Operation Midnight Sun Prologue - Collaboration!
Operation Midnight Sun
Prologue
(This story is not sexually explicit; however, it's not recommended for children. Adult themes, foul language, violence, and other inappropriate material may be present throughout, so read at your own discretion. The author will not be held responsible for a lack of responsibility on the reader's part.)
(Alex: This story is a collaboration with the notorious Arlen Blacktiger, a writer I became familiar with quite some time ago. Each of us will be contributing to the story, and so you should see each of our respective writing styles in the contents to follow.
All parts of Operation Midnight Sun will be posted to both of our profiles. Apart from that, I expect that each chapter will be relatively short... I'm shooting for no more than about ten thousand words apiece. Oh yeah--please note that the world in this story is significantly larger than it is IRL. For example, it might take me a few hours to get to the other side of the Mississippi IRL, but in this story such a journey might take me a day or two.
Anyway, we have a lot of stuff in mind for this story. There will be drama, suspense, politics, and plenty of action to keep things exciting. I don't think there's a need to explain much of the background of this story here, as much will be revealed about the world in which Operation Midnight Sun is set immediately below.)
(Arlen: Whew, collaboration is hard work! A lot of editing, much more so than I'm used to. Anyway, thankfully Alex/Tiger Khan is way more patient than I am with the revision process. For fear of spoiling later plot points, I won't say where we drew inspiration from. However, I will thank all the writers out there who have contributed to the great creative zeitgeist that is the internet...And of course SoFurry!
Lastly: This story is set in a world similar to but very distinctly different from our own. I most certainly don't advocate extremism, and have nothing against the religions depicted here. Any similarity to real people is yadda yadda you know the rest. Enjoy!)
Maybe it all started on 9/11.
That day was central to all modern accounts of politics and culture; yet perhaps it wasn't quite accurate to claim that the world became what it became as a direct and inevitable result of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City and the three thousand people trapped inside of them.
After all, for some time the war in Afghanistan had gone well. And for some time after American withdrawal, even Iraq had remained a stable nation, albeit a less than ideal destination for tourism or business investment. Even for some time after the US's first and thus far only black President left office, the Libyan situation remained manageable.
Afghanistan, however, rapidly began to sour. The goal of American withdrawal had suddenly been trashed following a Taliban uprising and the assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. A sudden Islamist offensive in that country had shaken American military forces nearly to the point of defeat, and only a sudden injection of other NATO forces--British, German, Scandinavian, and others--managed to prevent Americans from leaving Afghanistan the way they had left Vietnam so many years before.
A military crackdown not just in Afghanistan but in all of southern and central Asia managed to contain Islamist elements, for some months. For some months, the western public was content to hear of massive abuses not only by central Asian dictators but by NATO forces, provided that their boys were allowed to come home in one piece.
But the situation could not be maintained. Too many regional nations and their peoples tired of having western influence dominate regional politics, and their antipathy towards "The Great Satan" and its allies soon hit the flash point.
Iran invaded Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and successfully overthrew the repressive regimes that had formerly dictated the course of affairs in both countries. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and the rest of the ex-Soviet microstates in the region were quick to follow.
Within six months, western forces in Afghanistan had a half million angry Persians breathing down their necks from the north and the west and millions of raging but thus far disorganized Pakistani militants raiding them from the south and the east.
It was at this time that al Qaeda-linked agents managed to take over Pakistani nuclear weapons facilities.
Some said that they had done so at the behest of Saudi government powers; some said that they were acting strictly under the orders of al Qaeda leadership; some said that they were a rogue element of al Qaeda. But what everyone agreed about was that when the nukes began to rain down from the sky--targeting the western world and Pakistan's old nemesis, India--the failure of the Saudi government to prevent its populace from dancing in the streets was at least a significant factor in the decision of NATO to invade the Arabian peninsula, central Asia, and Iran, all at the same time, all within an hour of the first nuclear launch.
In the end, missile defense technologies managed to shoot all of the nukes out of the sky, all but one which managed to strike one of the most densely populated parts of the world: southern India. In an instant, the overwhelming majority of the Dravidian peoples were wiped from the face of the planet, and EMP fallout from that and the rest of the nukes--those that were shot out of the sky--blew out enough digital infrastructure to set unshielded technology back by a generation.
