SERENAYA 12

“Hey, did you hear about the girl in the plane that buzzed the settlement? She’s local, right, I mean from around here?” the crippled man said, anticipating so many answers.

“Well... Maybe she was once a ‘resident’ here long ago, though I can’t be sure. My memory’s not what it used to be,” the old man whispered, almost afraid to be overheard.

“Oh, c’mon now, I’ve heard the rumours,” the other remarked, holding the old man’s gaze.

“Rumours be damned, why do you listen to such hearsay?”

“It’s just, well... Hell, I’ve heard weird things. Look, I heard that she found a plane, ‘that plane’, in the ice pack, frozen solid for a thousand years. The last of its kind. Is that true? Who would make such things up? What could they hope to achieve?” A strained silence fell over the room, punctuated by the sounds of distant battle.

“Okay,” the old man simply said.

“‘Okay’ what?” from the cripple, his eyes now alert. Could this be true? Was he right?

“You’re the only one to have come close. I don’t think you can read my mind but it’s crazy. You guessed right, the girl is my daughter, my own flesh and blood, my only child. She’s 25 years old and fighting for the Twenty Sixth crowd. She found the plane, yes; it’s old, much older than even me. I don’t know how she found it or how she got it working but it is her.” A look of uncertainty passed over the elder’s face. Had he done the right thing letting his friend in? Could the lame man be an assassin for the Stone Collectors? Fate would tell and destiny would soon be calling, for better or for worse.

“Fuckin’ Lord! You ain’t crappin’ me? True? Your daughter? I mean, rumours are rumours but this is madness!” the cripple shouted, his mind awash with waves of images. He had been right all along.

“If you don’t believe me then I won’t and can’t change your mind. I have work to do. Leave me now. I have told you enough, go now,” the aged man uttered, fatigue showing in his watery eyes. He reached down for a cloth-covered bundle.

“I need to know more, tell me! You know more! Please tell me.”

If the cripple could have stood, he would have done so.

“She is my daughter, her name is Serenaya. Now go.”

The bundle was unwrapped now, the cloth falling to the floor. A small plasma pistol filled his hands. The small size belied its potency. In a sudden move the old man placed the weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The cripple screamed: “No! No!” But it was too late; a beam of plasma blasted the other’s head apart in a shower of cauterised blood, flesh, brains and bone.

A burning smell filled the room and shock filled the cripple’s mind. Serenaya? Was that her name? Now she was the last, she was a bastard, her father now dead. He had to leave before the authorities found him and he had to find her. As quickly as he could, he turned his wheelchair and left the macabre seen.

---

On a small island a dozen or so miles off the north coast of Scotland the seeds of battle were seductively sown in the minds of three young fanatical warriors, true believers in their cause. Whether it was for good or bad didn’t cross their hardened minds; this was a cause that would see them as the new leaders of the nearby landmass that was once the United Kingdom. Now it was a free for all with the toughest or wealthiest being top dog. All that was about to change. Ruthlessness would be the new factor in shaping the future of this troubled land once again. For a thousand years after the nuclear/biological war with mainland Europe and countless years after internal squabbling, a new fight would soon erupt. This time sheer determination and skill in battle would make it succeed, for if it didn’t failure would be worse than death. Failure would bring the pain of slow torture at the hands of the Stone Collectors. They had to succeed; the missiles had to fire and find their targets – there was no second chance.

Walking through the slight drizzle to the first launcher, Jian checked the closed launch tube, noticing how the rain ran down the lightly greased barrel away from the rubber seal. Good, no leaks. Opening a panel at the wheeled base-plate, Jian brought up the system diagnostics online on the small computer terminal. Letters, digits and graphs showed that everything was okay, that no failures showed up. Just to be sure, he ran the check twice more and was finally satisfied that his Iranian supplied weapons were ready for launch. There where twelve sets of mobile launchers, each with three small rockets hidden snugly inside the tubes – a total of thirty-six mixed warhead devices. Neutron bombs for people killing, hydrogen bombs for large military targets and atom bombs for precision drops on smallish targets.

