CHAPTER 23.5

 “F**k Around And Find Out”

     

August 8th, 2040: Jeoji Village, Geuleo-Ondouh Region, Geuman Sangsung Yeonbang

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Ryuk leaned against his scythe. Through heavy breaths, he glanced back at Gyeon who was laying on the sheep pasture with a wooden block and a carving knife. 

“Hey Ryuk! Half of the day is already gone and we still have the rest of this field to harvest.” To his right, Jeong was still at it with him doing large, clean swings with his scythe. 

“You make it sound like we will not get the harvest in before the cold weather hits.” Picking up his scythe, Ryuk went back to cutting his lane. “Relax a little, we still have many days before the first snowfall. The one you should be shouting at is Gyeon--Hey! One of the sheep is wandering Gyeon!” 

“Yeah yeah, I got it.” With no urgency seeing that the sheep was more interested in longer grass, Gyeon used his shepherd staff and waved it near the sheep, causing it to move back to the rest of the flock. “We will need to get Yeong and Jeom to shear them again soon, is the price for wool going up again?” 

“I believe so, a passing merchant a few days ago said something about Lord Jung-Hee wanting more fine cloth for his castle, so most of the available wool around here is being sold directly to him, rather than through the guild.” Ryuk replied. Pausing for a moment he looked up at their small, but quaint village; and gazing into the far distance--being on a downward sloping hill, he could see Lord Jung-Hee’s castle walls sticking out past a small mountain. While The Great Mangjeol Dae Mal-Chin did not bless the land with rich minerals, he had given the valley so much fertility that it never changed from its lush green for anything but winter. A time where the land could rest, and his village must either use the storage food they have, or go fishing in the lake at the bottom of the valley. Though being far off, it was a last resort as the winters could be so harsh to the point that the roads became unusable, damning any villages or towns that did not prepare in time. Refocusing his mind on cutting the wheat and trimming the dirt road, Ryuk did not realize that he was the only one working. Looking back at Jeong with a raised eyebrow, Ryuk saw that he was squinting his eyes.

“Something in your eyes?” He questioned, not getting a simple head shake, followed by Jeong pointing into the distance.

“Something flying is coming this way.”

 

Looking at where Gyeon was pointing, he was correct in saying that something was flying towards them. However, the simple one object had turned into three, then nine objects as it lumbered across the sky.

“What In the Lord's holy good graces… what is that?” 

    

 

With the speed of a hawk on the hunt, creatures black as a moonless night, soared overhead, making a deafening roar as they passed. Feeling a fear they had never felt before, Ryuk, Gyeon and Jeong watched, frozen, as the formation flew over them and continued past. Gyeon was the first to regain his senses. With his hands working faster than his mind could process, he had already begun to crudely carve the odd creature's shape into the piece of wood. Once the creatures had become nothing but a single black dot in the distance again. Ryuk and Jeong looked at each other with faces whiter than fresh snow, followed by both throwing down their scythes and sprinting back to their village as fast as their bodies would allow. 

 

A few hundred meters above them not too long ago…

 

    “Oh man, we're gonna give these poor bastards nightmares for weeks.” Goodwin chuckled, leaning back into his seat, he looked to his left to see their water count had indeed gone up…by two percent. “Fuckin’ hell, this was not worth antagonizing the locals for a glass of water. Any denser clouds higher up?” Looking to the right and behind him, their navigator, Rolf, scanned over his radar.

“Nope, seems like we got lucky with that rainstorm a few weeks back. We should have kept following it.” Glancing over at their drone operator, Cash, he returned it with a shrug. 

“Don’t look at me, it was Goodwin’s idea.” 

“I swear if you two start fighting again, I am going to throw one of you out.” With the co-pilot, Braxton, quickly shutting down any argument that could have happened, Cash and Rolf returned to looking at their respective stations. 

“Sköll and Hati are at half fuel. Want me to start the docking procedure?” 