Fighting in Asia quickly hit a stalemate. Major naval battles decimated north Africa and parts of southern Europe for months; at the same time, European ground forces swept through the Balkans and into Turkey, annihilating anything that had to do with Islam. Eventually, western forces managed to coordinate with Israel, and it was only the threat of all-around nuclear obliteration that set an upper limit on the amount of destruction that would be inflicted upon the near East.
The next six months were defined by extreme, chaotic violence, the results of which were still uncertain and unlikely to ever be sorted out.
Australian military forces did battle with Pacific Muslim nations. The Philippines were cut in two; into a secular Christian part and a radical Islamist part. Japanese and South Korean forces took advantage of the situation and launched a blitzkrieg invasion of North Korea, destroying the communist state within two months. India, China, and Russia officially declared neutrality, but it didn't seem that there were many people in the world that didn't get involved in what would quickly be recognized as World War III: a massive, secular vs. Islam battle which miraculously did not result in the further exchange of nuclear weapons.
It took about a year for the "hot war" to end.
The Arabian Peninsula was decimated--not just by NATO forces, but by the non-Muslim peoples of Indian and particularly south Indian heritage who formed the industrial backbone of the area. They fought tirelessly, throughout sandstorms and under armored strikes that sent their western allies running for covers, and were only stopped by a fanatical group of Arab fighters from devastating Mecca.
Pakistan was almost squeezed out by western bombardment from Afghanistan and a wave of Hindu hatred, but managed to hang on by sending large portions of its populace into the far, mountainous north and launching suicide attacks against Indian forces--only sometimes with members of its own military. Often, Indian Muslims would take it upon themselves to destabilize the homeland with strikes on industrial and military targets without being ordered to do so by Pakistan.
Southern Europe and north Africa, despite withstanding major naval attacks at the beginning of the war, managed to evade further damage by endlessly fighting battles over the Mediterranean. In the heart of Europe itself, the military didn't have to worry about Muslim enclaves--European citizens didn't need any more than the most simple of small arms to exterminate the Muslims from their beloved motherlands forever.
Russia ceded parts of the Caucasus to what would shortly come to be known as the International Islamic Republic, though the protests of its increasingly hardline populace demanded months of political repression. And in the end, more ethnic Russians had fled to eastern Europe than remained in Russia.
By the time a ceasefire was declared, there were no free Muslims in the western world--which quickly organized itself as WNU, for Western Nations United. All were either held in prison camps that made Auschwitz look pleasant, or in mass graves so jam-packed with bodies that no plants would grow over them for decades.
Christians, Jews, Hindus, and followers of other religions in the Islamic world suffered similar fates. Those philanthropists and religious leaders--in the WNU and IIR alike--who called for peace and tolerance and compassion and understanding and liberalization didn't need to be forcefully censored; the public at large discredited them and those who survived political violence inflicted by grassroots activists shut their mouths and kept them shut.
The peoples of South and Central America threw in their lot with the WNU. When their leaders failed to bow to absolutely overwhelming popular opinion, they were betrayed by their own security forces and turned into the streets to take the blows of a thousand fists.
Facing the threat of an internal Islamic uprising, funded and supported by the IIR, China ceded control of its western territories in exchange for a promise of peace and relatively free trade. It and Africa provided natural resources and nonmilitary products to the IIR and the WNU without prejudice, and so for the first time in several centuries, Chinese and Africans prospered while westerners and Muslims did not.
But almost all of the rest of the world was either squarely in the IIR's camp or in the WNU's camp. India managed to remain relatively neutral, despite widespread public hatred toward the few Muslims who remained in its borders--each day, more and more left for Pakistan without looking back. Russia remained neutral, too, but the political repression that it had inflicted upon itself reduced it from a vying superpower before the war to a nation that was scarcely a shadow of what it had once been. Cuba remained neutral, but that nation's leadership remained wise and did not inspire the wrath of the west and guarantee its absolute obliteration.
For a while, it seemed that despite the polarization of the world, things might go on in the west as they once had. True, technology had been set back by many years due to EMP fallout, but everyone had a job--either in the military or in the nominally private businesses that existed under what would correctly be called fascism. Everyone hated Islam and sure, every now and then there were "mysterious" explosions at IIR military installations, but there were indications that things might become relatively normal--maybe not immediately, but within a year or two. Or a decade or two. Or soon. Or sometime, anyway.