Jian shut the terminal down and repeated his visual checks on each of the thirty-five tubes. Each was fine. He randomly opened another terminal on launcher number seven and cycled the system. Again it checked out. Walking over to his two colleagues, Boss and Jano, Jian talked in a hushed voice. “The weapon systems check out. All we have to do is wait. Then we will launch and be the new conquerors of our troubled land. May God be with us…”

---

Jian watched the main control screen that showed each launcher and individual weapon – thirty-six yellow blobs with green icons next to them. Jano watched the group of launchers with fibre optic laser viewing optics. Boss watched the other group with a similar device. “Everything’s fine here, Jian.”

“Okay. You tally up on your lot Boss?” Jian whispered.

“Yes fine on this side, not even a bug moving,” Boss replied. “How are the readouts, Jian, any anomalies or problems?”

“Everything is sorted here, thirty seconds to go,” Jian replied. “I’d turn your optics down to the lowest setting if I were you. You don’t want flash blinding.”

Jano remained quiet but nodded in agreement.

The pair’s extra sensitive night vision equipment would adjust automatically to any bright flash or light, so any change would be automatic, a factor that Jian didn’t trust. He was not keen on machines, explaining his constant checking of the systems and his refusal to use the night glasses. The countdown reached zero. At first nothing happened, at least not visually but in the microcircuits, commands were sent to ignite the launch motors and arm the warheads. In a glare of crude yellow light, first one and then another rocket speared forth into the night, the pop of the seals being broken lost in the rockets roar. Jian had to close his eyes at the brightness. It was an impressive sight he had to admit. What would the sight resemble on the receiving end when thirty-six missiles detonated on thirty-six separate pre-programmed targets? He wished he could see each one as it happened. Sadly that was impossible because his side, the Stone Collectors, had lost all of their spy satellites to the Twenty Sixth beam weapons. It was a bonus getting these nuclear missiles so cheap from the Iranian Superpower Block at such a bargain price. Even when such outdated technology was still much prized by either side today or anyone with enough credit could get hold of them. In fingers of yellow lightning and in voices of thunder the rockets headed steeply heavenwards, rapidly moving out of sight. In seconds all thirty-six had been launched and had gone.

Jian rubbed his eyes and shut them. He could still see the fiery trails on his closed lids. Maybe he should have worn a set of fibre optic viewing optics. He turned to Jano and Boss and smiled. “Now we have started our little quest for power, our Gods of War will guide us. Through the death of our enemies, a great nation will become ours again!”

“I wouldn’t want to be under that fucking lot when they go off!” Boss said. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction.

“Some party, eh? Let’s set the destruction charge and get out of here to the base,” Jano commented.

“Yes, let’s do it. We can’t leave any trace of our being here. You two, you know what to do. I’ll double check when you’re done – give me a shout. I’m going for a walk to clear my head.” With that Jian set off down the gently sloping beach, almost invisible in the coming dawn and endless drizzle. Still, he was happy inside, for the first time in ages. Yes, they could win and have a place to live in peace again. It was worth fighting for. Even if they failed, the battle would be worth it. No one could deny they hadn’t tried in the long run.

Boss and Jano went over to the mobile assault vehicle and unlocked the cab door. Here, Juno entered the small driver’s position and brought out a small package the size of a briefcase. Boss looked on with cautious eyes. He knew the dangerous nature of the thing, which his friend held. It was a high power nuclear bomb, in the one-megaton range – equal to a million tons of normal high explosive: some kick ass bomb! Locking the door again and walking over to the centre of the launch area, Jano set the bomb down and started to prepare it for detonation. Boss scanned around the area watching for movement at this crucial time, his small machine pistol ready. No one would venture to this distant island, at least not until they had worked out the launch position but by then it would be too late. It would be turned to glass, totally obliterated.

