The Ukrainians burst in relief. But they didn’t moon though.
Primakov tempered the mood with, “1 down, still over 11000 to go…”
“Hey man, chill… we got this.”
“Well, I just hope your thing… the Albatross can scale… most things go to shit when you scale…”
Within the next 6 minutes, the Albatross had granted asylum to more than a 100 refugee missiles. The waiting list still had like 10,000+ ICBMs… all lost and roving the skies over Russia… but the Albatross seemed to have enough horses under its hood.
NORTHCOM, Colorado Springs
“Sir, we just lost track of the last Minuteman…”
“And you are sure none of them landed or detonated?”
“Don’t think they even had a chance to arm…”
“I am calling POTUS.”
Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia
The first Minuteman, meant for the Kremlin reduced its speed to 200 Knots before banking sharply to the right. It then aligned itself with the coordinates supplied by a soothing satellite named Koba.
3 minutes later, the Minuteman from Minot, North Dakota pierced the cold, salt free waters of Lake Baikal.
Camp David
“Hey, is it me or did it just get friggin chilly?” asked the President from the back of a golf cart.
“Probably the Smoky Mountains Sir, or maybe it’s the… Atlantic breeze…,” replied his aide.
“Really?”
Just before the aide could answer, his phone buzzed, “Yes… what? ICBMs… Jesus! For real, real? Mr. POTUS, the D Sec wants to talk to you…”
“Whaaat? Not now. This is my down time. Also stop saying POTUS to my face… whats with that uh?”
“Uh… Sir… Mr. President, the D Sec says we have lost all of our ICBMs.”
Earth, Milky Way
The earth continued to twist and turn around its new axis. After doing the same thing for over 4 billion years this was a welcome relief. First it slowed down for a few seconds… which was obviously great… and when it revved again, north was west, east was middle, Almaty was equator, Kansas City was North Pole, Krasnoyarsk was Kinshasa…
The best part had been the helter-skelter reaction of the satellites. Like a swarm of synchronous bees they had been bugging the shit out of Earth. And suddenly they had become headless hyenas.
Military, industrial, weather, geo-synched snatches and spying bitches — all… all of them got bitch slapped by the Earth’s axis realignment or tilting. After trying real hard, most of them burnt up in the atmosphere. The smarter ones simply abandoned Earth for pretty boy Mars.
All of them were destroyed… all of them… except for a few Russian satellites.
Chapter 44
Krasnoyarsk, Siberia
“300 for Aral Sea?” asked Pulikesi.
Primakov pulled up his briefing on the Aral Sea. It was a drying sea. Hardly any depth. “Nah, make it 100.”
“100 to Aral Sea. Great.”
Ilya outlined the next batch of incoming ICBMs, “100 German. 30 Dutch. 15 Polish and 350 Israeli.”
“Put them into the Lena.”
“Putting them into the Lena river…” replied Ilya.
“Next up, 500 Frenchies. Say Volga?”
Primakov disagreed. The Volga was a cherished river. Only a cherished enemy would suffice. “Only Americans in the Volga. Send the Frenchies to Amur.”
“Amur — Frenchies. Got it.”
“Yo Primakov, your plan is real cute, but there is one little problem…” began Pulikesi.
“What the hell is that?”
“Well, it’s cool that we caught the missiles aimed at Russia. But to have supremacy… you need all the nukes… even the ones with your allies, like say Ukraine… haha… too soon?”
Rocket man Antipin and the President stared at Primakov. He simply returned the stare. Antipin became annoyed after the 5 sec, benefit of doubt wait period and slammed the carbon dated table, “Forget Ukraine. What about China? Fuck, they have like what… 700?”
“Well they are sorta our allies…” shrugged Primakov, “we never thought about our friends.”
“Fuck your enemies hard… fuck your friends harder… isn’t that like your KGB motto?”
Primakov stoutly defended his former employer, “You know, technically I might not even be KGB… I graduated in the transition years between the KGB and the FSB, and all we did was talk about chicks…”
Korlov looked on sheepishly as an overhead counter notified everyone that 400 British nukes had been assigned to the Ob River.
Antipin was now concerned about other potential ICBM challengers. “There is also India with 100, Pakistan probably same, North Korea 2000…”
The President interjected at the citing of Upper Korea. “I wouldn’t worry about North Korea. We can trust our boy…”
“Madam with all due respect…”
“Leave it Luzkhov. No more crazy talk about the Great Leader. In fact, I think the he is set to become our staunchest ally.”
“Pyongyang silos totally silent. No missile launches,” confirmed Korlov.
Antipin was unmoved, “But that still leaves us with China and the sub-continent.”
President Petrova put her foot down, “Well, we will deal with the Chinese and Indians diplomatically… numerically they are chickenfeed.”
The situation room was getting balmy. Whoa, it was already happening.
Antipin had one more question. Stealing the bulk of the western armament had been easy enough, but now came the hard part. “Mueller, it’s great that the Americans and the rest of the world have been rendered toothless, but… but… how long can we hold this advantage? I mean they still have their factories, their uranium mines, their enriching facilities, their titanium capabilities… NASA… like whats the long-term endgame here?”
Luzkhov added, “Plus the Americans could easily build their own Project Catie… which could counteract and re-rotate the earth back to the old alignment… or worse put us at the South Pole.
Mueller and Otto scratched their beardless chins in mock amusement.
“Well?”
Otto finally put up his hand and said, “Well, how long did it take for the android to catch up to the great phone?”
“Years… but still, not close enough,” said Mueller. The bloody Germans were doing a canned routine.
“And how long did it take to get ‘close’?” asked Otto.
“Say 6-7 years.”
“Which in the world of advanced weaponry translates to…”
“6 to 7 decades… 70 years…”
The President seemed to buy it. Primakov wanted to take a dump. All the missile herding had been tiring. Korlov wanted some coffee but was afraid to jinx things.
Yuspov the Attorney General, wanted to have his name mentioned somewhere. So he said what he could, “Back in the day, we had our first nuke just 6 months after the Americans.”
“True but you gotta remember, back in the day, the Mac was thoroughly defeated by Windows.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means we learn from our mistakes. Despite ganging up, the great phone has maintained the edge — technically and economically. Trust me, no one is going to make another Project Catie for a long time. Plus this isn’t like the nuke which was built in 2 years with 0.05% of GDP. This… this Project Catie was built over 70 years with like 50% of Russo-Soviet GDP.”
The situation room nodded doubtfully.
Chapter 45
Dalian, China
“Comrade Secretary, the US 7th fleet just fired over a 100 missiles — ICBMs. They are all headed north.”