After all, how long, really, could sentient beings hate one another? Over a billion lives had been lost in the war--mostly in the Muslim world, but there was a reason that Italian was no longer a major world language and there was also a reason why the IIR managed to take over Greece in the post-war negotiations without much protest from WNU leadership.
There was no denying that many people in all parts of the world had lost a lot. So, surely things would get better in the future, and surely Muslims and the rest of the world would learn to live in relative peace again. Surely they would.
En Route to Warsaw, Poland State, WNU
March 23rd, 2024
13:14PM GMT
Chilly early Spring winds blew over the tall, athletic Polish teen through an open window, causing her to brush several sleek strands of hair back under her cap. Winter was finally over, so the open-topped train car she was in was now packed full of refugees--whereas just a few months ago the idea of such a vehicle being used to evacuate a small village of Poles was ludicrous when there were so many more pressing needs for trains.
Her whole family was leaving what had been their home town for some generations, and that was the reason for the unfamiliar wetness in the corners of her eyes. Certainly, eastern Poland hadn't taken near the beating that the broken collection of rocks and islands once known as Italy had, but enough damage had been inflicted to the countryside to make life there uneconomical, to say the least.
Yet when the unbalanced, tattered church steeple finally disappeared into the morning fog behind them, she couldn't help but hide her face for a few moments. The last things anyone needed to deal with were her tears.
Next to her, packed in by the press of far too many bodies, her brother and parents sat wearing what clothing they had left. Their luggage had been shoved under their legs to serve as seats in what was once a cattle car. Such accommodations would have been unthinkable almost anywhere just years ago, but they were more than acceptable in the wake of the devastation that had ravaged the world.
Still, she felt miserable. Just six weeks after her seventeenth birthday, her life had been turned upside-down. She had been young, and her town had been small, so she somehow had managed to insulate herself from the fact that of all the young men she had known through her life who had been sent to fight in the Balkans, those who had returned had not been the smiling, pleasant faces that they once had.
Now, every man between the ages of eighteen and forty five had the face of a soldier.
For a few months, there had been hopes that life at home would be allowed to continue as usual. Those who lived in her village formed a closely-knit community and there was sufficient capital in the area to rebuild it, but then the entire province had been taken over by what was now considered the Polish branch of the WNU to be used as an extensive military installation to train more men from Slavic lands to fight and to die combating the Muslim threat to the south and to the east.
Her father cleared his throat, coughing into a gloved hand. She felt fear for a moment--after all, everyone in her family had been scared to death, a week before, when he'd started having trouble breathing. Now, happily, his fever had broken and he seemed to be recovering, fueled by his indomitable stubborn spirit and the support of his family. It was these two factors that led him to glance into his daughter's eyes and favor her with a warm smile.
"Warsaw is only a few hours away. When we reach it, everything will be better... the city is full of opportunity. You can get a good degree from the university and find good work easily. Your uncle will give Mama and I work at the restaurant, which he claims is quite busy these days. Your brother will be busy with school for some time... so, by the time he's called for military training, everything should be settled with the IIR. So, don't worry--everything will be fine."
She didn't seem convinced. And a moment later, she winced and turned to the side to see that her younger brother had just gently elbowed her side.
She couldn't help smiling just a little bit--first, cautiously, and then sincerely. There was so much hope and happiness in his eyes. This was despite the fact that the kid had, along with all the rest from their village, spent the whole previous night packing away what little they could carry and getting it aboard the train that had been allocated for their use. But he seemed to look at the whole thing as just another adventure.
"Everything is better in the city," he said confidently. "The schools, the jobs... the girls... say, please make some new friends as quickly as you can--varied friends, I mean. A few blondes, a few brunettes, some redheads..."
She scoffed, but couldn't deny that he was right. She had planned to attend Warsaw University since before the war, and she had been accepted thanks to the submission of an application she had sent out just before the bullets began to fly and the bombs began to fall.
Maybe Warsaw would come to be her home some day. But that day was a long, long time away.
She swallowed her grief. She tried to smile, and failed, and she was about to speak after managing a forced but hopeful sort of grin when she was cut off by the train's crackling P.A. system.