Opening up the pressurised case and activating the keypad took a minute; entering the code took two more and finally sealing and locking it took one more. Then it was ready, to do the evil task for which it had been designed, as had other similar devices on the speeding missiles. The destruction would soon start, though at this spot no one would die only cover their tracks.

“Okay, Boss the bomb is armed and ready to blow. The timer is set for two hours and thirty minutes. Then we have to be a minimum of ten miles away to live. The blast will be considerable.” Jano gloated, a crazy grin spreading from ear to ear.

“Are you sure that you have done it right? We don’t want no early detonation or a dud. I trust you on this, you know,” Boss warily replied, the uneasiness of any mistake playing on him like the plague on a doctor.

“Sure thing buddy, no problem, I checked it and its fine. Trust me!” the mad fighter forcibly laughed.

“We better find Jian and tell him all is set and that he can check the bomb. Then we leave this exposed place. Come on then, I want to go.”

“Okay, okay. Hang on; I want a last look at this place. We started a new dawn, here, you know. We were lucky finding this island. It has served us well.”

A minute later, he continued, “Okay, I’m ready.” Jano turned his back on the empty launchers and slowly ticking bomb.

Hurrying down to the beach, both found their leader quietly sitting on a rock, lost in his own world. In the light of a new day he silently looked at Boss and Jano. Abruptly he nodded and smiled, warmly, happily. Jano returned the nod, confirmation of completing the task.

Making their way to the escape craft, their job was done. Faithfully waiting at the small wooden jetty by the shore was a small three-seater hovercraft, looking squat and powerful. With a small jet engine and top speed of eighty knots, this was their silver bullet, a ticket to freedom in the remaining two hours and ten minutes. Jano climbed in, followed by Boss. Jian slowly walked back up to the bomb to double check his companion’s work. He knew that he had no need to, that Jano was as committed to the cause as he was but it was an important job. Five minutes later Jian returned, all was well. He cast off the stout line from the jetty and climbed aboard the small craft. Jano shut the door and Boss gunned the engine to accelerate them from the mooring point. Turning the craft around to face seawards, Boss floored the throttle to bring the jet engine up to full thrust, an ass kicking five hundred pounds sending them on their way. Soon out to sea and heading around the nameless island, the small craft was lost from sight in the dim light. No one could catch them now. Soon their second task could begin, rallying their army for victory and doing the Devil’s work? Were any of them aware of this? That they were playing into his hands?

---

An ice-cold crush of timeless pressure of immensely unbelievable weight held the big iron bird in place in her freezing grave. She had been there for over a thousand years. No one knew how long because time was only an approximate after so many years. Mankind had simply forgotten what year it was. All of the machines that could have forecast the year had been destroyed and replaced by newer ones. Anyhow, the year never really mattered – survival was more important. That’s why a young girl called Seranaya stood, she hoped, above the entombed plane, six hundred feet above it on the icepack. A bitterly cold wind blew from nowhere, so cold that it cut right through her, to shake her to her core. Even with a full piece carbon suit to protect her from the minus eighty below temperatures (minus 100 if you took into effect the wind chill factor), Seranaya was cold. But she reminded herself that she had a job to do, to make sure that the buried plane really was here and not the legend that people talked about. She checked her hand held computer to confirm her location – a list of digits came up on the display and she smiled. She was at the spot. All she had to do was do a scan with the painting radar to perform a number of things: a depth check, note the plane’s position, find any ice gradients which could make extraction dangerous and to see if anything else was down there. That she doubted but it was possible. Turning the computer slightly downwards, she pressed another button to activate it, not easily through her carbon gloves.

Seconds ticked by as the small dish scanned deep into the ice, down to where the old plane lay under millions of tons of frozen water. On the weatherproof screen on the computer the word “SCANNING” appeared and stayed for what seemed an age. Then “STANDBY” replaced it as images from down below processed into the memory, finally to be displayed on the screen. Serenaya couldn’t believe it. She stared at the data; it indicated a solid contact at six hundred and twelve feet below where she now stood, a change in ice density at a hundred and thirty two feet for sixty-nine feet and that the plane was in one piece and reasonably level. It must be in the same position as when it forced landed all those years ago. How amazing, she thought.

