quickly enough. The identity of the targets was now known to everyone. Powerful active jamming equipment came on. Ships began a radical series of maneuvers like some stylized dance, with scant attention paid to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of anyone's worries.

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Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising

40 – The Killing Ground

"Going to get some leakers," Toland said.

"Six or eight," Jacobsen agreed.

"Figure three missiles each."

By now the Tomcats had fired all of their missiles, and drew off for the Hornets to join the action with Sparrows and Sidewinders. It wasn't easy for the fighters to keep up with their targets. The Backfires, speed made for difficult pursuit curves, and the fighters were notoriously short on fuel. Their missiles continued to score, however, and no amount of jinking and jamming could defeat all of them. Finally one aircraft got a surface radar contact and radioed a position. The seven remaining Backfires fired their missiles and turned north at Mach 2. Three more fell to missiles before the fighters had to turn away.

Again the Vampire call came in, and again Toland cringed. Twenty incoming missiles were plotted. The formation activated jammers and SAM systems, with a pair of Aegis cruisers on the threat axis. In seconds they were launching missiles, and the other SM2-equipped SAM ships added their own missiles to the "basket," allowing their birds to be guided by the Aegis computer systems. The twenty incoming missiles had ninety SM2s targeted on them. Only three got through the SAM cloud, and only one of them headed for a carrier. America's three point-defense guns tracked the AS-6 and destroyed it a thousand feet from the ship. The other two missiles both found the cruiser Wainwright

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Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising

23 – Returns

BITBURG, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"Target in sight. Execute according to plan."

"Roge," acknowledged Shade-Two. "I have them visual."

The Duke broke left, clearing the way for his wingman to make the first run. Shade-Two's aircraft was the only one left with the proper ejector racks for the bulky hard-target munitions.

"Gawd!" The Duke's display showed an SA-11 launcher right in his flight path, its missiles aimed northwest. One of his aircraft had learned the hard way that the SA-11 had an infrared homing capacity that no one had suspected. The colonel reefed his aircraft into a hard right turn away from the launcher, wondering where the rest of the missile battery's vehicles were.

Shade-Two skimmed over the target. The pilot toggled off his four bombs and kept heading west. Gunfire rippled across the sky in his wake. Too late.

The French-made Durandal weapons fell off the ejector racks and scattered. Once free, they pointed down, and rockets fired to accelerate the munitions straight at the ground. They were designed to break up concrete runways and were ideal for underground fuel tanks. The bombs did not explode on impact. Instead, the hard-steel weapons lanced into the ground, penetrating several feet before detonating. Three found underground fuel tanks. The Durandals; exploded upward, breaking open a path for burning fuel to leap into the air.

It was the next thing to a nuclear detonation. Three white columns of flame rocketed into the air, spreading like fountains and dropping fuel for hundreds of yards. Every vehicle in the compound was engulfed in flame, and only those men near the perimeter escaped with their lives. Rubber fuel bladders brought to the sight exploded a few seconds later, and a river of burning diesel and gasoline spread through the trees. In a matter of seconds, twenty acres of woods were transformed into a fireball that raced skyward, punctuated by secondary explosions. Ellington's fighter rocked violently as the shock wave passed.

"Damn," he said quietly. The plan called for him to use his cluster munitions to ignite what the Durandals had burst open.

"Don't think the Rockeyes are necessary, Duke," Eisly observed

Ellington tried to blink away the dots as he turned away, keeping as low as he could. He found himself flying right down a road.

The Soviet Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater was already angry, and what he saw to the east didn't help. He'd just conferred with the commander of the Third Shock Army at Zarrentin to learn that the attack had again bogged down within sight of Hamburg. Furious that his most powerful tank force had failed to achieve its objective, he'd relieved its commander on the spot and was returning to his own command post. Now he saw what could only be one of his three major fuel depots rising into the clear sky. The General cursed and stood, pushing aside the roof panel on his armored command vehicle. As he blinked his dazzled eyes, a black mass seemed to appear at the lower edge of the fireball.

What's that? Ellington wondered. His TV display showed four armored vehicles in a tight column--one of them a SAM launcher! He flicked his bomb-release controls to Armed and dropped his four Rockeye canisters, then turned south. His tail-mounted strike cameras recorded what followed.

The Rockeyes split open, distributing their bomblets at a shallow angle across the road. They exploded on impact.

CINC-West died a soldier's death. His last act was to seize a machine gun and fire at the aircraft. Four bomblets fell within a few meters of his vehicle. Their fragments sliced through the light armor, killing everyone inside even before its fuel tank exploded, adding another fireball to a sky that had still not returned to darkness.