"Everyone, please stay seated for the whole trip. We will arrive in two and a half more hours, and there will be food and water at the station."
There was a pause.
"The tracks were heavily damaged in the war, and I am not confident that they were repaired properly. If you get up... well, it'll be that much more dangerous for you if they weren't."
In the end, she decided to say nothing at all.
Behind her, the sleeping wolf whose knees had been digging into her back for the last two hours finally shifted and grunted awake. Considering he'd already been slumbering inside the train car when her whole town had boarded an hour before dawn, she imagined he must have been on it from one of the other evacuated rural villages. His yawn turned into a groan, and he bumped her in the back again with his knee, muttering a muted apology in his half-wakened state.
"S... sorry. Sore legs," he mumbled. She tried to sit forward, so as to give him a bit of space to stretch, but the quarters were just too tight. An old woman glared at her, from deep inside the heavily-wrapped winter clothes she'd layered about her person, before twisting forward again to look away.
Her family chatted on, as they rode, despite sore muscles from the long work of the night before. Their community had lost many of its strongest sons to the war, and had needed help from her young, able family to evacuate. She mused that her slightly chubby form could use the exercise, and resolved to keep up the physical work somehow in the city.
That wouldn't be a challenge, she thought. There was a rush to recruit women into the military and already many who had lost all of their families in the war had been drafted.
Staying mostly silent, content to listen with a vague smile as her family went on about the future, she rested herself against the chilly glass window someone had been kind enough to make in the old cow car. Having learned so many lessons from the Germans, the government officials who had decided on this program must have realized being trapped in a dark, airless place would cause panic. In her case, the view meant she could at least watch the abandoned countryside for entertainment on their journey.
She was dozing as the scenery began to change. Slowly, abandoned fields full of dead wheat gave way to inhabited ones, though at that time of year the difference was hard to spot. Then, military-protected farms gave way to towns and factories, where clusters of quickly-built homes had shot up over the last few weeks to house the displaced Greeks and Romanians who had successfully fled Muslim invasion. Her half-sleeping eyes registered the buildings growing taller, streets straighter and more well-planned, until finally her brother's hands shook her shoulder.
"Hey, sleeping beauty... we're in Warsaw. Take a look!"
She woke up rather slowly and looked in the general direction he was pointing. Through fog, the very recognizable and famous spire of the Palac Kultury i Nauki pierced into view. Like a spear of the culture and science museums the spired tower housed, it penetrated her sense of drowsy gloom, and brought a smile to her face even as the passing skyline obscured it from view once again. She looked forward to seeing it, remembering having heard that the government had opened its doors for free to the public.
The P.A. crackled again, and mingled furs and humans began to groan and mutter and shuffle awake, a symphony of cramped limbs and hopeful voices.
"Five minutes to Warsaw Central Station! Please gather your things so you may depart the train in an orderly fashion. Officers will be waiting with housing assignments in the main lobby area, so stay together!"
As it turned out, it was easier said than done to stay together and remain orderly. Their train was far from the only one arriving in Warsaw Central Station which itself was operating far beyond its capacity. Simply looking out at the sea of people in the main terminal for a second was enough to nearly give her a headache.
But the trains' occupants unceremoniously entered in great straggling mobs--what other choice did they have? And besides, some of the bellowing, harried voices echoing through the massive chamber seemed to have some relevance to her and her family, and so she held onto her brother's arm so that, at the very least, they would not get separated.
Ten minutes later, however, it became clear that if there was someone in charge, he wasn't doing his job. Her whole village managed to stay together, more or less, yet the minders who had been assigned to get them to wherever they were going had not even the slightest idea of what to do with them. It didn't help that electronics all over Poland had been fried in the war and only a few high-ranking military members so far had the conveniences of desktop computers, let alone cell phones--pen and paper technology simply didn't support logistics of the scale to sort and filter a half nation of refugees.
She ended up wandering the station along with her brother as her parents and their neighbors sat in one, marginally less busy corner of the area to relax and wait for instruction. There were so many people there--apart from Poles, there were Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, grim-faced women and children from the Balkans, and some security guards who most blatantly did not come from anywhere in the region. She was pretty sure she had most of them pinned as French or Scandinavian or English, but one guard in particular just seemed... out of place.