Still staring at the screen, Seranaya clicked the small blinking cursor onto additional information: total mass in tons of ice that needed to be removed to reach the plane, plus or minus five percent, one hundred and nine thousand tons; amount of crush damage to the plane, plus or minus ten percent, up to fifty eight point six. Shit, a fucking rebuild… But she knew that from the start, so long under the ice, so much weight pressing down, to crush, to smother, to destroy would leave her quest nothing more than a rare piece of scrap metal. Blinking a cold tear from her eyes, Seranaya finely tuned the painting radar to focus on the plane and do a detailed scan of it. This task would take half an hour, so she gently placed the computer on a small portable stand and returned to her nearby snow camp to have a hot meal and wait.

---

The Stone Collectors came by their name by accident. A long time ago, when the current war was no more than isolated skirmishes between the rival factions of people, up to five heavily armed groups of varying strengths fought to control their local areas and then the whole former UK landmass. Total control was near enough impossible due to lack of numbers in some groups, lack of heavy weapons and bad communications routes. So in over two hundred years of tit for tat fighting that brought misery, death and the extinction of the three smaller groups, the Stone Collectors came up out on top. Due to skill, knowledge of the terrain and of their enemy’s weakness and to sheer perseverance, they nearly won. A breath taking number of counterattacks by the opposing Twenty Sixth had stopped the Stone Collectors in their tracks. Resorting to proven tactics of guerrilla hit and run raids brought the Collectors some reprieve but they needed more heavy weapons and more forces to retake lost ground and finally finish the Twenty Sixth off once and for all. But fate had a funny way of working in wartime, so the war could go either way.

Long ago a small boy was looking for food on a new spring day, a few kilometres from his elders’ camp. Enjoying the warm weather, the young lad found more than food; he came across the newly fossilised remains of a group of humans from a long time ago. Staring in awe and fear at the sight set into the stony riverbank before him, the nine year boy started to cry. For he knew that something terrible had happened to the contorted bones poking out of the virgin rock not six feet in front of him. Skeletons with arched backs, broken limbs and smashed in skulls could only mean suffering and pain, a voice in his head told him.

Stepping closer to the sloping rock, he picked up a hard piece of granite and started to slowly scrape and gouge away the softer stone. He wanted to take some old bones to show his friends and maybe trade with them. Minutes into his task a toothless jawbone rested on the ground at his feet. So caught up in his task, he never noticed three more shadows join his own. It was a fear in his mind that made him turn and drop the hard stone in surprise. Standing dangerously close were three heavily armed men of the Twenty Sixth, with wicked grins on their faces. Attempting to run was no use, for the strongest member of the group pinned the boy to the ground with his dirty boot.

“Talk, you little swine, where is your camp? What’s the fighting strength there? What weapons?” the dirty soldier demanded.

When no answer was forthcoming, he lowered his laser pistol and shot the boy. His companions laughed until they cried, what a little idiot, not even putting up a fight!

Two days later, a search party from the boy’s camp found his corpse. They saw what he had been doing and how he had been murdered and named their ragged band after him, the Stone Collectors. Now after many years and hundreds of fights later, the Stone Collectors became ones to be reckoned with but they needed more heavy weapons, more fighters and a lot of luck. Any more lost battles could mean the end of their gamble to win control of the landmass that they sorely wanted. It was hard enough holding onto the ground they already occupied, being under constant attack by a vicious enemy.

---

As for the Twenty Sixth, their story was more conventional in the way that they formed. Originally from the ruined streets of Glasgow and surrounding area, the group was known for its fierce fighting in a hundred skirmishes and lack of mercy for prisoners if they wouldn’t change sides. Over the years the “membership” grew and included local mercenaries, ex-prisoners and just about anyone who had some skill or other to offer. From accountants to drivers to weapon techs, all had a role to play in this sprawling group that changed its name from the Hustlers to the Twenty Sixth when recruitment brought pilot numbers up to number 26, enough for their aims of two squadrons of the best skilled and most able people to take the war to the Stone Collectors from the air.