“Affirm Cash, just let me get some height here first.” Fiddling around with the autopilot, the YA/Q-4A or more commonly called by her flight crew, ‘Ye Flying Death, began a smooth transition into a climb with the drone falling back to allow Sköll and Hati to have enough room to safely dock underneath the wings.

“SITREP on the reactor Lucca?” Looking right at the back of the cockpit. Lucca was constantly shifting his vision across all of his monitoring equipment.

“All green here. Sodium coolant is steady and no issues with the heat exchange. That said, we are now officially at half-load. Once we reach anything below thirty we are gonna start having performance issues.”

“And how long until that becomes a problem?” Goodwin could feel his stomach slightly sinking, all the while his mind playing a scene where he had to water ditch ‘Ye Flying Death.

“Not for another two months. What is more concerning is the rationing of our food stocks. The window for us to fly to North America is only getting smaller. We need to agree on a course of action.”

 

No one disagreed with that. Ever since they took flight on what was supposed to be a normal test flight, it turned out to be something more than any of them could have bargained for. Over open ocean when the transfer happened, the initial white flash was expected to be the aftermath of a nuclear detonation, but was quickly ruled out as a mushroom cloud was not spotted. Flying back over to what the crew thought was New Zealand, had turned out to be a completely new continent devoid of any modern-era machinations that they could think of, not to mention the gravity-defying islands that made it impossible to fly anywhere below 50,000 feet. With absolutely no way of communicating and in a daze over what was happening. It was decided that they would fly northwest to Australia, and if that didn't turn up anything meaningful, go further north to Papua New Guinea than to The Philippines. A combined total of about 4,800 miles. But as the odometer climbed, it became apparent that either they weren't going northeast, or Australia had completely vanished. Cutting the trip short after a storm was spotted and their water tanks running low, they followed it north. After weeks on open water, the crew spotted land and immediately diverted to it… only to find themselves in wonderland.

                   

“Alright Cash, altitude good, speed good, heading good. Green light on docking.” Using a selection of buttons, Goodwin circled one of his monitors to a camera that was positioned just in front of the left docking arm.

“Affirm, commencing final approach.” Relaying commands to Sköll and Hati, the drones immediately pulled away from the delta wing formation, inverted themselves and lined up with their respective docking arms. With the greatest precision an artificial intelligence can give, the drones effortlessly glided underneath ‘Ye Flying Death’s wing and opened their docking latch before moving up and connecting. Once connected, Cash retracted the drones and had them seated into the shallow docking bays. “Sköll and Hati are docked and recharging, ETA twenty minutes.”

“I’ll never get over how smooth that always looks. The power of AI, am I right?” Giving a smirk to Braxton the moment was short-lived when the two pilots spotted a strange cloud mass in the distance. “Wildfire?” 

“Too spotty, a wildfire would be much wider. Check it out?” Braxton looked back at Goodwin who glanced at the compass.

“We’re going north anyways, might as well.”              

                     

As the smoke got closer, the crew became more restless as the landscape below them went from fields to a small forest then pastures. However, the next sizable section of fields seemed to be in rather poor condition. With the fields either burnt or seemingly been fought on with the corpses of horses and humans littering a select few. Looking back to where the majority of the smoke was coming from, Goodwin’s eyes widened in shock.

“Ah fuck, we’re flying towards a siege, aren’t we?” Using the few reconnaissance cameras they had, it was made very clear that Goodwin was right. In front of the Americans, a city was in the middle of an active siege. Surrounding the entire city and not far off, the rather large besieging army had set up camp, built three siege towers, seven catapults and was assaulting the city from two wall adjoining faces. As for the sky, wyverns from both sides were facing off each other in a chaotic battle for air superiority. For the defenders' part, they were showering the attackers in arrows and a few ballistas scattered across the wall, however, it seemed that the elite forces were smart enough to take shelter behind the siege towers. “All in favor of intervention?”