She couldn't help but moving in for a closer look at the dark haired man, cradling his M4 assault rifle like he was worried about something. He seemed worried, or concerned, or on edge, and she couldn't blame him for that. As one of the main centers of public transit in eastern Europe that had remained relatively unmolested during the war, Warsaw Central Station was a prime target for IIR saboteurs.
Maybe he could use a few comforting words from a friendly face. And she didn't speak bad English--now, the official language of all nations allied against the Islamic threat. So, after glancing at her brother meaningfully, she approached him and gave him a polite but chaste smile.
"Good afternoon," she said, in accented but understandable English. He looked at her and she felt his hazel-colored eyes bore into her own perfectly deep, shimmering blue eyes as if to examine them and note how truly comforting they were to look upon.
Yet, he did not soften. If anything, he held his weapon closer--but she was not intimidated. She just smiled a bit more sadly.
"It must be hard to be a soldier," she mused. "Ever since the war started... you don't even have the luxury of fighting on your own soil, all the time." She sighed. "Ah, well... at least we're all united in mutual defense."
He didn't seem to like that comment--not one bit. So, after biting her lip, she decided that he might not like to talk about the war at all.
And the only thing that had been on her mind for months had been the war. So, really, she wasn't sure what to talk about--so, she sighed, toyed with a lock of her hair with her fingers, and looked away for a moment.
She looked around. There were other women in the station, sure--but most of them were old or married or very young. The moment open hostilities had been called off, there had been a rush all over the WNU for good young women to marry soldiers, war heroes in particular. Polygamy had been legalized (although one man was limited to two wives and such a thing was only allowed when there were an excess of women compared to men) and she knew that some of her closest friends growing up had already been spoken for.
And, really... this dark haired, tan-skinned man, for all of his silence and his tendency to clutch at his weapon and look anywhere but her... well, he wasn't all that bad looking. And who knew how beautiful dark hair like that would look when mixed with red hair like hers in children born and raised to defend the free world from the Islamic threat?
She blushed. But she did manage to speak to him again--and this time, she managed to get him to speak back to her.
"You know... before the war, I used to ride a motorcycle," she said. He looked at her--and so, feeling emboldened, she continued. "A Kawasaki Ninja. I used to be pretty good with it, too... I did some tricks, and I used to ride pretty fast... but usually, I just liked to... ride through the countryside. It was so peaceful..."
A terrible nostalgia threatened to overwhelm her. But she fought it down, and managed to meet his eyes for a moment when he started to speak.
"I used to ride, too," he said, and his accent was one she was not immediately familiar with. Was he... French? She didn't think so.
"But my family wasn't rich enough to afford a motorcycle. So, I just rode my bike... manually." He grinned and met her eyes for a bit longer--and then he looked away and spoke in a somewhat shakier tone. "I just... rode, I suppose. But there was no peace where I'm from."
He stopped speaking abruptly. And now, she noticed that he was positively sweating and that he seemed to be anxiously glacing around every few seconds and that his grip on his weapon was such that his knuckles were becoming white.
"And... where _are_you from?"
He didn't answer her. She tried to catch his gaze for a moment, but she failed. She felt awkward--what was she to do in a situation like this? In a complete lack of good alternatives, she simply began to name places, hoping that at some point he would meet her eyes again and quit reliving whatever nightmare he had fallen into during the war.
"France?" she asked. "Greece? Italy?"
He still didn't respond.
"Romania? Macedonia? Albania?"
He didn't look at her. But he did speak.
"No. More to the west."
"Italy?" she guessed--and then she remembered that she had already guessed Italy. And yet, he looked so Italian that it was hard to mistake him for some other ethnicity found in the WNU. He was tan, sure, but he had hazel eyes and facial features that she was not familiar with, yet seemed to fit in best with the mental image she had of the average southern European.
But he was not Italian. So, perhaps...
"Spain?"
Finally, he looked at her again. He smiled in a manner that confused her, and nodded.
"My ancestors were. But we were forced to leave and live elsewhere," he admitted. And then he shrugged.
"Things like this happen all the time in the course of history. But it doesn't matter to me. No matter what, I will always be a man of al-Andalus."
He turned toward her. He raised his weapon. And then she understood why he had been so nervous the whole time she had been speaking to her and she prepared to die.