All they needed was a suitable plane and that was where Seranaya came in and her crazy plan to find the entombed plane and rebuild it, then make many more till they had a huge air fleet. Already in possession of two hundred mile an hour electric powered trainer/light strike aircraft the group needed more powerful craft. Acquiring aircraft from the Iranian Superpower Block was impossible due to political infighting and paranoia to any foreigners. The Iranians possessed machines such as advanced hypersonic fighter planes and true space vehicles. All of these would make any group or country top dog on the block; that’s why the Twenty Sixth only managed to come by thirty Type 10 Bright Star electric planes. These were highly agile but too slow, limited in warload and were needed for training new pilots. Other sources of aircraft turned out to be full of shit or unreliable, so the frozen plane was a must. If it could be repaired or reverse engineered then the Stone Collectors could be defeated. Iranian supplied nuclear missiles would also be part of the plan. They supplied weapons to both sides when it gained them some influence or favour. No one played fair in modern war.

---

From the shore a bright flash lit up the barely visible island on horizon, turning the grey day into a sunburst of blinding light. The bomb set by Jian, Boss and Jano had detonated on time. It obliterated everything. A huge mushroom cloud rose up, rolling and boiling in reds and purples as it cooled and grew in size to reach the stratosphere. Seconds later the blast wave reached the shore at the speed of sound, a bulging sphere of violence. A group of people, nomadic wanderers using gravity drive vehicles, witnessed the blast from twelve and a half miles away. Half suffered temporary flash blindness due to watching the flash; at night blindness would be permanent and irreversible. Six medium sized bus like vehicles were turned over and badly damaged, smashing their drive systems and body work. The remainder suffered light damage. Out of a hundred people most had their breath taken away as they got simply blown away, thirty-six died and twenty-four seriously injured. The rest got off lightly.

By this time the three war starters had reached safety on one of the thousand year old rusting oilrigs in the North Sea. No one had spotted them. Over two hours previously the thirty-six nuclear rockets had hit and destroyed their targets. A total of nine hit Twenty Sixth weapon sites, vehicle bases, ammo dumps and command centres above ground in un-hardened buildings. Each carried a thirty-kiloton atom bomb set for low altitude airburst for blast damage. Neutron bombs, the people killers, hit troop and fighting men/women concentrations with small five kiloton blasts that produced incapacitating gamma rays to kill and disable anyone nearby. Buildings a mile and a half away would only be lightly damaged but people up to ten miles away would suffer, taking up to three days to die. The remaining missiles were hydrogen bombs, really, really big ones with plenty of Boom in them. Twenty-one hit targets up and down the country belonging to the Twenty Sixth, away from the Stone Collectors positions and facilities, due to the large blast radius. Targets included sprawling weapons factories, undamaged old cities and towns, new type barricade style towns (like huge walled city/forts, very heavily armed), underground command facilities and one port city used to import various arms. Destruction and loss of life would be a hundred percent, though a lot of Stone Collectors would escape by being in other areas of the country, being left with only their portable weapons. It was a heavy and devastating attack that achieved total surprise.

---

Serenaya returned to the camp, her camp, on the barren icefields of the north Artic. Before she entered the pressurised lightweight plastic shelter, she stopped and looked around at her remote location. For mile after mile around her the ice fields stretched seemingly to infinity over the snowy plain, to give the impression that nothing else existed in the world, just this. Above her the sky was a thin powdery blue dusted with a hint of white high altitude Cirrus clouds, many miles out of reach but almost close enough to touch. This in particular took the young girl’s breath away; if she were an angel then she wanted to live up there with those wispy clouds and delicate blue sky. Even the unbroken line of the horizon which stretched evenly around her was an eye opener in a cold icy sort of way; hardly a bump or ridge spoiled the circular horizon line as Serenaya slowly scanned it with her wide brown eyes. Her faceplate fogged slightly, so she turned up the suit’s demister to maximum. The visor cleared, giving her back her stunning view of the whole area. Standing for another few minutes admiring it, Serenaya wondered had it always been like this? Maybe it had, timeless to Mankind’s passing in Mother Nature’s world of stunning beauty.