“Whoah whoah, pump your brakes a little Goodwin!” Caught off guard by Goodwin’s comment, Braxton looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “We don’t even know who these people are, let alone who is technically ‘the good guys’. Let’s just go around and avoid this clusterfuck.”

“I don’t know about you, but that tells me everything I need to know.” Pointing to one of the camera feeds, it showed a view of a church where women and children were being rushed in, seemingly in a panic. With Goodwin looking back at Braxton and then the rest of the crew, he repeated his question. “So what is it going to be, gents?” 

“I finally get to send my babies into a combat situation? Fuck yeah I agree!” Quickly cementing his vote, Cash quickly began sending commands to the drone with Rolf and Lucca returning a shrug.

“Whatever you think is best, Captain.”

“Alright, then it’s settled, we are intervening on the side of the defenders. Cash, fangs out and level those siege towers! Launch Sköll and Hati and get them on air dominance. Braxton, swap over to gunnery mode and deploy the hardpoints.” 

“Affirm Captain, Loading AIM--wait, scratch last sir. I can’t tell BLUEFOR from OPFOR, all the lizards look the same! Rader will be painting as many allies as foes, Captain.” 

“Then…fucking load hellfires and I’ll initiate the laser guidance systems and point at whatever looks to be the enemy--and priorities those siege towers before they reach the wall!” Reducing the speed of ‘Ye Flying Death. Goodwin moved his visor down and entered what was commonly called “Combat Mode”, allowing him to see right through the aircraft frame and get a complete 360° degrees view. 

   

Having already been told repeatedly when they first started the Drone Carrier Program, all the drones had a mixed loadout to allow a response to any situation. Ordering the three drones on the right side of the formation, Zeus, Hades and Ares began their attack run. Once they oriented themselves in a straight line with the towers, each drone opened their onboard stations and fired one hellfire before quickly banking right and away from the battlefield. Using the state-of-the-art guidance system on ‘Ye Flying Death, the missiles had no trouble hitting the towers, causing all three to crumble in a cloud of dust and debris. 

“Towers down, moving onto the other siegeworks!” With Cash getting the drones to swing around, in the meantime, Goodwin had laser designated all the catapults and a few dense groups of footmen. “Beginning attack run!” 

“Heads up Cash we’ve got incoming bearing 342!” Rolf shouted with him fiddling with multiple switches. “Fucking battlefield is too dense to get a clear picture.”

“Solid copy Rolf, deploying Sköll and Hati.” Extending the two drones back out and detaching them, they immediately punched to full power and speed ahead of their mothership. “I see the threat Rolf, Goodwin I need a lock!”

“Locked and waiting Cash, send it.” Watching as Sköll and Hati zoomed ahead, they broke hard right and a few seconds later, four puffs of smoke. 

“Scratch four bandits. Looks like the ground forces have taken notice.” Watching Cash noticed a line of archers on the wall had stopped firing to gawk at Zeus as it fired another hellfire into a dense group of cavalry. 

“We got routing forces to the south, it seems like we scared them enough. Give the Eastern flank reason to follow suit, Cash.” 

“Affirm Captain.” Recalling the five drones, Cash sent in the remaining drones, Mars, Daina and Pluto for clean-up.

“Air is clearing up Captain, what OPFOR aerial assets are left are flying east.” Having managed to clean up the radar enough to properly read it, Rolf started marking targets left and right. “Happy hunting Cash.”

“Oh goddammit, Captain, we did it again.” Braxton let out a heavy sigh with Goodwin raising his visor and giving a confused look.

“What do you mean Braxton?” 

“Just..look at the walls when you get the chance.” Lowering his visor again, Goodwin looked to the walls, and knew exactly what Braxton meant. Every single person on the wall was looking up at them, each one with a face pale as snow and frozen in fear as ‘Ye Flying Death slowly lumbered across the sky. 

“Ugh, I really hope this doesn't cause problems in the future…”