But the Spaniard, the Arab was struck with such force that though he managed to fire, his shot blew hopelessly past her to bury itself into the crowds behind her. Within seconds, there was a fury of fists and feet on the ground before her, some of which she recognized as her brother's--and then there was chaos. Chaos, and more gunners.
Shouts of "Allah u akbar!" rose into the air along with smoke, brass casings, and the screams of hundreds of dead and dying. Many were shot and many others trampled one another in a mad, confused rush for safety that ultimately doomed the rest of the soldiers in the station, letting the gunners continue to shoot with impunity.
And still her brother fought on.
Somehow, she managed to dodge bullets and bodies alike. Somehow, she managed to stand there, stupidly, listening to an odd whisper within her mind that spoke through a fog of confusion to tell her to move, to do something, to help her brother before he was overwhelmed and killed!
She acted ten seconds later--a lifetime in such violence--and rushed forward. Her brother was still on top of the insurgent, and so she kicked and kicked and kicked until she heard a scream--and then, in his final burst of strength, the Arab shoved her brother off and knocked her off her feet with a wide arcing motion of his arm.
She hit the ground face-first and she tasted blood and saw stars. She tried to pick herself up, but she couldn't--there was so much shooting and screaming and violence that she couldn't possibly do anything about it. She had to just sit there, cowering, hoping that her brother would manage to get to his feet and save her again--
There was more shooting, then. But this wasn't the high-pitched shriek of an M4 carbine set to full automatic. This was the dull _thud_of a high-caliber pistol.
She dared to look up. And the sight she saw then was one that she would be cursed to remember for the rest of her life.
The Arab was on his feet. He was bruised and bleeding from a nasty cut on his upper cheek, yes, and his face was twisted into a mask of absolute hatred. But he was on his feet, and holding the pistol that he had just used to shoot her brother dead mercilessly, cruelly, and with such malice that he kept firing, over and over and over and over, so that the boy's dead body jerked violently with each additional impact.
Her brother was dead. This thought numbed her--but then she saw that the Arab was reloading. Soon, his pistol would be ready for more action, and he would use it to fight his way back to his rifle--assuming that anyone dared to oppose him. And once he got to his rifle... then there would be more killing, more reckless murder of unarmed, defenseless civilians, limited only by WNU military response that could be many deadly minutes away.
Maybe it was 9/11 that put the world on an irreversible path to present conditions, and maybe it was her birth that made her the girl that she was, and the woman that she was becoming.
She never thought of it like that, though. Whenever she thought about herself, Kasia Jazinski believed that she became who she was when she stopped crying and she stood up and she grabbed the combat knife on the Arab's belt and used it to cut out his throat.
After that, she calmly crawled to the insurgent's stolen M4 carbine and used it to the best of her ability to pin down the rest of the attackers until the black HUMVEEs rolled in and either killed the terrorists or dragged them away, kicking and screaming and cursing them in the name of Allah.
She barely remembered these events, though. She barely remembered being debriefed by the police, being told that her parents in addition to her brother had been killed along with the rest of the people from her village, and she barely remembered going to their collective funeral--a simple state function performed by a Catholic priest who had been thoroughly desensitized to the concept of traumatic death during the war.
What she did remember, though, was that when it was all finished, she did go to Warsaw University, just as she had planned. But she didn't go to ensure that her paperwork had come through or to sign up for classes or housing or even to walk around the campus a single time. She went there to visit the military recruitment office and to sign up for the toughest, most rigorous training course they offered.
Within a month, she was in the 90th percentile of all female recruits. Within three, she was in the 97th percentile of all recruits regardless of gender, and within six, she had been reassigned to WNU's CIA for work under a CO she would only ever know as "Zeta".
Within a year, she had assassinations, sabotages, and too many reconnaisance missions to count under her belt.
It was at this time that brass at the CIA started to search for a select group of individuals who would operate indefinitely behind IIR lines under a mission known only as "Operation Midnight Sun."
(Alex: Not bad for a prologue, eh? I must admit that this story will be significantly different from most of what I have posted until now... hopefully my loyal fans will find something to enjoy, but this story is targetted to a somewhat different audience than the audience of, say, Lone Tiger.
Anyway, we have already started work on the next chapter. It will be posted when it is finished. So, until next time... keep it real, SoFurry. Keep it real.)