Turning to the medium size door, she punched in her four-digit code to unlock the mechanism. A really determined person could defeat the small lock with a large hunting knife, maybe even to cut through the tough plastic walls but no soul was about and it gave Serenaya a feeling of security, even if it was a slightly misconceived feeling. For the duration this was her home, her shelter from the elements and from the huge vastness of the outside. In here she could see the walls; they were her horizon, close enough to reassuringly touch and bring her down to earth from the massive remoteness of the icepack.

With a slight hiss the door opened and she slowly stepped inside the white walled structure. It contained a single plastic bunk with double layer space blanket with small heating elements, a light weight desk and chair, computer equipment of assorted types, a cooking area with laser stove, two crates of provisions and a chemical toilet in a small cubicle with an equally small shower. This was not Serenaya’s favourite item but it was at best functional and at least it didn’t smell due to the efficient chemicals within. Taking off her gloves and one-piece helmet, she sat down and breathed deeply, relaxing for a moment. When done, she clicked the computer on and monitored the smaller unit that she left scanning outside. Everything was in order. Rows of text filled the screen in dizzying scrolls that her eyes struggled to follow. Carefully to not upset the system, she touched the menu section at the top of the screen to view directly what the radar was seeing.

Several seconds later a small window appeared in the middle of the display, showing a faint hazy image like a roughly drawn cross. This took her back to when she was a child and clumsily painting a cross on thick paper, the watery paint soaked into the paper and spoiled her simple image. This is what the buried plane now resembled, with the smudged bits being the streamlined/wing fuselage structure retaining their outline after so many years. She rotated the image by again touching the sensitive screen, viewing the plane from around the compass and then zoomed in to examine each part as closely as possible. Firstly, the huge single piece vertical tail. It was bent lazily over to the right, off centre by shifting ice over the years but still attached to the body. The horizontal tail plane was bent accordingly; the port unit separated from the vertical one, to be frozen in space half a metre away. The starboard unit was fine in comparison, still attached. Moving up the fuselage she swore under her breath – the hollow structure had been partly crushed by the solid ice around it. Radar waves painted a photo like image that showed massive crush damage down the delicate structure, all along from the tail plane to the cockpit. Cockpit transparencies were missing or broken and a huge amount of ice invaded the once pressurised area, crushing and shattering over hundreds of years.

Moving the picture to display the port wing and one of the double power units showed more of the same, a bent wing, no longer upwards but slightly downwards. The huge airscrew had come adrift from the motor, to hang in the ice before it, blades bent back from a much earlier crash landing. Serenaya could only guess at what internal damage internal damage was like to the fuel tanks, engines and wing spars. Quickly scrolling to the starboard wing showed less damage but nothing was left untouched; this wing had combat damage on the outer quarter, jagged metal bent upwards from several holes.

Smiling to herself, Seranaya granted herself credit for managing to come this far. Next the plane had to be raised from its icy tomb, transported to the secret research base and taken apart. New parts had to be made, measurements taken, tests done and improvements made using recent technology. Only then could any new planes start to be fabricated, a long and slow job. Moving back to the main menu, Seranaya took in additional information and after several minutes stopped to prepare her meal, a man made substitute for rabbit stew with a carton of high energy drink.

On the ice the plane painting radar completed the scan and went into Standby mode to await instructions. Further details would have to be gleaned from a visual inspection after boring down through the ice, a job the young girl didn’t envy but needed to do. Finishing her meal, she got ready to return to the ice.

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